In contemporary American culture, Native Americans are perpetuated as a single entity of ultimate environmentalists who were undone by the cruel, earth-rending white man. While this may be true on many levels, there are many Native American tribes and nations of markable heterogeneity, each with their own dynamic history with the environment. This project examines both positive and negative facets of the environmental legacy left by native Mississippian river cultures.
Environmental Engineering
The most important evidence of the way native Mississipian cultures shaped their environment is preserved in the mounds left by the moundbuilding cultures of the great basin.
Mississippian mound building cultures spanned from Wisconsin and Minnesota in the north to Florida and Louisiana in the south.
Mounds were built by these cultures to serve a variety of functions. They were used as burial sites, foundations of homes and temples, and a way of maintaining a social heirarchy both within and between communities. Through these remnants, and the archeological treasures they contain, scholars are starting to piece together the histories and cultures of these people.
Cahokia
Cahokia was the largest settlement ever in North America prior to European colonization.
Cahokia is perhaps the most important archeological site of the mound building cultures. Situated across the Mississippi river from present-day St. Louis, it has been reduced to a number of grass covered mounds dotting the landscape. Research suggests that Cahokia was abandoned about 100 years before Europeans landed in North America, but little is actually known about the cause of this abandonment.
This artistic rendering of Cahokia shows the city at its peak around the year 1200. At this time, Cahokia was at least as large as any of the cities in Europe. In North America, no other city was able to surpass its peak population until the 1780s!
Cahokia gives us many clues into how mound building cultures interacted with their environment. Cahokian houses, public buildings, and walls were all built using wood, which was likely a scarce resource around the settlement itself.
Evidence suggests that Cahokia would have been plagued by a number of environmental issues. Scholars have proposed that soil erosion, poor fertility, overhunting, and deforestation were all major factors leading to its decline and eventual abandonment.
Modern day remnants of the Cahokian civilization include a unique arrangement of earthen mounds, seen here from above.
Compared to Europeans, the Cahokian civilization dosen’t seem to have left a large footprint on the modern environment. Cahokians aren’t known to have actively engineered waterways or roads for transport. Closer examiniation, however, raises some considerations. Deforestation of the area likely affected the assemblages of floral and faunal communities surrounding Cahokia, which may have contributed to its decline.
Resource Use and Abuse
Agriculture, lumber, and hunting were the most important resources for mound building cultures. The perception of these resources by native Mississippian cultures was perhaps the most important reason for the considerably low enviromental impact —relative to Europeans —and generally positive legacy.
Animism is the term that Edward Tylor coined in 1871 to explain this perception. In short, Native American ideologies promoted the practice of making inanimate things living. This view imbibes value into what Europeans considered “resources”, and is one of the primary reasons for the low enviromental impact of native cultures.
Agriculture
Maize was a staple of the Mississippian diet. When planted together with squash and beans it is called a milpa.This arrangement promotes symbiosis between crop species by providing fertilizer, shade, and structure for each plant to use according to its needs. All three of these plants were eaten by Cahokians, and it is likely they planted milpas.
Women of the Mississippian cultures traditionally raised the crops. Apart from maize, squash, and beans, the other most important crop was sunflower.
Though nutrient leeching of the soil is slower when crops are rotated and interplanted, maound building civilization are thought to have suffered poor crops yields in the their most permanent settlements,
Lumber
The enormous range of Missippian cultures means that there were myriad trees used by Native Americans. In the south the most important would have been the trees most resistant to rot, primarily bald cypress. Moving north, other trees like oak and the american sycamore would have been used. In Minnesota and Wisconsin, pine was a good alternative.
The most profound impact that civilizations such as Cahokia would have had on forests is that trees were thought to have been almost completely levelled in the immediate areas surrounding the settlement. This levelling would have been negative environmentally, but the forest bounced back when the settlement dissolved.
Hunting, Fishing, and Trapping
Many animals were used by the Missippian cultures. The most important was the deer, but bison and other animals were frequently hunted too. It is very hard to determine how populations of many animals were affected by the natives prior to human settlement. Understanding the native’s perception of animals gives us the best clues into how they shaped the fauna of their enviroment.
http://www.kincaidmounds.com/