Literature

Settlement patterns occur in some areas and among certain groups of people but there are exceptions in every case.  In looking at settlement in the Northfield area looking at it in a greater context of settlement overall adds a wholeness to the picture.  Most events of settlement are not disconnected from others.  They link through chains of events that often happen over wide territories in the U.S. as the tide of people move westward (Stilgoe, 339-349).

Settlement into the west opened up as the States in the east began to become overcrowded and also as it became profitable for land surveyors to sell land (Holton, 3-6).  The Railroad and cities like Chicago would provide gateways into western lands such as Minnesota (Cronon,292-307).  Along the way battles would be fought between Native Americans and settlers, treaties signed sometimes under duress, and territories established that would later become states.

Settlement has also been examined in Environmental history.  Settlement is inextricably linked to the land it occurs on.  Landscapes are transformed as fences, houses, towns, and farms appear on the land.  Often vegetation changes as patches are cleared and new plants grown.  Domesticated animals also changed the face of the land.  These changes are all linked to the cultural ideas that people hold about land and its value (Warren, 74-79).  This can also be linked to why people chose certain places to settle over others.

Looking at the question of how people new to a place connect to their new home is an important one in settlement and immigration history.  It is something that all immigrants throughout time have had to deal with.  Learning to adapt to their new life and new land.  Often learning to love or at least have an understanding of the place they now inhabit and often changing it based on values and ideas they bring with them (Stilgoe, 3-11).  Looking at what a sense of place entails helps to unravel the story of how settlers connected to the land and gained a sense of place in their new homes or if they were in fact able to.  In some cases it appears that those who did not were often unsuccessful in their venture.  It appears then that developing a sense of place could have been an important part of the settlement process.  Because a sense of place usually involves knowing a place and for settlers to learn how to live in new worlds this kind of understanding was important.  People would do this in different ways and sometimes it would include a drastic transformation of the new land they lived in (Warren, 74-79).

Looking at the actual impact that settlers had on the land helps illustrate ways they viewed the land and connected to it.  It also in some ways can show how they developed a sense of place.  For some settlers trying to create their old homeland in the new one would help them to bond to their new home.  It would often combine pieces of the old with the new and create something different than either of them.  There were often ideas of improvement such as the application of the grid to order land, which was applied not by settlers but by surveyors.  It would still shape the view of the way land was supposed to be (Stilgoe, 99-107).

Impacts on the land are also often connected with social and cultural ideas about land and where people fit in it (Stilgoe, 344-345).  During this time of settlement there were boosters promoting the usefulness of land, ideas of progress with the railroad improving transportation, and the generation of waterpower were also abundant.  There were also ideas of thrift, in getting land for as cheap as you could by getting there before the surveyors who would charge you more.  These trends can be found in other stories of other places such as historian William Cronon's Nature's Metropolis, where he explores these same issues.  These ideas connect with how people connect to a place.