made little or no impression on the pi'imeval environment so favora"ble to 

 the production of wildlife* Vith this productiritj- unchecked, the combined 

 effects of all the hunting, trapping, and fishing done "by all the trihes 

 resulted in no material decrease of the constantly. replenished- Supply. 



The needs of the sparse Indian populations v;ere--less 'than- the- repro- 

 ductive capacity of the .game herds, and the Indians' - v/eapons '-were not ■ 

 adapted, to quick, and easy, -killing, of game. If some icata&trophe had wiped 

 out the Indian population, there would have remained in a- year • or two only 

 a fev/ scarcely discernible signs to indicate the hundreds of years of its 

 occupancy, other than a few si^ell mounds here and there, the earthen "burial 

 mounds', the crude paintings in caves, and perhaps the smoke stains of cook- 

 ing fires in a sheltered angle of a cliff. The Indian's trails and his gar- 

 dens v.rould alike have oeen overgrown and his. rude huts and frail tepees dis- 

 integrated with the turns of the seasons as are the leaves and grasses of 

 the. passing year. The wild game and fur species, along v;ith the forests, 

 vegetation, rivers, lakes, aq.uatic life, and insect life, vrould soon have 

 appeared unmarked and undamaged by the red man's long occupation of the 

 land. 



EXPLOITATIO-IT BI ^'KITE S3T.TLERS • ; 



But after only three hundred years of occupancy, the white man in this 

 country, were he to be suddenly exterminated, v/ould leave behind him enduring 

 scars and open vrounds that might nex'er heal. .After hundreds of years our 

 concrete highways and our cities of stone and steel would be reduced and- 

 dissolved to some extent, but the geologist v/ould still be able to find arid 

 wastes, dust bov/ls, the scarred, eroded, -treeless mountain sides, 'the choked 

 and muddy streams, and the ruinod marshland — melancholy monuments of the 

 white man's civilization. The botanist vrould find valueless species of 

 plant life growing where richly productive vegetation had once flourished, 

 and the biologist v/ould observe rats, cats, starlings, English sparrows, 

 carp, and other such alien creatures usiirping a. land that was never meant 

 for them. The entomologist would find other devastating evidences of our 

 occupation and husbandry equally eloquent of Our. careless, wasteful, destruc- 

 tive habits. 



Among the Indians it was the common practice to move to fresh hunting 

 grounds whenever the old shovred signs of becoming exhausted. Left unmo- 

 lested, the former site was soon replenished, for its productivity and fer- 

 tility had not been impaired. The Indian' s- gardening operations left a scar- 

 on the v/ilderness scarcely more permanent than that^ made by his canoe as he 

 paddled along a lonely lake, . ' ' 



That he must never kill for sporji was one of the- commandments- given to 

 the Indian by the God who created the universe, according to the Iroquois 

 legend. He v;as given dominion over the beasts of the field' and the fov/ls 

 of the air as in our own theology, but it was a provisional custodianship . 

 and tolerated neither waste .nor abuse, Tet these same Iroquois, when pre-, 

 sented with the opportunity to trade furs and meat for firearms, didnet 

 hesitate to despoil' their wildlife resources in prder to strengthen their • '- 



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