1491 (76 page)

 

Uses of peach palm: Interviews, Clement; Mora-Urpí, Weber, and Clement 1997 (“only their wives,” quoted on 19); Clement and Mora-Urpí 1987 (yield); Denevan 2001:77 (saws).

 

Domestication of peach palm: Clement 1995, 1992, 1988.

 

Agricultural regression and fallows forests: Balée 2003 (“These old forests,” 282); 1994.

 

Anthropogenic forests: Interviews, Balée, Clement, Erickson, Nigel Smith, Stahl, Woods; Balée 1998; 1989 (11.8 percent, 14); Erickson 1999 (I am grateful to Prof. Erickson for sending me a copy of this paper); Smith 1995; Stahl 2002,1996.

 

“Gift from the past”: I have lifted this phrase from the title of Petersen, Neves, and Heckenberger 2001.

 

Terra preta:
Much of what follows below is taken from the excellent Lehmann et al. eds. 2003; Glaser and Woods eds. 2004; and Petersen, Neves, and Heckenberger 2001. For a popular treatment, see Mann 2002b, 2000b. Lehmann et al. argue that from a scientific standpoint ADE (Amazonian dark earth) is a better term than
terra preta.
I use
terra preta
to avoid acronyms.

 

Terra preta
valued: Smith 1980:562. Smith’s fine early article on
terra preta
was largely ignored on publication—“I got two reprint requests for that article,” he told me. “Nobody was ready to hear it.”

 

Terra preta
distribution estimates: Author’s interviews, Woods, Wim Sombroek; Sombroek et al. 2004:130 (.1–.3 percent); Kern et al. 2004:52–53 (
terra preta
sites every five kilometers along tributaries).

 

Maya heartland: The Maya heartland—from Petén, Guatemala, and Belize north to southern Campeche and Quintana Roo in Mexico—covers about fifteen thousand square miles, a third or half of which was devoted to agriculture.

 

Charcoal: Glaser, Guggenberger, and Zech 2004; Glaser, Lehmann, and Zech 2002. My thanks to Prof. Glaser for giving me a copy of this article.

 

Microbial activity: Author’s interview, Janice Theis; Theis and Suzuki 2004; Woods and McCann 1999 (inoculation). I thank Joe McCann for giving me a copy of this article.

 

Charcoal and global warming: Author’s interview, Ogawa; Okimori, Ogawa, and Takahashi 2003.

 

Kayapó: Author’s interviews, Hecht; Hecht 2004 (“low-biomass,” “cool,” 362–63; “To live,” 364). I am indebted to Prof. Hecht for several fascinating discussions.

 

Terra preta
experiments: Author’s interview, Steiner; Steiner, Teixeira, and Zech 2004.

 

Río Negro site: Author’s interviews, Bartone, Neves, Petersen; Heckenberger, Petersen, and Neves 2004, 1999.

 

Timing of
terra preta
at plantation: Neves et al. 2004:table 9.2.

 

Xingu and black earth: Heckenberger et al. 2003 (“regional plan,” “bridges,” 1711; “built environment,” 1713). For criticism, see Meggers 2003.

 

Santarém
terra preta
: Interviews, Woods, Sombroek; author’s visit; Kern et al. 2004.

 

Meggers reaction: Meggers 2001 (“without restraint,” 305; “accomplices,” 322). A response appears in Heckenberger, Petersen, and Neves 2001.

 

“rev up”: DeBoer, Kintigh, and Rostoker 2001:327.

 

“Rather than adapt”: I swipe this phrase from Erickson 2004 (“Native Amazonians did not adapt to nature, but rather they created the world that they wanted through human creativity, technology and engineering, and cultural institutions,” 456).

 

10 /
The Artificial Wilderness

“all the trees”: Columbus 1963:84. I discovered this quotation, and the ideas around it, in Crosby 2003:3–16, 1986:9–12 (knitting together Pangaea).

 

Invention of Columbian Exchange: McNeill 2003:xiv.

 

Kudzu: Blaustein 2001; Kinbacher 2000.

 

A thousand kudzus everywhere: Crosby 1986:154–56 (spinach, mint, peach, endive, clover), 161 (Darwin), 191 (Jamestown, Garcilaso).

 

Cod and sea urchins: Jackson et al. 2001.

 

Keystone species: Wilson 1992:401.

 

“widowed land”: Chapter title in Jennings 1975.

 

Passenger pigeons: Schorger 1955 (vomiting, 35; rain of droppings, 54; huge roostings, 10–15, 77–89; excommunication, 51; one out of four, 205).

 

Muir and pigeons: Muir 1997:78–82.

 

Audubon and pigeons: Audubon 1871 (vol. 5):115.

 

Seneca and pigeon: Harris 1903:449–51.

 

“living, pulsing”: French 1919:1.

 

Leopold and monument: Leopold 1968.

 

Mast competition, lack of passenger pigeons: Interview, Neumann, Woods; Neumann 2002:158–64, 169–72; Herrmann and Woods 2003 (I thank Prof. Woods for giving me a copy of this paper).

 

Seton’s estimate: Seton 1929 (vol. 3):654–56. See, in general, Krech 1999:chap. 5.

 

Lott’s and other modern estimates of abundance: Lott 2002:69–76 (“primitive America,” 76); Flores 1997; 1991 (“perhaps” twenty-eight to thirty million, 471); Weber 2001 (“more likely” twenty to forty-four million). Shaw (1995) and Geist (1998) suggested the number should be ten to fifteen million.

 

Inka tree farms: Daniel W. Gade, pers. comm.

 

De Soto never saw bison: Crosby 1986:213.

 

La Salle’s buffalo: Parkman 1983 (vol. 1):765.

 

“post-Columbian abundance”: Geist 1998:62–63.

 

Elk begin to appear: Kay 1995.

 

California: Preston 2002 (Drake, 129).

 

“The virgin forest”: Pyne 1982:46–47. See also, Jennings 1975:30.

 

“artificial wilderness”: I borrow the phrase from Callicott and Nelson eds. 1998:11.

 

More “forest primeval” in nineteenth century: Denevan 1992a:377–81 (“pristine myth” article).

 

Cronon, academic brouhaha: Cronon 1995a, 1995b; Soulé and Lease eds. 1995; Callicott and Nelson eds. 1998 (“Euro-American men,” 2). An abridged version of Cronon 1996b appeared in the
New York Times Sunday Magazine,
13 Aug. 1995.

 

Making gardens: Janzen 1998.

 

Creating future environments: I have borrowed the phrase and the thought from McCann 1999a:3.

 

11 /
The Great Law of Peace

Nabokov in New York: Boyd 1991:11–12.

 

Early history of Haudenosaunee, Deganawidah story: Fenton 1998; Snow 1994:58–65; Hertzberg 1966.

 

Rules of operation: Tooker 1988:312–17. The basic source is Morgan 1901:77ff.

 

Checks and balances: Grinde 1992:235–40; Tehanetorens 1971 (“especially important,” sec. 93; impeachment grounds and procedures, secs. 19–25, 39 (“warnings,” sec. 19); rights of individuals and nations, secs. 93–98). A modern translation is online at http://www.iroquoisdemocracy.pdx.edu/html/greatlaw.html.

 

“they will not conclude”: Williams 1936:201.

 

Iroquois women: Wagner 2001; Parker 1911:252–53 (“Does the modern American woman [who] is a petitioner before man, pleading for her political rights, ever stop to consider that the red woman that lived in New York state five hundred years ago, had far more political rights and enjoyed a much wider liberty than the twentieth century woman of civilization?”). I thank Robert Crease for helping me obtain this source.

 

Underwood’s estimate: cited in Johansen 1995:62.

 

Condolence Canes: Barreiro and Cornelius eds. 1991; Fenton 1983.

 

Age of council: Mann and Fields 1997. See also, Johansen 1995.

 

Haudenosaunee as second oldest: Some of the Swiss cantons have continuously functioning parliaments that are older, too. But I did not include them because the individual cantons seem more comparable to the individual nations of Haudenosaunee than to the league as a whole.

 

Great Law as inspiration: Grinde and Johansen 1991; Grinde 1977; Johansen 1987; Wright 1992:94 (“Their whole”).

 

Differences between Constitution and Great Law: Venables 1992:74–124 (Adams’s reminiscences, 108).

 

Franklin: Johansen 1987:40–42.

 

Indian freedoms: Josephy ed. 1993:29.

 

“Every man”: Quoted in Venables 1992:235.

 

“such absolute”: Colden 1747:100.

 

Perrot, Hennepin, Jesuit on Indian liberty: Quoted in Jaenen 1976:88 (Jesuit), 89 (Perrot), 92 (Hennepin).

 

Lahontan: Lahontan 1703 (vol. 2):8.

 

Montaigne: Montaigne 1991:233.

 

Greater attractiveness of native lives: Axtell 1975; Wilson 1999:67 (fleeing Jamestown). Axtell’s conclusions were sharply critiqued in Vaughan and Richter 1980; Axtell’s response (1981:351) was convincing, at least to me. See also Calloway 1986; Treckel and Axtell 1976.

 

Pilgrims dismayed by renegades: Salisbury 1982:128–33.

 

“When an Indian”: Quoted in Axtell 1975:57.

 

“troubled the power elite”: Jaenen 1976:95.

 

Appendixes

“I abhor”: Quoted at http://www.russellmeans.com/russell.html.

 

Insulting names: This is a separate issue from the use of Indian references on geographical features and U.S. sports teams, some of which have long annoyed Indians. Various efforts have been made to ban the use of “squaw,” for example, as in Squaw Valley, home of a big ski resort in California, on the grounds that the word is a vulgar term for the vagina used to demean native women. Most linguists do not believe this is true. Still, the use of specific terms for the women of an ethnic group rings oddly these days—one can’t imagine a resort called Jewess or Negress Valley. Redskin, as in the Washington Redskins, the football team of the U.S. capital, also seems unhappily anachronistic. According to the team, the name is intended to celebrate Indians’ warrior spirit, a good quality, and is therefore not derogatory. But it seems like calling a dance troupe the New York Pickaninnies and saying the name is intended to extol African Americans’ innate sense of rhythm, a good quality.

 

“snowshoe,” “people who”: Goddard 1984; Mailhot 1978.

 

Crosby on civilization: Crosby 2002:71. See also, Wright 2005:32–33.

 

“‘Tribe’ and ‘chiefdom’”: Kehoe 2002:245.

 

Khipu:
For a brief overview, see Mann 2003.

 

“resembles a mop”: Joseph 1992:28.

 

Governor consults
khipu:
Collapiña, Supno et al. 1921.

 

Khipu
are banned: Urton 2003:22, 49.

 

Locke and Mead on
khipu:
Mead 1923 (“the mystery”, n.p.). Locke (1923:32) shared Mead’s view: “
The evidence is intrinsically against the supposition that the quipu was a conventional scheme of writing
” (italics in original). For another early attempt at decipherment, see Nordenskiöld 1979.

 

“Inka had no writing”: Fagan 1991:50.

 

Aschers’ work: Interview, R. Ascher (“clearly non-numerical”); Ascher and Ascher 1997:87 (“rapidly developing”).

 

Urton and
khipu
writing: Urton 2003.

 

Breakdown of
khipu
meaning units: Urton 2003:chaps. 2–5 (“system of coding information…binary code,” 1; comparison with Sumer, Maya, Egypt, 117–18).

 

Khipu
placename deciphered: Urton and Brezine 2005.

 

Miccinelli documents: Laurencich-Minelli 2001; Laurencich-Minelli et al. 1998, 1995; Zoppi 2000.

 

Tentative decipherment: Urton 2001.

 

Charles VIII and European syphilis epidemic: Baker and Armelagos 1988:708.

 

“lyen in fire”: Quoted in Crosby 2003:125–26.

 

Darwinian predictions about diseases: Ewald 1996:chap. 3. More precisely, nonvectorborne microorganisms evolve toward moderate malignity.

 

Díaz and Las Casas: Williams, Rice, and Lacayo 1927:690 (“origin”). My thanks to June Kinoshita for helping me obtain this article. On the origin of syphilis, Las Casas was unequivocal: “From the beginning, two things did and do afflict the Spanish on this island [Hispaniola]: the first is the sickness of the bubas [pustules], which in Italy is called the French disease. And I know for the truth that it came from this island or from when the first Indians came here, when Admiral Christopher Columbus returned with the news of the discovery of the Indies, which I saw in Seville, and they were stuck rotting in Spain, infecting the air or some other route, or else there were some Spanish with the disease among the first returnees to Castille.” Las Casas also says the epidemic began during the war in Naples (Las Casas 1992 [vol. 6]:361–62).

 

Recent syphilis findings: Rothschild and Rothschild 2000 (Colorado); 1996 (U.S. and Ecuador); Rothschild et al. 2000b (Caribbean). See also, Rogan and Lentz 1994, cited in Arriaza 1995:78.

 

Evidence for early European syphilis: E.g., Pearson 1924 (suggesting that Bruce’s recently excavated skeleton and deathmask support a diagnosis of syphilis, rather than leprosy); Power 1992 (I am grateful to Robert Crease for making it possible for me to obtain this source); Stirland 1995:109–15. News reports indicate that other such skeletons exist, too, though some have not yet appeared in the scholarly literature (e.g., Studd 2001; Barr 2000). In the past, though, few of “the numerous cases of pre-Columbian Old World syphilis…have withstood reexamination” (Baker and Armelagos 1988:710).

 

Universal presence of syphilis: Hudson 1965a, 1965b.

 

Confusion with Hansen’s disease: Baker and Armelagos 1988:706–07.

 

Historians’ motives: Crosby, “Preface to the 2003 Edition,” in 2003b:xix.