What is the term widowed land?

Answer 1

The phrase "widowed land" comes from the book by Francis Jennings, The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism, and Cant of Conquest (1976). In it, he states that colonists coming to America believed that they were coming to a "virgin land"; that is, new, unspoiled, and waiting for people to inhabit it. However, Jennings explains that the population of native peoples had gone down dramatically from waves of disease, warfare, and changes in their ways of life, much of it caused by Europeans who had been there before the colonists. In that way, the Americas was a "widowed land", empty and deserted. Because we tend to think of buildings as a sign of habitation, imagine finding a town with no people in it, or only a few families. If we thought in the way of the early colonists, we would think, "Great! A whole lovely town just sitting here waiting for us to move in!" instead of wondering, "What happened? Where is everyone?" Because land in the Americas seemed empty of buildings and farms (how Europeans lived), they did not think that anyone was using it. Of course, many people where using it to hunt and gather their food and other necessities of life.