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The great transformation that has been the subject of this book started with Charles C. DeRudio (née Carlo Camillo di Rudio) on July 6, 1870. For the first time in this region, land was treated as a commodity, and two hundred dollars bought the rights to a quarter section of land. The most profound change on that day was the transformation of Waconda Spring from a place where pilgrims communicated with the spirit world to a potential source of wealth. The previous cultural landscape had ancient roots. This is not to say that it was unchanging; the physical landscape itself changed as climatic regimes came and went, and the archaeological records shows that the human cultures underwent many profound transformations. James Sherow ’s “geodialectic” was surely at work.1 But the native routes of travel became adjusted to the landscape through a pattern of trial and error, so that the primary trails were those that provided all of the necessities of life, while others may have been used only during wet seasons. Even when one population replaced another, as when the Apaches entered the region, the knowledge of the landscape passed to the newcomers. This was true even for the sacred places, as all of the peoples of the region, even though they had their own specific rituals and beliefs, nevertheless shared in a continent-wide religious tradition with a single underlying cosmology. Most of that changed practically overnight. After 1870, the landscape became both physically and culturally different. The native nations were driven away, and the physical changes were just as profound. Bison were hunted to the edge of extinction, which led to changes in the species of grass, which in turn caused the local extinction of prairie dogs.2 Farmers broke the sod in order to plant, fenced the land, and introduced new species of plants, both intentionally and unintentionally. What had been 9.Perspectives 198 chapter 9 clear-flowing streams with beds of sand or rock became choked with sediment that eroded from the fields. Windmills and then irrigation pumps drew down the water table, causing many springs and even some rivers to stop flowing. Routes of travel became more artificial, with most local traffic flowing along section-line roads. The intangible changes were just as profound. The “spirit of the place” had changed.3 Land instantly became a commodity, with its value subject to market forces. Mineral rights became a consideration. Immigrants who did not share the old cultural understandings formed new communities and developed new myths and legends. Some of the myths persist to this day, in service of the market. One commonality with the old order was the presence of special places like Lincoln Camp, places that helped to unite communities and that provided a space for moral instruction. But these have gradually faded into disuse. In the present-day order of things, everything—even religion—becomes a commodity. People have little interaction with the land and tend to live indoors. Even in rural areas, the interaction is primarily with the plowed fields, and people enter the natural world only to hunt or fish. The main routes of travel are now designed primarily with cost in mind, so that the interstates lie away from the visually interesting spots, with their hills and stream crossings. How can I sum this up? It is hard to write about the losses I perceive with regard to the modern disconnection from the landscape without sounding like a grumpy old man, but we have become unmoored, with no meaningful connection to the land. We are now adrift in a way that no one has ever been before. Even the nomadic societies that existed in this region more than a thousand years ago had a stronger connection to the land than we do. Nomads do not wander randomly but move between places they know on a fairly regular basis, carrying their knowledge of and beliefs about those places with them. Today many people meet, not at a specified place within their familiar surroundings, but on the Internet, an entity that substitutes for real space. Places are now Web pages, and the meetings lack face-to-face contact with physical human beings. So let me end with a question: What does it mean for a society to live without place? ...

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