We're inundated with all kinds of first Thanksgiving tales, and turkeys, and the Tea Party calling the Pilgrims socialists, who turn capitalist. I thought they were seeking religious freedom.
But before that, in 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue, and brought with him European plants, and animals. And new diseases. He took back American plants, animals and diseases, particularly syphilis which ran rampant through the royal courts of Europe. (Where was that religious zeal?) The Pilgrims arrived more than a century later.
Before Columbus, the two continents were physically separate for millions of years. And their ecosystems evolved separately. When he came there was a phenomenon called "ecosystem release". On both continents. New species have no predators to keep their numbers from exploding and spreading. Human populations have no immunity and die from new diseases.
And so it was in America. Between Columbus and the Pilgrims, whole tribes of Indians died out. That's why the settlers found the land so lightly populated.
An interesting book called, "1491: New Revelations--" by Charles C. Mann (charlesmann.org) says that by the time the Pilgrims arrived, " European diseases had killed 90 % of the hemisphere's original inhabitants, 30 million people, possibly 100 million."
Many settlers and sailors died from diseases as well. Check out the gravestones at the colonial burial grounds around the Boston Common sometime. Most died quite young.
The Europeans brought in lots of new species: bluegrass, clover, wheat, rye, endive, spinach, mint, peaches, apples. Also hogs and horses. In that famous painting " The First Thanksgiving" they sit on bluegrass, clover and dandelions, foreign invasives all, which by then had overtaken the ecosystem.
The Pilgrims first settlement may have been in a village abandoned by Indians who caught viral hepatitis from French sailors. The Pilgrims may have survived by digging up the dead Indians' food caches.
That first Thanksgiving feast was probably a mush of corn and wheat. Maybe some game or a bird. Maybe berries. However, it's the season of the traditional European harvest festival, full moon and all.
American Indians were actually very sophisticated land managers. They drained swamps, made floating farm islands (like on Lake Dahl in the Kashmir). Indians built incredible terraced fields (think Peru). Mexico and the Amazon were gardens, fields and orchards. Corn was bred in barely a century from a wild Mexican tiosinte grass, a remarkable agricultural achievement. It now is a main food crop sustaining the world's exploded population.
Northern Indians grew fields of corn and squash. When the harvest was near, Indian maidens would sleep on raised platforms in the fields to keep the raccoons, and other critters from ruining the crop.
They used fire as a land management tool to provide good Savannah grass for the bison, elk and moose. (Like African herding tribes do.) Forests were kept open for more efficient hunting, which controlled animal and bird populations. When the Indians in an area died out, dense forest with thick underbrush took over, and animal and bird populations exploded.
Ecologically, when a predator does not exist, populations explode. We are seeing that in the United States now where the wild deer population has reached 30 million. Similar things happened in abandoned Indian lands. That's why there were so many buffalo when the west was first settled. And huge flocks of pigeons.
Europe got new species from the Americas too: llamas, corn, squash, chocolate, coffee, tomatoes (called love apples), tobacco, cocaine, plus the aforementioned sexual disease. And, of course, turkey. In 1973, there were 1 million wild turkeys in the US. Today there are 7 million. About 16 frequently cluck through my back yard. They are very big tall birds.
Ruth S. Foster is a landscape consultant and arborist. More gardening information can be found on her website: www.mothersgarden.net
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