Indians: The First Environmentalists?

Nature and History in America

Pre-Columbian culture regions

Hunting

Fishing

Development of agriculture

• 10,000 years ago: NW Mexico or SW U.S.

• Beans, gourds, squash

• 5000 years ago

• Cotton, corn, pottery

Indian agriculture

Hunter-gatherers: Subarctic

Hunter-gatherers: Pacific Northwest

Hunter-gatherers: California

Plains Indians

• Agriculture and hunting

Plains Indians

Plains Indians

• Export economy

• Alibates Quarry

Cahokia, Illinois

• Peak 1100-1200

• Up to 20,000 inhabitants

Irrigation in Southwest: Hohokam

The Anasazi of the Southwest

• Peak 1100-1300

Hunter-gatherers & conservation

• Marginal and fragile ecologies

• Conservation methods

• Abundance and extinction

Indian ecological management

• Animals and the supernatural

• Getting animal spirits to agree to their slaughter

• Fire as ecological management tool

• Followed spread of maize, except on Plains

• Ecological effects