Scorched Earth by Emmanuel Kreike

Author:Emmanuel Kreike [Kreike, Emmanuel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780691137421
Publisher: PrincetonUP
Published: 2020-10-23T00:00:00+00:00

Not by Nature: Western Indigenous Americans and Environmental Infrastructure

Indigenous hunters had a major impact on the continent’s fauna and contributed to the demise of the continent’s large mammals, including the buffalo.36 They also deeply shaped the New World’s flora by the use of fire.37 The indigenous Americans of the Pacific Northwest are often depicted as typical gatherers who lived off plants that “just grow by themselves.”38 Yet, they subjected 100 plant species or closely related groups of species to “some form of management associated with their maintenance or productivity” and engaged in the “cultivation of landscape.” The list of plant resources that Pacific Northwestern indigenous Americans “sustained” included seaweed, 2 fungi species, 4 species of fern, 13 species of conifers, and 12 tree species, including yellow cedar, lodge pole and ponderosa pine, Rocky Mountain and big leaf maple, paper birch, and hazelnut.39

Pacific Northwestern indigenous Americans also managed berry bushes with fire and pruning, and they widely used and harvested at least 60 species in large quantities. They dried and stored the berries underground and berry remains are well-represented at archaeological village sites.40 Thousands of trees in the Northwest show evidence of human use: sustainable bark harvesting left scars on lodgepole and ponderosa pines along the coast and red cedars at the Indian Heaven huckleberry site in Gifford Pinchot National Forest, Washington. The scars on the red cedars date as far back as three centuries.41

American settlers admired the open landscapes of Vancouver Island and elsewhere in British Columbia, which they regarded as natural savannas. But, in fact, the Garry Oak savanna, which was covered with Cama meadows and fern glades, was the product of centuries of burning by the indigenous Salish. European observers in 1842 similarly considered the Springback clover (Trifolium wormsioldii) expanses near Fort Victoria to be wild and natural, but they very likely were carefully managed by the local Songhee. Indigenous Americans managed such important staple root plants as the ubiquitous Cama (Camassia quamash) and Wapato or swamp potato (Sagittaria latifolia) through landscape clearing, weeding, and selective harvesting.42 European settlers discovered that Camas provided excellent fodder for their cattle, rendering the indigenous American staple highly vulnerable to foraging livestock. The destruction of the southern Vancouver Island Cama harvest by settler cattle factored into the outbreak of the 1877 Nez Perce war.43

Indigenous Californians practiced landscape burning to create a more open landscape and to manage vegetation. They especially subjected the brushy or chaparral areas to fire management.44 Indigenous Americans also shaped the grass savannas of the Great Plains by fire. Regular burning favored such highly nutritious short grasses as Buffalo grass (a staple for the buffalo) and reduced the spread of less palatable long grasses and forbs.45 Landscape burning was also used to move game. During the late summer, the Blackfeet and other Great Plains groups set fire to open grasslands to force the buffalo herds toward their winter pastures in the foothills, where they had their winter camps.46

Seasonal migrations usually occurred between sites with environmental infrastructure. Neither the Great Plains nor the Pacific Coastal indigenous Americans were truly nomadic.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.