Photo: Oconaluftee village - a living history museum showing the Cherokee way of life c. 1750Below i

Photo: Oconaluftee village - a living history museum showing the Cherokee way of life c. 1750Below is an excerpt from a thesis I ran across, it covers many interesting things, including evidence of Native American food forests in Southern Appalachian/Piedmont areas. It repeats itself a few times, but it’s still some interesting reading:“Bartram viewed the Southern landscape with the training and sensibilities of a botanist.  He found evidence of extensive silvicultural practices at the ancient Indian settlements that had been abandoned long before the Indians of his era entered the region.  Persimmon, honey locust, beauty berry, red mulberry, shell-barked hickory, and black walnut not only survived the people who had cultivated them but continued to provide sustenance for the new-comers.“I observed, in the ancient cultivated fields, 1. diospyros, 2. gleditlia triancanthos, 3. prunus chicasaw, 4. callicarpa, 5. morus rubra, 6. juglans exaltata, 7. juglans nigra, which inform us, that these trees were cultivated by the ancients, on account of their fruit, as being wholesome and nourishing food.  Though they are natives of the forest*, yet they thrive better, and are more fruitful, in cultivated plantations, and the fruit is in great estimation with the present generation of Indians, particularly juglans exaltata, commonly called shell-barked hickory” (Bartram 1973, p.38, l.13).  Byrd and Hawkins were also impressed with the stature of the shell-barked hickories near old settlements.  The lists of plants and descriptions of the horticultural practices of the Indians give an idea of the extent of Indian land management.  The early inhabitants of the region did not just gather the fruits of the wild, but, as Bartram notes in the quote above, they were actively cultivating native species to enhance production.  The drawings of John White give further evidence of the plants they grew and a feel for the plantations surrounding their habitations (Rowse 1986).  Native species of squash and sunflowers are prominent in the images of their village gardens.  Long considered to have been introduced to the Southeast, varieties of squash and sunflowers are now known to be derived from species native to eastern North American and were selected and cultivated by American Indians as early as 4,500 BP (Smith 1995).         The open under story must have been impressive to the early Europeans as it was so often described, and not only in the Long-leaf Pine-dominated coastal plain where such an open landscape is expected, but through the Piedmont and into the Mountains of Georgia and North Carolina.  Traveling near Wrightsborough, today’s Wrightsboro, Georgia on the Little River in 1773, William Bartram described a magnificent forest that he himself said stretched the bounds of credibility, the trunks reaching eight to eleven feet in diameter, five feet from the ground: “The ground is a perfectly level green plain, thinly planted by nature with the most stately forest trees, such as the gigantic black oak q. tinctoria), liriodendron, juglans nigra, platanus, juglans exaltata, fagus sylvatica, ulmus sylvatica, liquidambar styraciflua, whose mighty trunks, seemingly of an equal height, appeared like superb columns” (Bartram 1973, p.36, l.35).  His description projects a sense of wonder that such giants had been “thinly planted by nature”.  As well it may, for this particular stretch of forest lay twenty to thirty feet above the floodplain of the Little River on a terrace, again Bartram’s words, near a large complex of ancient ruins.  It is possible that given the location the trees had been cultivated to some degree by the earlier inhabitants.  Later in his journey, Bartram conveys the unexpected park-like quality of a landscape in the mountains near the Tanase River (Little Tennessee River): “…came near the banks of a large creek or river, where this high forest ended on my left hand, the trees became more scattered and insensibly united with a grassy glade or lawn bordering on the river; on the opposite bank of which appeared a very extensive forest, consisting entirely of the Hemlock spruce(P. abies), almost encircled by distant ridges of lofty hills.” (Bartram 1973, p.362, l.20).  Insensibly is a word that captures the unexpected nature of those open areas in a heavily forested mountain region.  William Bartram was by this time well traveled in the Southeast and an astute observer of nature.  Again, there is something about his description of the lands he passed through that implies the hand of something other than normal floral processes.  Indeed, Bartram plainly states that trees were cultivated by the early Indian cultures to improve upon the quality and quantity of the nuts and fruits of native species: “…these trees were cultivated by the ancients, on account of their fruit, as being wholesome and nourishing food.  Though they are natives of the forest*, yet they thrive better, and are more fruitful in cultivated plantations, and the fruit is in great estimation with the present generation of Indians” (Bartram 1973, p.38, l.17).          Benjamin Hawkins traveled through north Georgia in November 26, 1796 and recorded: “This little settlement is on the richest lands I have seen, the second low grounds about eighty feet above the first, with a gentle slope, the lands above by far the richest, the growth poplar and chesnut very large without any undergrowth…”(Hawkins 1980, p.4, l.28).  Near Pine Log, Georgia he describes a scene similar to Bartram’s description of the ancient Indian orchard: “Then down the creek ½ mile to an old Indian settlement, deserted, the peach trees thriving, the lands rich, the growth mostly hickory, tall and large.  Here I saw several Indian women from Etowah, gathering hickory nuts…”(Hawkins 1980, p.5, l.9).  These descriptions present a very different forest structure from today’s forests of monocultures and tangles of multiple successions that reflect commercial plantings and repeated clearing, and it is a landscape that experienced human manipulation.          Not only were native plants cultivated, the Indians also appear to have been actively engaged in the export and import trade.  Useful plant species were transplanted from the Mississippi River to the East Atlantic coast and from the coast to the Appalachian Mountains.  Possibly, some were introduced to the East after the Sixteenth Century as they filled the void left by prior eastern populations that had been decimated by disease and war wasted upon them by the Spanish, but others may have arrived earlier through trading routes.  The Osage Orange, Maclura pomifera, is not native to the East Coast but was carried by western Indians as they migrated east.  The Honey Locust, Gleditsia triacanthos, is another western plant, much revered by the Indians.  Lawson in his Natural History of Carolina includes it in his list “Of the Vegetables of Carolina” and says they were “first brought” by Indian Traders (Lawson 1967).  He records in his journal that he saw it at the Indian town of Sapona, which probably was at the headwaters of the Cape Fear River near today’s Highpoint, North Carolina.  Notably, Mark Catesby, the famous and prolific naturalist and illustrator of Southeastern fauna and flora, does not mention the Honey Locust, nor is it represented in his engravings (Catesby 1974).  Instead, the similar but native eastern species the Water Locust, Gleditsia aquatica, is pared with the American Goldfinch and the Black Locust, Robinia pseudo-acacia, sets the stage for the American Bison.  Possibly they were omitted intentionally if he knew they were not native to the region.  The Indians did not know about honey or sugar before the Europeans introduced the sweets, but Gleditsia triacanthos has a sweet pod that they related to the taste of the European products (Zahner 1995).  Though not a native of the East, the numerous streams with the word Sugar in them, especially those outside the range of the Sugar Maple, reflect the esteem held for the Honey Locust by the Indians.  Honey Locust is a prominent feature in some of the Cherokee myths, the clusters of three thorns providing a test (Mooney 1900).  The Cullasaja River cascading off the Highlands Plateau in Western North Carolina is testimony to the breadth of its artificial distribution.  Cullasaja means place of the honey-locust and so draws the memory of another culture into the consciousness of the twenty-first century.           Another important transplant is the Chickasaw Plum.  Both Lawson and Bartram mention the Indian or Chickasaw Plum.  Clearly Bartram considered it a transplant: “The Chickasaw plumb I think must be excepted, for though certainly a native of America, yet I never saw it wild in the forest, but always in old deserted Indian plantations: I suppose it to have been brought from the S. W. beyond the Mississippi, by the Chicasaws.” (Bartram 1973, p. 38, footnotes).  Lawson acknowledges the existence of several types of plums but calls the most common of them the Indian Plum (Lawson 1967), further substantiating Bartram’s observation.         In return for these western plants the eastern people provided the very important plant, Yaupon Holly, Ilex vomitoria, to Indians beyond its normal range.  Ilex vomitoriaheld ceremonial rather than nutritional value to the Indians and was of great importance in their rituals (Hudson 1979).  The name Yaupon seems to have been used interchangeably by settlers with Cassine, but the plant used for the ceremonial Black Drink is Ilex vomitoria.  The purgative effects of the drink remain reflected in the scientific nomenclature.  The natural bounds of the Yaupon Holly’s habitat were extended west and north from its native coastal environment (Merrill 1979).  Bartram observed it growing well outside its normal range in a Southern Appalachian Indian village near the Jore River, a tributary of the Tennessee River.  “We passed through the Jore village, which is pleasingly situated in a little vale on the side of the mountain; a pretty rivulet or creek runs through the vale, just under the village: here I observed a little grove of the Casine Yapon, which was the only place where I had seen it grow in the Cherokee country; the Indians call it beloved tree, and are very careful to keep it pruned and cultivated; they drink a very strong infusion of the leaves, buds and tender branches of this plant, which is so celebrated, indeed venerated by the Creeks and all the Southern maritime nations of Indians”(Bartram 1973, p.357, l.11).        William L. Merrill noted another historical record of the coastal plant being cultivated in the Southern Appalachians in his publication The Beloved Tree: “The earliest evidence for the Cherokees’ transplantation of this plant is found on a herbarium sheet of Ilex vomitoria …On the reverse side of this sheet is the notation, in a very clear eighteenth-century hand, that this specimen was collected in 1769 by W. V. Turner in “Cherroke countrey” (Merrill 1979, p.57, l.25).  The Creek Indians, too, were transplanting and growing it north of the plant’s native range in 1796 according to Hawkins. “At the first site of the town of Hillaubees; at the other one settlement, the creek margined with cane. At this hut I saw the cassene yupon growing about 8 feet height. It had been brought from the seacoast and did well.” (Hawkins 1980, p.15, l.21)- from PROMETHEUS IN THE WATERSHED by CHRISTA S. FRANGIAMORE  -- source link

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