Arguement paper
Native Americans have been portrayed in countless ways throughout the history of the United States. Whether they are called Indians, First Nations, Indigenous Peoples of America, Amerinds, or something that might be seen as more racist during these times, it is a label that brings up similar images. Native Americans are typically viewed as a culture and population that lived in harmony with the wilderness. They are generally thought of as almost druidic nomads with relatively small populations that had little impact on the environment. Emphasize the small impact on the environment. The Europeans, however, supposedly had a booming economy and population with many technological advances that far surpassed those of the Native Americans. Environmentalist groups and certain laws today still think of pre-contact Americas as pristine. They urge us as a 21st century population to strive to be at harmony with nature and non intrusive to it. They claim we should alter the land to bring it back to the way it “naturally” was before the “white man” came to America. Or perhaps worse, there are suggestions of taking large tracts of land and leaving it to grow as it will, which it hasn’t for millennia. Taking into consideration that native populations of the Americas were in fact not at harmony with nature and actually altered it significantly, it would be foolish to stop touching some parts of nature altogether and expect it to return and function as it was upon its discovery by Europeans.
It should be emphasized that the earliest European explorers came upon a huge population with extremely advanced mathematical and scientific accomplishments. What changed this? Disease; smallpox and hepatitis among other diseases decimated the Native American populations. This pandemic of the Americas caused the civilization to be devastated to the point that in the decades it took colonists to explore further, the wilderness had regrown and the animal population had exploded from the absence of caretakers. The survivors of the myriad of European diseases that swept through had reverted back to hunter gatherer ways because as a survivor it was an easier way to survive. Not to mention the addition the introduction of the horse made to their traveling abilities. In reality the ‘non-altered’ wilderness that was discovered by many explorers was essentially the previously well kept farms and orchards and grazing lands of the native population.
An argument might be made that 2 out of every three victims of the devastating European Black Death survived. This doesn’t match up with the kinds of numbers that are being talked about; 95% or even greater numbers of the native population died. For one disease this would be a very high number, but the natives were subject to a flood of diseases that they had never experienced before, smallpox, typhoid, bubonic plague, influenza, mumps, measles, whooping cough and more all came with the new people arriving. One example of this is when Hernando de Soto arrived in what is now Florida. The year was 1539. He brought with him an army of 600 men, with a food supply of 300 pigs. Pigs reproduce quickly and easily transmit their diseases to wildlife and to new pigs. The diseases then traveled through the wildlife and when it came across humans, it quickly infected them as well. The land he traveled through was packed with native settlements. Indeed when he crossed the Mississippi he was watched by several thousand Native American warriors. One of his men told of how in the land of Arkansas it was “very well peopled with large towns, two or three of which were to be seen from one town.” After Soto, the next Europeans to visit the area were French canoeists. They didn’t see a Native American village for 200 miles. The number of settlements in the area had shrunk from and estimated 50 to a ten. An epic outbreak of diseases would explain this decrease. Why were the natives so susceptible to these diseases from animals? A short answer is that they didn’t domesticate many of them. This means they did not live in close quarters with large quantities of them. Therefore they had never been exposed to zoonotic diseases, which are diseases that can be transmitted from animal to human.
So in the times before 1492 there were huge settlements of Native Americans throughout both North and South America. The point of this fact is that with settlements of the size and density that were described by Soto’s men and others, a life of simple hunting and gathering would not be feasible to feed those sorts of numbers. However, organized agriculture on a large scale would. A typical idea of agriculture, the ranching part of it at least, requires large quantities of domesticated animals. Although, as I mentioned before, the Native Americans did not have a great number of domesticated animals. To remedy this lack but still supply themselves with meat, the Native Americans changed the very landscape they lived in to better propagate animals such as deer, elk and bison. The natives then hunted these animals with much success. As for the vegetation side of agriculture, they planted orchards. These orchards were “an ecological kaleidoscope of garden plots, blackberry rambles, pine barrens, and spacious groves of chestnut, hickory, and oak.” (Mann, 251) The spaciousness of these woodlands was such that the first white settlers of Ohio could “drive carriages through the trees.” Additionally, the John Smith of Pocahontas claimed to have ridden through Virginia forests at a gallop.
In addition to greatly changing the landscape of the wilderness of their home, the natives of the Americas developed many key crops of today’s world. Most important, perhaps, is maize or corn. The Native Americans’ great variety of corn supplied areas with very different growing conditions throughout the world with a crop that greatly reduced hunger. Southern and Central Europe became dependent on it by the nineteenth century. In Africa it became a staple along with peanuts and yuca. Along with corn, peanuts, and yuca, the Americas supplied crops that are now closely associated with countries that are decidedly not in the western hemisphere. For example; potatoes in Ireland came from the Americas, tomatoes in Italy also came from the Americas. According to Charles C Mann’s article 1491, more than half of the crops grown worldwide were originally from the Americas.
I mentioned before that the natives of the Americas greatly shaped their ecosystem. In North America in particular the major tool to do this was fire. In the 1640s a man named Adriaen van der Donck wrote about his time in America, more specifically the Hudson River Valley of New York state. In it he talked about the local natives’ yearly burning of the land. In his words, they set fire to “the woods, plains, and meadows,” to “thin out and clear the woods of all dead substances and grass, which grow better the ensuing spring.” Burning to shape the environment was not limited to the New York area. In fact, fire had its greatest impact on Central America, the Great Plains and Midwest of the current United States. The grasslands were burned for many reasons, most directly to chase buffalo during a hunt. This however wasn’t the primary motive for burnings. When an area is burned, logically, most if not all plants are killed. At the very least their growth is stunted. Quickly after the fire the plants spring back to life. The first back is vegetation that grows close to the earth. If it is an especially extreme fire that does kill everything and leaves the ground barren then lupin will spring to life first. Lupin can put ammonia into the ground which fertilizes it for other plants. In this case the next plant will be grass. The new grass is fertile and sweet and a great food source for grazing creatures such as buffalo. If the plant life is allowed to continue to grow on its own, without being burned or otherwise wiped out, shrubs and small trees will come next. Given enough time, giant trees would take over. However, the Native Americans consistently burned the old grass to the ground which allowed new fresh grass to regrow. In essence, natives created the great grasslands of the mid United States, the clear spacious forests of the eastern United States and very likely had a substantial affect on the land of the western United States.
When the pandemic of European diseases, brought about by domesticated herd animals, swept through Native Americans their way of life was brought down around their ears. They were unable to burn the landscape as effectively as they previously had been able to. Greatly lessened burning caused the thick undergrowth to regrow in the forests. Lightening helped with burning and kept up grasslands, but if left alone for a very long period of time then these grasslands will become scrublands. The Native Americans had a huge impact on the ecosystem of North America from coast to coast. Of course Europeans-turned-Americans have changed the landscape greatly as well. However, those sections that are being debated to be set aside as ‘wilderness areas’ that man does not touch will not grow to be the ‘pristine’ wilderness that is fondly remembered by many environmentalists and others.