Quote:
Originally Posted by sopas ej
I'm not sure what book my partner was reading some years ago, but he told me that in that book, he read that when the early English colonists arrived in what we call New England, the native people had already clear-cut large areas for their agriculture, and it wasn't until those populations started being killed or displaced by the early colonists that reforestation started happening... in other words, it seems many people think that when the early English settlers started arriving on the east coast, that they arrived to pristine untouched forests, when in actuality, there were already large areas that were cleared for farming.
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This is correct.
It's also worth noting that although bison ranged far into the eastern woodlands by the time that English settlers came (there's a reason Buffalo has its name) this seems to have been something that happened relatively recently, as Native Americans thinned out the forest cover and allowed for bison to migrate eastward.