Pawpaw (Asimina triloba) produce the largest fruit of any native North American tree and were probably widely planted and cultivated by first nations people.
Illustration: Mark Catsby
I live minutes away from one of the most biologically diverse patches of old growth forest remaining in Canada. It's a green paradise of endangered Tulip Trees (Liriodendron tulipifera) and imperiled Butternuts (Juglans cinerea), massive American Beeches (Fagus grandifolia), impressive Basswoods (Tilia americana), generous Black Cherries (Prunus serotina), large Large-toothed Aspens (Populus grandidentata), ancient Sugar Maples (Acer saccharum), giant Black Maples (Acer nigrum), sky-high Northern Red Oaks (Quercus rubra), jumbo Eastern Black Oaks (Quercus nigra), broad Common White Oaks (Quercus alba), shaggy Shagbark Hickories (Carya ovata), bitter Bitternut Hickories (Carya cordiformis), stately Black Walnuts (Juglans nigra), substantial White Ashes (Fraxinus americana), towering Yellow Birches (Betula alleghaniensis), shady Eastern Hemlocks (Tsuga canadensis) and wind-sculpted Eastern White Pines (Pinus strobus). Tangled River Grape (Vitis riparia) vines drape over limbs high above the forest floor, while tenacious Poison Ivy (Toxicodendron radicans) and tendrilous Virginia Creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia) climb up trunks. Diminutive American Chestnuts (Castenea dentata), fragrant Sassafras (Sassafras albidum), strong Blue-Beeches (Carpinus caroliniana), superstrong Ironwoods (Ostrya virginiana), beautiful Eastern Flowering Dogwoods (Cornus florida), oriental Pagoda Dogwoods (Cornus alternifolia), spreading Witch-Hazel (Hamamelis virginiana), spicy Spicebush (Lindera benzoin), and rare Wahoo (Euonymus atropurpurea) fill out the understory. Slender Black Gums (Nyssa sylvatica), regal Swamp White Oaks (Quercus bicolor), girthy Bur Oaks (Quercus macrocarpa), huge Red Maples (Acer rubrum), stupendous Silver Maples (Acer saccharinum), hefty White Elms (Ulmus americana), modest Slippery Elms (Ulmus rubra) and robust American Sycamores (Platanus occidentalis) ring salamander breeding ponds. Quiet and solitude pervade. In this place, it's tempting to think that this remnant forest is a pristine urwelt, untouched since glacial times. But that's simply not the case; humans have been influencing and impacting the forests in one way or another since time immemorial, including this one.
Since the arrival of Europeans in the Americas, forests have suffered tremendously. In my own patch of forest I see evidence of overharvesting of "medicinal" plants, namely American Ginsing (Panax quinquefolius); recreational vehicle damage; overgrazing by White-tailed Deer (Odocoileus virginianus) caused by poor management practices; the historical overhunting of fur and game animals which has left the woods impoverished of Fisher (Martes pennanti) and Elk (Cervus canadensis) and a host of other species; fragmentation by roads; increased incidences of Brown-headed Cowbird (Molothrus ater) parasitism on nesting birds because of reduced forest area; artificial drainage ditches; sterile conifer plantations; dozens of devastating introduced species like Chestnut Blight (Cryphonectria parasitica), Emerald Ash Borer (Agrilus planipennis) and Garlic Mustard (Alliaria petiolata); forest fire suppression; and the extirpation of top predators like Grey Wolf (Canis lupus). Other forests are impacted still further by industrial and selective forestry, clearing for agriculture, overgrazing by domestic livestock and fragmentation by pipelines, power transmission lines and seismic lines. Most of these impacts would be considered European in origin, perhaps with the exception of clearing land for agriculture. But first nation, especially along the St. Lawrence River and around the Great Lakes, were influencing and impacting forests, sometimes in extreme ways, long before the arrival of European explorers and settlers.
A farmstead carved out of Carolinian old growth near Chatham, Ontario, circa 1838.
Painting: John Philip Bainbrigge
The "untouched" forests that Europeans encountered in the Great Lakes basin were in many cases actually more like carefully designed landscapes, and not deep dark wildernesses. First nations people cleared forests for agriculture, sometimes on impressively grand scales, using fire and by girdling large trees. The fields were then planted up with Corn (Zea mays), beans, squash, tobacco and other medicinal and edible plants. After a decade or so, as local resources such as firewood, game animals and soil quality diminished, settlements were relocated, and fields were burned and left to regrow under natural succession. Where forests were left intact, controlled burns, usually in the form of modest ground fires, were used to clear forest understory of thick shrubs and forbs, promoting the growth of grasses and other forage favourable to game animals. Managing habitat with fire may have imperative to maintaining sustainable game populations around settlements since hunting pressure would have been intense. The legacy of these impacts is difficult to detect in forests today without diving into the pollen or charcoal records of a forest. There is another way, however, that first nations historically influenced forest ecology: sylvaculture of fruit- and nut-bearing trees; in some cases, we can still see evidence of that on the landscape today.
Doubtless, sylvacultural techniques would have differed culturally and geographically, but in general it seems to have included both the management of existing forests to promote the growth of productive old trees, and the planting of new trees in orchards. It was chiefly centered around settlements, where foods could be easily harvested and protected against pests and, no doubt, other humans. Pawpaw (Asimina triloba), oaks, Shagbark Hickory, Shellbark Hickory (Carya laciniosa), Pecan (Carya illinoinensis), American Chestnut, Allegheny Chinquapin (Castanea pumila), hazels, Black Walnut, Butternut, and American Beech were all utilized as food, and may all have been part of sylvacultural practices throughout eastern North America. The reality is, we don't know much about historical first nations sylviculture, but what evidence we do have comes mainly from studies of witness tree records in the United States. Witness trees were trees marked and noted by surveyors as they laid out plots of land. In theory, witness trees should be representative of the relative abundance of species that were present when surveyors moved through a region, usually sometime in the 1700's and 1800's. Surveyors would have marked whatever tree was closest to corners of the lots they were mapping, so trees were essentially selected randomly (though some bias for selecting trees of certain size or species may have existed). Thanks to this historic record, ecologists have been able to show that a disproportionate number of witness trees around known former first nations settlements are nut-bearing trees.
First nations people may have reduced competition around nut-bearing trees by girdling or otherwise removing adjacent competitors. They also planted trees around settlements, sometimes in large orchards, if historical accounts are accurate. In the course of establishing orchards, trees were sometimes moved well beyond their normal range. I suspect that the few Shellbark Hickories near Long Point, Ontario, may have been moved there (as nuts) by first nations people; the massive nuts of Shagbark Hickory are not likely to have been transported by wildlife over such a long distance from the next nearest populations: 135 km away on the Niagara Peninsula and 200 km away in Essex County. A similarly disjunct population of Pawpaws, again near Long Point, may have been established in the same way. Pawpaw produces the largest fruit of any native tree in North American and were certainly utilized by first nations south of the Great Lakes, so would have been a likely candidate for human-facilitated range expansion. In my childhood haunts of eastern Ontario, there is an isolated population of Bear Oak (Quercus ilicifolia), 200 km distant from the next nearest population in New York State, which is itself disjunct from the species' main range by a similar distance. Was this species brought to eastern Ontario by first nations people? Bear Oak isn't known to have been a particularly important food source, compared to Common White Oak for example, but Bear Oak acorns may have been accidentally transported along with other oaks and either discarded to grow feral or intentionally planted.
I would say that not enough consideration has been given to the influence of first nations on the abundance and distribution of fruit- and nut-bearing trees in North America. Though quantitative evidence is limited, it stands to reason that since other cultures all over the world have been moving useful and valuable plants around the globe for millennia, native Americans would have done the same. Certainly, other first nations' practices such as the widespread use of fire to modify landscapes, has been well documented. The historical legacy of fire use is now being considered in such a way as to cause us to redefine what we mean by untouched wilderness. Very few places on Earth are true wildernesses, truly untouched. Rather, almost everywhere that can support a viable ecosystem has been home to humans at one time or another, and humans, no matter how limited their population, or how conservation-oriented their society is, invariably impact and influence ecosystems in measurable ways. It's time to start looking at humans, both historic and contemporary, as part of forest ecology, not a separate and unnatural or external influence. Only once the human dimension is considered, can we hope to have a complete historic view of forests, and a more holistic approach to addressing modern day conservation concerns.
