The evergreens would be put to good use to build and heat homes, lay trails, and build rugged ship masts for maritime shipping and a future navy.Mmm, if it's a choice between burning pine and freezing to death, I know what I'd do.
It's not like they could have picked up an canister of propane at the local Home Depot.
Mmm, you might burn pine indoors until the first time you had burned down your house from blaze in your chimney stoked with pine resin condensed in the flues. After which you'd be not only freezing but homeless. Pine makes great kindling, but you feed your kitchen range, fireplace, or parlor stove with cherry, ash, oak, maple hickory, beech, or other hardwoods that don't burn fast or leave much carbon in the chimney.
But then, you probably don't know much about other trivia that any country boy or colonial citizen would have known way before Home Depot. Perhaps you might improve your education by reading Post #6 of this thread.
Mmmm.