Hello, and welcome to Western Stem and welcome to a special bonus series that I'm going to be doing about Native American culture prior to the arrival of Europeans in North America. There's a lot of information about the Aztec, the Inca, the Maya, but there's much, much, much less that's been written about North American Indian societies and their culture. And that's a mistake because we need to understand how these two cultures are going to interact throughout this period
that we tend to refer to as European colonization. And while we'll be focusing on the Europeans quite a lot, we can't ignore the other side of the equation here now, before the sales of European ships ever broke the Atlantic horizon, the land that we today called North America was not an untouched wilderness by any stretch of the imagination. It was a place of cities, bustling cities, sprawling trade networks, cultivated fields, and a deep reciprocal relationship between people and place.
It wasn't a blank slate waiting to be discovered. It was a landscape that had long been shaped by human hands. To imagine, pre Columbian America as a wild and silent expanse is to misunderstand the very nature of the continent. Before fourteen ninety two, the forests, rivers, and plains teemed with life, not just animal and plant, but humans as well. Generations of indigenous people's transform these landscapes, creating environments that
were both beautiful and bountiful. Forests were open through controlled burns, prairies managed to encourage game, orchards, and cultivated fields lined river banks. To quote one particular historian, quote, the natives did not live lightly upon the land. They changed it dramatically and in ways that made it more productive end quote. Among the marvels of this world was a great city that rose alongside the Mississippi River, Kahokia, Larger than London
in its time, Kahokia was no scattered village. It was a true metropolis. Its population numbered in the tens of thousands, Its center dominated by massive earth and mounds, the largest of which rivaled the size of the Great Pyramids of Egypt. Wide ceremonial plazas, wooden palisades, and astronomical markers shaped a city built with purpose and vision. To quote now historian Stanley Rice, Kahokia was not a mere village. It was a city, possibly the largest north of Mexico before modern times.
End quote.
Here people gathered for feasts, rituals, and trade, bringing together the rhythms of agricultural life with the celestial patterns above them. And this city, Cookia was no isolated marvel. Across the continent, Indigenous societies formed vast and interconnected networks. Obsidian from the Rocky Mountains, copper from the Great Lakes, seashells from the Gulf coast, all moved along trade routes that wove of
fab of cultural and economic exchange. These goods passed from hand to hand, village to village, carried by people whose footsteps left I'll admit it faint, but nevertheless enduring marks on the land. Each exchange told the story of relationships, of shared ideas, and of a continent humming with life. Again quoting Rice, quote vibrant, networked and full of life, not silent, uninhabited wilderness end quote. This was a land
of people. As much as we like to think of it as a pristine, untouched land, which is what Europeans saw, That's not the lens that Native American peoples would have looked at it through. Even in the absence of the monumental architecture of Kahokia, the land bore witness to this human touch. Great stretches of prairie and forest weren't touched
at all, but they were actively tended. Fire used with skill and critically restraint, shaped ecosystems to encourage certain plants and animals in the northeast, the so called Three sisters I grew up with. In the Midwest, corn beans and squash were cultivated in harmony. It's not easy to grow them all, by the way, Trust me, I've tried. Farther west, there were terraced fields and irrigation systems that brought fertility
to arid soil. This wasn't the domination of nature in European forms, but the conversion with it, one where people both listened to, adjusted, and lived with their surroundings. Not changed them and.
These people themselves.
But what we can say is, prior to the arrival of Europeans, they were strong, they were healthy, and they were thriving. Skeletal remains reveal robust bones, low rates of disease, and shockingly good dental health, which was a striking contrast to the often sickly populations of medieval Europe. According to all statistics before fourteen ninety two, the people of the Americas were among the healthiest of the world, with low rates of dental decay and strong, robust skeletal remains. These
weren't populations desperately eking out a marginal existence. These were communities nourished by diverse diets, clean environments, and sustainable practices. But flourishing, of course, was not eternal. Around the year thirteen hundred, the Mississippian world began to contract.
We don't know why.
Maybe the climate was changing, maybe there was an internal strife, maybe there was an outbreak of disease. After all, we still don't fully understand. The Bronze Age collapsed, and this is essentially what we're seeing. Cities like Khochio were slowly abandoned, their plazas left silent in the mounds, untended until they were simply covered by the earth. By the time Europeans arrived two centuries later, the monumental civilizations were gone, and
this illustrates the importance of timing in history. Had Europeans arrived in the thirteen hundreds instead of the late fourteen hundreds, basically the year fifteen hundred, they would have encountered a totally different civilization, a totally different groupings of people, perhaps peoples in a much stronger position to resist them. What remained instead was a world in transition, populations that have
been dispersed, forests, regrown fields, reclaimed by weeds. Now, of course, to European eyes, this looked like a virgin land, unworked and unclaimed.
But that illusion had consequences.
When colonizers saw orchards they assumed were wild, when they stumbled upon cleared meadows, or followed game trails that had once been footpaths, they didn't realize that this was all by design. Again quoting Stanley Rice, quote, Europeans did not walk into an untouched world. They walked into a ghost world, shaped by those who came before, and emptied by their
mysterious disappearance end quote. This misunderstanding, which shape centuries of policy, myth making, and of course violence and the erasure, was more than just historical oversight. This was a philosophical decision. To imagine this continent as unpeopled was to simply erase its legacy. And yet even in the traces left behind in all those mounds, in those earthworks, in the stories that would be passed down is another truth. I don't think North America was ever waiting. It was already made.
The landscape that we talk about that we live in today, if you live in the United States or in North America at all, is the descendants of those earlier, carefully shaped environments. The myth of a primeval wilderness has long obscured the wisdom of those who lived with rather than
over the land. We can never return, of course, to what the North America was before Europeans came, but we can learn from how the native peoples that lived there before lived with the land rather than constantly fighting against it. Safe to say that in modern culture, especially in North America, we don't think about fire the same way that the Native American cultures that came before us did. In our
popular imagination, fire is a force of terror. It destroys forests, it swallows homes, It drives wildlife.
In a smoky sort of panic.
Our stories have all taught us to fear it, whether those are fairy tales or frontier myths. Of course, in modern memory, all of us will remember the Los Angeles fires from just not even twelve months ago. These wildfires some images of charred cities and emergency evacuations, but long ago. To the Native American cultures of America before the Europeans, fire was something else entirely. It wasn't the destroyer, It was the planner. It was the architect. It was the
good medicine for the earth. In the great tapestry of pre Columbia, North America, fire was woven into nearly every thread. Where forests and are now thick with impenetrable undergrowth, there were one's open woodlands where wildflowers bloomed, Where thickets now choked the hillsides, there were ones tall grasses beneath clear sides. The difference was fire. Fire set by Native American groups with intention, guided by knowledge, and lit by human hands.
Across the continent, Indigenous peoples set fires to shape their environments, from the pine forests of the southeast to the oak savannahs of the Midwest, from California to the tundrant margins of the far North. Fire was used as a tool, to quote one historian, if there was anything to burn, Indians set fire to it. This was an early record from centuries ago. But this wasn't reckless burning. It was an ecological craft learned and passed down through generations. They
knew what they were doing. Indigenous peoples used fire to make the landscape more fruitful. This cleared away old, dry vegetation and made room for new shoots to emerge. It opened up the forest floor, allowing light to reach the soil, coaxing out some hungry herbs and berries. These ashes promoted
new growth, releasing nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus. In the wake of flames, came not destruction, not evacuation, but abundance, lush grasses, fresh wildlife, flowers and bloom animals drawn to the new floorage. In places like the tall grass prairies, the burning wasn't just beneficial, it was essential. Without fire, grasslands would disappear beneath a creeping tide of shrubs and young trees. Without fire, the great open landscapes of North America,
especially in that central zone, would have all vanished. These ecosystems needed the flame to retain what they were. Perhaps every grassland in the world depended and depends still on a recurring fire cycle. Even in the forests. Fire shaped what lived and what didn't. Some trees, like the closed pines of California, could only actually reproduce after fire burst their seeds from the resin sealed cones. The story goes deeper. Still, fire to the early Native Americans wasn't just ecological, It
was cultural. It was the expression of these people's relationship to the land. Indigenous communities burned for countless reasons, to improve hunting, to gather food more easily, to prepare soil for planting, to promote safety by reducing fuel for uncontrolled wildfires. We still do this today. They burn to protect their homes, to clear trails for their hunters, to help animals, and to grow straighter basket weaving stems and better even harvests.
They burned not to destroy the world, but to renew it. In one early account, Native peoples explained that they burned the forest quote to render hunting easier end quote. The idea was that underbrush would crackle and alert games, you had to get rid of it. In another early account of Native Americans, it was said that they set fires quote to clear the woods of dead substance and grass end quote, making way for the springs new life. And always they knew how to control it.
Quote.
Indian countries are clean countries, observed a nineteenth century military officer. No underbrush or decayed logs. The annual fires clean up everything.
End quote.
The technique was precise. Fires were set at certain times of the year, often in the spring or fall, when moisture levels were higher and it was easier to control the flames. Fires were kept as we now say when we do barbecue, low and slow, burning the underbrush but leaving the trees alive. And people built their homes with this knowledge and mind, structures temporary enough to be rebuilt
if needed, or placed where fires rarely reached. This was never an attempt to conquer nature, but to express the humility of coexistence, and the results were astonishing. One early North American settler rode quote, you could gallop your horse among the trees end quote. The forests were that open. Others were called fields where strawberries grew wild under oaks. Quote, so that your foot could hardly direct itself where it would not be dyed in the blood of large and
delicious strawberries end quote. Forests weren't tangled and dim. They were open, sun dappled, and full of life, and those meadows well, According to some, they were not ablaze with fire, but with color quote a mass of blossom, larkspur poppy, sage in bloom. What grace the fields most of all was the sight of all the different sorts of colors together end quote. Even those grand Sequoias, the tallest trees on earth, owed their survival to fire. Without periodic burning,
their seeds could not germinate. Fires cleared the competing underbrush and gave seedlings the light and the space they needed to grow. There were towering trees charred by flame, but alive beneath them, lush, fresh green shoots reaching for the ever distant sky. This fire driven landscape, it wasn't an accident. It was the result of sustained in deliberate action where indigenous communities were removed through war, disease, sometimes forest relocation.
Immediately a traveler would note the absence of fire, who was visible. Forest suddenly thickened with underbrush. Prairies disappeared completely. Deer and bison vanished from areas where they had once thrived.
One account notes.
Quote, within a century, forest grew where prairies had formerly dominated end quote. The land had gone natural it was no longer being tended.
Now.
Some scholars refused to believe what was right in front of them. They couldn't accept these so called primitive societies had managed ecosystems with such sophistication for decades. Anthropologists dismissed the idea that Native Americans were anything more than passive foragers. One forest re official scoffed, quote, it would be difficult to find a reason why the Indians should care way or another if the forest burned.
End quote.
Clearly he didn't ask any of the Indians, but the forest. They told a different story. Fire scars etched into tree rings, several centuries of regular, low intensity burns. Paulin trapped to the layers of ancient lake bed mud shows transition from dense forest to open grassland at times that correlate with human habitation, and accounts from early European settlers speak not of untouched wilderness, but of carefully tended landscapes managed never
by the plow, but only by the flame. One study even suggests that the cessation of native burning after fourteen ninety two helped to actually cool the earth when millions of Indigenous people died from European diseases, their fires went with them.
The forest grew back, and.
In doing so they pulled billions of tons of carbon from the air. This reforestation may actually have contributed to this so called Little Ice Age, a century's long period of global cooling. It's actually kind of a scary thought, right, The silence of extinguished fires, by the death of so many people, might have been felt all the way in distant Asia.
Fire was not merely a tool.
It was a form of knowledge, a way of living with the land, not upon them. To quote again Stanley Rice, quote, fires was always the servant, never the master end quote. And in those controlled burns, those black and meadows, those scorched oak groves bursting with new life, lies the memory of a people who understood something this modern world is just starting to relearn. We're just starting controlled burns on
a major level again here in the last century. It took us that long to recognize what native peoples always knew. Fire was essential to this land. For them, fire was never destruction, It was restoration.