![[Pasted image 20250201171951.png]] [Northeastern Indians](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_peoples_of_the_Eastern_Woodlands) shifted their farms from place to place to allow soil fertility to regenerate, and they moved their camps seasonally to take advantage of hunting opportunities and spring fish runs. Upon their arrival in North America, Europeans found no fences, no signs designating ownership. Land, and the game that populated it, they believed, were there for the taking. Europeans failed to notice that the Indians had altered the landscape by burning the understory of the forests to open forest floors and provide more young greenery to attract game animals. Colonists wrote extensively about the parklike forests they found filled with abundant game, but never noticed that the Indians had been actively managing those forests to encourage the wildlife they hunted until it was too late. Generations later, when the Indians were mostly gone from New England, descendants of the first colonists wrote wistfully of a past when hunting and travel through the woodlands had been pleasant and easy. But they still didn’t understand that it had been the native people they had despised as lazy and unproductive, and had driven off the land, who had been responsible for its productivity. --- Next: [[1.22 Europe]] Back: [[1.20 Women]]