and there, the earthen burial mounds, the crude paintings in caves, and per- 
haps the emcke stains of cooking fires in a sheltered angle of a cliff. ‘The 
Indian's trails and his gardens would alike have been overgrown and his rude 
huts and frail tepees nh eae ated with the turrs of the seasons as are the 
leaves and grasses of the ssing year; The‘wild egceme an2 fur species, along 
with the forests, ee iton, rivers, lakes, aquatic life, and insect 
life, would socn have appeared unm marked and undamaged by the red man's long 
occupation of the land. 
Exploitation by White Settlers 
But after only three hundred years of occupancy, the white man in this 
country, were he to be suddenly cxtcrminated, would leave behind him enduring 
f=) 
Scars and open. wounds that might néver heal. fter thousands of years our 
concrete highways and our cities of stone and steel would be reduceG and dis- 
solved to. some- extent, but the geclogist would still be- able to fina arid 
wastes, dust bowls, the scarred, eroded, treeless mountain sides, the choked 
and muddy streams, and the’ ruined marshland--melancholy monuments of the white 
man's civilization, The botanist would find velueless species of plant life 
growing where richly productive vezetation had once flourished, and the biol- 
ogist would observe rats, cats, starlings, English sparrows, carp, and other 
such alien creatures usurping 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, destructive habits. 
Among the Indians it was the common practice to move to fresh hunting 
frounds whenever the old showed signs of becoming exhausted. Left unmolested, 
the former site was scon replenished, for its productivity and fertility had 
not been impaired. The fae gardening operations left @ scar on the 
wilderness scarcely more permane oe then that made by his canoe as he paddled 
along a lonely lake. 
That he must never kill for sport was one oo the commandments given 
ts the Indian by the God who created the universe, according to the Iroquois 
legend. He was given dominion over the beasts of arte field and the fowls of 
the air as in our om theology, but it was e provisicnal custcdianship _— 
tolerated neither waste nor abuse. he Indian never shared the white man's 
conception of sport; to provide meat and fish for himself and his family was 
@ laborious task. 
The white settlers and pioneers soon acquired the same attitude, no 
doubt, for it became the general practice among them to depend upon their 
profesional hunters to bring the necessary supplies of game into the set- 
lements, very much as the citizens of a modern commmity depend upon th 
butchers and the meat markets for that tyne of food. With the occupation 
of the land by the-white settlers, however, wildlife began to diminish. 
The decrease was imperceptible at first, but it was definite nevertheless, 
| for once the scttlers had brought the primitive land under tillage or ex- 
| ploited it by industry, it long remained in that status As they moved 
) westward the new settlers subjugated more and more of the wild.land, and 
the wildlife that remained in rear of the advancing line of frontiersnen 
and settlers was forced to adjust itself to a new environment-~one that for 
st species was not nearly so favorable as it originally was. 
ee. 
