We all have grown up with the image of Native Americans as being one with nature.............The first Earth Day in the early 70's featured the poster of a Native American Chief imploring all of us to walk the earth "softly"and have respect for all of our fellow fauna and flora.
As one digs into the historical literature, the revelation that seems to come to life is whether it be the early North American pre -Clovis and Clovis peoples 10-15,000 years ago or the mound builders in the Midwest or the great Inca and Aztec cultures of Central and South America..............all seemed to be eventually guilty of despoiling their environment...............either running short of water and firewood or decimating the native animals that had once shared their part of the planet with them.
The attached research from Andrea Laliberte and William Ripple reinforce previous studies from Martin and Szuter and Lyman and Wolverton that suggest that Lewis and Clark's 1804-1806 Expedition across the West found great pockets of "fauna sinks" where Indian tribe densities were greatest.................and "war zones' where animal populations were abundant and Indian populations negligible.
Like today's demilitarized zone separating North and South Korea where endangered wildlife of all kinds thrives(but is absent as you drift into North and South Korea proper), it appears that human beings whether white, Indian, Black or Yellow have historically driven animal populations to either very low levels or to extinction.
It is hypothesized that prior to European colonization of the Americas, the great herds of Buffalo, Elk, Deer, Pronghorn, Bighorns and Moose as well as the great predators Grizzly, Wolf, Cougar, Jaguar, Lynx and Bobcat might have been at extremely low population levels as the Indian population peaked in the New world. With the arrival of the Explorers in the early 1500's came the myriad diseases Pox, fever, etc that decimated the Indian populations by as much as 90%. It is very possible that the English colonizers of Jamestown and Plymouth thought they were encountering a pristine environment because both the forest and it's creatures had rebounded in numbers due to less persecution by the almost vanished tribes.
Fascinating and sobering stuff to ponder and contemplate about as we 21st Century humans attempt to restore the full array of Creation across the USA, Canada, Mexico and the South American States.
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