Challenges and Ecological Disasters......

Mrs.Garber Wrote

2. Some of the greatest obstacles to Westward migration and settlement were geographic in nature. Western settlers had to overcome the utter lack of water, dust storms, unforgiving mountainous terrain, frigid winters, and sweltering summers. How did Western settlers deal with these challenges? Are the settlers' responses to these challenges sustainable in the long run or is the West headed for ecological disaster?

   The settlers did cope with all these obstacles in a variety of ways, and many of which were natural human reactions to simple environmental changes. Many things that you can think of as far as what you do when your cold or hot, they did. For instance, when it is cold, you put a coat on, or you create a sheltered area and make a fire to keep yourself warm. The settlers used many simple techniques to help themselves survive. If you will, this is how many towns were formed, where people had gotten together to build a camp, and some people couldn't go on, so they just made life as best as possible where they were at, and as people came along, the population of the camp grew and in a good couple of years, it turned into a village and eventually into a town. Although there were people who stopped to make camp and didn't move on, there are those who were driven by the force of money and the promise of the 'gold rush'. And this 'gold rush' that they were promised was enough to make them leave their old poor lives behind in hopes of something new and better. What do you have to lose if you have nothing?

  
    Are the responses good to go in the long run? The answer is absolutely not. Yes albeit, they did make towns and such, but for every town that was made, there had to be two that failed and died out. Its kind of like a really cruel version of Charles Darwins' "Natural Selection" theory. The methods that were used back then to build things were totally bad for the environment, but they did work to a certain extent. Most people who didn't know of the most up to date methods for building in a futile environment usually died, and those who did know the proper methods of building and surviving lived, but eventually had to change to newer methods or they would ruin the environment. Did they care back then if the environment was ruined? No. But they did eventually catch on as to how the burning of coal effected the environment, and how bad it was to cut down hundreds of trees to the animals around them. These settlers weren't like the Native Americans around them who used every part of everything they killed or cut down, the settlers had a lot of waste and they knew it.

    Now although these people were bluntly murdering their environment and polluting the Earth, they eventually became self-aware of what they were doing and changed their methods before it was too late. You can plainly tell that they were headed toward an ecological disaster, but had noticed the signs of this well before it actually happened. The reason you can see this so plainly is because if you look back through history  (which is fact) you can see that there is no ecological disaster stemming from the fact that the settlers were existent.

   I think the settlers did a good job at transitioning from temporary shelter and supply to permanent shelter and supply, and the reason I say this is because although, we are effected here in the future by moderate deforestation, there is no real signs or problems that have stemmed from the settlers (as stated above.) And to those people I give kudos.



Semper Fidelis.