For much of human history, mankind has lived in close proximity with the natural world. At the time the world was created, the attitudes and beliefs of the Native American's differed from that of the colonizing Europeans regarding man's relationship to nature. While the Native Americans believed they were part of nature, the Europeans felt they were superior to nature. After examining the Native American creation and trickster tales and the beginning books of Genesis, distinctions between these views are evident. Similar to Genesis, later texts like Thomas Harriot's, A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia, portray man's dominion over the natural world. In turn, the point of view of the capitalist Judeo-Christians affects their attitudes towards the Native Americans in a sense that they were also superior to the savages because they were an uncivilized people.
             One major distinction regarding man's relationship to nature is in Genesis, the universe was created as a hierarchal cosmology. God, the omniscient soul creator, creates human beings and grants them special status. Even though man, who is created in the image of God, gets created after the animals, plants, and sea, God determines man is superior to the natural world. "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth." Thus God had dominion over man and man had dominion over the fauna and flora of the natural world. In Genesis, Adam is granted dominion over the natural world and obtains the privilege of naming the world. Moreover, the natural world is subdued for the purpose of man. The colonizing Europeans attitude toward nature was that of arrogance or propriety.
             In contrast to the colonizing Europeans view of man's status in the ...