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Three Worlds, Three Views: Culture and Environmental Change in the Colonial SouthTimothy Silver
Appalachian State University
©National Humanities Center
For nearly three hundred years before the American Revolution, the colonial South was a kaleidoscope of different people and cultures. Yet all residents of the region shared two important traits. First, they lived and worked in a natural environment unlike any other in the American colonies. Second, like humans everywhere, their presence on the landscape had profound implications for the natural world. Exploring the ecological transformation of the colonial South offers an opportunity to examine the ways in which three distinct cultures—Native American, European, and African—influenced and shaped the environment in a fascinating part of North America.
The Native American WorldLike natives elsewhere in North America, those in the South practiced shifting seasonal subsistence, altering their diets and food gathering techniques to conform to the changing seasons. In spring, a season which brought massive runs of shad, alewives, herring, and mullet from the ocean into the rivers, Indians in Florida and elsewhere along the Atlantic coastal plain relied on fish taken with nets, spears, or hooks and lines. In autumn and winter—especially in the piedmont and uplands—the natives turned more to deer, bear, and other game animals for sustenance. Because they required game animals in quantity, Indians often set light ground fires to create brushy edge habitats and open areas in southern forests that attracted deer and other animals to well-defined hunting grounds. The natives also used fire to drive deer and other game into areas where the animals might be easily dispatched.</span>
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