Our mythology claims that we are a nation carved from the wilderness. The pioneers pushed through trackless forests to “people” a continent, facing bears, wolves, mountain lions, and Indians along the way.
While the historians chipped away at one aspect of the myth, biologists, anthropologists, and geographers have been attacking it from their perspectives. The historians tell us that the natives were more numerous and much better organized than our mythology allows. The imprint of humanity on the landscape in the form of towns, farms, and trails was widespread. Now the scientists are telling us that the landscape itself was to a considerable extent a human creation.
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Europeans had a special disdain for the California Indians, perhaps because the Californians did not employ conventional agriculture. Early historical accounts by both Spanish and Anglo writers are filled with scathing remarks about the general ignorance, shiftlessness, and stupidity of the natives. Today’s anthropologists can read between the lines of these accounts thanks to a century of interviews and studies by their predecessors and the ecological knowledge developed by biologists. Now we can surmise that the native Californians did not adopt agriculture because it would have been a step down. Why tie your whole future to a handful of domesticated crops when you can draw on dozens of different wild plants that thrive because you manage the land in a way that makes them thrive?
California Indians are famous for their basketry. They weave cradle boards for children, cooking baskets that are actually waterproof, giant storage baskets for keeping food through the winter. (It does seem that those contemptuous early observers would have realized that people who needed food storage baskets the size of 55-gallon drums did not need agriculture.)
