REMOVAL OF THE FOREST. 
135 
and further growth, only by the removal of a portion of the 
forest that hemmed him in. The destruction of the woods, 
then, was man’s first physical conquest, his first violation of 
the harmonies of inanimate nature. 
Primitive man had little occasion to fell trees for fuel, or, 
in winter; but it is, in very many instances, certain that, by whatever 
means the growth of forests upon them was first prevented or destroyed, 
the trees have been since kept out of them only by the annual burning of 
the grass, by grazing animals, or by cultivation. The groves and belts of 
trees which are found upon the prairies, though their seedlings are occa¬ 
sionally killed by drought, or by excess of moisture, extend themselves 
rapidly over them when the seeds and shoots are protected against fire, 
cattle, and the plough. The prairies, though of vast extent, must be con¬ 
sidered as a local, and, so far as our present knowledge extends, abnormal 
exception to the law which clothes all suitable surfaces with forest; for 
there are many parts of the United States—Ohio, for example—where the 
physical conditions appear to be nearly identical with those of the States 
lying farther west, but where there were comparatively few natural 
meadows. The prairies were the proper feeding grounds of the bison, 
and the vast number of those animals is connected, as cause or conse¬ 
quence, with the existence of these vast pastures. The bison, indeed, 
could not convert the forest into a pasture, but he would do much to pre¬ 
vent the pasture from becoming a forest. 
There is positive evidence that some of the American tribes possessed 
large herds of domesticated bisons. See Humboldt, Ansichten der Natur , 
i, pp. 71-73. What authorizes us to affirm that this was simply the wild 
bison reclaimed, and why may we not, with equal probability, believe that 
the migratory prairie buffalo is the progeny of the domestic animal run wild? 
There are, both on the prairies, as in Wisconsin, and in deep forests, as 
in Ohio, extensive remains of a primitive people, who must have been 
more numerous and more advanced in art than the present Indian tribes. 
There can be no doubt that the woods where such earthworks are found 
in Ohio were cleared by them, and that the vicinity of these fortresses or 
temples was inhabited by a large population. Nothing forbids the suppo¬ 
sition that the prairies were cleared by the same or a similar people, and 
that the growth of trees upon them has been prevented by fires and 
grazing, while the restoration of the woods in Ohio may be due to the 
abandonment of that region by its original inhabitants. Ihe climatic con¬ 
ditions unfavorable to the spontaneous growth of trees on the prairies may 
be an effect of too extensive clearings, rather than a cause of the want of 
woods. 
