Write A Short Summary On How North American Settlers Arrived In The Pacific Northwest.
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When the first American fur traders and settlers saw the Willamette Valley, they wrote glowingly about its natural beauty and its suitability for farming. It seemed to them as if nature had made the valley for the explicit purpose of planting crops, grazing livestock, and pleasing the eye of overland migrants from the east. Much less obvious to pioneers was the fact that Indians had very consciously shaped this environment through fire. Annual, low-intensity, controlled burns, set in the late summer, had minimized the valley's underbrush, reduced the number of trees, facilitated native hunting and gathering, and created the prairie-like appearance that settlers so appreciated. The Willamette Valley was in substantial part the artifice of Indians and of fires set by Indians.
Once American settlers set up homes in the area, however, their first impulse was to suppress the fires that Indians set. From the viewpoint of the farmer, rancher, and homeowner, fires—whether caused by Indians or not—were a wild force of nature that threatened the crops, livestock, and buildings that settlers had brought with them to Oregon. Or, more to the point, they threatened to destroy the value of the property that settlers had brought to and created on the land. Thus Jesse A. Applegate, a very early settler, recalled the frightening effect of such a fire:
We did not yet know that the Indians were wont to baptise the whole country with fire at the close of every summer; but very soon we were to learn our first lesson. This season [1844] the fire was started somewhere on the south Yamhill [River], and came sweeping up through the Salt Creek gap. The sea breeze being quite strong that evening, the flames leaped over the creek and came down upon us like an army with banners. All our skill and perseverance were required to save our camp. The flames swept by on both sides of the grove; then quickly closing ranks, made a clean sweep of all the country south and east of us....The Indians continued to burn the grass every season, until the country was somewhat settled up and the whites prevented them.
Your answer:
When the first American fur traders and settlers saw the Willamette Valley, they wrote glowingly about its natural beauty and its suitability for farming. It seemed to them as if nature had made the valley for the explicit purpose of planting crops, grazing livestock, and pleasing the eye of overland migrants from the east. Much less obvious to pioneers was the fact that Indians had very consciously shaped this environment through fire. Annual, low-intensity, controlled burns, set in the late summer, had minimized the valley's underbrush, reduced the number of trees, facilitated native hunting and gathering, and created the prairie-like appearance that settlers so appreciated. The Willamette Valley was in substantial part the artifice of Indians and of fires set by Indians.
Once American settlers set up homes in the area, however, their first impulse was to suppress the fires that Indians set. From the viewpoint of the farmer, rancher, and homeowner, fires—whether caused by Indians or not—were a wild force of nature that threatened the crops, livestock, and buildings that settlers had brought with them to Oregon. Or, more to the point, they threatened to destroy the value of the property that settlers had brought to and created on the land. Thus Jesse A. Applegate, a very early settler, recalled the frightening effect of such a fire:We did not yet know that the Indians were wont to baptise the whole country with fire at the close of every summer; but very soon we were to learn our first lesson. This season [1844] the fire was started somewhere on the south Yamhill [River], and came sweeping up through the Salt Creek gap. The sea breeze being quite strong that evening, the flames leaped over the creek and came down upon us like an army with banners. All our skill and perseverance were required to save our camp. The flames swept by on both sides of the grove; then quickly closing ranks, made a clean sweep of all the country south and east of us....The Indians continued to burn the grass every season, until the country was somewhat settled up and the whites prevented them.
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