Opinion | An Iconic Landscape, Threatened by Trees - The New York Times - 0 views
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For a host of ingenious reasons, Native people had long set fire to the prairie: to rejuvenate vegetation and attract bison herds, to ward off mosquitoes and snakes, to ease travel, even to hinder their enemies in battle. Intentionally or not, they were also keeping the Eastern redcedar at bay, confining the scrappy conifer to the prairie’s deepest wrinkles.
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white settlers were slow to catch on. Confronted by fire, wild or not, they fought back, desperate to save their homes, their crops, their livestock, their culture at large. At the same time, they planted trees in a land without: for shelter, for timber, for shade, for a touch of their forested homelands back east
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“Trees were so rare in that country, and they had to make such a hard fight to grow, that we used to feel anxious about them, and visit them as if they were persons,”
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