It’s not a hijack if you veer the thread towards another part of the OP, right?
I can only speak for the history of the Blackfeet (western Montana and Alberta). The Blackfeet first got horses around 1740, probably from the Shoshone, who got them from further south. Before the coming of the horse, the Blackfeet had semi-domesticated dogs that were used for transport (pulling travois) and, in times of hunger, for food.
In the “dog days,” the Blackfeet hunted buffalo by creating a funnel of rocks, brush, and people that ended at a cliff. Some of the tribe (men) would wear wolf skins, get behind the herd and start them stampeding towards the funnel and cliff. Others would stand on the sides of the funnel, waving blankets or skins to keep the buffalo from veering away. The buffalo would be stampeded off the cliff. Men with spears and arrows would kill the wounded buffalo at the base of the cliff, and the women would butcher them.
The most famous “buffalo jump” is Head Smashed In buffalo jump in Alberta. It is estimated that the Blackfeet used this method to kill buffalo for around 6000 years.
The Eastern Woodlands were not the Eastern Woodlands until the Europeans arrived and decimated the native population via disease. Until then the area was a patchwork of agricultural areas. When the natives died, the trees grew back.
Left alone for a couple of years the Midwest cheerfully and energetically returns to scrub and, after a few more years, woodland. Keeping the Midwest treeless is WORK and the only forces preventing it now are plows, lawnmowers, chainsaws, and Roundup. Five hundred years ago the forces were fire, naturally and manually set, and bison eating seedlings.
I wouldn’t even give drought the same amount of credit Cecil does because many deep-rooted trees survive what passes for a Midwest drought quite well. An accidental forest fire would clear a tract and the people would notice that many more herbivores were attracted to the new growth than had been living in the forest. They weren’t dummies, so they replicated the situation by regularly setting grassfires to clear land of scrub, tree seedlings, and dry grass. This went far beyond small, localized fires because, as Cecil said, there isn’t much out here to stop a fire from spreading, and there were quite a few people living here, all wanting their piece of the buffalo pie (not to be confused with buffalo chips, which they wanted, too, but for a different reason, having burnt down the trees).
It is my recollection from casual reading that the Great Plains, the short grass prairie that extended from the Missouri River to the Rocky Mountains, is a natural thing arising from three factors – lack of rainfall sufficient to support the oak and elm savanna that arose on the tall grass prairie further east, large grazing animals, primarily the American Bison, and small grazing rodents, primarily Prairie Dogs. Between the buffalo and the Prairie dogs no brushwood ever got a chance to establish outside the narrow river valleys where the dominant species were drought resistant trees like the Cottonwood and the Box Elder.
As far as the eastern forests are concerned, an old growth forest of oaks, maples, hickories, elms and similar broadleaf hardwoods would tend to shade out any undergrowth. Except where windstorms, rock outcrops and poor soil had created a clearing where light could reach the ground, the floor of the primeval forest of the Ohio River Valley was pretty much just leaf litter. At least in Central Ohio the native people (the Shawnee) created fields by girdling the great trees to allow light through.
Well, the truth is likely somewhere between “massive planned ecosystem change” and “a few localized burns”.
It actually isn’t hard to figure out- leave a section of prairie alone and see what the Climax growth is. In at least some areas (the western areas), it appears to be grasslands with scattered trees. However, I have no doubt that other areas would turn into a forest given enough time, especialy in the eastern areas.
On my way to work this morning, knowing when the highway was first laid and that it was all farmland before that, “enough time” appears to be less than 35 years to get 30’ honey locusts and 20’ Russian olives (not a native species but one birds like and spread). My father worked for the tollway in the purchase of the land so the date is pretty clear.
Yeah. Aren’t the great plains in the rain shaddow of the western mountains? They are not dry enough to be a desert but the moisture is removed from the air on the western side of the mountains and it doesn’t picks up moisture all the way to the midwest.
No, they are “The West.” For me, the Midwest is from Cleveland to Omaha. I think of the states you mentioned as being in the Great American Desert, which is naturally treeless. Yeah, it’s an old term, and Great Plains is probably more accurate, but plains extended from the Rockies into Indiana and the Great Plains blend into the Tallgrass Prairie as things get moister. It is the Tallgrass Prairie that needs to be forced to stay prairie.
No, that overstates the matter. There would have been plenty of woodlands in Eastern North America, even at peak population levels.
David Lentz has collected a series of scholarly essays on pre-Columbian population levels and environmental impact in a book entitled Imperfect Balance.
Much of that population was concentrated in Central America. Studies cited in the intro estimate the population of Central America and Mexico to have been in the ballpark of 25 million, while the population for the entire remainder of North America would have been in the 2-4 million range.
That is simply not enough people to maintain the entire eastern seaboard as a patchwork of farms. No doubt there were sizeable areas under cultivation which were thereafter forested, particularly along river basins, where the mound-building culture seems to have been concentrated. But areas outside the attractively fertile flood plains of the rivers would likely have remained forested.
What’s astonishing to me is how even the most remote areas were peopled - say, for example along the Colorado River, which even today remains very treacherous and rugged terrain. Living there thousands of years ago - certainly with none of the modern conveniences we take for granted - is very sobering.
On the plains, in those days lighting the prarie up was a handy way to get someones attention, early explorers noted this was done frequently. Older growth is woody and unpalatable as feed, so “prescribed burning” of quick and frequent flash fires was probably preferable than getting caught in a locale that hadn’t torched in some time. There was no escaping that or hiding under. . a hide.
As others have pointed out, prior to Columbus those woodlands were grasslands and savannas.
The problem is that it isn’t. There are savanna and woodland areas in much, much lower rainfall areas in similar climates in Australia, Asia and Africa. While the Great Plains arean’t high rainfall areas nor are they true arid zones, and as such they should support a vigorous tree population as the subhumid zones do elsewhere in the world.
In Asia and Africa the sub-humid temperate savannas survived because agriculturalists had domesticated grazing animals and saw the grasslands as a resource. In Australia they survived because the people lacked agriculture and couldn’t sustain sufficiently highpopulations to comepletely denude the landscape
In the Americas there was a unique situation of high argricultural population levels coupled with a complete lack of grazing animals. As a result large areas of savanna and woodland were completed deforested
Could you explain why given that massive timbered areas in in Australia, Asia and Africa in non-riparian zones far drier than the Great Plains? It makes no sense that only in North America would the woody vegetation be unable to evolve to fill a vacant niche in the subhumid zones.
I’m not sure what you mean by this. Nobody suggests that animals adpated to fill those niches in a short period of time do they?
I believe he’s talking about domesticated grazing animals. And yes, the Plains people were mixed hunters/gatherers/agriculturalists, especially before they got horses.
The river bottoms were prime farmland and even nomadic tribes would plant in them and come back for the harvest.
One of these days I’ll write a report on the Indians and their horses. I found a story about the two (Navajo?) guys who are said to have stolen the first ones from the Spaniards. It could be fun to track that one down.
There are several flaws with this, starting with the fact that the figures quoted area vigorously dispute dby other authors. .
Secondly small scale marginal, swidden agricultural populations are far more destructive than dense agriculture on more favourable soils. In marginal areas such as you describe people with no domestic animals are forced to burn an area, grow crops for one year and then slash and burn anew area next year. Even extremely low population densities will maintain vast areas as a patchwork of regenerating farmland using this method.
Thirdly you overlook that the Indian farmers didn’t just clear forest for agriculture. The vast majority of forest was cleared to provide foraging grounds. Remember that these were agricultural people with no dometsicated grazing animals. The needed to be able to harvest game meat, and that is achieved most effectively in open woodlands or mosaic forest with a good herbaceous layer to provide feed for ruminants. In addition much of the wild plant food collected by Inidans was favoured by an open forest or savanna structure. All of that adds amajor incentive for those peopel to keep the forest open by the use of fire without ever actually planting crops on the land.
We have very good evidence form the Southwest that areas of savanna and grassland in areas far more marginal than that of the Great Plains are anthropogenic, and in the absence of human intervention are reverting once more to closed woodland and open forest.
I’m a little confused. The plains indians farmed the river bottoms and this cleared the forests from the whole great plains? There were no grazing animals except the vast herds of bison? Even today, grazing will inhibit the growth of trees. For example in the west end of Tehachapi Pass there are grassy fields dotted with oaks. All of the oaks are large, older trees with no young trees because as soon as one sprouts the cattle who graze the territory eat it off. When the old oaks die it will all be grassland.
While the plains Indians concentrated in the riparian areas they farmed vast areas outside the riparian zones. In this respect they were no different to the people of the Fertile Cresecent.
In addition Indians cleared or thinned vast areas of land to maintain favoured wild food resources. I covered both these points in more detail above.
No, bison were only domesticated after the arrival of Europeans. The Indians had no grazing animals.
Nope. Over most of the world grazing is responsible for a massive increase in tree numbers. That is simply because grazing removes fuel for fires and without fires there is nothing to kill seedlings.
What you are completely overlooking is that this is not a natural system. The cattle are conmfined to that pasture and are maintained at artificially high numbers.
A very simple question: given that grazing animals such as deer and bison occupied almost all the timbered country of the US how do you explain the presence of trees in that country? Quite obviously grazing under anything even approximating natural conditions does not inhibit tree growth. I can certainly provide countless references demonstrating that grazing has been repsonsible for a masisve increase in tree densities worldwide.