THERE is a popular myth that when the Europeans first arrived on American shores, they found a chaste, Edenic landscape unscathed by the indigenous peoples who inhabited the land. This image fits nicely with another figment of the western imagination: that the Native American was the original environmental conservationist.
The truth is less romantic. Certainly from the 16th century onwards rapacious transformers from Europe ran roughshod over nature. Yet their ecological transgressions were against landscapes that had already been considerably altered by Native Americans, who used fire extensively to manage plants and animals. They did not always manage it successfully,…
