About Forests & People -- America

The farming, manufacturing and trade economies in Europe, the Middle East and Far East were pushing civilization along.  There were starts and stops and jerks along the way, but century after century, farming, manufacturing and trade allowed cities to develop where commerce, industry, arts, science and innovation grew.  About that time Columbus stumbled into the continents between Europe and India - he didn’t know what he was doing or what he’d found, or he wouldn’t have called the people ‘Indians’.  They had their own names for who they were.  More than a hundred years later the English landed on an American shore far north of where the Spanish had been running rough shod over the people and land looting for gold.  

Those English had to deal with a landscape unlike any they had ever seen before, solid forest.  People are like the other walk-around critters, we don’t usually like the deep dark forest.  We have long standing mythology about deep, dark, scary forests and the evils there, like Hansel and Gretel found.  We like the openings and the edges of the forest where the sunlight reaches the ground and plants we can eat grow.  We like to see around us in case something may be coming to eat us.  Forest near-by is ok, but on the edge and in the openings is where we want to be, not deep within.  

Unlike other critters, beavers and people can cut trees to make forest openings where food crops can grow and we can use the wood for fuel and housebuilding.  That’s what we did. 

It didn’t take too long for the New Englanders to realize the forests they were clearing to plant corn and pumpkins had some great wood that Europeans would pay to get, especially the white pine trees.  White pine trees didn’t grow in Europe, it began to dawn on American forest cutters that this wood was far superior to European wood for many uses.  These Americans-to-be could trade this superior wood for things they wanted from the “mother land,” and other “mothers-lands”.