In the Forward, John Demos places this book within the setting of historical research into early colonial American history. He believes that Cronon’s work achieves an original, unique perspective into the relationship between people—both Native Americans and European colonists—and the land during the early settlement period in New England. At the time of its first publication, Cronon’s work was among the first in the area of ecological history.

Throughout the book, Cronon and his sources refer to Native American people as “Indians.” Due to evolution in acceptable sociopolitical terminology, the accepted modern usage is “Native Americans.”

In the Preface, Cronon comments on the unlikely path that brought his work to publication in 1983. At that time, nothing similar to the research Cronon proposed had been performed, making his work remarkable due to both Cronon’s position as a Yale graduate student and his somewhat new and controversial ecological topic. However, in the 20 years since the first publication of this work, other scholars have substantially added to the foundation laid by Cronon. His work, therefore, stands as the seminal work in early American ecological history.