I like and agree with both Lee and David's comments... while also sensing some tension between them. What exactly did these landscapes look like in, say, the year 1500? How many people lived there and how much did they manipulate the natural surroundings? Might the incredible bounty that Joe and Zenas reaped have resulted from not Indigenous stewardship but Indigenous absence? So many had died, from disease and war, in the previous two centuries. Could the philosophies of the newcomers have achieved similar sustainability if not for the technologies that allowed them to so easily migrate? (I don't know the answers to these questions, but I'm delighted to have this forum to pose them. :) )
The wave of depopulation that ran ahead of actual settlement almost certainly had an impact on NW IL, though I think it probably took until nearer 1700 to manifest. But I am not sure how much we can know about that - maybe lake pollen studies would reflect vegetative change - and the ways the Native population used the land had almost certainly changed, with them harvesting more furbearers for sure. There's even the question of how the people of NW IL were affected by the extension of power up the Mississippi by the pre-settlement proto-state of Cahokia. Human history is a mess, but my sense is that the earlier settlers who briefly saw Native populations as they had been, also saw tremendous natural bounty.
Yes! So, the question I ask, is why were those bounteous resources not everyone's natural heritage to be shared? The people who were there before operated an economy of sharing for generations without depleting the resources. Then, suddenly, those resources were mostly gone within one generation. I see no sense in assigning personal blame to men like Joe (I do assign some to the philosophers who stood behind them, John Locke should have known better). They were creatures of their culture and the times and were often fair and generous within their context. But of all the things the settlers brought (disease, violence, etc) the worst was the story that the forest (etc) was a resource, not a relative.
Interesting, albeit sad, read. Prior to the arrival of European invaders (or the other native American tribes pushed west by those Europeans) Illinois was significantly peopled. Would have been interesting to see the character of the area before Europeans had much impact in North America.
I like and agree with both Lee and David's comments... while also sensing some tension between them. What exactly did these landscapes look like in, say, the year 1500? How many people lived there and how much did they manipulate the natural surroundings? Might the incredible bounty that Joe and Zenas reaped have resulted from not Indigenous stewardship but Indigenous absence? So many had died, from disease and war, in the previous two centuries. Could the philosophies of the newcomers have achieved similar sustainability if not for the technologies that allowed them to so easily migrate? (I don't know the answers to these questions, but I'm delighted to have this forum to pose them. :) )
The wave of depopulation that ran ahead of actual settlement almost certainly had an impact on NW IL, though I think it probably took until nearer 1700 to manifest. But I am not sure how much we can know about that - maybe lake pollen studies would reflect vegetative change - and the ways the Native population used the land had almost certainly changed, with them harvesting more furbearers for sure. There's even the question of how the people of NW IL were affected by the extension of power up the Mississippi by the pre-settlement proto-state of Cahokia. Human history is a mess, but my sense is that the earlier settlers who briefly saw Native populations as they had been, also saw tremendous natural bounty.
Yes! So, the question I ask, is why were those bounteous resources not everyone's natural heritage to be shared? The people who were there before operated an economy of sharing for generations without depleting the resources. Then, suddenly, those resources were mostly gone within one generation. I see no sense in assigning personal blame to men like Joe (I do assign some to the philosophers who stood behind them, John Locke should have known better). They were creatures of their culture and the times and were often fair and generous within their context. But of all the things the settlers brought (disease, violence, etc) the worst was the story that the forest (etc) was a resource, not a relative.
Interesting, albeit sad, read. Prior to the arrival of European invaders (or the other native American tribes pushed west by those Europeans) Illinois was significantly peopled. Would have been interesting to see the character of the area before Europeans had much impact in North America.