Posted on 08/17/2013 8:45:52 AM PDT by re_tail20
I should have worded better, instead of giving the impression it was strictly Custer’s expedition; that’s only part of it, though naturally the oldest photos used for comparison.
Also, for the Exploring With Custer, the listed author on Amazon is Grafe, but if you check here http://isbndb.com/subject/black_hills_s_d_and_wyo_discovery_and_exploration one finds out it is actually Grafe and Horsted.
Horsted expanded the scope of the photographic work, and published the book we have.
It is a little known and hardly publicized fact that Native Americans used fire to manage the extent of forest and grasslands. The landscape was manipulated for hundreds (if not thousands) of years by the hand of man. Not quite as pristine as most believed and were taught.
The best thing about the “west” is the relative absence of LIBs...now and then. That lends itself to more civility, sanity and freedom.
Ain’t that the truth! I spent many of my formative years in Wintun/Modoc country of N. California, and was well aware of that. In the case there, it wasn’t for planting, but to keep large brush & encroaching scrub down. That encouraged growth of new browse & increased the amount of transition forest areas for better hunting.
Also, though, when ‘slash and burn agriculture’ is mentioned in social studies, the implications are not mentioned, and the kids never think about it. The impression left is that small plots around a village had brush burned off of them for planting of ‘the three sisters’, and all lived in peace and harmony, at one with Nature, until the Evil White Man came.
Exactly, you nailed it. It was to increase and promote better hunting areas. And, farther east, to increase grasslands for buffaloe and other prairie game herds (same thing essentially, just different target animals).
Slash/burn agriculture was/is only used in tropical forests, and not in NA. And the North/Central American Native Americans had very a sophistocated agriculture anyway, much more advanced than slash/burn.
Those wet plate photos are incredible, and the amount of effort to get each one I can only imagine. Humping around a big camera, mixing the collodion, applying it, taking the picture and developing all before the collodion dries, adjusting for temperature on the fly, storing the glass negatives.
This guy was a master. Impressive photos.
Yup. There is a good book on the subject with regards to where I live now (New England), ‘Changes in the Land’. A little preachy at times, but a solid look at how natives tamed the landscape here. Early settlers were impressed by the park-like landscape (tall massive trees, little undergrowth), then a generation later wondered why it became a brambly, thorny thicket.
Easier to attract browsing herbivores like deer to new growth and a LOT easier to shoot them with a bow and arrow if you don’t have thick vegetation in the way.
Thanks for the post. Beautiful stuff!
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