An interesting theory:

Indians often worked on such a grand scale that the scope of their ambition can be hard to grasp. They created small plots, but they also reshaped entire landscapes to suit their purposes. A principal tool was fire, used to keep down underbrush and create the open, grassy conditions favorable for game. Rather than domesticating animals for meat, Indians retooled whole ecosystems to grow bumper crops of elk, deer, and bison.

In North America, Indian torches had their biggest impact on the Midwestern prairie, much or most of which was created and maintained by fire. Millennia of exuberant burning shaped the plains into vast buffalo farms. When Indian societies disintegrated, forest invaded savannah. Is it possible that the Indians changed the Americas more than the invading Europeans did?

1491

[via RileyDog. 04/30/02]