Pre-Columbian Native American Orchards?

I posted a video from an apple orchard in Alsace, France. Whether in France or in America, an orchard consists of just one species of fruit or nut tree, and practically nothing else like weeds, shrubs, etc. It is about as different from a natural forest as you can get.

But, before European contact, Native Americans had orchards. They were not orchards in which the people cut down a natural forest (which would have been a lot of work) but rather they were natural forests that the natives altered to have more of the tree species in which they were interested.

For example, Native Americans loved chestnuts. Chestnuts grew wild in North American forests (before an introduced fungus killed all of them in the twentieth century). According to forest ecologist Thomas Bonnicksen, after the ice ages about four percent of the eastern forest was suitable for chestnuts to grow. But chestnuts grew in forty percent of the forest area, primarily because Natives planted the seeds and set fires, thus altering the microclimate. They did not totally create chestnut orchards, but they enhanced chestnut forests into something like chestnut orchards. They did this so much that we can no longer know to what extent the “wild” chestnut groves are partly the product of Native orchards.

In southern North America there are many natural stands of pecan trees. Natives loved pecans. They had pecan orchards. They did not plant the orchards from scratch, but they altered existing pecan forests by planting more pecans, creating something like a pecan orchard. They did this so much that we can no longer know to what extent the “wild” pecan groves are partly the product of Native orchards.

In California, Native tribes depended on acorns. There were many natural oak forests, but the Natives pruned and planted oaks, to extend the existing forests and make them more productive. They did this so much that we can no longer know to what extent the “wild” oak groves are partly the product of Native orchards.

The most dramatic example is the palm oases of southern California. Are they natural? We always thought so. But why is it that these desert oases, east of San Diego, consist almost exclusively of native fan palms (Washingtonia filifera)? Some ecologists think that Natives planted the palm trees there and managed them, to keep other species out. Why? These fan palms, just like date palms, produce delicious and nutritious fruits. They did this so much that we can no longer know to what extent the “wild” palm groves are partly the product of Native orchards, if in fact there have ever been “wild” palm groves.

 

Native Americans transformed the landscape of North America and deserve credit for being something other than “mere” hunter-gatherers. I explain this in my recent book Forgotten Landscapes: How Native Americans Created Pre-Columbian North America and What We Can Learn from It.