Except America wasnât an endless expanse of forest with no certain borders. At least not while human beings inhabited it. The idea that native peoples did not cultivate or shape our land and that we had no borders is white propaganda meant to dehumanize and de-legitimize native peoples.
This illustration here show Apalachee people using slash and burn methods for agriculture. Fires were set regularly to intention burn down forests and plains. Why would we do this? Well because an unregulated forest isnât that great for people, actually. We set fires to destroy new forest growth and undergrowth, and to remove trees, allowing for easier game hunting, nutrient enriched soil, and better growth rates for crops and herbs we used in food and medicine.
Pre-Colonial New England, where my tribe the Abenaki are from, looked more like an extensive meadow or savannah with trees growing in pockets and groves. Enough woodland to support birds, deer, and moose, but not too much to make hunting difficult. We carefully shaped the land around us to suit our needs as a thriving and successful people. Slash and burn agriculture was practiced virtually everywhere in the new world, from the pacific coast to chesapeake bay, from panama to quebec. It was a highly successful way of revitalizing the land and promoting crop growth, as well as preventing massive forest fires that thrive in unregulated forests. Berries were the major source of fruit for my tribe, and we needed to burn the undergrowth so they could grow.
That changed when white people invaded, and brought with them disease. In my tribe, up to 9 in 10 people died. 90% of our people perished not from violence starvation, but from disease. Entire villages would be decimated, struck down by small pox. Suddenly, we couldnât care for the land anymore. There werenât enough of us to maintain a vast, carefully structured ecological system like we had for thousands of years. We didnât have the numbers, or strength. So the trees grew back and unregulated. We couldnât set fires anymore, and we couldnât cultivate the land. And white people would make certain we never could again. Timber, after all, was the most important export from New England.Â
Endless trees and untamed wilderness is a nice fantasy. But itâs a very white fantasy, one that erases the history of my people and of my land. One that paints native peoples are merely parasites leeching off the land, not masters of the earth who new the right balance of hunting and agriculture. It robs us of our agency as people, and takes our accomplishments from us. Moreover, it implies that only white people ever discovered the power to shape the world around them, and that mere brown people canât possibly have had anything to do with changing our environment.
Donât bring back untamed wilderness. Bring back my fire setters, my tree sappers, my farmers and my fishers. Bring back my people who were here first.Â
Sources:Â
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_use_of_fire#Role_of_fire_by_natives
https://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/fsbdev3_000385.pdf
http://www.sidalc.net/repdoc/A11604i/A11604i.pdf
For those curious I recommend reading Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists and the Ecology of New England.
https://books.google.com/books/about/Changes_in_the_Land.html?id=AHclmuykdBQC&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button#v=onepage&q&f=false
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