Indians of North America

CORE

CLARIFY

"Environmental History is the study of how settlements alter ecological conditions and how those changes influence each era’s ideas about nature with respect to responsible resource use from one period to the next."

"Ideas meaning those concepts associated with the perception, ideology and values that contribute to methods of discovery with respect to our surrounding land, air and water."

Place – topos-

derives from bio-eco-geo- history

Natural history
Prehistoric
History

Favorite places

1. Size    (review pretest)
2. Description
   1. Frame, border, boundary or “frontier" influences concepts
   2. Angle (view) (reveals, hides, opens, obscures ---foci)
   3. Content the features and elements comprising the scene
   4. Placement
      1. Foreground – important?
      2. Background – the setting (prelude and introduction)
3. Vision
4. History
   1. Pre columbian -- maize, beans, squash, tobacco, turkey & fish
   2. Early               -- Indian wars (dispossession & occupation)
   3. Middle            -- Revolution, Slavery and civil war
   4. Late                -- Conservation and preservation
5. Now – suburban/urban/industrial
   1. cityscape &
   2. Gospel of Ecology

Native American conditions and the origins of

• agriculture
• hunting
  
• irrigation and agriculture
  
• numbers and calendar from the Mayans

Readings

I. Reisner, A Savage Encounter, violence through regeneration and revolt
            Illusions prevailed over geographical reality (climate + geology + bio)
Louisiana Purchase and the visionary character of John Wesley Powell

II. Merchant, The Indians in the landscape
            14,000 years ago, some would argue 20,000 to 30,000 years ago.
            1500s the stone and adobe pueblos (city in Spanish)
horses and the revolt of Popé in the New Mexico Pueblos, 1676

The story emerges from artifacts that remain from the past.

Who are the Indians?	Yaqi, Anasazi-Pueblo, Micmac, Powhatan
	Initial inhabitants   - aboriginal, original peoples First Nations Treaty obligations & as such legally they are “internal dependent nations.”
	Shown in John White's paintings from the late 1500s of Virginia and the Carolinas, Chief Herowan.
	recent photo of Bandelier National Monument an Anasazi ruins.
Dates:                         1539               Coronado’s expedition to the southwest                         1676               Pueblo revolt                         1776               Mission San Diego founded in California                         1848               Treaty ending the Mexican War                         1869               first Powell expedition down the Colorado RIver                         1888               Powell’s irrigation survey
1900 -- Theodore Roosevelt became President due to an assassination.
1902 -- The Newland’s Act institutionalizes "reclamation" of arid lands

   Chaco Canyon discussed

National Park Service, Chaco National Historical Park

The story emerges

Taos pueblo , Great Basin

WHATEVER PLACE IS YOUR FAVORITE, THEREIN RESIDES A GEOLOGICAL AND HUMAN PAST; occupiers of the land, before we came there, have shaped its look, its picturesque qualities, its biology and its current configuration of elements.

Reisner
pp. 16 “and the other savage”

Spanish colonial land grant system or the "encomienda" included: riparian springs, extensive grazing, & irrigable farmland. This was to assure a size of land grant sufficient to sustain settlers in the western, arid regions of the Great Basin and range region..      

Merchant
pp. 27 “a European introduction—the horse”

R.  Illusions are very toxic to the imagination but corrupt our idea of the biogeography.

M.  European livestock and foodstuffs altered the native ecology.

Epidemics, horses, and the fur trade would alter the balance of power on the eastern seaboard all the way to the great plains and Rocky Mountains.

Virtually an island called California and the distant valleys of the Willamette and Columbia Rivers, and Puget Sound were isolated for a while, until 1805–1830s with fur trade. Then came war in 1848 & occupation.

Cape Cod

Places are more than special or memorable sites, they are biogeographical settings where organic and inorganic elements and features conspire to sustain life and where the past informs or explains the present.