The Environment in American History

Nature and the Formation of the United States

Jeff Crane

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317813286
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

From pre-European contact to the present day, people living in what is now the United States have constantly manipulated their environment. The use of natural resources – animals, plants, minerals, water, and land – has produced both prosperity and destruction, reshaping the land and human responses to it. The Environment in American History is a clear and comprehensive account that vividly shows students how the environment played a defining role in the development of American society.

Organized in thirteen chronological chapters, and extensively illustrated, the book covers themes including:

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• Native peoples' manipulation of the environment across various regions

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• The role of Old World livestock and diseases in European conquests

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• Plantation agriculture and slavery

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• Westward expansion and the exploitation of natural resources

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• Environmental influences on the Civil War and World War II

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• The emergence and development of environmental activism

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• Industrialization, and the growth of cities and suburbs

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• Ecological restoration and climate change

Each chapter includes a selection of primary documents, and the book is supported by a robust companion website that provides further resources for students and instructors. Drawing on current scholarship, Jeff Crane has created a vibrant and engaging survey that is a key resource for all students of American environmental history.

1
Faith in a Generous Land

Some time after the animals had been created, along came Coyote. Coyote had all the emotions and problems that humans have today. Everything that the human being was, this is what Coyote was. He was traveling one day when his brother, Fox, stopped him and told Coyote that a great monster was devouring all the animal people. Fox told Coyote that he had to save the animal people. Coyote gave it some thought and decided that maybe he would have to kill this monster. He got five flint knives all sharpened and shaped and put them in his belt. He had a little pouch, and he put soot and pitch and rope in it. Then Coyote went to look for the monster.

He came across the prairie where Grangeville [Idaho] is now, and he hollered over toward the Clearwater Valley. The monster at that time was laying in the valley devouring all the animal people. Coyote hollered, “Monster, here I am! I am right here! Come and get me! You can’t eat me like you do all those other people. Come and get me!”

So the monster raised his head over the edge of the canyon and looked out across the prairie toward the place where Coyote was hollering at him.

Coyote said, “Oh, there you are monster. I’ve come here to see what you are doing to the animal people.”

The monster looked over and said, “I am going to eat you, too.”

The monster devoured the animal people by sucking them into his stomach with his breath. Coyote knew this, so he tied himself to the mountain on the other side. So when the monster would suck in his breath, Coyote would come to the end of his rope and stop. He teased the monster saying, “You can’t get me.” And then monster would try again, but Coyote would stop at the end of the rope. The monster did this three times.

Coyote finally decided to go inside the monster so he could rescue the animal people. He reached around behind him and cut the rope and went in the monster’s mouth. When he was inside Coyote looked around until he could see the animal people. Some were already devoured, some were half dead, and some were still alive. As Coyote was walking among them, Rattlesnake shook his rattle and struck out at him and Coyote said, “What are you getting mad at me for? I came here to save you, and here you are striking at me.” So Coyote stepped on Rattlesnake’s head, and that’s why today Rattlesnake had a flat head. Coyote went a little further, and Grizzly Bear roared and growled at Coyote. Coyote said, “What are you getting mad at me for? I came here to rescue you.” Grizzly Bear growled at him again, so Coyote pushed his nose, and that’s why Grizzly Bear has a flat nose. Coyote then told all the animal people that he was going to rescue him and that he was going to kill the monster.

Coyote built a fire from the pitch in his pouch, and he used the fat from the monster to keep the fire going. The Coyote told the people, “When the monster takes its last breath, you all escape by running out of the holes of the monster. Wait by the holes and when the monster takes its last breath, run out. That will be your last chance to escape.” Then Coyote started working. He started to cut the heart away. While he was doing this, sometimes his knife would break, and he would get another knife and keep going. In time he was down to his last knife and the last piece of flesh that was holding the heart. Coyote then told the animals to get ready because the monster was going to die. The animals were waiting by the holes in the monster: by the nose, by the ears, by the mouth, and by that hole underneath the tail. When Coyote made the last cut, the heart came loose. When the monster took his last great breath, all the animals ran out. The last one out was Muskrat. He ran out of the hole where the tail was and the hole closed on his own tail while he was getting out. That’s why Muskrat’s tail doesn’t have any hair.

When the monster was dead, Coyote came out and said, “This place should have some human beings in it. It is such a beautiful place to be. I am also going to create other people, too.” Coyote started cutting the monster up; as he did this he would throw pieces of the monster in all directions, and he would create tribes out on the Plains and to the south and east and north and west. So Coyote did all that. He scattered the body parts to the four winds, and that’s where the different tribes come from.

Then his brother Fox said to Coyote, “You forgot to put human beings here. You have to create people here, too.” Coyote replied, “What I will do is create people this way.” Coyote washed his hands in water to get the blood off and scattered the blood droplets on the ground. When those drops of blood hit the earth, human beings sprang up as Nee-mee-poo, the Nez Perce people. That’s how we were created: from the blood that hit the earth. Coyote said, “These will be a special kind of people in this valley. They will have strong hearts and strong minds, and they will live well here in this valley.” That’s how the Nez Perce people came to be. To this day you can still see the heart of the monster where Coyote cut it out at Kamiah, Idaho.¹

The Nez Perce (Nee-mee-pu in their own language) historically lived on and used a vast range of territory in southeastern Washington, northeastern Oregon, and central Idaho in the area of the Snake, Clearwater, and Grande Ronde rivers. Prior to contact with Europeans they lived primarily on a mix of salmon, bison, camas root, deer, and other resources. Like other native peoples they told and retold an extensive oral culture that communicated ideas of land and resource use, instructions on preserving meat and building tools and weapons, humorous stories, and the dictates and rules of diplomacy and relationships. Their creation stories all illuminated a great deal about their local landscape and their relationship with the land and the animals, birds, and others species that shared that ecosystem with them. Typically in these stories, the humans are but one species among many, maybe distinct, but in no way accorded dominion or superiority over the others. Native culture was different from European culture in that respect; this reflects a faith system built on respect and reverence for the natural world.

Before Europeans arrived in the western hemisphere, a complex and diverse array of Indian cultures used and altered the landscapes of North and South America. The most highly developed cultures, the Incas and Aztecs, were located in South America and Meso-America. While they are not described directly here, Meso-American peoples did influence the rise of agriculture among North American Indians. An analysis of representative groups of the Northeast region, the Pacific Northwest, the American Southwest, and the Southeast, with some consideration of a few Native peoples in other areas, provides an opportunity to better understand the variety of ways that Indians used and adapted to the landscape while even transforming it to suit their own needs.

Native peoples showed great ingenuity and flexibility in their use and management of land and resources across the continent. In the era before contact with Europeans they largely constructed systems of great resilience, emphasizing dependence on multiple food items originating from different sources and ecosystems, including mixed agriculture; hunting of a number of species; fishing and collecting shellfish from beach, river, and ocean; and of course, collection and use of a wide variety of plant species. They did not simply glean from the abundance of the land. Indians helped to increase abundance and diversity through changing ecosystems by use of fire across the continent and because of agriculture and irrigated agriculture in thousands of locations. While Indians faced droughts and sometimes overused local resources, they created a model of sustainable resource use that functioned well for thousands of years with little degradation of the land.

Life in the Bays and Forests of New England

In the American Northeast, Native peoples such as the Pequot, Narragansett, Wampanoags, and others used and changed the environment in myriad ways. In the region of Connecticut and Massachusetts, some tribes gained as much as two-thirds of their diet from agriculture. They grew predominantly corn, beans, and squash, otherwise known as the three sisters for the tradition across North America of planting the crops together. Besides the nutritional benefits of these three crops, plenty of carbohydrates and proteins in addition to important nutrients, these plants complement each other. Corn is a nitrogen thief; this grain will render soil infertile within a few short years. Legumes such as beans host bacteria on their roots that fix nitrogen, introducing it back into the soil in replacement of that consumed by corn. While this does not replace all of the nitrogen taken up by corn, it does extend the usable life of a particular plot. Also, corn stalks provided poles for beans to climb up, and the squash were planted in between corn and beans in order to provide shade from scorching summer sunshine. Squash leaves and vines covered the soil, limiting erosion, and rotting squash leaves release a toxin that slows weed growth. This type of agriculture was practiced as far north as the Kennebec River of Maine and deep into the American Southwest, and it constituted the foundation of most Indian nations’ food economy prior to the arrival of Europeans.

Being the staff of life for these Indians, they carefully protected their corn. According to Puritan Roger Williams, crows numbered in the millions and

are great devourers of the Indian corne as soon as it appears out of the ground … against the Birds the Indians are very careful, both to set their corne deep enough that it may have a strong root, not so apt to be pluckt up, (yet not too deep, lest they bury it, and it never come up) as also they put up little watch-houses in the middle of their fields, in which they, or their biggest children lodge, and earely in the morning prevent the Birds.²

Williams wrote that they avoided killing the crows because of their belief that the Crow had brought the first corn, “an Indian Graine of Corne in one Eare, and an Indian or French Beane in another, from the Great God Kautàntouwits field in the Southwest from whence they hold came all their Corne and Beanes.”³ They readily killed large numbers of other birds, but due to the crow’s spiritual significance gave it protection. Instead, children threw rocks to try and drive them off without hurting and offending them.

Although they gained the majority of their food from agriculture, these native peoples also followed the seasonal cycle. The rivers of the region hosted large spawning runs of striped bass, alewives, sturgeon, American shad, Atlantic salmon, and other species. Indians traveled to traditional fishing spots on these rivers during the spawn, netting, spearing, and trapping these fish. Profusely laden with clams, with oysters up to a foot long, and lobsters by the thousands available in shallow water during high tide, the beaches also provided access to coastal fishing. Ripening fruit such as strawberries, blackberries, and blueberries also contributed to the diet of Indians of this region as did numerous other indigenous plants. Hunting of deer, turkey, passenger pigeon, rabbits, moose, and others provided needed hides, fat, oils, and protein for their diets. Bones could also be made into tools or sewing needles and internal organs used for storage containers. These foods were so important that the native calendar was organized around the cycle, with months named for when spawning fish arrived or the right time to plant corn. Northeastern native peoples built a broad and complex food economy based on using a variety of foods that supplemented their agricultural production. This provided them with multiple, reliable sources of food so they did not become overly specialized or overly dependent on one particular organism or means of feeding themselves. Such a complex approach made their economy sustainable as well.

The Good Fire

The Puritans and other European settlers justified their dispossessing the Indians of their land by failing to recognize native peoples’ changes to and uses of the land while portraying them as savages barely occupying a “howling wilderness.” Some historians perpetuate the misrepresentation, portraying most North American Indians as simple hunter-gatherers, which is the exception rather than the rule, and neglecting to discuss agriculture, land use, and ecosystem change. In so doing they sustain the myth of native peoples that justified European and American conquest. Understanding native use of fire is an effective way to reframe our understanding of Indian land use in a way that shows they did alter ecosystems.

Fire was crucial to Northeastern Indians’ agricultural strategy. Early colonial visitors and settlers commented on the open, park-like land beneath the canopy, the woodlands largely free of underbrush, with extensive meadows and grasslands. They noted these features without understanding their origins in natives’ uses of fire. For the clearing of agricultural fields they girdled and burned trees. Girdling consisted of stripping bark in a circle completely around the tree. This stopped the flow of sap and killed the tree, drying it out and rendering it more flammable. Burning introduced vital nutrients into the soil such as nitrogen and phosphorus and generally extended the life of a particular field from 3–5 years to as long as 8–10 years. When the fields were abandoned, grasses, berries, shrubs, and finally forests would recolonize that ground. This successional stage created habitat and allowed the soil to regain fertility for later use. Fire was also useful for hunting because it cleared out undergrowth and brush, rendering the hunting of animals, particularly large mammals in the fall or winter, much easier. The overall result was a mosaic landscape composed of meadows, farms, and patches of forests composed of different species of trees of varying age and size. The Europeans did not happen onto an ancient forest primeval but rather a dynamic landscape of constant use and change that hosted a variety and abundance of plant and wildlife species.

The sustained use of fire and the creation of a mosaic landscape resulted in large numbers of edge ecosystems throughout the northeastern landscape. These edges between forest and meadow and meadow and farm are rich in both abundance of organisms and in a diversity of flora and fauna. Fire opened forest to sunlight, bringing forth berrying plants, grasses, shrubs, and new types of trees and providing food that both Indians and animals benefited from. In New England deer, elk, wild turkey, bear, and numerous other species thrived on the food produced on these edges. This edge ecosystem did three key things: It produced more edible plants and berries for the Indians, increased the abundance of desirable game species by providing more food for them, and brought these desired species right to where the Indians wanted them, making them that much easier to hunt and trap. What the Europeans saw as natural abundance was in fact partially created by the Indians. Native peoples created a sustainable economy, mixing agriculture with hunting, fishing, and gathering in a way that allowed them to maximize their flexible use of the landscape while even increasing the “natural” carrying capacity of the land. In doing this, the first inhabitants of the continent created a sustainable economy that lasted thousands of years with no significant degradation of the environment.

Fire brought other benefits. Fleas could become a real nuisance in camp sites, making life miserable. Burning forests and grasslands reduced their numbers, at least for a while. Further south, poisonous snakes, fleas, and ticks could be reduced or removed by the use of fire. The practice of burning to clear out nuisance species would continue in some part of the United States into the 1930s. Fire was often used by warring natives to prevent pursuit as well or in some rare cases to drive game away from the area in which an enemy tribe lived and hunted.

In using fire so extensively Indians changed the environment and the composition of forests, creating a “mosaic” of patches of grassland, successional plants, agricultural fields, and different communities of tree varieties. Many of the impressive, large white pines of New England later so coveted by the British for their naval and merchant fle...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• 1 Faith in a Generous Land
• 2 Pathogens and Plows in the Land of Plenty
• 3 A Great Fur and Hide Marketplace
• 4 A Great Farming Nation
• 5 “A Newer Garden of Creation”
• 6 Naturally Horrifying: Environment in the Civil War
• 7 Western Lands of Wealth and Violence
• 8 Conserving Resources, Saving Sacred Spaces, and Cleaning the Cities: America in the Conservation Era
• 9 Restoring and Transforming the Land in the 1920s and 1930s
• 10 Abundance and Terror: Americans in World War II
• 11 Environmental Consensus in the Republic of Abundance
• 12 Environmental Reform and Schism
• 13 A Time of Environmental Contradictions
• Epilogue: The Greatest Peril of Abundance
• Index