Читать книгу American Environmental History - Группа авторов - Страница 47

Our last document is a US Geological Survey map of Bitterroot Forest Reserve (today’s Bitterroot National Forest) in the Northern Rocky Mountains, along the Idaho–Montana state line. The surveyor who compiled the map, J. B. Leiberg, noted the extent of old fire scarring and woodland regrowth over hundreds of thousands of acres. Leiberg dated some fires as far back as 1719, long before American settlers arrived in the region. The area with multiple lines drawn through had seen successive burns. Some of these fires were doubtless the result of lightning, but many more were likely to have been ignited by Indians, who used fire to clear out dense undergrowth, encourage new growth of grasses for game, and preserve mountain mweadows from forest encroachment, among other reasons. How much was America’s “virgin wilderness” in fact a landscape maintained by Indians?

Figure 1.5 Map of Bitterroot Forest Reserve showing burned areas by J. B. Leiberg 1890.

(Source: US Geological Survey, Twentieth Annual Report (1990), pp. 384–385. Public Domain.)