# Were The Great Plains a Human-Made Ecosystem? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 24, 2007, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-great-plains-a-human-made-ecosystem/405348 "2007-05-24T14:35:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2007, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-great-plains-a-human-made-ecosystem/405348/1 "2007-05-24T14:35:57Z")
Watching “dances With Wolves” made me wonder-were the Great Plains in 1866 a human-modified ecosystem? before AD 1500 or so, horses were unkown to the native Americans (the Spanish brought them). How did the natives hunt the buffalo? I suspect that the natives actually did wholesale modification-they probably burned down vast tracts of forest, which allowed the buffalo herds to increase in number. After a certain point, the buffalo were so numerous, that trees could not re-establish themsleves. then, along came the horse-which enabled the natives to increase in number. So the landscape was not virgin woilderness-the Great Plains were the work of man. Could this be true/ ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2007, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-great-plains-a-human-made-ecosystem/405348/2 "2007-05-24T14:40:05Z")
My Time-Life book on Ecology (remember that whole Time-Life series?) claimed that the pre-horse Great Plains were a well-integrated, functioning ecology that the coming of horses, cattle, and modern agriculture screwed up. I find it hard to believe that the earlier Indians would’ve set up a better-working one, or that they could or would have planned ecological engineering on a scale like that. Grassland exist in several parts of the world. Big ones, too. I think it’s a natural development. ---
**Author:** ![An\_Arky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/87869e/32.png) [@An\_Arky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Arky)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2007, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-great-plains-a-human-made-ecosystem/405348/3 "2007-05-24T14:50:17Z")
The Dust Bowl was certainly man-made to a great extent. There was a land rush, the price for wheat was artificially high, and a bajillion people all came out and ripped up the native grasses and planted wheat, etc. This resulted in a lot of erosion. That, coupled with a severe drought, caused the Dust Bowl. Note that had they not ripped up so much of the native grasses, the area would’ve survived the drought just like it always has over the last few millenia. Wiki link: [Dust Bowl](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_bowl) ---
**Author:** ![Common\_Tater](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/common_tater/32/13846_2.png) [@Common\_Tater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Common_Tater)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2007, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-great-plains-a-human-made-ecosystem/405348/4 "2007-05-24T14:57:01Z")
It would be interesting to know the population figures at various points, say, north of the Rio Grande for the last 1000 years. I’ve seen figures of roughly 100,000 for the area now comprising the US. This number has steadily increased in recent decades to several millions, which may be more reflective of popular political sensibilities than anything else. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2007, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-great-plains-a-human-made-ecosystem/405348/5 "2007-05-24T15:01:22Z")
Yeah, I loved those Time-Life books! Unfortunately, they were a product of their time, forty or fifty years ago, and do not reflect the research and understandings of the past two generations. > [@Stephen J. Pyne](#): > > … the modification of the American continent by fire at the hands of Asian immigrants … was the result of repeated, controlled, surface burns on a cycle of one to three years, broken by occasional holocausts from escape fires and periodic conflagrations during times of drought. … So extensive were the cumulative effects of these modifications that it may be said that the general consequence of the Indian occupation of the New World was to replace forested land with grassland or savannah, or, where the forest persisted, to open it up and free it from underbrush. Most of the impenetrable woods encountered by explorers were in bogs or swamps from which fire was excluded; naturally drained landscape was nearly everywhere burned. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2007, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-great-plains-a-human-made-ecosystem/405348/6 "2007-05-24T15:08:59Z")
> [@](#): > > Yeah, I loved those Time-Life books! Unfortunately, they were a product of their time, forty or fifty years ago, and do not reflect the research and understandings of the past two generations. > Quote: > Originally Posted by Stephen J. Pyne, Fire in America: A Cultural History of Wildland and Rural Fire, 1982 > … the modification of the American continent by fire at the hands of Asian immigrants … was the result of repeated, controlled, surface burns on a cycle of one to three years, broken by occasional holocausts from escape fires and periodic conflagrations during times of drought. … So extensive were the cumulative effects of these modifications that it may be said that the general consequence of the Indian occupation of the New World was to replace forested land with grassland or savannah, or, where the forest persisted, to open it up and free it from underbrush. Most of the impenetrable woods encountered by explorers were in bogs or swamps from which fire was excluded; naturally drained landscape was nearly everywhere burned. I still find it hard to believe – the Indians were all over the continent, but the Eastern Woodland remained Eastern Woodlands – they didn’t turn into grasslands. And those forests had plenty of underbrush and bogs. The Prairies were there where the rainfall was lower, which is consistent with that biological result. Away from big rivers like the Platte I don’t think the Plains could’ve supported large forested areas, Indians or not. And animals don’t adapt in short perioods of time to fill thodse ecological niches. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2007, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-great-plains-a-human-made-ecosystem/405348/7 "2007-05-24T15:40:54Z")
But what did the Plains indians do before the Spanish introduced horses? Were they sedentary farmers? The buffalo supported humans-but i find it hard to understand how buffalo could be hunted, without horses. What about the indian migrations? I once read that the ancestors on the Navajo migrated from northen canada, to the southwest, around 1600 years ago. Could the plains indians have been recent arrivals on the great plains? ---
**Author:** ![wevets](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9a140/32.png) [@wevets](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wevets)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2007, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-great-plains-a-human-made-ecosystem/405348/8 "2007-05-24T15:56:35Z")
You might be interested in [this article](http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/95/24/14576) from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Native Americans not only hunted bison on the Great Plains, but also other megafauna like mammoths. Horses were not necessary because cooperative hunting and predetermined strategy allow humans to trap or encircle animals much faster than the individual human can run (only in modern times has hunting of large animals ever been an individualistic activity, and not even to a huge extent now - it’s just way easier to do in groups.) The quote below is from the linked article: > [@George C. Frison](#): > > Features Used in Bison Procurement. A wide variety of natural and artificial features as well as combinations of both were utilized throughout Paleoindian times to trap and/or otherwise impede bison so they could be killed. These include headcuts in arroyos (18, 19); parabolic sand dunes (23); and stampeding animals into narrow, deep, steep-sided arroyos (34). In many cases, constructing a corral or the addition of artificial barriers to enhance the efficiency of a natural feature is suggested. For example, one component at the Horner site (27) is a bison bone bed with remains of 70 animals. They were killed as a group in late fall or early winter in a shallow, low-gradient drainage channel 0.5 m in depth (Fig. 6). Evidence supporting this place as the actual kill location consists of nearly complete bison skeletons remaining after removal of unarticulated bones (Fig. 7). An added above-ground wooden corral is suggested, although postholes that would confirm the presence of such a structure are lacking and would not have been necessary for a fence adequate to contain the animals. In addition, digging postholes into the cobble terrace on which the site is located would have been extremely difficult. A wooden corral to contain the animals has been suggested also at the Jones-Miller site in eastern Colorado (24). Is there any evidence that the Great Plains were forest or another biome before humans increased fire frequency? I was under the impression that the plains were grasslands pretty much regardless of humans. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2007, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-great-plains-a-human-made-ecosystem/405348/9 "2007-05-24T16:02:01Z")
[QUOTE=CalMeacham] I still find it hard to believe – the Indians were all over the continent, but the Eastern Woodland remained Eastern Woodlands – they didn’t turn into grasslands. And those forests had plenty of underbrush and bogs. The Prairies were there where the rainfall was lower, which is consistent with that biological result. Away from big rivers like the Platte I don’t think the Plains could’ve supported large forested areas, Indians or not. And animals don’t adapt in short perioods of time to fill thodse ecological niches. [/QUOTE] My last ellipsis substituted for this: > [@Pyne](#): > > Conversely, almost wherever the European went, forests followed. The Great American Forest may be more a product of settlement than a victim of it. but all I know is what other people tell me. Anyway, he’s not saying that all grasslands were created by purposeful burning, so no adaptations were required, just expansions of existing populations into an enlarged niche. The Indians also used burnings to control the undergrowth in forests. In the east, John Smith remarked that “a man may gallop a horse amongst these woods any waie, but where the creekes and Rivers shall hinder.” From the [USDA Forest Service,](http://www.foresthistory.org/Research/usfscoll/people/Native%20Americans/AmIndian.html) who we pay to know about these things, > [@](#): > > Smith’s and White’s observations of the open nature of eastern forests are typical of those of most other early observers, who commonly spoke of the ease of riding a horse or driving a wagon under the forest canopy. Reports of such open conditions were widespread in the coastal forests and in the forests west of the Appalachians as well, as far north as Quebec. Such conditions could only have been created by frequent, low intensity ground fires, many of which were set by Indians. > > But frequent forest burning did more than reduce the undergrowth and improve the habitat for preferred species. In many cases it created grasslands in areas where forests otherwise would have existed. Prairies extended into Ohio, western Pennsylvania, and western New York. In Virginia, the Shenandoah Valley – a broad valley located between the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Alleganies – was one vast grass prairie which covered more than 1000 square miles. > > Native Americans burned the area annually. R.C. Anderson writes that the eastern prairies and grasslands “would mostly have disappeared if it had not been for the nearly annual burning of these grasslands by the North American Indians.” > > In the West, as well, Indian burning also greatly extended the area of grasslands and reduced the area of forest. They also used annual burnings to maintain oak savannas in Wisconsin and on the Pacific coast and make it easier to harvest acorns. It cannot be said that, prior to 1492, the western hemisphere was a pristine wilderness untouched by the hand of Man. There were millions upon millions of people living here and they had to support themselves somehow. Many farmed, which required them to clear the land first. Others were hunters and gatherers and there is plenty of documentation showing how they optimized the existing ecology to increase yields. In my own yard, in an area that once was prairie, it is a yearly battle to keep the forest at bay as scrub bushes and trees attempt to put down roots. You have to do what I did: realize that, by keeping and citing your old Time-Life books, you are perpetuating outdated information. I had very nearly a complete collection but I finally had to give it away because it was too full of bad information. ---
**Author:** ![wevets](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9a140/32.png) [@wevets](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wevets)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2007, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-great-plains-a-human-made-ecosystem/405348/10 "2007-05-24T16:17:33Z")
That’s great. Thanks, **dropzone**. You mention extension of grasslands in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Virginia, and Wisconsin, but what about the heart of the Great Plains - what I usually think of as the Great Plains - north Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, eastern Colorado, South Dakota, Iowa? These weren’t forested recently, were they? ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2007, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-great-plains-a-human-made-ecosystem/405348/11 "2007-05-24T16:19:48Z")
[QUOTE=Common Tater] It would be interesting to know the population figures at various points, say, north of the Rio Grande for the last 1000 years. I’ve seen figures of roughly 100,000 for the area now comprising the US. This number has steadily increased in recent decades to several millions, which may be more reflective of popular political sensibilities than anything else. [/QUOTE] Did anyone ever really say 100,000 Indians? The number I have heard most recently was 100,000,000 in the current day U.S. The articles coming out for the 400th anniversary of Jamestown describe the slash and burn techniques that the Indians in Virginia used to keep the forest clear. One of the main reasons Jamestown was settled where it was is because it was one of the only places not obviously occupied by Indians already. The reason for that is the land was a swamp ridden not very desirable place. I find it hard to believe that anyone thought there were so few Indians given the shear number of tribes around the country. It wouldn’t make sense. ---
**Author:** ![MikeS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/919ad9/32.png) [@MikeS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MikeS)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2007, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-great-plains-a-human-made-ecosystem/405348/12 "2007-05-24T16:44:22Z")
[The Master speaks](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/050708.html). ---
**Author:** ![Common\_Tater](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/common_tater/32/13846_2.png) [@Common\_Tater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Common_Tater)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2007, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-great-plains-a-human-made-ecosystem/405348/13 "2007-05-24T16:44:33Z")
[QUOTE=Shagnasty] Did anyone ever really say 100,000 Indians? [/QUOTE] Hm - in Mails’ “Mystic Warriors of the Plains” estimates 200,000 plains tribe Indians, at their peak around 1800, with the Blackfeet and Sioux numbers dwarfing the rest. While it’s quite a volume, I’m not sure where he sourced those figures from. ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2007, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-great-plains-a-human-made-ecosystem/405348/14 "2007-05-24T16:46:11Z")
A population of 100 million pre-Columbus in what is now United States seems really off to me. The U.S. didn’t reach that number until the early 20th century. I don’t see how stone-age technology could support that kind of population over such a broad geographic area. (I can understand how it could be comparable in some areas, but, for example, the Great Plains couldn’t support a large population until metal plows were available.) ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2007, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-great-plains-a-human-made-ecosystem/405348/15 "2007-05-24T16:58:13Z")
[QUOTE=Shagnasty] Did anyone ever really say 100,000 Indians? The number I have heard most recently was 100,000,000 in the current day U.S. The articles coming out for the 400th anniversary of Jamestown describe the slash and burn techniques that the Indians in Virginia used to keep the forest clear. One of the main reasons Jamestown was settled where it was is because it was one of the only places not obviously occupied by Indians already. The reason for that is the land was a swamp ridden not very desirable place. I find it hard to believe that anyone thought there were so few Indians given the shear number of tribes around the country. It wouldn’t make sense. [/QUOTE] Charles C. Mann in _1491_ talks about the endless debate between the High Counters and the Low Counters. Both sides have the problem of lack of data. They are forced to extrapolate from later numbers and the extrapolation has a huge margin of error. As an example, he says that the low point for the Indian population comes around 1900, when there were only about 500,000 north of the Rio Grande. If you assume a 95% die-off rate, that gives a pre-contact population of 10,000,000. But if you just assume a 96% die-off rate, suddenly you magically appeared 2,500,000 extra Indians. Nobody ever apparently gave 100,000,000 for pre-contact U.S. The highest of the High Counters was Henry F. Dobyns, and his estimate was 91-112 million for the whole of the Americas. The densest populations, however, were in central and south America, not in the U.S. Mexico City may have had more people than any city in Europe when the first European saw it. This was way back in 1966. (What, you thought this was somehow just coming out today? That’s an insult to historians.) Dobyns and the High Counters were immediately attacked, mainly, as I said earlier, because of the total lack of evidence and the need for breathtaking extrapolations. Mann makes it clear that nobody has any idea of the pre-Columbian population, but that it has become a major political issue because the Indians themselves have a stake in maintaining a high number because of the level of genocide that implies. Mann isn’t good on the issue of Plains Indians. I’m only halfway through the book, but a flip ahead shows the barest mention of maize agriculture and hunting of large animals. There’s no question that the Indians did hunt bison, as well as elk, deer, and moose, especially to keep them from trampling their fields. But without horses, these hunts were localized. And he does say: > [@](#): > > Ecologists and archaeologists increasingly agree that the destruction of Native Americans also destroyed the ecosystems they managed. Throughout the eastern forest the open, park-like landscapes observed by the first Europeans quickly filled in. Because they did not burn the land with the same skill and frequency as its previous occupants, the forests grew thicker. Left unattended, maize fields filled in with weeds, then bushes and trees. My ancestor Billington’s great-grandchildren may not have realized it, but the impenetrable sweep of dark forest admired by Thoreau was something that Billington never saw. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2007, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-great-plains-a-human-made-ecosystem/405348/16 "2007-05-24T17:07:55Z")
> [@](#): > > It cannot be said that, prior to 1492, the western hemisphere was a pristine wilderness untouched by the hand of Man. There were millions upon millions of people living here and they had to support themselves somehow. Many farmed, which required them to clear the land first. Others were hunters and gatherers and there is plenty of documentation showing how they optimized the existing ecology to increase yields. In my own yard, in an area that once was prairie, it is a yearly battle to keep the forest at bay as scrub bushes and trees attempt to put down roots. > > You have to do what I did: realize that, by keeping and citing your old Time-Life books, you are perpetuating outdated information. I had very nearly a complete collection but I finally had to give it away because it was too full of bad information. I’m not saying that the Western Hemisphere was pristine, untouched wilderness. There’s evidence that the native Americans certainly did change local regions. I just seriously doubt that they had as sweeping a change as turning forested land into the Great Plains on the grand scale you suggest. I’ll have to look into it, but it just doesn’t add up. Time’Life or no Time-Life. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2007, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-great-plains-a-human-made-ecosystem/405348/17 "2007-05-24T17:28:47Z")
**Cal** , check out Cecil’s column. Yes, the Great Plains, west of Omaha, were permanent grassland, but the “prairie peninsula” he describes includes most of Iowa and Illinois and part of Indiana, Minnesota, Missouri, and Wisconsin. This is a vast area–half the size of the Great Plains–where the prairie ecology was maintained both naturally and artificially and, I’m sure, the people who hunted the herds of bison that roamed the middle of the continent were unconcerned with the technical differences between that tallgrass prairie and the combined tallgrass prairie and steppe of the Great Plains. The bison treated it as a single area, too, and, as they were the ones evolved for it, I’ll follow their lead. ---
**Author:** ![wevets](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9a140/32.png) [@wevets](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wevets)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2007, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-great-plains-a-human-made-ecosystem/405348/18 "2007-05-24T17:45:23Z")
Here’s an [interesting article](http://www.usna.edu/Users/history/kolp/HH345/PRE1492.HTM) on the population size of pre-Columbian Native Americans. Not a lot of definitive answers, but food for thought. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2007, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-great-plains-a-human-made-ecosystem/405348/19 "2007-05-24T19:50:51Z")
[QUOTE=wevets] Here’s an [interesting article](http://www.usna.edu/Users/history/kolp/HH345/PRE1492.HTM)… [/QUOTE] > [@wevets' article](#): > > With decades of careful research, historian Woodrow Borah once predicted, scholars eventually may produce an estimate with a margin of error of 30 to 50 percent. Now, THAT’S funny! ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2007, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-great-plains-a-human-made-ecosystem/405348/20 "2007-05-24T20:02:04Z")
**dropzone** , that Master’s article doesn’t say thaty Native American fires were even a major contributor to the ecology of the Plains – just that they may have added to the fires, which were also started by other factors. That’s a long way from saying that the Native Americans rendered the Plains treeless. Mind, I never said that people had no effect on the land. I’ve explicitly said otherwise. But this seems awfully far from your claim. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-great-plains-a-human-made-ecosystem/405348.md?page=2)