It was a common belief that when the early European settlers entered North America they found an unbroken forest of large trees. It was often stated ”a squirrel might have gone from Maine to Louisiana by leaping from one giant tree to the next, never touching the ground.”
Until the latter half of the twentieth century many foresters dismissed the possibility of any significant disturbance by the Native Americans. We now know that in many parts of North America indigenous people built large cities, had extensive farms, and operated far-ranging trading networks. Though appearing pristine to the casual observer of the 1600s, these primeval forests had been subjected to extensive modification by both human and natural disturbances.
Careful search and critical reading of many of the early European settler’s journals and diaries reveal that large areas in eastern North American forests had been extensively modified by early indigenous cultures. In general, forest succession allows for relatively rapid recovery of a forest system, that to a casual observer gave the appearance of a pristine virgin forest. More careful observations, however, by someone familiar with a particular forest association, revealed a forest successional stage and not an end point in forest dynamics.
Click to read more about early Illinois.
No comments:
Post a Comment