THE TREELESS PRAIRIES OF THE WEST. 209 



washed into the earth, or drawn into the earth by insects or small animals. But 

 tree seed would make young trees which would not again produce seed for ten 

 or more years. If now, at the end of this first season, a fire swept over the tract 

 the seeds of the annuals which had found a slight earthy protection, would come 

 up again the next summer, again seeding and extending the area. The trees 

 would be burned down, and though perhaps many would sprout, successive burn, 

 ings would keep them confined to one place. In short, under annual burnings, 

 herbaceous plants could still increase their area annually, but trees could never 

 get far beyond the line they had reached when the annual fire first commenced. 

 There could be no doubt that an annual burning in a tract destitute of forest 

 growth, would certainly prevent the spread of timber, or of any plant that re- 

 quired more than a year to mature seed from the time of sowing. Now, if we 

 look at the actual facts, we find that the Indians did annually fire the prairies. 



Father Hennepin, the earliest writer on Indian habits, noted that it was the 

 practice in his time. There is little doubt but this practice of annual burning has 

 been one extending long into the past. What object had they in these annua^ 

 burnings ? They must have known that the buffalo and other animals on which 

 they were largely dependent for a living, throve only on huge grassy plains, and 

 that it was to their interest to preserve these plains by every means in their power. 

 Low as their power of reasoning may be, they could not but have perceived that 

 while grassy herbage throve in spite of fires, perhaps improved under the fiery 

 ordeal, trees could not follow on burned land. What could be more natural than 

 that they would burn the prairies with the object of retaining food for their wild 

 animals? If we have no difficulty in reaching a positive conclusion so far, we 

 may now take a glance at the early geological times. Mr. Meehan then referred 

 to the researches of Worthen, Whittlesley and others in Ohio, Illinois and other 

 prairie regions. On the retreat of the great glacier, the higher lands and drift 

 formation were probably high and dry long before the immense lakes formed 

 from the melting and turbid waters ceased to be. 



It was tolerably well understood that many species of trees and other plants 

 which required a temperate atmosphere, retreated southwardly with the advance 

 of the glacier, and advanced to higher latitudes on the glacier's retreat. Thus 

 these higher ridges would become timbered long before the lower lands became 

 dry. Evidence accumulates that man existed on this continent, in the far west, 

 not long after the glacier retreated, though "not long," in a geological sense, 

 may mean many hundreds of years. The lakes of glacial water would gradually 

 become shallower from the deposit of the highly comminuted material brought 

 down from higher land, from the wearing away of rocky breastworks as in South 

 Pass, Illinois, as well as from the opening which would continually occur from 

 nature's ever varying plan of streams under ground. In all events, the drying of 

 these lakes would be from their outward edges first. Aquatics would give way to 

 marsh grasses, and these to vegetation such as we now find generally spread over 

 the prairie region. If now we can conceive of human beings such as we know 



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