Native American Hunters Kept Passenger Pigeon Populations in Check

 ...that is, until Native Populations crashed about 1600 because of exposure to European diseases, which caused a ninety percent population decline.

I have just published my sixth book, Forgotten Landscapes: How NativeAmericans Created Pre-Columbian North America and What We Can Learn from It. I am starting a series of essays and videos to promote portions of this book.

I have posted a video about the impact of Native American hunting which corresponds to chapter 3 of my book.

From about 1600 to 1800, billions of passenger pigeons darkened the skies of North America, a story too incredible to believe except that it actually happened. Why did passenger pigeons not have such huge populations before 1600? I make the case that it is because Native Americans, primarily little boys practicing with bows and arrows, hunted the pigeons enough to prevent them from having a population explosion. That is, until after European diseases caused a massive dieoff of Native Americans. This is a major way in which Native Americans had an impact on the North American landscape: by preventing the passenger pigeon explosion that did, in fact, occur after the crash of Native populations.

Native Americans did not just live in North America; they had a significant impact upon its ecology. This is something that white historians and readers who think of Native Americans as savages have overlooked.