Some Thoughts on Forest Primeval Part II

I recently finished reading Andres' Resendez's new book, "A Land So Strange: The Epic Journey of Cabeza de Vaca." The story is oft-told and one of the more interesting ones in American history--Narvaez's expedition blows off course and lands in what is now Florida in 1528. The 300 men leave the ship and venture into the interior. Eventually this group was whittled down to four, de Vaca, two other Spaniards and an African slave named Estabanico.

They essentially traveled on foot through the swamps of Florida, then constructed rafts, drifting out into the gulf, shipwrecking again along the Texas coast, walking back into the interior of northeastern Mexico and the American southwest, eventually walking into Spanish territory some 10 years later. A truly remarkable journey.

Resendez scrupulously footnotes his book, drawing heavily from primary source documents, largely from de Vaca's "Relacion", an account published in 1542.

What is interesting, aside from the story of survival, from a historical geographical perspective, is the land that these men unwittingly traversed. They were the first Europeans to do it and the land they encountered was anything but a vast unoccupied wilderness.

At every turn the Spanish "children of the sun" encountered tribe after tribe of natives, all of whom had intimate knowledge of their environments, many were hunter/gatherer societies living in seasonal migration patterns, other inland communities were more sedentary and agricultural.

As they reached the southwest U.S. by the 1530's, they encountered relatively vast societies structured almost solely on maize agriculture and trade.

Moving through Spanish territory and the end of their journey, de Vaca encountered a landscape being radically depopluated of natives via the brutalities of the slave trade and, more impactfully, the ravages of virgin soil epidemics, which would in the matter of a few decades, take down Indian populations some 90-95% throughout the new world, a fate awaiting the peoples contacted by the de Vaca group and all of the tribes of what is now the eastern U.S.

So, Denevan argues that with depopulation came the cessation of human (Indian) intervention on large swaths of land, thusly allowing for more forest succession and the "wilderness" that Whitney analyzed as basically untrammeled prior to European settlement.

Thus, perhaps the notion of the forest primeval that rests in the American lexicon needs a re-interpretation, and is better viewed as a snapshot at a particular moment in time of a land in a perpetually dynamic state. The world that de Vaca and others would encounter was not at all in a "natural state." In fact, there may be no such condition.

To conclude, by triangulating the perspectives of the traditional European historical geographer, the intrepid explorer, and the archaeologist cum historian, I've had a subtle shift in my thinking about notions of wilderness, the forest primeval, and what it really means.

Some Thoughts on Forest Primeval- Part One

The traditional historical perception of the "New World" encountered by Europeans in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries is a perception that tends towards the idea of a clash of civilizations with an untouched wilderness or "forest primeval" serving as the idyllic backdrop.

The Indians encountered in this bizarre new land are generally thought to have struck a harmonious balance with what we think of as "Nature," untrammeled tracts of perfectly climatic forest and grassland. The cliche is that natives had little impact on ecological succession.

My early winter readings have been cause for personal evaluation of these historical interpretations. British historical geographer, Gordon Whitney uses the old contextual model of European imposition upon a pure wilderness environment in his excellent book, "From Coastal Wilderness to Fruited Plain"--operating largely under the assumption that upon contact wildness was the state of North America geography.

Whitney structures an almost geometric study of forest and prairie conditions throughout eastern and midwestern temperate American from 1500 to the present and the systematic changes that occurred with wide scale European settlement. While there is little doubt changes have occurred from pre-Columbian ecological conditions, I find it necessary to challenge Whitney's fundamental thesis.

Could it be that the thick woodlands and grasslands of our imaginations of the contact period through colonization in the 18th and 19th centuries were indeed much changed in a span as short as even 3 or 4 decades? That is to say, that the world encountered by early settlers might not have been the world at all of some 100 to 200 years prior around the time of Columbus and subsequent Spanish voyages. Indians perhaps acted upon the land in ways we don't fully understand the scope of.

An interesting study relating to this theory is William Deneman's 1992 article, "The Pristine Myth," which essentially argues that pre-contact native populations were much higher than thought and Indians manipulated their environments in remarkable ways.

Deneman puts figures of native populations in the 20-40 million range at contact. Large empires and 1000's of smaller bands of natives were patchworked consistently across the entirety of the Americas, and were engaged in forest clearing for fields, hunting, the burning of grasslands for both game drives and to keep an open understory for ease of travel. They also built numerous structures such as permanent and semi-permanent housing, earthen mounds, etc.

Throughout the south and Mississippi Valley alone from 1100-1500-the Mississipian cultures had vast, complex agrarian enterprises and trade routes, doubtlessly impacting the environment in myriad ways.

As Deneman hints, we must consider not only the impacts of native populations at contact, but the cumulative effects of thousands of years of habitation prior when evaluating just how radically the land was altered.

to be continued soon...

Snag Creek Habitat

Amongst the seemingly unbreakable horizon of row crops can be found some gems. At our place near Washburn, IL we put in some grass filter strips along the Snag Creek.

The land itself undulates a bit where there is some depositional till built up to the north from the country road and you can't see the creek. Snag itself is not a big waterway, 3-15 yards wide in most spots, we've got strips of about 30-50 yards in width, and while not visually imposing, this bit of grass provides amazing habitat.

Pheasant, quail, muskrat, coyote, deer and one resident beaver all take refuge in this narrow shelter belt. Unfortunately, with $4.00 corn, many farmers are planting corn "fence to fence" these days, and grasses are being tilled back under.

What we have along Snag isn't much when measured against the acreage of crops around it, but to me it serves as a testament of what once was amongst the agricultural fields and what could be again. Diversity.

Pics: 1. Grasses and hackberry shrub. 2. Waterway, just east of beaver dam, semi-closed cover. 3. Waterway on east side of farm, open cover.

Long Run

Desire sometimes trumps prudence. Not feeling the best, I still did my long run Saturday morning at Farmdale, 18 miles or so. Started off chilly (upper 30's) and gray but by two hours in was sunny and closer to 50. The leaves are now 90% off.

Back to prudence. I was rewarded on the run by noticing a few giant sycamores that for some reason I'd never looked up long enough off the trail to notice. My payment may very well be today's bronchitis.

Living and not always learning...

Blood Meridian

The 98th Meridian divided the Oklahoma Territory from Indian Territory. A line of demarcation between creeping civilization and the nowhere geography of the ignoble savage.

Cross that line, mayhem, the unknowing hand of god, spirits. The Blood Meridian. Cormac McCarthy's world.

Scalp hunter, savage, indistinguishable, both bent to the dark heart of man.

Prose over scalding embers, a black cauldron simmering roiling blood stew, murky surface sparks, launching projectiles of energy into the night sky.

An Old Testament journey, majestic in scope, darkly bizarre, horrifying, yet real. Dancing a dance of temptation, seducing our mythologies towards a greater shade of truth.