Environmental Transformation of North America prior to European Colonization

It is long been thought that both North and South America remained untouched by the natives that inhabited these continents for thousands of years prior to European exploration and eventual inhabitation. However this belief now appears to have been flawed in its assumptions. Native peoples, especially in the North American continent, have had large impacts on the ecology of the ecosystems the inhabited (Crosby). Before the Europeans colonized North America, Native Americans, were widely engaged in several practices that resulted in large-scale modification of forests, replacing them with open landscapes: burning, cultivation of crops, and constant relocation of villages.

Fire

Native Americans made extensive use of fire to enhance their hunting success. Perhaps more than any other practice, burning of fields and forest led to a transformation of large areas of the North American landscape due to the scale at which various native people used this tool.

Creating openings in the forest improves hunting success because many larger mammals, such as bison, buffalo, deer and antelope find their food resources outside of heavily wooded forest. The bison and buffalo were generally more desirable for Native peoples to hunt because they provided large amounts of meat, and their hides could be used for clothing and shelter. These animals resided mostly in the Great Plains, which some ecologists believe have been shaped by constant burning (White, Cronon). Fires suppressed the growth of the trees on the forest edges and even pushed the edges back farther, creating vast empty treeless areas (Williams). Frequent burning helped maintain the Great Plains and other grassland areas by preventing regeneration of the woodland that once grew (Williams). Areas that were once covered by trees like hemlocks, beech, and junipers were now turned to grassland suitable for wild animals (Cronon). Fires also created suitable habitat for deer. The elimination of brush and creation of forests with widely spaced tree created breeding grounds for deer (Williams). To keep the deer from migrating, Native Americans created fires on the edges of the forests (White, Cronon). The Native Americans transformed the Great Plains area into a “prodigious game farm” (Mann).

Fire was also used to create land that was livable. Brush, small trees, and other plants low to the ground made great covering for a variety of predators. Low vegetation, around villages, provided cover for dangerous species, such as poisonous snakes, or rodents that carried disease. Fire helped to uncover the brush and therefore drive out these unwanted animals (Williams). By managing the habitat near villages, Native Americans could in this way decrease overall levels of disease.

The sheer number of Native Americans that have been thought to inhabit the land could easily of caused such a great devastation to the forested areas. “Rather than the 8 million to 15 million native peoples…prior to 1492 as was previously thought, modern biological and archival reconstruction has put the number at between 43 million and 63 million, some even suggesting double that figure” (Williams). Such numbers alone would induce extreme environmental changes.

Fires set by the Native Americans were not always small brush fires that cleared brush around homes and villages. Some fires were great in extent and consequently caused wide scale transformation of forested areas. Some fires cleared between 20 and 200 acres of land surrounding the village using slash-n-burn techniques (Feest). Slash-n-burn or Swidden farming technique involves clearing fields with axes and machetes, and then burning off the chaff and refuse (Mann). This practice was used for preparing areas growing vegetation such as corn, beans, and squash (White; Cronon). Swidden farming cause the most harm to forests because everything is cleared, unlike the creation of hunting fields.

Fires for cooking and warmth also contributed to the local ecological transformation (White, Cronon). Women gathered firewood constantly to keep fires going. Quick consumption of wood forced them to search in about 3-mile radiuses around the village to find firewood (Williams). Villages of 50-1,500 residents quickly resulted in shortages of wood in the surrounding area of the village and comparably larger shortages must have faced villages as large as 25,000 residents (Williams). Mobility played a big role in resource consumption as Native Americans needed to find new ground to fuel the need for wood. Many villages set big fires that burned all night at times, winter and summer, creating a strain on wood resources (Cronon). The effects of intensive food gathering and firewood consumption led to some village sites relocating every new season.

Agriculture

Agriculture played a major role in early ecological transformation of the North American continent. Many villages had their own fields of vegetation to live off and most were grown on land cleared by swidden farming techniques (White, Cronon). To clear fields for planting, a group of around 50 men and women were required (Williams, 1936). The amount of land cultivated around a village is usually a radius between 10-15km (Williams). Fully-fledged agriculture became a dominant way of life for Native Americans for 500 years prior to the arrival of European settlers (Williams).

Fields of vegetation and gathering of firewood resulted in local deforestation for many of the Native American villages located in the North East (White, Cronon). After time much of the soil around villages declined in fertility (White, Cronon). Many of these villages became permanent grasslands after villages moved on to other territories. New land was then found, cleared, and prepared for farming and hunting. Two of the most popular crops were beans and corn. Cornfields continually remove the nitrogen from the soil causing it to quickly loose its fertility. Beans have nitrogen-fixing bacteria located in their roots which act to replace the nitrogen taken out of the soil, however beans could not put back in as much nitrogen as the corn had taken out (White, Cronon). Therefore the soil was slowly becoming harder and harder to manage. After farming the land for many crop cycles, Native Americans were forced to migrate to new locations in search of fresh resources.

Moving was not difficult due to the way villages were built. However preparing the land by clearing forests was a long process that took much manpower to accomplish. With the invention of the metal axe, clearing became more effective and efficient (Williams). The efficiency of Native Americans clearing and slash-n-burn techniques meant depletion of firewood was of little concern and constant relocation, which meant suffering forests (Williams). Some conservative estimates have the amount of treeless land per person set at 30 to 40 acres during the pre-Columbian occupation of North America (Williams). The forests did eventually experience some re-growth.

Ecosystem Transformation began long before European explorers settled in America. “When Lewis and Clark headed west from [St. Louis], they were exploring not a wilderness but a vast pasture managed by and for Native Americans” (Mann). This statement is a clear indication changes to the forest were intentional. They managed these forests by using fire and growing agriculture (farming). The dense forests that were originally throughout North America prior to human contact were manipulated into bare grassland, hunting ranges, and widely spaced forests. “Here’s the reason that the southern forests were so open and park like; not because the trees naturally grew thus, but because the Indians preferred them so.” (Cronon). Many believe that deforestation started with the arrival of the European Settlers, but the forests show some persuasive contradictory evidence. Diseases introduced by European settlers caused sever death and provided further evidence of ecological transformation from Native Americans. As population decreased, forests (of 1750) began to the resemble those of 1,000 years prior to Native American intervention (Williams). This putting the exclamation point on the evidence of the impact Native Americans had on the forests.

Works Cited

1. Cronon, William. Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England. New York, 1983.

2. Crosby, Alfred W. Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900. Cambridge University Press, 1986.

3. Feest, Christian F. “Virginia Algonquians” Handbook of North American Indians. Ed. Bruce G. Trigger. 20 Vols. Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1978

4. Mann, Charles C. 1491:New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. New York, 2005.

5. White, Richard and Cronon, William. “Ecological Change in Indian-White Relations” Handbook of North American Indians. Ed. Wilcomb E. Washburn. 20 Vols. Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1988.

6. Williams, Michael. Deforesting the Earth: From Prehistory to Global Crisis. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2006.

7. Williams, Roger. A Key into the Language of America. 5th ed. Providence: The Rhode Island and Providence Plantation Tercentenary Commission, 1936

Aaronl13 16:49, 10 October 2006 (UTC)