Misconceptions of Precontact America

What comes to mind when you think of North America prior to 1492 "when Columbus sailed the ocean blue"? Wild open plains, abundant wildlife, scattered Indians using what nature gave them? The actual precontact America was very different. Instead of scattered Indians, the population in North and South America was more like 57-112 million. The wild open plains were actually teeming with this population and the abundant wildlife was the work of the Native Americans. This essay looks at precontact America and attempts to dismember the myths that follow it.

European plants and animals were among the first visible pioneers. There was also a critical frontier of microorganisms. The belief is that precontact America was in great abundance of wildlife-but historians must take these accounts with a grain of salt to discover how much wildlife actually inhabited precontact America. For example, James Ohio Pattie reported seeing 220 grizzlies in one day. Since this would mean seeing a grizzly every three minutes, historians cannot assume that Pattie's account is reliable. Individual observations, in other words, must be evaluated as critically in ecology as in history. Not only is it assumed that there was an abundance of plants and animals in precontact America, but it is also believed that these "flora and fauna" coexisted harmoniously. However, instability of ecosystems is expected-even without human intervention.

Prior to recent studies, it was also assumed that Native Americans were a natural-part of ecology, but the truth is, Indians actively altered and controlled their environment. Horticulture (dikes, dams, canals); farming (clearing fields, plowing, sowing, and weeding); and the use of fire were all ways Native Americans altered and controlled their environments. Indians used fires for communication and to clear the country to make hunting easier. The result was almost park like, with large, widely spaced trees, few shrubs, and plenty of succulent grasses. These forests according to historian, William Cronon, "not merely attracted game but helped create much larger populations of it". Since abundance of game was seasonal, Indians used the aforementioned methods to get by.

The myth of how many Indians lived in precontact America is extremely difficult to analyze. Anthopologists' figures for precontact New England population ranged from 90,000-25,000. Reductions from calculations were taken without reasons and older historians made no move to cover their racism towards the natives. Alfred Kroeber argues that Indians' populations remained stationary because they "lacked the skills to expand". Evidence to the contrary was simply ignored. Studies in the 1960s and 1970s showed that the actual estimate of precontact population was much higher than older figures.

Why were the older figures so inaccurate? An epidemic swept through the population as America was being colonized. In 1837, a steamer carrying supplies and passengers for the trading posts along the upper Missouri became infested with smallpox. Although the traders tried to warn and protect the Indians, the Indians contracted the disease and spread it across the continent and then back again to the frontiers of the U.S. Loss of life was anywhere from 50-95% of those affected. The use of threat of the spread of disease by colonists strained Native Americans traditional beliefs. Some thought that the English God was punishing them. English colonists played on this to get what they wanted from the natives.

The loss of Native American timber to needy colonists; the loss of grazing land; and the pursuit of the buffalo severely changed the ways Native Americans met their needs. Some Indians attempted to take tolls from colonists crossing their land. Domestic animals from Spain and England spread to populate America. Sportsmen riding the Kansas Pacific shot at a buffalo herd-a single hunter could kill more than a hundred animals in an hour-and in a single decade, the species was almost extinct.

There are many views out there to dismember the popular misconception of America in 1490 and shows what it became in 1890 due to the series of ecological frontiers that had crossed the continent. If these invisible frontiers had not come to America, perhaps colonization would not have occurred and America today might be an entirely different place to live.