Colonial Ecology, Atlantic Economy. Strother E. Roberts
Читать онлайн книгу.
is covered with wild grass, which grows as high as a man’s shoulders, and very thick.” These newly formed, lush meadows attracted game animals like deer and moose for Native hunters. They were “of still greater use to new [English] settlers” who found “a mowing field already cleared to their hands … and without these natural meadows many settlements could not possibly have been made.” Beaver meadows provided early English settlers in New Hampshire and elsewhere in New England sufficient grass for their cattle until they had “cleared ground enough to raise English hay.” For Peirce, then, it was the hand of Providence—acting through the teeth of the beaver and the industry of Indian hunters—that had made successful English colonization possible.77
Setting aside the role of “Providence,” Peirce presented an astute early understanding of the importance of beaver to colonial landscapes. Beaver had historically played an important role in converting woodlands bordering streams into first ponds and wetlands, and then broad, verdant meadows.78 These meadows provided Native American hunters with game and, later, fed the cattle of the English settlers who appropriated their lands. But while astute, Peirce’s late eighteenth-century tribute to the utility of the beaver fell far short of accounting for all of the creature’s myriad impacts upon New England’s land- and waterscapes.
As beaver ponds disappeared from the landscape in the wake of the fur trade, species diversity declined apace. Bird species that nested in waterlogged trees—the blue heron, osprey, woodcocks, and various types of eagle—disappeared or saw their regional populations decline precipitously. Species of woodpecker that fed upon the insects living in these decaying trees also would have declined in number and, as a consequence, birds like black-capped chickadees, nuthatches, tree swallows, and screech owls that live in the holes excavated by woodpeckers would have become scarcer. As the populations of insects associated with ponds and wetlands—like dragonand damselflies—declined, so too did the populations of birds like the tree swallow and kingbird, which fed upon them. While the declining numbers of many of these bird species would likely not have dismayed early English settlers, or even their Native American neighbors, they may have felt differently about the loss of waterfowl habitat within the Connecticut basin. Duck species—like the wood duck and hooded merganser—lost many of their summer feeding and nesting sites in the region, reducing their numbers and forcing them to concentrate in the watershed’s lakes and remaining ponds.79
Other pond species also suffered. Frogs, toads, tortoises—all of which local Native American communities relied upon seasonally to supplement their diets—and other species of amphibians and reptiles lost a large percentage of their breeding habitat. Freshwater crayfish continued to thrive in lakes and free-flowing rivers, but their numbers likely declined as the overall amount of freshwater habitat fell. Most obviously, fish populations faced declining habitat as a result of disappearing beaver ponds. Some species suffered more than others. Since beaver ponds are dynamic ecosystems, gradually transitioning from free-flowing stream to pond and back again, different fish species benefit from different stages in the pond lifecycle. Brook trout flourished in the still, well-shaded waters of new beaver ponds. As rising water tables and tree harvesting by beaver opened up the woodland canopies bordering ponds and waterways, yellow perch and sunfish flourished in the warmer, sunbathed waters and fed on the proliferating species of aquatic plants. With the disappearance of beaver dams and the ecological dynamism they fostered, fish of all species became less abundant, and local Native American and Euro-American communities faced declining opportunities for including fresh fish in their regular diet.80
This decline in the availability of freshwater fish may in part explain English colonists’ later focus on the springtime runs of anadromous fish (those species that live and feed in the ocean but spawn in freshwater streams) like salmon, shad, and alewives. The relationship between beaver and salmon, especially, is an ambiguous one. While young anadromous fish can often pass downstream through the loose weave of limbs that forms a beaver dam, these same dams can pose an obstacle for adult fish attempting to ascend a river to breed. With each subsequent beaver dam on a stream, fewer spawners would have been able to pass. However, placing such geographic limits on anadromous fish actually protected the biodiversity of the river system. Shad and alewives head out to sea within a few months of hatching, but juvenile salmon can linger to feed in their native streams for up to five years, significantly decreasing the population of freshwater fish with whom they compete for food and space.
If beaver dams limited the geographic distribution of anadromous fish, beaver ponds provided important spawning habitat and more abundant food sources to help ensure the survival of the newly hatched fry. As beaver dams disappeared, anadromous fish would likely have expanded their range upstream in each of the Connecticut’s tributaries, but their overall numbers may have suffered, just as this new source of competition would have increased the pressure on freshwater fish populations already undergoing habitat loss.81 Still, the salmon, shad, and alewives would have retained one key advantage. Once their young had passed downstream and made it out into the ocean, the diets of these far-traveling fish no longer relied on the declining resources of the inland river environment. They could feed on the ocean’s bounty before returning to their native waterways to spawn, offering a bonanza to the humans who anxiously awaited their annual runs.
A broader phenomenon of nutrient loss within the river system as a whole meant that filter-feeding freshwater mussels also declined, further impoverishing the foraging options available to local Indian communities. Prior to their destruction, beaver ponds had functioned to conserve nutrients within the waters of the Connecticut basin by acting as nutrient sinks. Filter-feeding mussels and aquatic plants benefitted most directly from these impounded nutrients, but their good fortune reverberated throughout the food chain. Undammed stretches of waterways also felt the impact of beaver ponds. By slowing the overall pace of waterways beaver ponds significantly increased the likelihood that nutrients carried by streams and rivers would be utilized within the drainage basin, rather than being carried out to sea. Detritus in slow moving water was more likely to fall out of the current, to be decomposed and returned to the soil. In this way, beaver ponds not only increased the extent of aquatic habitat in a watershed but also increased the biomass that it was able to support. Without beaver dams holding back these ponds, the overall ability of the watershed to support life declined.82
Concurrent species loss meant that the extermination of beaver from New England was a double catastrophe for Indian communities. Beaver provided the most lucrative pelts, but were far from the only furbearers harvested. Minks, river otters, and muskrats contributed a considerable amount to the profits earned by merchants like John Pynchon. As beaver numbers declined, these other species took on new importance for Native hunters. Unfortunately, the population levels of mink, muskrat, and otter were directly linked to the presence of beaver in the landscape. Both minks and otters fed on the fish, amphibians, and invertebrates that thrived in beaver ponds. Muskrats exploited beaver ponds to build their own aquatically protected limb-and-mud lodges. Each of these species suffered an extensive loss of habitat as beaver ponds gave way to meadows. Reduced numbers of these species, added to the loss of the beaver, exacerbated the economic distress faced by Native communities that, by the second half of the seventeenth century, had become increasingly dependent upon the fur trade.83
If, from the 1630s to the 1650s, the terms of the fur trade favored Native American hunters, by the 1660s onward, the long-term consequences of the trade had begun to severely undermine Native American claims to the lands of the Connecticut Valley. The Indian nations of the valley continuously reduced the quantity of cropland they cultivated over the course of the seventeenth century. In part, this represented a decline in population occasioned by outbreaks of European diseases, many introduced through contacts in the fur trade. A decline in land under cultivation may also have occurred as a direct result of the fur trade. As Indian men harvested more beaver, women needed to exert more labor cleaning and processing beaver skins into marketable pelts. Since women provided the agricultural labor in Connecticut Valley Indian communities, this new demand may have cut into efforts to plant and maintain crops. With less land under cultivation, and facing declining fur yields, many Connecticut Valley communities chose to sell off territory in order to maintain access to European commodities.84
From the mid-1650s forward, the Pocumtucks, and neighboring communities, sold