Ed
To add emphasis to your points, there is plenty of historical
evidence for a thriving Native population in the lower Connectict
River Valley, but move into the Berkshires and archeological sites are
very few and far between. Indian populations in the upper Connecticut
River valley were scant. To make a living Indians had to fish, so
their settlements were near water. The streams were also
transportation corridors. I realize you know this. I make the point
for the list.
Bob
There is evidence that coastal Indian populations were
significant, but their impact relative to ours was miniscule.
Bob
Sent from my iPhone
On Nov 27, 2009, at 8:23 PM, "Edward Frank" <[email protected]> wrote:
> Jon,
>
> I don't really think that most native American utilization had
> landscape scale impacts as took place with the farming and timbering
> activities after European settlement. Perhaps some of the Mound
> Builder cultures with large earthworks and agricultural base had
> greater impacts, but still I doubt they were on the scale of what
> took place in the 1800's to 1900's, Maybe on a local scale, but not
> a broad scale. I do not doubt that there were small patches that
> were managed by fire by native Americans all across the eastern US,
> or that perhaps some other management took place on a scattered
> basis, but these were small impacts compared to the scale of the
> forests themselves. I can even believe that disease could have
> decimated the populations of native Americans shortly after the
> arrival of European settlers and explorers. The idea of large scale
> forest management is different story.
>
> I think it is a just a romantic notion that these forests were
> being managed in any significant scale prior to European
> settlement. It is a good story, with the proper liberal political
> sentiment, but it just is not true. There is no reasonable
> archaeological evidence that any large scale forest management was
> being done in these forest. There was a strange fad running in the
> archaeological circles when was in college. It was the idea of
> relativism - that any interpretation of archaeological evidence is
> based upon the viewpoint of the person making the interpretation.
> There was no objective reality as everything was relative. The only
> thing that was important was the why, and by this philosophy that
> could not be known. Therefore all interpretations were equally
> valid. As a physical scientist (with a minor in archaeology) I can
> say without any qualms "What a load of crap!" This is perhaps one
> of the sources of the idea of larger scale native American managed
> forest scenarios in several popular books. Things actually happened
> or did not happen and these events left evidence. We try to
> interpret what this evidence to the best of our ability to try
> figure out what actually happened.. We may not get the
> interpretations exactly right, but certainly some ideas are better
> interpretations of the past than others. You can not prove beyond a
> shadow of doubt that some of these fanciful interpretations are
> wrong, but you certainly can say they are extremely unlikely to be
> correct.
>
> Ed Frank
>
> Check out my new Blog: http://nature-web-network.blogspot.com/ (and
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