From the Vault MacCleery: April 29, 2010

Role of Indigenous Peoples in Modifying the Environment of the Pre-Columbian Southeastern U.S.

In surveying the boundary between the states of North Carolina and Georgia in 1811, Andrew Ellicott (Mathews 1908, p.223) wrote that:

“the greatest inconvenience we experienced arose from the smoke occasioned by the annual custom of the Indians in burning the woods. Those fires scattered over a vast extent of country made a beautiful and brilliant appearance at night; particularly when ascending the sides of the mountains.”

Summary

The Southeastern U.S. harbors some of the most diverse plant and animal communities in the United States (Owen 2002). The impressive variety of biotic life stems from the fact that the Southeast: 1) served as a glacial refuge during past Ice Ages, 2) possessed a warm, favorable climate throughout most of the Holocene, and 3) has a large degree of physiographic variation including the Southern Appalachians, Piedmont, and Coastal Plain (Fenneman 1938).

Indigenous people too have fostered biotic diversity through their activities, especially through widespread burning. Many rare and endemic species found today in the Southeast today have evolved, in part, in association with human-based disturbances that are uncommon today.

Humans have affected ecosystems of the Southeast for millennia. At the time of European contact, the ecological effects of the activities of indigenous peoples were likely more significant in the Southeast than in any other region of North America, with the possible exception of parts of California and the coastal Pacific Northwest. This was due to relatively high population densities (Williams 1989, p. 34-5), the widespread application of agriculture, as well as plant communities and climatic conditions particularly conducive to application of fire to improve human benefits from ecosystems.

After initial contact with Europeans in the 1500s, the Native American population of the Southeast (and virtually everywhere in the Americas) declined precipitously (80-90%) due to the introduction of European diseases from which Natives had no immunity. But even at substantially reduced numbers, indigenous people continued to have a major effect on the ecology of the region, through application of fire, agriculture, and hunting.

The Evolution of Human Impacts on the Ecology of the Southeast
People had begun to move into the Southeast by approximately 12,500 BP, during the Clovis period (Fowler and Konopic 2007). At that time, northern portion of the Southeast was characterized by boreal plant communities (e.g., spruce-fir forests) and associated wildlife (Hamel and Buckner 1998, Delcourt and Delcourt 1991, Parmalee and Klippel 1982). Pleistocene megafauna, including mammoths and mastodons, also existed in the Southeast 2 (Hamel and Buckner 1998). By about 7,000 BP, North American glaciers had retreated and the Southeastern climate moderated so that species currently characteristic of the Southeast were in place (Hamel and Buckner 1998, Delcourt and Delcourt 1991).

Initially, the ecological effects of humans were likely relatively modest, although Clovis likey contributed to the extinction of the Pleistocene megafauna. Both Clovis and Paleo-Indians used fire, most likely to enhance game habitat and assist in hunting (Fowler and Konopic 2007, Hamel and Buckner 1998). Hunting and gathering, fostered by the use of fire, continued to be the primary subsistence activities during the Archaic cultural phase (8000 B.C.-1000 B.C.). Ward (1983 as cited by Lorimer 1992) noted that signs of the Archaic cultures:

“covered the Piedmont landscape, leaving a network of tracks that is hard to miss . . . The broad alluvial valleys, the rolling upland hills, and the banks of small streams were all occupied, visited, or utilized at some point during the 6,000 to 7,000-year span of the Archaic period.”

The eastern North America began to see the initial development of agriculture about 3000 B.C. when isolated evidence for domestication of single species began to emerge in several areas. By about 1800 B.C. at least five seed-bearing plants had been domesticated and formed a coherent indigenous agricultural complex (Smith 2006). The five indigenous wild plants that had been domesticated included bottle gourd (Lagenaria siceraria), two cultivated varieties of chenopod or goosefoot (Chenopodium berlandieri), marsh elder or sumpweed (Iva annua), squash (Cururbita pepo), sunflower (Helianthus annuus var. macrocarpus). In addition, three other cultigens appear as food crops that were widely utilized: erect knotweed (Polygonum erectum), little barley (Hordeum pusillum) and maygrass (Phalaris caroliniana) (Smith 1992, Smith 2009).1 Domestication of these plants caused Eastern North America to become one of the ten centers of independent agricultural development worldwide (Smith 2006, Smith 2009). In the Americas there were five such centers (Eastern North America, Mesoamerica and three in South America).

By 1800 B.C., plant domestication was occurring over a broad area, including what is now Kentucky, Tennessee, Illinois, Ohio, Missouri, Arkansas and Alabama (Smith 1992, Smith 2009). By the middle Woodland Period (250 B.C. - 200 A.D.) eastern North America witnessed the emergence of fully developed agricultural economies based on these indigenous crops, including Hopewellian societies, which engaged in building large geomentric earthworks and creating beautiful and elaborate artifacts.

Maize (Zea mays) was not introduced to Eastern North America until about 200 A.D., almost 2,500 years after local domestication of marshelder, squash and sunflower (Smith 2009). Maize did not become a major food source until after 800 A.D. when intensive maize agriculture quickly spread (Smith 1992). Maize, which displaced several of the plants domesticated earlier, became a major factor in the diet of native people through much of eastern North America from northern Florida to Ontario, Canada (Smith 1992). Widespread maize cultivation after 800 AD is also coincident with the rise of Mississippian chiefdoms, large settlements (e.g., Cahokia), and the evolution of complex societies.

The widespread application of maize agriculture led to a significant increase in population (Delcourt et al. 1993) and an increase in the use of fire (most likely for agricultural clearing). In a sediment core near the Little Tennessee River, Cridlebaugh (1984) found an order of magnitude increase in charcoal abundance after A.D. 1000. This period also witnessed an increase in the pollen record of species associated with disturbance (e.g., ragweed, Ambrosia) (Delcourt 1987, Delcourt and Delcourt 1997). Peacock et al. (2005) recorded a steady, but modest, decline in the abundance of freshwater mussels (Epioblasma spp.) associated with pre- maize agriculture. This decline, likely associated both with direct exploitation and increasing stream sedimentation, rose by an order of magnitude in the post maize period.

Condition of Southeast Ecosystems at the Time of Initial European Contact (A.D. 1500) It is difficult to accurately determine the ecological conditions of the Southeast at European contact (A.D. 1500) as there were few European observers in this region at that time. Only a few who traveled through parts of the Southeast recorded their observations. One of the most important was the Hernando de Soto expedition of 1539-42. For four years, de Soto (with his 600 men, 200 horses and 300 swine), pillaged, plundered, and inadvertently spread European diseases from Tampa Bay, Florida, north to near what is now North Carolina, thence west and southwest along the Appalachians, west across the Mississippi River, thence down to the Gulf of Mexico (Thomas 1993, Mann 2005).

Even with its large numbers of men and animals, the de Soto expedition moved with relative ease throughout the Southeastern landscape. De Soto chroniclers wrote frequently of expansive agricultural fields, open park-like forests, numerous villages, and large numbers of people (Swanton 1937, Rostlund 1957). For example, in describing Indian agricultural fields in northern Florida, a de Soto chronicler wrote that they:

“marched on through some great fields of corn, beans, and squash and other vegetables which had been sown on both sides of the road and were spread out as far as the eye could see across two leagues of plain (Doolittle 1992).”

Dobyns (1983) has estimated that this single field may have covered 16 square miles. De Soto chroniclers also recorded dense populations, especially in productive river valleys.

In what is now Clark County, Alabama, a de Soto chronicler reported that the area “was thickly settled in numerous towns with fields extending from one to another, a pleasant place with fertile soil and good meadows along the rivers. Talisi was a large town, and on both sides of the river were other towns, many corn fields, and an abundance of grain.” Further on, another de Soto chronicler reported that the land was “so fertile and thickly populated that on some days the Spaniards passed 10 or 12 towns, not counting those that lay on one side or the other of the road.”(Rostlund 1957).

Once arriving at the Mississippi River, de Soto found a landscape teeming with humans. The river itself was lined with native villages (Mann 2005). Eerily, by the time the next explorer Space does not permit a detailed description of ecological conditions chronicled by de Soto. These are accounts available elsewhere (Swanton 1937, Rostlund 1957, Young, and Hoffman, 1993). passed through this area more than a century later (La Salle in 1682), the entire valley had been radically transformed into a relative silent place (Mann 2005). Where de Soto had observed scores of villages, expansive agricultural fields, and high human populations, French explorer La Salle saw mostly forest and very few people or villages. What happened? The country had been substantially depopulated by European diseases, and the ecology of the area had been substantially altered (Young 1993, Mann 2005, Parkman 1983).

Ecological Effects of the Native Pandemic (1500s)

The first wave of native depopulation was caused by smallpox shortly after 1500, even before the de Soto expedition. This was followed by successive waves of other “Old World” diseases (e.g., measles, malaria, typhus, diphtheria). This pandemic, which encompassed all of the Americas, took place largely out of sight of Europeans. By 1800, native populations were a shadow of their former numbers (perhaps declining by 90 percent), and their social structure had been substantially disrupted (Dobyns 1983; Cronon 1985; Thomas 1993, Delcourt et al. 1993).

Landscapes cleared for agriculture or routinely burned had two or more centuries to recover before the first waves of permanent Euro-American emigrants poured over the Appalachians to find landscapes that were more "pristine" than they had been in more than a thousand years (Denevan 1992; Lorimer 1992, Delcourt et al. 1993, Rostlund 1957, p. 409).

In addition to the (often quite rapid) regrowth on extensive old fields, the depopulation of native peoples undoubtedly lead to a resurgence of many wildlife species as a major source of predation was substantially reduced and forests regrew. Indeed, some species moved into areas where formerly they had been absent. Bison were not present east of the Mississippi before 1500 (Rostlund 1960, Belue 1996). The de Soto expedition did not report one bison (which surely they would have done if they had been observed), although they traversed many areas where a century later bison were abundant. The bison’s migration east was likely the result of favorable habitat conditions in old fields, grasslands and canebrakes in the relative absence of human predation (Rostlund 1960, Belue 1996, Geist, 1998).

By 1700, bison ranged as far south as Florida (Rostlund 1960) and as far east as Virginia and Pennsylvania (Belue 1996). Like other large ungulates, the large numbers of bison that were present in the Southeast transformed many areas as they browsed, created large wallows and well worn migration corridors and traces (some of which remain visible today) (Belue 1996).

Other wildlife species undoubtedly expanded to fill the habitat niche created by human population decline in the Southeast after 1500. The enormous abundance of passenger pigeons in the 18th and 19th centuries may well have represented a “bubble population” which expanded enormously as a result of regrowth and maturation of large areas of mast producing forest after 1550. Evidence of passenger pigeon remains is not abundant in human middens during the Mississippian period, suggesting a much higher abundance after 1600 than existed earlier (Neumann 2002).

Social and Cultural Responses to the Pandemics

Many European settlers were appalled at seeing the dreadful suffering of the Indians. William Bradford of the Plymouth Colony wrote of their "fearful" and "lamentable condition as they lie on their hard mats....what with cold and other distempers, they die like rotten sheep."

Even so, it was common for Europeans to view what was happening as God's way of "sweeping away" the native populations and "making room" for the new arrivals. John Winthrop wrote that: "God hath hereby cleared our title to this place."

Many English settlements and agricultural fields were located on Indian village sites abandoned due to epidemics. Such sites were choice locations because they substantially reduced the labor needed to clear the forest for agriculture and were commonly the best agricultural lands.

The epidemics caused severe social disorganization to American Indian societies. Traditional alliances and kinship ties were disrupted and confidence in leaders, medicine men and traditional ways was undermined. Not surprisingly, such frightful losses severely demoralized those that survived. Robert Cushman wrote of the Indians near Plymouth in the early 17th century: "Those that are left, have their courage much abated, and their countenance is dejected, and they seem as a people affrighted."

The fact that Indians were so severely affected, while Europeans were not, was taken by both the Europeans and the Indians themselves as a sign of the superiority of the European God and culture. John Winthrop wrote that during the smallpox epidemic of 1633: "divers of them, in their sickness, confessed that the Englishmen's God was a good God; and that, if they recovered, they would serve Him." Many converted to Christianity in the hope that the European God would protect them from the dreadful sickness.

Ecological Conditions in the Southeast at the Time of European Settlement (A.D. 1607-1800)

As compared to relatively few eye witness reports on the ecological conditions in the East and Southeast in the 1500s, such reports become much more common after 1600 (Smith 1616, Smith 1624, Beverley 1705, Catesby 1731, Loskiel 1794, Rights 1947, Lindestrom 1656, Byrd 1728, Bartram 1791, Norris 1890, Logan 1859, Lawson 1709, Romans 1775, Lederer 1672).3

Many of these writers took note of extensive “ancient” Indian plantations and abandoned fields extending for miles along rivers, whose use likely predated the disease epidemics (see in particular Bartram 1791). Even so, what these narratives also consistently suggest is that, even at the much reduced population levels of the early 1600s, native peoples continued to have a substantial influence on ecological systems through both agriculture and widespread burning, which created and maintained large areas as semi-permanent prairies, oak and pine savannas, canebrakes, and other fire-adapted vegetation types.

Reasons attributed by early observers for burning by indigenous people varied, but included improving conditions for wildlife, especially large game such a whitetail deer; hunting and driving game; making travel easier; improving the visibility and projecting villages; killing trees and preparing sites for agriculture; managing forests for mast (acorns, chestnuts, and other nuts); warfare; enhancing the production of berries; creating material for homes (saplings and cane); and even amusement (Williams 2003; Fowler and Konopic 2007, Bartram 1791).

Burning by humans generally occurred in the fall and spring, whereas natural fires ignited by lightning were more common from late spring into summer. Both the extent and timing of Indian burning transformed the ecological landscape in ways that natural ignitions could not have accomplished (Fowler and Konopic 2007). A variety of evidence, including lightning strike occurrence and historical records, indicate that most of the fires in the Southeast during the pre- European settlement period were of human origins (Lorimer 2001, Barden 1997).

On the relative importance of human vs. natural fires on the Piedmont, Barden (1997) wrote that:

“It is significant that all reported historical observations of actual fires were made during the dormant season of the year (January 1701 by William Lawson, February and March 1720 by Mark Catesby, October 1728 by William Byrd). During these months thunderstorms and lightning-caused fires in southeastern North America are extremely uncommon (Barden and Woods 1974, Robbins and Myers 1992). Neither of the explorers who traveled through the Piedmont during months of frequent thunder- storms reported seeing fires (Desoto— May 1540, Lederer—June 1670; Alexander 1935).”

Open, Park-like Forests of Early Successional and Disturbance Tolerant Species

Some of the most detailed descriptions of pre-European ecological conditions in the Southeast come from the botanist William Bartram who traveled extensively throughout the Southeast (Bartram 1791). The most common ecological conditions reported by Bartram (and other writers) were open forests, interspersed with grasslands and meadows, with extensive cane lands along the rivers. As an example of many such references, Bartram (1980, as cited in Fowler and Konopic 2007) reported that as he descended the west side of the Nantahala Mountains he traveled “through spacious high forests and flowery lawns.” Bartram’s journals contain numerous references to “delightful groves” of open grown “stately forests” of “oak, ash, mulberry, hickory, walnut, elm sassafras, locust, etc.” as well as “vast open forests” continuing for many miles (Bartram 1791, Rostlund 1957). References to dense forests of late successional species are rare indeed.

Descriptions of open forests were also very common in the notes of other early observers. John Smith commented that around Jamestown in Virginia "a man may gallop a horse amongst these woods any waie, but where the creekes and Rivers shall hinder." (Williams 1989) Andrew White, on an expedition along the Potomac in 1633, observed that the forest was "not choked with an undergrowth of brambles and bushes, but as if laid out in by hand in a manner so open, that you might freely drive a four horse chariot in the midst of the trees." (Williams 1989).

Such observations of the open nature of coastal forests and in the forests west of the Appalachians are typical of those of most early observers, who commonly spoke of the ease of riding a horse or driving a wagon under the forest canopy. Rostlund (1957, p. 408) concludes that, “the open, parklike appearance of the woodlands, undoubtedly the most common type of forest in the ancient Southeast, was mostly the work of man.” Lorimer (1992) writes that:

“The low importance of shade-tolerant species over extensive areas of the Piedmont and Ridge and Valley provinces in presettlement times provides indirect but important evidence on presettlement fire frequency. Tolerant species appear quite capable of dominating the overstories on many sites (e.g., Abrams and Downs 1990, Abrams and Nowacki 1992), so we must consider why these strong successional trends did not also take place in presettlement times. If fire was indeed the principal factor restricting the occurrence of these species..., then the rarity of late-successional forests on the uplands suggests the influence of fire may have been widespread and pervasive.”

There is unambiguous evidence in the pollen record of the Southeast that early successional or fire adapted tree species, such as oaks, pines, hickory, and chestnut, dominated forests for thousands of years (Delcourt and Delcourt 1985, Delcourt 1987, Watts 1980). Human agency was undoubtedly a factor in maintaining this ecological condition.

Even some of the remaining magnificent old-growth bottomland forests may trace their initiation to the post-pandemic abandonment of Native American agricultural fields. Currently huge sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua) trees dominate the canopy of several old-growth bottomland forests. Sweetgum is a shade intolerant species that is largely absent from the understory. Many of the dominant sweetgum trees have reached their maximum age and are now being replaced (Hamel and Buckner 1998).

Prairies and Grasslands

Frequent forest burning did more than reduce the undergrowth and improve the habitat for preferred species. In many cases it created openings and grasslands where forests otherwise would have existed. There are many references to treeless areas in the early literature, which were often referred to as “barrens,” “plains”, “meadows” or “savannahs.” In Bartram’s journal there are numerous separate references to “vast meadows,” “extensive savannas,” and “large grassy plains” some of which were reported to be many miles in length (Rostlund 1957).

Many grasslands were relatively small, from a few to several hundred acres. But some were very large. Bartram reported that the Alachua Savanna in northern Florida was “a level green plain, above 15 miles over, 50 miles in circumference, with scarcely a tree to be seen.” (Rostlund 1957, p. 408). In Kentucky, a vast grassland on the Pennyroyal Plateau measured approximately 155 miles long and 12 miles wide (Lorimer 2001, p. 432).

In Virginia, the Shenandoah Valley -- a broad valley located between the Blue Ridge and Allegany Mountains -- was one vast grass prairie which covered more than 1000 square miles.

Native Americans burned the area annually (Van Lear et al 1989, Maxwell 1910). After the cessation burning by native peoples, much of this area promptly reverted to forest and the early white sellers in this area had to clear forests on land that had only recently been prairie (Rostlund 1957, p. 409).

No less a personage than Thomas Jefferson, a keen student of both ecology and native peoples, wrote to John Adams that (Jefferson 1861, as cited in Williams 2003):

“It has been practised [use of fire to hunt] by them all; and to this day, by those still remote from the settlements...This is the most probable cause of the origin and extension of the vast prairies in the western country.”

R.C. Anderson (1990) writes that the eastern prairies and grasslands "would mostly have disappeared if it had not been for the nearly annual burning of these grasslands by the North American Indians."

Canebrakes

Canebrakes were a major feature of the landscape of the Southeast at the time of European settlement (Platt and Brantley 1997). This habitat type has since been virtually eliminated from the landscape due to fire suppression. Cane is the only native bamboo of the Americas (Arundinaria gigantea). Canebrakes develop best in wet areas, alluvial plains and bottomlands.

In these areas cane can reach a height of thirty feet and form dense stands as high as 65,000 culms per acre (Platt and Brantley 1997). Individual culms would reach a diameter the size of a man’s leg.

The extensive area of cane reported in the 17th century was likely the result of depopulation in the 1500s and expansion of cane to occupy large areas of abandoned agricultural fields, especially in alluvial areas. Cane was reported throughout the Southeast and a far north as Delaware and Illinois (Platt and Brantley 1997). It is difficult to estimate the extent of canebrakes in the Southeast in 1700, but early accounts made note of their vast extent. Early travelers along the rivers of the Southeast often reported canebrakes extending for many miles along the shoreline (Platt and Brantley 1997).

In journal during his decent of the Tombigbee in 1772, Bernard Romans reported that ". . . we encamped . . ." on a high bank, where for the first time we saw the rich ground clear of large canes" (Romans 1775, see also the Alabama Encyclopedia5) William Bartram repeatedly remarked on canebrakes during his southeastern travels, describing "vast cane meadows,"

"widespread cane swamps," or "an endless wilderness of canes" (Platt and Brantley 1997). On the lower Tombigbee River in 1775, Bartram noted canes as "thick as a man's arm, or three or four inches in diameter; I suppose one joint of some of them would contain above a quart of water." (Bartram 1791).

Cane grows rapidly and requires moderate fire – fire frequency on a 7-10 year fire cycle. Too

frequent burning discourages cane and leads to its replacement with more fire tolerant species of

grass. An absence of fire also eliminates cane (Platt and Brantley 1997).

Indigenous people valued cane for food, shelter, baskets and tools, especially weapons (Hamel

and Chiltoskey 1975). Canebrakes were heavily utilized by the bison and American Indians

likely encouraged the expansion of cane to promote bison habitat (Platt and Brantley 1997). The

destruction of cane by whites was considered as provocation to war by the Seneca tribe (Platt and

5http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/face/Article.jsp?id=h-1279

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Brantley 1997).

The area of canebrakes declined rapidly in the 18th century as a result of Euro-American

expansion into the Southeast. Factors included overgrazing by cattle, increased fire frequency

and displacement by agriculture. The first wave of European settlers in the Southeast consisted

largely of cattlemen who treated the area as open range. Cattle found cane nutritious and

overgrazing followed. Cattlemen also set frequent fires to promote young nutritious grass, which

could have also converted canebrakes to more fire tolerant species. The next wave of European

settlers was farmers, who often used the vigor and productivity of cane as an indicator of

agricultural productivity (Platt and Brantley 1997). They eradicated vast areas of cane to plant

cotton, tobacco, and other crops.

Today cane has been virtually eliminated from the Southeastern landscape. There is interest in

restoring canebrakes, which are considered to be a critically endangered landscape having been

reduced to less than 2 percent of their former range (Noss et al. 1995). The loss of canebrakes is

considered one of the factors contributing to the extinction of the Backman’s warbler (Hamel

1986, Remsen 1986).

Pine Savannahs

The Atlantic Coastal Plain was dominated largely by magnificent open pine stands at time of

European contact (Bertram 1791). Within the primary range of the fire-tolerant longleaf pine,

only small areas of fire-intolerant southern mixed broadleaved forests (beech. magnolia, semi-

ever-green oaks) existed in specialized habitats not subject to frequent fires (Frost 1993).

Longleaf pine was estimated to cover about 92 million acres and extended from Florida to

southern Virginia. North of Virginia, pitch pine predominated on the Coastal Plain (Frost 1993).

The longleaf pine/wiregrass community is very much a fire dominated plant community.

Estimated fire frequency was in the 2-3 year range (Frost 1993). In the southern portion of the

range of longleaf pine, lightning fires during the summer season are very common (Komarck

1964, Murphy and Holle 2005). In this part of the southern Coastal Plain natural firebreaks are

uncommon, with numerous tracks from hundreds to over one thousand square kilometers without

a single natural firebreak (Frost 1993).6

Natural fire alone is sufficient to maintain longleaf pine

in many parts of the southern Coastal Plain.

But burning by indigenous people was likely a major factor in extending the range of longleaf

and other southern pines into more topographically dissected areas where it would not otherwise

have occurred (Frost 1993). Longleaf existed in extensive parts of the Piedmont which would

most likely have been in broadleaved vegetation without human burning (Frost 1993). Longleaf

pine also often took over agricultural fields abandoned due to pandemics and dislocation (Fowler

and Konopic 2007).

Although longleaf pine was a major source of income during the early colonial period as naval

stores (tar, pitch, turpentine, etc), today, like canebrakes, it is reduced to a tiny fraction of its

former range. Grazing (especially by hogs), logging, fire suppression, and conversion to

6 Komarck (1964) noted that in 1962 and 1963, there were 1,146 and 1,048 lightning fires reported in Florida (cited

in Frost 1998).

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agriculture have all contributed to longleaf pine’s decline (Frost 1993). By the early 1990s, Frost

(1993) estimated that about 2.6 million acres remained in naturally regenerated longleaf pine. Of

that only about 674,000 acres, less than 0.7% of the original range, remain in a condition similar

to the classic open-grown, fire-maintained, longleaf pine-wiregrass community. Like

canebrakes, the longleaf pine/wiregrass community is considered to be a critically endangered

ecosystem (Noss et al. 1995).

The precipitous decline on the range of the longleaf pine has adversely impacted a variety of

species which are associated with this ecosystem, including the threatened red cockaded wood

pecker, gopher tortoise, and a large number of rare plants, reptiles, insects and other animals.

Noss et al. (1995) reported that there are an:

“enormous number of rare plants (191 taxa) and animals (at least 41 taxa in Florida) associated with

longleaf pine and wiregrass (Aristida stricta) in the Southeast (Noss 1988; Hardin and White 1989).

Of those species, 27 are federally listed as endangered or threatened and another 99 are proposed for

listing by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service or are candidates for listing (Appendix E).”

Do Eye Witness Accounts Provide a Reliable Way to Construct Pre-European Ecological

Conditions?

By their nature, eye witness accounts are selective, oftentimes being spatially restricted along

travel corridors (especially rivers) and biased by perspective (how things are seen and

interpreted) and subject matter (what items are chosen to write about). Some writers had an

interest in emphasizing particular points, sometimes to make settlement seem economically

attractive or easier than it otherwise might be in reality. The routes taken also do not provide a

truly representative sample of the landscape. Travel routes usually followed rivers and streams

and existing trails, where human influences on the landscape were the greatest. But the sheer

number of eye witness accounts, many by individuals having no particular economic interest in

coloring their accounts, is impressive. When these independent accounts provide a largely

consistent story, as is the case for early observations of the ecological conditions in the

Southeast, they must be taken seriously.

Of particular value are early accounts by land surveyors, such as William Byrd (1728), who were

required to survey land lines on predetermined compass lines, often in difficult terrain. Byrd

(1728, as cited in Lorimer 1992), noted that, in contrast to lands next to Indian settlements which

are “burnt every year,” forests in the mountains and areas more distant from such settlements

may go many years without fire. But even these areas, with “dead Leaves and Trash of many

years heapt up together,” will eventually “be kindled by the Indians that happen to pass that way,

furnishing fewel for a conflagration that carries all before it.”

A relatively dense network of Indian trails provided both good access and conduits for human

influences. Lorimer 1992 writes that:

“Maps of known Indian trails, such as those in Massachusetts (Russell 1980), Pennsylvania (Wallace

1965), and the Southeast (Myer 1971) show that relatively few stands would have been located more

than 15 miles from the nearest Indian trail (figure 3). This would have rendered many stands in

otherwise sparsely settled areas subject to occasional accidental or intentional fires.”

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Finally, even after the advent of maize agriculture caused indigenous populations to be less

nomadic and concentrate near productive coastal and alluvial areas, there is ample evidence that

upland areas and areas more distant from settlements, continued to be utilized (and burned).

John Smith (as quoted in Lorimer, 1992) wrote that when the Indians of coastal Virginia go

hunting:

“they leave their habitations, and reduce themselves into companies, as the Tartars doe, and goe to the

most dessert [uninhabited] places with their families, where they spend their time in hunting and

fowling up towards the mountains, by the heads of their rivers, where there is plentie of game . . .

Having found the Deere, they environ them with many fires, and betwixt the fires they place

themselves.”

Reconstructing the Pre-Columbian Environment in the Southeast

Conservation biologists and other resource managers seeking to reconstruct the historic range of

variation (HRV) in the Southeast are faced with serious challenges. The first is whether to

include the role of indigenous people in HRV. The vast wealth of evidence points inexorably to

the conclusion that the Southeast was a humanized landscape almost everywhere at the time of

first European contact and remained so until the indigenous peoples were overwhelmed by

repeated waves of Euro-American expansion.

Humans have been affecting in relatively substantial ways the composition, structure and pattern

of plant and animal communities in the Southeast for the past 7,000 years when the current suite

of species assembled after the last glaciations. As such, excluding the effects of people on HRV

would be problematic. But including the effects of indigenous people also raises potentially

vexing issues. What time frame to choose for HRV will be an important decision. Some choices

include: 1) before the decimation of native people by European disease (A.D. 1500), 2) the time

of European settlement (A.D. 1600-1800), or 3) another date. Any date chosen will have its own

set of potential benefits and drawbacks. Why is this question important?

If one is willing to paint with a very broad brush, the ecological conditions prevailing in the

Southeast at the time of Euro-American settlement (about 1650) can be conjectured from a

wealth of first hand accounts. The coastal plain of the Southeast would have been dominated by

large, open grown stands of longleaf pine with an admixture of other southern pines. These pine

forests would have been subject to frequent lightning and human set fires. The coastal plain

forests would have been interrupted by grasslands and prairies, sometimes small in size, but

occasionally extensive (several square miles in extent).

The ecological conditions of the Piedmont and Appalachians would have been more complex.

There would have been open forests of longleaf and other pines on sandy and well drained soils,

with open grown broadleaf/pine forest mixtures or pure broadleaved forests on the heavier soils.

Again the open park-like forests of the Piedmont would have been interrupted by extensive

prairies and grasslands in some areas. Many of the alluvial areas along rivers and streams in

both the Piedmont and coastal plain would have been in indigenous agricultural fields or

extensive canebreaks. Many such cranebreaks likely originated on agricultural fields abandoned

due to disease pandemics. Some alluvial areas would have been open bottomland hardwood

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forests.

The ecology of the Appalachians would have been complex, based on soils, aspect and the

history of human intervention. Open grown forests of early successional species, oaks, hickory,

black locust, American chestnut, etc., created by frequent under burning by indigenous people,

would have been very common. Again, small to large prairies would exist in some areas.

While the picture painted above of the Southeast in 1650 is very coarse and undoubtedly overly

simplified, it is useful to illustrate two conclusions: 1) the current ecological conditions in the

Southeast are dramatically different today than they were in 1650, and 2) those conditions were

dramatically different in 1650 that they would have been absent ten millennia of human use and

management.

Differences in ecological conditions today as compared to 1650 are, of course, due, in large part,

to the significant land use changes that have occurred over the last three centuries or more. But

they are also due to substantially altered disturbance regimes. Even many old growth forests and

protected and “natural” areas exhibit vegetation conditions at odds with what would have been

expected in pre-European landscapes. Intact forests everywhere in the Southeast are witnessing

increases in shade tolerant species, such as mountain laurel, rhododendron, beech, and maple.

Without active human intervention, these species will replace southern pines, oaks, hickories,

and other shade intolerant species that have dominated the Southeast forest ecosystem landscape

for the last seven thousand years or more (Elliot and Hewitt 1997, Hedman and Van Lear 1995).

Additional evidence of the ecological effects of altered disturbance regimes, is the tally of rare

and endemic plant and animal ecotypes and species in the Southeast. A predominance of the

endangered ecosystems listed by Noss and others (1991) in the South are either wetland

ecosystems or frequent fire dominated ecosystems, such as prairies, pine savannahs and barrens,

tropical hardwood hammocks, oak/pine shrub forests and the like. The Ozark-Ouachita

Highlands Assessment: Terrestrial Vegetation and Wildlife lists 21 rare communities in the

Ozark-Ouachita Highlands (10 forest and woodland types, 4 shrubland types, and 7 grassland

types). Many of these are rare either due to limited distribution due to habitat conversion or

limited ecological niche (e.g., talus). But fire exclusion is listed as a factor in the decline of 9 out

of 21 rare communities (USDA/Forest Service 1999).

Further evidence for the important role of fire in maintaining the ecological values of

Southeastern ecosystems comes from a review of the 67 threatened, endangered and candidate

plant species on National Forest System lands in the Southeast.7

Of these plant species, 43% (29

species) require fire to maintain the community in which they reside, or to support some specific

aspect of their life history. Another 27% (18 species) tolerate fire in their ecosystem without

long-term adverse impacts. For another 24% (16 species) fire is not a factor because they occur

in ecosystems that essentially never experience fire (e.g., aquatic species). Only 6% of the

threatened, endangered and candidate plant species (four species) on National Forest System

lands in the Southeast are adversely impacted by fire (Owen, citation needed).

Resource managers are largely powerless to counter the ecological effects of the substantial land

7 Excludes the Caribbean National Forest.

13

use changes that have occurred in the Southeast over the last three centuries. But they are not

powerless in recognizing and addressing through management activities the ecological effects of

altered disturbance regimes. An understanding of natural and human influences on the

development of historic landscapes is critical to effectively planning and executing projects

designed to restore or conserve rare and endemic species and ecosystems in the Southeast.