The Forests of a Nation
How time transformed and carved our forests and the lessons embedded within
As I grew up, I struggled to understand a profusion of contradictions concerning the land and the forests in the United States. I heard we once engaged in over logging. A few adults told me we still had plenty of forest left to cut down and we needed more of it; bringing back logging would be good for our economy. Some people said that all of the Americas were once dense with thick stymieing forest. This opaque forest sounded like a magical place wished I could visit. Alas, no one has invented a time machine. However, people have kept stories, pictures, and logs (both written and tree-like) which can inform us of how our forests used to be.
To start with the forests as they were in 1850, would only lead to the same conclusions and myths above. One has to go back further to learn the truth. Let us find ourselves in the 1600s, after Columbus had discovered a new route to “India” and more people were streaming across the Atlantic to find new land which was supposedly free for the taking.
Colonialist settlers always found the indigenous people’s habit of setting things on fire to be of great concern and of great annoyance. However, this is why the English mercenary, John Smith, could write about galloping his horse through the forest. Others, upon their arrival, would remark at how an army could fit through the gaps in the forest. Even Buffalo, NY was named after the animals who wandered from the plains to the east coast. How could this be if it were over grown?
As multitudes of colonial settlers moved in and set up shop, they clear cut pieces of this forest. The colonial settlers began to displace the indigenous peoples’ who had lived in the regions they offset for millennia before the settlers had arrived. This displacement did not come easy. Many people of the tribes were shot. Tribal villages were burned down. Food sources were destroyed. The choice between moving away towards the other tribes or suffering greatly was an obvious one. The people who had lived there since time immemorial moved further north, south, and west. As they moved on, the forest closed behind them while they longer tended to it. This was a minor barrier. As the colonist settlements would grow, it would inevitably lead to conflicts.
History continued in this pattern for centuries. The settlers were utterly savage, raping and killing the indigenous peoples. Indigenous people hid where they could in the forests which hadn’t been logged. This pattern of migration accelerated as the Indian Removal Act was passed in 1830. As a result, the Shawnee, Ottawa, Potawatomi, Sauk, and Fox, Choctaw, Seminole (along with the Miccosukee), Muskogee, Cherokee, and Chickasaw all signed treaties and agreed to be moved. As the removal progressed, it lead to the Second Seminole War, which lasted from 1835–1842.
In 1832, Two years into the Indian Removal, Dr. Hartwell Carver, wrote an article which argued the merits of a transcontinental railroad from Lake Michigan to California. Asa Whitney began submitting proposals congress advocating a route from Chicago and the Great Lakes to California. At this point, support of the idea remained scant. However, it would continue to stew in the back of people’s minds.
In 1839, John L. O’Sullivan wrote of a “divine destiny” to encompass the entire country with a union of republics. This first mention did not catch the attention of the burgeoning nation. In December of 1842 — just a few months after the end of the Second Seminole War, he wrote of the nation’s “manifest destiny” to occupy the whole of Oregon. Of course, the Oregon Trail had already been established and traveled by fur traders — this, however, spurred a mania of people who would travel the treacherous Oregon Trail.
In 1845, Asa Whitney initiated his own survey along a proposed route to ascertain feasibility. Two years later, Dr. Hartwell Carver once again submitted a proposal for a railroad. Congress liked the idea and ordered the Department of War to conducts surveys in 1853 until 1855. The reports failed to include topographical maps needed to plan the railroad. In 1856, the Select Committee on the Pacific Railroad and Telegraph of the US House of Representatives wrote on the necessity of build a railroad and telegraph lines for rapid communication in the defense of the nation in the Pacific.
This same year, the Chief Engineer of the bankrupt Sacramento Valley Railroad, Theodore Judah, wrote a very long proposal. He sent it to congress and many other influential people. In 1859, he became the accredited lobbyist of the Pacific Railroad Convention. He then traveled to Washington D.C. and was given an audience with president James Buchanan. He also represented the matter before congress. In 1860–1861, while travelling back to California, he continued to survey and search for the best route. The beginnings of civil war were in motion and congress was divided in 1860. The southern states wanted their own route through the south to California and because of this division, the railroad plan did not have enough votes. One year later, after the southern states had seceded from the union and the nation was engaged in civil war, congress voted again. This time it was successful.
The incessant striking of iron marked off all the intervening years and along came 1869. The railroad tycoons completed the first transcontinental railroad. This meant lumber could be cut down and transported across the country to help develop the nation and more people could easily travel from one coast to the other without having to brave the long trail on wagon or horse (Ford’s Model T was still 40 years off).
Around this time, the US government started keeping track of all the lumber being stumped and milled. The census records are relatively accurate, but they may have underestimated the actual amount of logging. Along with this, they published maps and information on how much money one might stand to get land and log on it.
If one wanted to buy land or find work, all one needed to do is find one of the maps produced during the census. They had all the relevant areas marked out. If one was worried about ever running out of timber to fell, these maps could give assurance that one’s investment was sound. All of the most dense and old growth trees were all marked out, ready for any one to come and extinguish up to 3,000 years of life to make a profit.
The logging which commenced in 1869 has much in common with modern day oil extraction. The population grows, therefore demand grows. This is especially true when many tools, houses, and vehicles (steam boats and steam locomotives) all need wood. This slowly etched away the forests.
Below are two maps comparing the actual woodland density at different times. There is a map from 1880 and there is a map from 1959. In 1880, many of the most densely wooded areas are 80%-100% woodland. In 1959, few areas have over 75% woodland.
It seems interesting to think that 86 years prior to 1966, a map could be made so accurate. However, that is exactly what was done. These maps from 1880 are incredibly accurate. Compare these two maps showing the potential ecosystem areas:
The forest service has kept track of the trees since at least 1850. They show some interesting changes. Population continued to grow past 1910. The forest area stop being depleted at that same time. This happened rather abruptly after 1910. This is a little bit puzzling.
Why would harvesting lumber, a commodity that so much depends on just suddenly stop? It really makes no sense unless one steps back to grasp the full historical context. What could possibly be persuasive enough of a commodity to ensure logging slowed down and let some of the tree population grow back? Oil! It may seem awkward to think that it was the oil industry which saved our trees, but the correlation is quite stunning and definitely there. Along with the lumber industry, oil hitched itself to the train.
Nowadays, identity and metadata are precious commodities on the internet. Many endeavors are funded by selling advertising space and placing ads which have a high correlation with one’s metadata or identity. At Google and Facebook, you are the product. The data they mine from each of us is their lifeblood — their black gold, lumber, gold, and raw ore. This raw ore of what and whom one is reading, liking, friending, and talking is processed and accounted for and allows them to provide a targeted ad service. All in the hope people will consume more and more.
The plethora of extractive corporations are now the modern day colonizers of the land. They are indiscriminate beasts. It may seem like they attack those less privileged, but that is only due to structural factors skewing their actions towards certain areas. Wherever the next field of extraction lies, there will be the extractive corporation to displace people of any sex, gender, race, or creed.
During the time the United States has occupied the territory of the indigenous peoples, it has also made many changes to the landscape. Those changes include: logging, killing off buffalo, creating strange trails, putting indigenous people in concentration camps called reservations, striking railroads, paving highways, exploding mountains, damming rivers, sinking large swaths of land from water and oil wells, and multitudinous other incidentals.
In the face of these gouges upon the land, it would be easy to see the United States without any hope going forward. The past dictates the future can be better. The better picture necessitates an overhaul in how natural resources are managed and how we build things. Cutting down all of our trees to power a modern society of 325 million people would be devastating. In the past we turned to oil, the long dead ancestors of the underworld which cushion our comfortable reality. That, too, is unsustainable. To continue down that path might unleash more horrors of the underworld than have already started opening in Texas.
What possibilities of pursuit do we have? Nature has provided us with a wonderful array of necessities. All that is needed is to learn to use what is out there. We could phase out plastic and turn to our relatives, the mushrooms, to help us replace leather, build furniture, and structural components for buildings. We could turn to our more distant relatives, the algae and seaweed, for help to build plastic like replacements. Perhaps, as my ancestors did in Mexico, we could bring back gourds as containers.
Instead of working against nature, we must once again learn to work with nature as the indigenous people once did (and still do). There are plenty of possibilities out there. We must ask ourselves, “How am I going to stop the unbridled extraction and rape of Earth and all that exists?” If you only worry about your bills and take no steps in the right direction, soon enough you won’t have any bills. Lamentably, you might not be alive either.
Notes
- The indigenous peoples of the land now called “The Americas” had changed the face of the land to help promote growth of life and to help sustain life. There were path ways through the forest and other distant indigenous people came and traveled these paths. It was a nation of tribes with their own civic governments.
- How can I compare one map which originally lists it units in cords per acre with one which is in percentage of land which is woodland? The map “1880 Map Showing the Position of the Forest, Prairie, & Treeless Regions of North America (Exclusive of Mexico)” and the “1880 Map of the United States Showing the Relative Average Density of Existing Forests” have a line which coincides with 20% woodland at 5 cords per acre.
This allows establishing the correspondence: I) No green — under 4% woodland per acre. II) The lightest green — 4%-8% woodland. III) The next darker green — 8%-20% woodland. IV) 20%-40% woodland. V) The dark green in the east — 40%-80% woodland. VI) 80%-100% woodland. VII) Low density forest. VIII) Medium density forest. IX) Super-dense forest — only occurring in Washington state.
Refences
- Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of The United States (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2014).
- Statistical atlas of the United States based on the results of the ninth census 1870 with contributions from many eminent men of science and several departments of the government
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Removal_Act
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_removal
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifest_destiny
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Transcontinental_Railroad
- 1870 Census: Statistical Atlas of the United States
- 1870 Map Showing the Fine Degrees of Density The Distribution of Woodland within the Territory of the United States
- 1880 Map of the United States Showing the Relative Average Density of Existing Forests
- 1880 Map Showing the Position of the Forest, Prairie, & Treeless Regions of North America (Exclusive of Mexico)
- 1880 Map Showing the Natural Divisions of the North American Forests (Exclusive of Mexico)
- 1880 Census: Volume 9. Report on the Forests of North America (Exclusive of Mexico)
- 1900 Census: Volume IX. Manufactures, Part 3. Special Reports on Selected Industries
- 1920 Census: Volume 10. Manufactures, 1919, Reports for Selected Industries
- The 1970 National Atlas of the United States of America
- U.S. Forest Resource Facts and Historical Trends
- History of the petroleum industry in the United States
