Don't have the references on hand but there is a fair bit of literature available on the use of fire regimes by native Americans to maintain Oak dominated open forest. It made traveling and hunting easier plus the forest was more productive and was able to maintain a higher density of game species.

Google presettlement vegetation.

Are you looking for a report on American forests in 1491 or a report on forests in a natural state?

gtd, John & William Bartram were Quaker botanists of the Colonial Era and from your state. Can we assume that you already know about them? They studied all plant communities, not just forests. William was also an illustrator and made remarkable observations about American Indians.
Regarding the fragrant strawberries on one of his trips William said their rich juice dying my horse's feet and ankles I have never gotten that image out of my mind.
Here is one of many links about them:

Here is a link that might be useful: John & Wm Bartram

I guess what I am looking for is a journal or report of some kind with detailed information on species and thier sizes in pre-settlement/virgin forests.If such a document exists I would love to read it. I was doing some research on the Bialowieza forest in Poland and was intrigued by the massive size of oaks and other trees in forest...it made me wonder what the forests around me looked like at one time....If only time travel was possible

Green, one possible source of precisely the info you seek would be that of the original land surveyors. In my region, detailed notes were taken from which really cool maps were later created. It's a possibility.

+oM

Its a bit of an egg hunt (if you follow the similie). The one thing that needs to be understood is that the forest wasnt "virgin". A good portion of it was "farmed" by the native peoples of the area. IT wasnt an overgrown thicket of dead forest because the natives used perscribed burning.

Maybe start looking up individual tree species such as chestnut, and pecan. There is evidence the wide range of these trees is due to the farming methods of native peoples. I remember reading a bit of settler accounts when I was looking some of those up.

You could also watch this, for a place to start. Not a bad documentary IMO:

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/america-before-columbus/

The main thing to remember is this: There were an estimated 50 - 200 million native peoples before columbus in north america, whom lived in a semi relationship with the forest.

Where I was in SW VA, the forest was mostly oaks, in particular chestnut, white, black & scarlet oaks. All can sprout from clear-cut stumps. As a result from clear-cutting around 1930, many were multi-trunked. The sprouts would grow from the periphery (outer edge) of the old stump. Some chestnut oaks had 2, 3, even 7 trunks in a "circle". I reckoned the original trunk was the size of the circle intersecting the centers of all the current trunks.

From that, a number of them right close to the house had originally been anywhere from 4 to even 7 feet in dia! For forest-grown trees, that's huge. Given that the biggest nearby trees along the moist drainages were 115-120' tall & nearly 3' dia, 7' dia forest trees would had to have been 140-150' or taller!

This post was edited by beng on Thu, Dec 20, 12 at 11:34

Suprised by the 50+m native people pre-Columbus. Can you provide a source for the estimate?

barnhardt, I have trouble with that too. Used to be the estimate for US/Canada was only ~5 million. Mexico & the S Amer Andes had larger, more organized agricultural & urban communities, so prb'ly 10s of millions, but the 200 million estimate to me is way too high, even for combined N & S America. Even 50 mil for the combined continents seems a bit high, but not unreasonable. Hunter/gatherers need ALOT of space to survive.

It would be very hard to actually determine the numbers, tho.

Canadianplant's comments re: native American's use of fire is quite true-depending on where and when you're talking. Fire frequency for much of the central oak forest/oak savannah systems was indeed closely spaced. But....just go a few hundred miles north, into the mixed northern hardwoods/conifer ecosystems and fire intervals are thought to have been in the range of two to four hundred years! And this is a gross simplification I readily admit.

I was in S. Florida last week and just as every time I'm down there, marveled at the slash pine/saw palmetto stands, or as they're known down that way, pine flatwoods. I have no doubt that fire used to play an important role in maintaining these forests and shudder to see the invasion of "Australian pine-not a pine at all- and the truly troublesome malaleuca into these stands, mostly with no fire to knock them back, now that there's typically a condo complex and golf course right next door. Of course, malaleuca has its own dastardly fire resistance which is helping it still more in taking over these stands, but that's a separate topic.

I deal with "native landscape contractors" all the time in my job. And while these tend to be some really good companies, their field of expertise falls off rapidly once you move beyond the prairie/oak savannah plant communities. Since we're right on top of an ecotone here, that is significant. We've got the oak/hickory forest type, the sugar maple/basswood/beech, and northern conifer swamp forest types right beside each other here. Original land surveyor's records for this county indicate 0% of the land in the 1830s was prairie. Yet every one of these companies is focused almost solely on that plant community, valuable though it is.

I could write a book about this subject-maybe I should-but not today!

+oM

It is my understanding that the populations of the Americas crashed about the time of Columbus. It is known that the population of the New England area was significantly higher than was found in the late 1500 when the area was first explored.

We are now learning about new areas of pre Colombian population, like the one in the St Louis area
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/daily/march/12/cahokia.htm

In southern Ohio in the area of Serpent Mound they are finding ruins of several unknown towns. If you have never been there these mounds which are all along the Ohio drainage area north of the river they are quite extensive and would need a sizable population to support their existence.

Also the archeologist are finding that the Amazon had populations much higher than previously thought because of newly discovered farming areas.

There is a book called 1491 that deals with the status of the Americas prior to 1491.

It would not surprise me to see the actual pre Colombian Population as high high as a million people in the Central and North America. There were 15000 just at Cahokia

You need to concentrate on recent archeological finds but you can google and find additional information.

I too often wonder about what the woods were like before the Europeans came. Some places where population pressure was light had extensive, thick forests. The Upper Midwest, W. PA and the hilly parts of the East are some. There are "benches" along the rivers of TN and adjacent states where agriculture was clearly practiced. These were flat areas close to the rivers and streams with alluvial soils, a long growing season, and easily reached by boat (their cars). The French kept meticulous records when they were fighting the Mohawks in the lower Hudson Valley (mid-1660s). They record the number of apple trees they chopped down, the number of cherry trees cut, etc. They also recorded hundreds of acres of corn fields they burned in their wars against the natives. Obviously this was some years after contact, but the tribes were relatively intact at this point still.

The very first contacts resulted in depopulation before the settlers arrived. Smallpox, typhus, measles, cholera and influenza killed as many as 90% of the native peoples of the Northeast before the pilgrims waded ashore in 1620. One disease we hear nothing about but had a devastating effect was "yaws". This is akin to syphilis, easily spread by touching the pustules, and the Indians had absolutely no resistance to it. (Yaws may damage the skin and bones, affecting the appearance and ability to move. It can also cause deformities of the legs, nose, palate, and upper jaw.)

Verrazano noted in 1524 that there were fields "open and free from obstacles and trees", extending for more than 75 miles from Narragansett Bay (RI). He wrote that the forests beyond were so uncluttered that they "could be penetrated by even a large army".

James Rosier, who went to ME with B. Gosnold (nephew of the Gosnold who is accused of maybe scuttling plans to resupply 'The Lost Colony' of Raleigh), reported that the Indians there had "but little wood", that some places looked like the pastures of England.

Capt. John Smith reported that the in the woods of Virginia a man "may gallop a horse amongst the woods any way, but where the creekes or rivers shall hinder".

Leonard Calvert, of the Calverts who founded MD, reported that the land along the lower Potomac River was timbered, but "not choaked up with any under shrubs, but so cleare as a coach may without hinderance passe all over the Countrie".

A missionary in Ontario in 1632 got lost, not in forests, but in "endless fields of maize". So there was a lot of agriculture.

One US Forest Service historian in the early 1900s (Hu Maxwell) worte that the tribes were burning everything and that "if the discovery of North America had been postponed 500 years, Virginia would have been pastureland or desert".

He was exaggerating some, but like any early human cultures, burning was a way to open farm ground. A lot of the ecosystems had gone over to needing fire to maintain itself. Places where thick barked pines predominate (Pine Barrens in NJ, the long-leafed pines of the SE Coast) are adapted to fire. The Indians had been at it for 15,000 years or so, and they recognized that fire rejuvenated grasslands and kept trees from encroaching (the "Oak openings in Ohio, Indiana and KY).

I didn't mean for this to be so long, but there a many books that touch on the related subjects of forests, populations and farming before the 1600s when the English and French started inhabiting North America. The quotes above are from some of these, not my words.

Check out this virgin stand of Longleaf in east TX.

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:500778}}

There is an old growth forest a few miles away from me that consists of large red oaks,hickories, and black walnut. Many of the trees are 150+ years old.I noticed in stands of red oaks that there is zero understory shrubs. The trees are so large that I think they suck up all the water and shade out anything that wants to grow under them.
{{gwi:500779}}
This is almost a pure stand of red oaks most are 3-5 feet in diameter. There is no shrub layer at all.

Yes, it is completely normal for there to be little regeneration or other growth in the understory of many types of old-growth stands, save for spring ephemerals. But when something comes along to cause an opening in the canopy, there is almost always an explosion of stuff getting started. And to a large extent, this also depends on forest type and location. For an example, it seems that in the PNW, almost regardless of stand age and composition, the native sword ferns still make a luxuriant carpet, this from N. Cali all the way on up to coastal Alaska. Then there's the tropical and subtropical situation a la S. Florida, where life gets a foothold within the tree canopy, with various types of epiphytic plants-ferns, bromeliads and orchids primarily-existing solely on tree trunks and branches. The native sabal, or cabbage palms in S. Florida seem to always have a thick growth of resurrection ferns growing within their "boots", the odd strap-like growths that cover their trunks, as well as other plants.

+oM

Rocky Hollow-Falls Canyon Nature Preserve - Turkey Run State Park, west-central Indiana. Old-growth Western Mesophytic Forest, with remnant Eastern Hemlock in the cool Sandstone ravines.
{{gwi:500780}}

I scrolled down and immediately recognized the place at Turkey Run State Park.

It is unfortunate that Indiana has done a lousy job of publicizing its natural wonders. It has some very pretty parks and other places.

I am willing to bet that there is no one on this forum who has ever heard of Cataract Falls. It is the largest falls in Indiana The total drop is 86' and the lower falls is over 100' wide with a drop of 18'.
http://www.cataractfalls.com/pictures.html

The color in the fall is spectacular.

Yep Knuttle, you're right-never heard of it! Looks like a marvelous place indeed. Reminds me of what we found in Ohio years ago-the time we ended up at Seven Caves, which is simply wonderful. Or the unexpected delight of a place not very far north of the city of Milwaukee called Lion's Den Gorge, which is simply too cool for words, and about which, I'd never heard a thing until my son, who recently moved to that area, suggested we check out.

+oM

These two paintings remind me alot of the descriptions made by the early explorers of the park like landscapes found in the new world. These are done by Vasily Vereshchagin in 1892 I believe. I read up on Indian burning practices and found that much of New Jersey was actually savannah/grassland like that in the paintings.
{{gwi:500781}}
{{gwi:500782}}

This post was edited by greenthumbzdude on Mon, Dec 24, 12 at 21:51

Through the years I have met many interesting persons such as a leading Palynology expert who stopped at my nursery one day. He was working with a major New England Indian archeology dig in the area, analyzing and cataloging plant pollens. A wealth of information as he took me through plant evolution of the Cape and Islands, layer by layer. He did note that from the earliest signs of human habitation there was evidence of annual, widespread burning which he attributed to the heavy growth of stinging nettle. And as the Indians began to farm the ash remains mingle with edible plant pollens. It was his supposition that the annual burnings were necessary not only for physical comfort but also to clear planting fields in the spring.

There are lots of woody plants now in the eastern forests that weren't there 400 years ago and likewise, many trees that were dominant that are now almost extinct- american chestnut and american elm.

Lots of large animals have disappeared from eastern forests as well- wolves, mountain lions, bison, and in some states black bears, moose, and elk. Anytime animals disappear, it has a major impact on the plant life. Deer are more numerous now.

What would be really interesting would be to see what the pre-Native American forests were like, 15,000 years ago.

A lot more open than one might think, kept clear not by Homo sapiens but by Mammuthus sp., Mastodon sp., etc.

{{gwi:500783}}
Pic: PLOS Biology: What Killed the Woolly Mammoth?, creative commons CC-BY license

Resin

If you look into a feild guide like Peterson feild guides to eastern trees, you can get a good idea, they list others but state that they are from another land mass. I am happy there are some small privately owned little areas near me that haven't been touched/cleared for at least 100+ years. I can really only ID the Hickory, oak, Beech, Sassafras, Maple and the Staghorn sumac. There are others but I can't remember now.

Ive read the pre columbian NA population to ne 50 - 200 million. We will never know because most of them were wiped out before any colonists seen them, due to the spanish landing in northern mexico and what not. Small pox and other diseases killed them before anyone saw them in their full glory.

Most sources ive read state that "the north american forests were anything but virgin overgrown trees".

But even that is just too simplified......for example, right here in my own state were vast stands of white pine, red pine and hemlock. From these forest were built the cities of Chicago (Twice!) and pretty much everything to the west and south. This did not result from the exploitation of a savannah ecosystem-these were indeed well developed and thick forests. One source of confusion could lie in the fact that in stands at or near climax, there would have ben little undergrowth, the forest floor being too shady to support much. But that is not the same thing at all as a widely-spaced oak savannah.

Likewise, "conifer swamps" occupied much of the northern two thirds of this state. These are incredibly thick, dense forests, the main species being N. white cedar (Thuja), balsam fir, and where there was sufficient sunlight, tamarack. These stands hardly ever burned, and when they did, the most likely outcome was replacement by the same species composition.

There's a LOT to forest succession. Any simple-worded effort to explain what was and what was going on is doomed to take one further from the truth, not nearer to it. For an example, go to the USDA Forest Service Silvics page for any species of forest tree-any species at all, and read up on what is known of it's place in its environment, how it gets started, etc. etc.... Fire is often a part of the mix, but far from the only factor. But reading just one of these things will open your eyes to the complexity involved in forest succession/composition.

+oM

"But even that is just too simplified......for example, right here in my own state were vast stands of white pine, red pine and hemlock. From these forest were built the cities of Chicago (Twice!) and pretty much everything to the west and south. This did not result from the exploitation of a savannah ecosystem-these were indeed well developed and thick forests"

Remember there were 200-300 years between the Spanish-introduced smallpox etc epidemics and most of the northern Midwest being colonised by Europeans. Plenty of time for massive forest increase.

Resin

There were some areas of northern Ohio that were impassable forest. This area is known as the Great swamp. It was nearly 30 miles wide and stretched from just east of Fort Wayne nearly to Toledo.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Black_Swamp
http://blogs.bgsu.edu/blackswampjournal/2011/04/14/history-of-the-great-black-swamp/

If you have ever read any thing about General Anthony Wayne's victory at the Battle of the Fallen Timbers, that will give you an idea of the extent of the swamp in the late 1700's.

The Wabash and Erie Canal was complete in the mid 1820's so it was not a barrier to the movement of goods and services from Toledo to Fort Wayne and down the canal to the Ohio River. There was a second canal from the Maumee River south to Cincinnati. Because of travel conditions some of the Indians moved west in the late 1830's were taken from central Indiana by the canal to Defiance Ohio and the down the Miami Erie canal to Cincinnati. They were then transported by Steamboat west to beyond the Mississippi.

When my ancestors came into the area east of Fort Wayne in the 1830 it was forest. By 1842 there was some settlers in the area. It did not truly become useable farm land until the mid 1850

Resin, your chronological point is well taken, yet I assure you, those that would have it that all of E. N. America was under similar burn regimes are off-base. The "pinery" of the western Great Lakes region was in fact under the occupation of a number of well-described and historically long-entrenched peoples at the time of French fur trading, the original European activity there. Widespread fire is thought not to have occurred across the region as a whole until after the clearcut logging of the late 1800s. I believe similar patterns obtain in places like Maine, New Hampshire, etc. This is one of my favorite subjects and I'm glad to see it being discussed, but so far at least, we're painting with too broad of a brush.

+oM

Dude, You might want to read America's Ancient Forests by Thomas Bonnicksen. Jay

Has anyone here read "Bartram, Travels and Other Writings"? I'm halfway though the book now and I notice he constantly mentions seeing orange trees as a part of the natural environment (mixed with native plants). I find it hard to believe he really saw naturally occurring orange groves. Any idea what tree he may have mistaken for an orange tree? He spoke of them being mixed with magnolias and live oaks.

Total shot in the dark, ATH - Osage orange, Maclura pomifera maybe???

alabamatreehugger: Several years ago I was at Highlands Hammock State Park near Lake Placid FL. Talking with a ranger about the trees in the park, he mentioned the native citrus. I stated that so far as I knew most citrus was native to Asia. He said that the large citrus trees in the park were thought to be descendents of trees originating with the original Spanish explorers, and of course they weren't native. I guess the word he meant was 'naturalized'. This may have been what Bartram saw. I have read reports of commercial orange groves in extreme south GA., and I believe Bartram even reported royal palms growing near what is now Jacksonville. Off hand I can't remember the date, but Jacksonville's all time low temp. is -2F, so that may have taken care of 'what used to be'.

Well they could be actual oranges that escaped from cultivation. I belive the spanish introduced oranges and other citris fruits to the southern united states hundreds of years before Bartram. Then again it could be osage orange but it was suppose to have a small natural range back then; a strip of land that extends from Southern oklahoma to East Texas.

Tom, don't interpret my comments to mean that the East was bare. It stands to reason that places with moderate temperatures and abundant rainfall (or a source of gravity irrigation) had more people. The population was concentrated, but sparse by today's standards. The Atlantic coastal Plain held many large permanent towns a large percentage of the people engaged in farming. Trade routes moved stuff from the Gulf of Mexico to Chesapeake Bay quite efficiently. A sort of 'super highway' trail went from the South along the fall line (that point on a river where the last big rapids divides the navigable/not navigable parts).

At the intersections of these trails, towns grew up, and the writings of the first Virginians mention many such trails. Around these towns, the land was likely open and the pressure on game animals was likely intense. Away from these routes, wild lands encroached.

Recent estimates of population between the Appalachians and the Atlantic start at one million. Some argument can be made for figures twice that, but if you accept one million, then large areas had to be farmed to support them, and records do show large areas of farming.

For comparison, there are upwards of 95 million inhabiting the area now, and we still have woodlands. Not as wild and full of imports, but large areas of the East still look pretty wild.

Here in Pennsylvania, we had governors who pushed for buying up failing farms in the early 20th century. The result is the largest state forest system in the lower 48 states. Some counties in the "Northern Tier" are largely state forest. If you walk the woods, you come upon artifacts from that era, mostly in the form of disappearing buildings, rotting or charred. Stone walls are not rare, but seem incongruent among the big oak, maple and cherry trees. This is in one hundred years, and the woods look pristine.

Some examples of the consequence of depopulation of the Indians:
After tangling with the French and English for about 100 years (1630-1750), many of the Iroquois packed up from their home in NY and moved to Ohio. Reason #1 of course was to get to a place with more furs. PA governor Hamilton took notice and wrote to NY governor Clinton about it in 1750. They would not have been able to move unless the area they were going to was open for immigration.

The Mandan Indians, much later, appear in the records from the 1700s. The lived in ND and SD, mostly agriculturalists in permanent towns. Lewis and Clark visited them, and records from just before that time estimate their population at about 4,000. By 1838, when a count was made, there are less than 200, a 95% decrease. One record says that the small pox epidemic left only 31 out of 1600 people in 2 towns. Eastern Indians fared similarly, only there were no Europeans to document it. After their population crashed, they, like many before them, joined up with related tribes for safety. This left big holes on the plains so that when whites got there, they found them empty.

Interesting stuff, Dz. What I believe needs to be said is that there seems to have been a marked dichotomy between the northern-tier states and all the rest to their south, for areas east of the Mississippi. When I was a lad, I was very much into books and old accounts of the loggers who first "let daylight into the swamp" as the old cliche was known-in the western Great Lakes states. As such, I looked at many old photos-keep in mind, this logging took place primarily since photography became common-and even quite far south in my state, the appearance was that of a thick woods. Now we know that even the biggest "pineries" were finite things. The pine existed in bands and large groves, not as one continuous cover over all the landscape. But that model that has become so widespread, of an open, savannah-like landscape, just doesn't take into account what was found in the north.

And it stands to reason that in these regions, the native residents would have a different lifestyle than their brothers and sisters to the south. The shorter growing season would demand this. In fact, the Garden Peninsula located at the very northern terminus of Lake Michigan in Upper Michigan's Delta County, stood out for its suitability to gardening/farming, in contrast to the surrounding area.

It is known that there was considerable trade between the various tribes, such that more southerly customs, like growing maize and beans, could be found in scattered locations in the north, while copper artifacts, almost surely originating in the upper Great Lakes region, can be discovered among the artifacts of more southerly tribes. So it's not an all or nothing proposition.

I'm just saying that the yearly or near-yearly burning that apparently was such a part of the landscape and life of the inhabitants of a big chunk of central N. America, starts to break down as one moves towards the edges, where conditions were not as suitable to this pattern.

In any case, the "original forest" descriptions of which we speak could surely be split into two components, those two being before human settlement, and after, in which examples, it is the early native peoples in consideration, not the later European peoples. But if reaching that far back, we've got some glaciers to account for!

+oM

I like this statement by Roy B. Clarkson in Tumult on the Mountains about West Virginia's primeval forest, "When white men first trod the fertile bottomlands along the rivers they saw immense oaks, yellow poplars or tulitptreees, sycamores and other hardwoods. As they ascended the mountains they traversed growths of huge sugar maples, beech and yellow birch. On the higher plateaus and mountaintops they encountered forests of red spruce so thick the forest floor had not felt the warming rays of sun for centuries."