Food Frontiers: Indigenous and Euro-American Ecologies in Early America

FAIN: HB-50562-15

Natale A. Zappia
Whittier College (Whittier, CA 90601-4446)

This study explores the evolution of food systems in the early American West. It closely examines the transformations that helped create new food systems across vast distances of continental North America. Within this region, food systems required myriad supporting components, including infrastructure, producers, consumers, and irrigation. In similar ways, Natives and Euro-Americans employed varying agricultural techniques over a period of three centuries, ultimately converging on complex, overlapping systems of grass management by the early 1800s. As in the Great Plains, grass supported large herbivores like livestock (especially horses, mules, sheep, and cattle) that simultaneously fueled regional and global markets for hides, wool, tallow, and slaves. By closely examining the intimate connections between families, villages, and land use that stitched together indigenous and Euro-American food systems, we can better understand the forces that paved the way for the modern West.

Associated Products

Revolutions in the Grass: Energy and Food Systems in Continental North America, 1763-1848 (Article)
Title: Revolutions in the Grass: Energy and Food Systems in Continental North America, 1763-1848
Author: Natale A. Zappia
Abstract: This article draws connections between the political revolutions of the Atlantic World and the equally powerful environmental revolutions occurring in North America between 1763 and 1848. The political-economic transformations that shook coastal cities also reverberated in the reorganization of food production and indirectly grass consumption, revealing deep interconnections between imperial objectives, continental land use practices, and the emergence of a global food system. Understanding the critical role of nonhuman actors, including grass and herbivores, reveals deeper relationships shared between early modern political, cultural, and environmental history.
Year: 2016
Primary URL: http://envhis.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2015/10/22/envhis.emv117.short?rss=1
Primary URL Description: Article appearing in Journal "Environmental History."
Access Model: subscription
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Environmental History
Publisher: Oxford

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