Finding Chestnuts in North American History
By Dr. Don Davis
2012 American Chestnut Summit, Asheville NC
Humans love trees. They shade our homes in summer, provide a convenient location for play or
rest, and give us warmth in winter. In the 21st century, they remain a symbol of nature’s fertility
and regeneration, especially in springtime, when bursting buds and blossoms remind us that a
new season will soon prevail. Trees connect us to specific places, provide us with a sense of
direction, and in some locales, where single species dominate the landscape, our community
identity. Forested places can even evoke, as the eminent geographer Yi-Fu Tuan has observed,
joy, fear, mystery, grief, tradition, and childhood memories.1
Ironically the tree that perhaps most piqued the emotions of the 19th and 20th century American-the American chestnut--has all but disappeared from the North American landscape. The
American chestnut was virtually lost to both field and forest during the first four decades of the
20th century, after an exotic fungus was introduced into this country on Asian chestnut nursery
stock. 2 Before that time, the American chestnut played an extremely important role in the
ecology, economy, and material culture of the eastern United States. From Maine to Mississippi,
the American chestnut evoked memories of community gatherings, family picnics, holiday
feasts, street vendors, small and big-game hunting, fence building, logging, shingle splitting, hog
husbandry, and even moonshining.3 For residents of Appalachia, where the tree defined the preWorld War II landscape, the loss of the American chestnut even served as a metaphor for the
passing of a self-sufficient, and largely forest dependent, way of life.4
1
American communities are still home to specific localities bearing the name chestnut, including
streets, cemeteries, schools, churches, and post offices. Numerous mountains, ridges, hills,
knolls, valleys, streams and ponds are also prefaced by the chestnut adjective, especially in areas
where the trees were prevalent. 5 Although some locales may have been home to only a single
grove of trees, many areas possessed entire forests of the American chestnut. George Ramseur,
who lived in southeast Tennessee during the 1930s, recalled that chestnut trees atop the
Cumberland Plateau “were as common as the moon rising and sun setting.”6 Although the
mountainous portions of Kentucky, West Virginia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania were also
home to large numbers of American chestnuts, they could be found in lower elevations across
much of their range. Chestnut Neck, New Jersey, for example, the colonial village that was also
the site of an important Revolutionary War battle, got its name from the many chestnut trees that
once grew in the township, even though the local terrain there is less than ten feet above sea
level.7
During the second half of the 19th century, especially in America’s largest cities, chestnut trees
were planted along major thoroughfares, where they shaded urban pedestrians during warmer
months and fed them during colder ones. In the summer of 1859, a New York Times writer
editorialized that in some areas of Manhattan, where the wealthy “still own land by the block,”
individuals were “planting avenues of chestnuts and elms.”8 In America’s first planned suburb,
Baltimore’s Roland Park, native chestnut trees were even touted as a potential drawing card for
future residents. A frequently posted advertisement in The Morning Herald during the mid-1890s
announced that “The more you see of Roland Park, the more it grows on you. It is an improved
piece of property with…beech and ash, sycamore and chestnut, which shade while they shelter—
all are here, for they have been here for years and years.”9 Apparently, American Chestnuts were
2
a visible part of the Roland Park landscape for another decade, as evidenced by a 1902 article
from the Baltimore Sun society pages: “Mr. and Mrs. William M. Ellicott gave a tea and chestnut
hunting party yesterday afternoon to the instructors and pupils of the Arundel School at her
residence, 106 Edgewood Road, Roland Park. An experienced raccoon hunter was engaged to
climb and thresh the chestnut trees, and the nuts were eagerly gathered from the ground by the
children, regardless of leaves and burrs falling upon their heads…”10
Smaller townships also planted chestnuts trees within their community borders, as local residents
perceived the trees as natural capital that might one day pay future dividends. In 1893, Maine
tavern-keeper Samuel Farmer pleaded for his neighbors to invest in a chestnut orchard, citing the
success of Temple, a town in the western part of the state that had imported numerous chestnut
trees from Massachusetts during the late 1840s. “Forty-five years later,” proclaimed Farmer, “the
trees are…over two feet in diameter, and in height and general size have outgrown all other trees
in their vicinity. It is a valuable tree for timber, and is used for telephone poles, railroad poles,
railroad ties, fence posts, sawed timber and plank.”11
The many uses for the American chestnut made it one of the country’s most favorite species,
causing several contemporary writers to christen it “the perfect tree.”12 In 1915, when New
England forester Philip L. Buttrick discussed the importance of the tree to the U.S. economy, he
concluded that the American chestnut possessed “a greater variety of uses than almost any other
American hardwood,” as the tree touched upon “every phase of our existence.” To bolster his
argument, Buttrick noted that the tree “serves as a shade and ornamental tree in our parks and
estates. Its wood is used in the building and decoration of our houses and the manufacture of our
furniture. We sit down in chairs made of chestnut and transact our business at desks, ostensibly
of oak, but generally of chestnut veneered with oak; we receive messages from the distance over
3
wires strung on chestnut poles. We sit in a railroad train and read newspapers into whose
composition chestnut pulp has gone, while our train travels over rails supported on chestnut ties
and over trestles built of chestnut pilings, along a track whose right of way is fenced by wire
supported on chestnut posts. On the same train travels goods shipped in boxes and barrels made
of chestnut boards and staves. Even the leather in our shoes is tanned in an extract made from
chestnut wood…At last when the tree can serve us no longer in any other way, it even forms the
basic wood…to make our coffins.”13
Perhaps the most pleasurable memories associated with the American chestnut involved our
annual consumption of the nuts, which usually started in early October and continued through
the coldest winter months. In urban areas along the eastern seaboard--from Washington DC to
Boston, Massachusetts--the often motely dressed sidewalk vendors who roasted and sold
chestnuts were seen as the true harbinger of the holiday season. 14 By mid-November, the aroma
from their small pushcarts was nearly inescapable, making it difficult for city dwellers to hold on
to their spare change. In 1898, an anonymous reporter for The Boston Evening Transcript
commented on the sensual allure of the roasting chestnuts, stating wryly that “the incense” of the
vendor’s trade was his best advertisement. “There are few who can permanently resist the sweet
savor sent up by the chestnut roaster,” observed the writer. “They may wish the vender had a
little cleaner hands and a little more wholesome attire, but one sense contends against the other,
and at last they are likely to shut their eyes and the sense of smell triumphs.”15
Chestnuts were equally important in rural areas during the winter season, feeding both the eyes
and stomachs of those fortunate enough to live near the nut-bearing trees. In many parts of
Appalachia, the nuts were less likely to be eaten than to be bartered or sold for much needed
provisions at the cross-roads store or fed to livestock for winter fattening. 16 But even in the most
4
remote areas of the tree’s native range, it would be difficult to find a single individual who did
not taste a handful of chestnuts before year’s end. Northeast Alabama resident Marie Washburn
recalled that as late as the 1920s, her family would attempt to maintain their annual store of
chestnuts until Christmas day. “Well, as far back as I can remember we always had chestnuts to
eat. And when I got big enough to go up to the field up there where they were, Daddy would
have us picking them up. He’d sack them up and…try to hide them from us but we’d find them.
And he’d say ‘now don’t eat them all up, we’ve got to have some for Christmas.’”17
In late spring or early summer, depending upon the geographic location of the stand, the
American chestnut again assaulted the senses of those living nearest the largest trees. After
chestnut trees fully leaf out, they produce thousands of long delicate catkins that turn from green
to white in a matter of several weeks. Accompanying the catkins is a strong pungent odor, which
some commentators, among them Henry David Thoreau, found “disagreeable” and even
“offensive.”18 Others were more kind, however, using adjectives ranging from “delicate” to
“heavy” when describing the recognizable odor of the chestnut blossom. 19 Visually, the
blooming trees were a sight to behold, turning entire mountainsides a creamy yellow; and then,
as the catkins began to release their pollen, a sugary white, that from a distance, resembled snow.
Nineteenth century travel writers Wilbur Zeigler and Ben Grosscup, who spent considerable time
exploring the mountains of western North Carolina, stated it was actually “the glory” of the
chestnut blossom that was responsible for the trees “giving character to the landscape.”20 The
prolific chestnut blossom was, not surprisingly, the impetus for the naming of dozens of
mountains and ridges throughout the Appalachians, including Yellowtop Mountain, North
Carolina, Whitetop Knobs, Tennessee, Yellow Mountain, Georgia, and Little Yellow Mountain,
Virginia.21
5
As an environmental history of the American chestnut, my research focuses on the relationship
between humans and chestnuts in North America over the past ten thousand years, although the
bulk of the forthcoming book surveys the period from European contact to the 20th century. For
those unfamiliar with environmental history proper, the field of study emerged during the 1970s
as the result of scholars from numerous disciplines wanting to better understand how historical
forces shape attitudes toward the natural world, and how nature, overtime, shapes the lives of
humans.22 The environmental history narrative is also known to general readers, as a number of
scholars and journalists have recently applied the basic approach to their craft. Environmental
history is found in the work of Michael Pollan, whose popular studies of foods like apples, corn
and potatoes, demonstrate the ongoing interplay between plants and humans, nature and culture,
over the last several centuries.23 Author Charles C. Mann has also been influenced by
environmental history, as his best-selling 1493 pays considerable homage to Alfred C. Crosby
and his ground-breaking book The Columbian Exchange: the Biological and Cultural
Consequences of 1492. 24 Only a handful of such studies have been devoted to a single plant
species, however, among them David Taylor’s Ginseng:The Divine Root, which expertly
chronicles the natural and human history of one of North America’s most important herbaceous
plants.25
In 1491, the year before Christopher Columbus came ashore in the West Indies, the natural range
of the American chestnut included more than 400 thousand square miles, an area that today
would fall within the borders of twenty-six states, two Canadian provinces, and the District of
Columbia.26 This was, in essence, the modern range of the tree, a vast territory extending from
6
southern Maine to southeastern Michigan, from southeast Louisiana to southern Georgia. From
there the trees could be found sporadically below the Atlantic fall line, in an area extending
northward to the southern terminus of the Chesapeake Bay. At the beginning of the 16th
century, the tree was the most dominant single tree species in the eastern forest, commonly
reaching diameters of six feet or more in some parts of the Appalachians. The American chestnut
influenced the lives of Native Americans throughout prehistory, providing both nutritional
sustenance and warmth and shelter in the form of firewood and building timbers. Early European
explorers and settlers would also make use of the trees and nuts, as numerous eyewitness
accounts attest. These primary sources shed considerable light on the importance of the
American chestnut during the early settlement of North America and provide additional evidence
that the trees once inhabited areas outside their accepted historic range.
The first Europeans to observe chestnuts growing in North American forests were likely
Spaniards, as they both explored and lay claim to areas where the trees were most commonly
found. Francisco Cordillo and Pedro de Quejo, both Spanish slave raiders, may have seen the
trees growing near the Atlantic coast after coming ashore north of Charleston in the summer of
1521, but is doubtful that they or their shipmates traveled far enough inland to observe living
trees, as chestnuts had largely disappeared from the South Carolina coastline prior to the 16th
century. 27 Returning to the area four years later, de Quejo and a crew of sixty sailed northward
along the North Carolina coast, later entering the Chesapeake Bay, where chestnut trees would
have been visible beyond the shoreline.28 In 1525, Estêvão Gomes, a Portuguese pilot who
served for the country of Spain, sailed northward along the shores of New England, a voyage that
left behind little documentation but apparently influenced mapmakers for decades. According to
7
author Thomas Suárez, the map of North America drawn by cartographer Juan Bellero in 1554
contains considerable nomenclature from Gomes’s original voyage, including a reference to a
“chestnut grove” along the coast of Maine.29
Fernández de Oviedo, who wrote the very first natural history of the New World, made several
references to chestnuts in his recounting of the life of Lucas Vázquez Ayllón, the Spanish
licentiate who, in 1526, attempted to establish the colony of San Miguel de Gualdape along the
South Carolina coast. According to Oviedo--who based his narrative on the testimony of eyewitnesses--the forests near San Miguel possessed “many pine and oak trees…and chestnut trees,
with small fruit.” In an earlier passage, Oviedo noted that the Indians were great archers who
made “sturdy bows from the wood of chestnut trees, which were much more plentiful in the
interior.” Although the Oviedo account was not published until the mid-1800s century, the
original manuscript was written during the mid-16th century and remains one of the earliest
mentions of chestnuts in North America. 30 Of course it is more likely that the chestnuts
observed by Ayllon were chinquapins due to their close proximity to the Atlantic coastline.
British explorer John Lawson reported seeing chinquapins in a Sewee cabin along the Carolina
coastline in 1701, stating that chestnuts were never found “near the Sea or Salt Water, tho’ they
are frequently in such places in Virginia.”31
Probably the most well-known Spanish explorer to have encountered chestnuts during the 16thcentury was Hernando de Soto, the conquistador, who from 1539-1542, traversed the
southeastern United States in search of gold, silver, pearls, and other precious commodities.
8
Although there are four major chroniclers of the De Soto expedition, only two are purported to
be from direct eyewitnesses, and both make specific reference to the American chestnut.
Perhaps the most reliable of the two accounts is attributed to Rodrigo Ranjel, De Soto’s official
secretary during the expedition. Based on Ranjel’s own personal diary, the story was also retold
by Oviedo in his Natural History of the Indias.32 Ranjel’s first mention of chestnuts occurs very
early on in the expedition--August 15, 1539--after De Soto and a smaller contingent of his army
entered the Robinson Sinks area of northern Florida. In a “fair-sized village” that anthropologist
Charles Hudson thinks was the Alachuan township of Cholupaha, Ranjel reported that the De
Soto entourage saw “many small chestnuts, dried and delicious.” He also remarked that the small
shrubs that bore them were “only two palms high,” which meant they were Allegheny
chinquapins; the Castanea species that in northern Florida grows to a height of only one or two
feet.33 Some botanists consider the Allegheny chinquapin of northern Florida a separate species,
classifying it as Castanea alnifolia. Thomas Nuttall first described the species in 1817,
remarking that the shrub could be as little as “12 inches high.”34 Today the small tree is
commonly referred to as the Florida chinquapin and is found in dry, sandy soils across its range.
Ranjel did see larger chestnut trees during the expedition, however, and wanted readers to know
that they were not uncommon in the new Spanish territory. In the very next sentence quoted
above, Ranjel added that there were “other chestnuts in the land, which the Spaniards saw and
ate, which are like those of Spain, and grow on as tall chestnut trees.” This statement is clearly a
description of the American chestnut, perhaps the very first put to paper. Ranjel described the
trees as “big and with the same leaf and burrs or pods (as Spanish chestnuts), and the nuts are
rich and of very good flavor.”35
9
Later in the expedition--on October 17, 1540--De Soto and his men observed “an abundance of
chestnut bread made from chestnuts” at a large palisaded village along the Alabama River below
Selma, Alabama. The chestnut bread was reportedly brought by messengers from the chiefdom
of Mabila, a Mississippian township located somewhere in the vicinity of present-day Camden,
Alabama. 36 According to Ranjel, there “where many and good chestnuts” in the woodlands
surrounding Mabila, a fact corroborated by naturalist William Bartram, who in the Fall of 1775,
observed an “abundance of Chestnut” in the “vast open forest” that once comprised the BlackBelt region of Alabama.37
The second eyewitness account of the De Soto expedition, and the very first chronicle available
to the general public, is attributed to the Gentleman of Elvas, an anonymous Portuguese cavalier
who reportedly survived the ordeal and later retold his story to Spanish publisher André de
Burgos. When his A True Account of the Travails Experienced by Governor Hernando De Soto
was published in Evora, Portugal in 1557, it was believed to be based on actual notes Elvas “kept
during the expedition.”38 Although several scholars have rightly questioned the source of the
narrative, it does provide more detail than the Ranjel account, especially regarding descriptions
of the expedition route, including the crops, trees, and food supplies found near Native American
villages. In the book’s final chapter, Elvas is quoted as saying, “Wherever there are mountains,
there are chestnuts,” implying that the expedition members only observed the trees growing in
higher elevations. 39 In the very first English translation of the volume, published in 1609,
English historian Richard Hakluyt translates the sentence as “Where There Be Mountaines, there
be chestnuts: they are somewhat smaller than the chestnuts of Spaine.” 40 However, in the
10
original Portuguese text, the phrase actually reads: “Onde a hi serras ha castanhas, sam algūa
cosa mais meudas que as colharinhas d'Espanha.” 41 According to Michael J. Ferreira, Associate
Professor of Romance Philology and Linguistics at Georgetown University, this sentence
translates into modern English as “Where there are mountains, there are chestnuts, although they
are somewhat smaller than the colarinha chestnuts of Hispania.”42
Ferreira finds it somewhat perplexing that the more conventional Portuguese term for mountains
[montanhas] was not used by Elvas, especially if De Soto and his men did only observe the trees
in upland areas. He also maintains that there is the very real possibility that a “typo” was made
during the preparation of the volume, as the printer might have mistakenly replaced the letter “t”
with the letter “s” during typesetting, since the two fonts are almost identical in 16th century
typescript.43 Given that chestnut trees could be found in both lowlands and higher altitudes at the
time of the De Soto entrada, the Portuguese expression for lands--terras--was, in fact, a more
appropriate choice of words. The use of the word serras [mountain ranges], on the other hand,
may simply imply that chestnuts were seen in their highest concentrations in high upland
terrains, an observation that, in the 16th century Southeast, would not be entirely untrue. The
mention of “colarinha” chestnuts by Elvas is less surprising, as the cultivar was common
throughout central Portugal at the time, including the immediate area surrounding the town of
Elvas. Colarinha chestnuts are identified today by their larger size and small hilus collar
surrounding the base of each nut.44 Regarding “Hispania,” Elvas was referring not to Spain, but
to the entire Iberian Peninsula, which obviously included the Kingdom of Portugal.45
11
After De Soto’s death in 1542, the Spanish made additional entradas into the Southeast interior,
where they continued to encounter and record the presence of chestnuts and chestnut trees. In
August 1566, Florida’s governor Menéndez de Avillés ordered Captain Juan Pardo to lead an
expedition into the backcountry in order to protect the Spain’s growing colonial interests there.
After accepting his official orders, Pardo and his men traveled northward from Santa Elena--a
Spanish settlement located on the Carolina coast--toward the mountains of western North
Carolina.46 Along the way, Pardo stopped at several Native American villages, including
Cofitachequi, near present-day Camden, South Carolina, and finally, at Joara, a township located
near Morganton, North Carolina, about fifty-five miles east of here. At Joara, Pardo and his men
constructed Fort San Juan, a garrison considered to be the first European settlement in the
interior United States. Excavations at the site reveal that at least one of the barracks was
constructed using chestnut poles strategically placed around its exterior walls. A large chestnut
plank was also found inside the structure, a badly decayed board measuring some 50 inches long
and 10 inches wide. Covered with river cane matting, the board was most likely used by the
Spanish soldiers as an interior bench. It also represents the first documented use of chestnut
wood for lumber planking in all of North America.47
Although upwards of thirty men were garrisoned at Fort San Juan over an 18-month period,
Pardo was not, as he returned to Santa Elena almost immediately after his initial arrival. On
September 1, 1567, Pardo began a second expedition to Joara, a journey that included overnight
stays at several Native American villages along the route.48 According to eyewitnesses, as Pardo
and his men arrived in each town, the Indians provided them with considerable provisions, as
several villages possessed storerooms filled with “maize, beans, pumpkins, and chestnuts for two
or three years ahead.”49 Among the eyewitnesses was Teresa Martín, a native Catawban who had
12
apparently married one of Pardo’s soldiers, Juan Martín de Badajoz, during the expedition. In
testimony provided to Florida Governor Gonzalo Canço in 1600, Martín reported that the
chestnuts given to Pardo and his men were “castaña apilado,” meaning they were “smoke-dried”
over a smoldering fire.50 This method of chestnut preservation, which had been perfected as early
as the 11th century in Europe, not only extended the shelf-life of the nuts, but also the flour or
meal made from them.51 Because the term castaña apilado is used consistently by Martín and
other eyewitnesses of the Pardo expedition, we have reason to believe that chestnuts were, in
fact, eaten year-round by Indians of the interior, consumed as an important foodstuff well beyond
the fall and winter months.
In late September, when Pardo finally arrived at Fort San Juan, he found the fort partially
abandoned, and his principal sergeant, Hernando Moyano de Morales, under attack at a distant
location. With hopes of rescuing Moyano from hostile Indians, Pardo lead a foray of men over
the Blue Ridge Mountains before stopping at the confluence of the French Broad and Nolichucky
rivers in east Tennessee. Pardo’s notary, Juan de la Bandera, wrote that the men saw “very good
land” during their ten-day journey, including “many chestnuts, walnuts, and quantities of other
fruits.”52 After successfully rescuing Moyano, Pardo’s and his entourage chose a different return
route along the eastern flank of Chilhowee Mountain, and by mid-October, was camped near the
junction of Walden and Cove Creeks. There they were visited by three chiefs from the
surrounding area, among them an individual named Otape Orata. According to anthropologist
Charles Hudson, the word Orata translates as chief or headman, whereas Otape is the
“Muskogean word referring to chestnut trees or a place where they may be found.”53 Hudson
thinks the village was located somewhere along the headwaters of the Little Pigeon River, near
13
the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, an area historically noted for its large and numerous
chestnut trees.
Despite the efforts of De Soto, Pardo, Menéndez, and others, the Spanish would eventually lose
their strategic foothold on the American Southeast, thereby allowing the English to establish
permanent settlements along the Atlantic coast. The first of these settlements was at Roanoke
Island, the English colony founded by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1584. Although there was a brief
expedition to Roanoke a year earlier, on August 17, 1585, Sir Ralph Lane and more than a
hundred colonists were left on the island to maintain a small fort and develop closer ties with the
neighboring Algonquin Indians. 54 Among them was Thomas Harriot, an historian and
ethnographer assigned to make a detailed record of the natural resources to be claimed by the
future colony of Virginia. Although a second group of colonists would be left at Roanoke in
1587 (the so-called Lost Colony), Harriot departed the island in the summer of 1586, when Sir
Francis Drake, who had just returned from sacking the Spanish town of St. Augustine, arrived
and offered the colonists safe passage back to England. By 1587, Harriot was in Ireland, writing
A Brief and True Report of the New Founde Land of Virginia, a short treatise summarizing his
explorations of Roanoke Island and the surrounding mainland.55
Published in 1558, Harriot’s A Briefe and True Report states that American chestnuts were
indeed among the foodstuffs regularly consumed by both the North Carolina Algonquians and
first English colonists. In fact, the full title of the section containing the reference to chestnuts
reads: “Suche Commodities as Virginia is known to yeelde for victuall and sustenance of mans
life, usually fed upon by the natural inhabitants: as also by us during the time of our abroad.” The
14
first commodity listed under the heading “Of Fruites” is the American chestnut, which Harriot
explains, was found “in diverse places great store: some they use to eat rawe, some they stamp
and boile to make spoon meat, and some being sodden they make such a manner of dowe bread
as they use for their beans.”56 According to Harriot, the Algonquians had two ways of preparing
chestnuts beyond simply eating them raw: they could turn them into a polenta-like porridge by
adding the ground chestnuts to boiling water; or they could add water to the ground chestnut
meal to make a dough mixture that could be later cooked over hot coals. Although there are few
if any eyewitness accounts from the early colonial period describing the precise method of
preparing chestnut bread, the end product most likely resembled a Middle Eastern flatbread, as
leavening agents are mostly absent in chestnut flour.57
Nearly a half-century later, Captain John Smith, the first governor of the Jamestown Colony, also
makes mention of chestnut bread, implying it was prepared for native elites and for special
occasions. In his well-known 1612 publication A Map of Virginia, Smith wrote that chestnuts
were “boyled [for] four hours” in order to yield “a broth and bread for their chiefe men, or for
their greatest feasts.”58 Smith is also the first English writer to specifically mention chinquapins,
and in doing so, reveals the Algonquin origins of the word. Smith noted that the Virginia colony
possessed “a small fruit growing on little trees, husked like a Chestnut, but the fruite most like a
very small acorne. This they call Chechinquamins, which they esteeme a great daintie.” 59
Nineteenth century anthropologist William Gerard thought the origin of the term chinquapin
derived from the Powhatan word for “rattle-nut” (chitshi-kwe-men) as the nuts were often “used
by the Indians in their squash-shell rattles.” According to Gerard, the change of the suffix min to
pin, “occurred at the beginning of the last quarter of the 17th century.” 60 Captain Smith was
apparently impressed with the flavor of American chestnuts, noting that they were often
15
preferred over European varieties. “In some parts,” wrote Smith, “were found… Chestnuts
whose wild fruit equalize the best in France, Spaine, Germany, or Italy,” especially for
individuals who “had tasted them all.”61 Smith also observed that chestnuts were “dryed to keep”
and suggested the preservation method allowed the nuts to “live a great part of the year.”62
Samuel de Champlain was another early European observer of American chestnuts, as he
recorded seeing groves of the trees during his numerous excursions across the St. Lawrence
River Valley during the early 17th century. On July 14, 1609, as Champlain traveled along the
lake he would later name after himself, he made note of a place along the eastern shoreline that
possessed “many chestnut trees.”63 Historians have deduced that Champlain’s chestnut grove
was located near Burlington Bay, just south of Winooski River, as the species was reported to
inhabit the area as late as the mid-19th century.64 Six years later, as Champlain made his way
around the southeastern end of Lake Ontario, the French explorer reported seeing another large
grove of chestnut trees in the area, near what is today the Sandy Creek State Forest in Oswego
County, New York. As it was the first week of October, Champlain remarked that the chestnuts
there were still in their burrs, and after sampling the nuts, declared them “of good flavor.”65 The
location of the trees is also documented in Champlain’s map of 1632, which was published in his
Voyages de la Nouvelle France Occidentale Dicte Canada Faits par le Sr. de Champlain
[Voyages to Western New France, called Canada, Made by Sieur de Champlain, Paris: Claude
Collet, 1632]. The book contains descriptions of specific locations depicted visually on the map,
all of which are identified by the letters A through Z, and numbers 2 through 95. Represented by
the number “93,” Hudson’s chestnut forest [Bois des Chastaigniers] is shown north and east of
the area where the Salmon River flows into Lake Ontario.66
16
Perhaps the most endearing reference Champlain makes to the American chestnut is found in his
engraved map of 1612, which was published the following year in his book The Voyages of
Samuel de Champlain. Ostensibly drawn to depict the territory and settlements of New France,
the Champlain map contains a decorative cartouche of North American plants, including the
American chestnut.67 According to museum curator Victoria Dickenson, Champlain created the
cartouche to illustrate the nuts and berries “that figured among the food or medicinal plants of
the Aboriginal inhabitants,” as well as document the things the explorer “ate, might have dried
and sketched, or even attempted to bring back to France to be planted in Old World gardens.”68
Although we know that Champlain both ate and sketched chestnuts, there is little evidence that
he or other European explorers took the trees or nuts back to Europe. Most botanists thought the
American trees to be identical, if not closely related to the European chestnut, and would
continue to do so for at least another two centuries. And because Europeans believed the
American nuts to be smaller, there was an additional incentive not to transport the trees across
the Atlantic. Europeans had been cultivating chestnuts in orchard settings for centuries, and
possessed long-held cultural beliefs regarding the trees proper growth and management.
Nonetheless, the American trees were certainly a welcomed resource that, in the short-term,
provided them with a predictable and familiar form of nutritional sustenance.
The American chestnut appears to have actually expanded its range during the second half of the
17th century, even increasing its presence in some parts of New England and the Mid-Atlantic.
This was due, in part, to the natural spread of the trees into newly disturbed areas caused by
17
summer and winter storms, as well as the general clearing of woodlands (formerly void of
chestnut) by both European colonists and Native Americans. The virtual elimination of the
beaver in New England and parts of the Mid-Atlantic as a result of the European fur trade also
positively impacted the American chestnut, as the ubiquitous beaver dam and pond had been
responsible for diminishing some of the tree’s habitat. Heavier annual rainfall amounts also
increased the number and size of chestnut trees in forests along the Atlantic seaboard, which
were beginning to recover from more than a century of severe and periodic droughts. 69
Abandoned Native American agricultural lands was another reason for the increase in the
number of chestnut trees in eastern forests, as diseases like smallpox, measles, and influenza—
which were introduced by into North America by Europeans during the 16th and 17th centuries—
eliminated as much as 90% of the native population in some areas.70
Of course the impact of colonial settlement on North American forests varied from region to
region, occurring first in New England and the Mid-Atlantic, and later in the Southeast. In
general, wooded areas were cleared first along the coast, and then gradually westward or
northward toward the fall line. In heavily cultivated agricultural areas, such as the Chesapeake
Tidewater, land clearance did not happen all at once, as nearly 80% of the interior woodlands
remained intact prior to 1740.71 While this percentage would certainly change over the next
several decades, beyond the coastal settlements the American chestnut did not seem to be
adversely impacted by forest clearance for another half-century.72 In the interior backcountry,
upland forests witnessed few dramatic changes prior to the mid-1700s, providing additional
opportunities for explorers and settlers to observe chestnut trees in their native splendor. In the
Appalachians, the American chestnut would continue to flourish over large swaths of territory,
18
including high-altitude areas largely void of human settlement. In many locales, old-growth
stands of chestnut remained essential habitat for a variety of big and small game animals,
including elk, deer, bear, turkey, grouse, passenger pigeon, and several species of squirrels. As
colonial settlement moved westward, these animals, in turn, provided nutritional sustenance to
literally tens of thousands of individuals, as well as predictable incomes for pioneer settlers and
fur traders alike. Chestnut timber and chestnuts would also remain important fixtures throughout
the frontier period, and help build a nation that appeared--at least in the late 18th century--to
possess an inexhaustible supply of natural resources.
19
ENDNOTES
1. 1. Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. Minneapolis, Minnesota,
University of Minnesota Press, 2001, pp. 27, 36, 56, 114-117, 152-157; Owain Jones and Paul
Cloke, Tree Cultures: The Place of Trees and Trees in Their Place, New York, NY: Oxford
International, 2002, p. 5-15; Kit Anderson, Nature, Culture, and Big Old Trees. Austin, TX:
University of Texas Press, 2003, pp. 1-12, 150-157. For the historical role that forests played in
the economy, culture, and settlement of America, see, for example, Michael Williams,
Americans and Their Forests: An Historical Geography, New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1992; Eric Rutkow, American Canopy: Trees, Forests, and the Making of a Nation, New
York, NY: Simon and Shuster, 2012.
2. New York Times, “The Costly Blight of the Chestnut Canker, May 31, 1908, p. 4;
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Final Report of the Pennsylvania Chestnut Tree Blight
Commission, Harrisburg, PA: 1914; 121 pages; G.F. Gravatt, Chestnut Blight, Farmers’ Bulletin
No. 1641, U.S.D.A: Washington, DC, 1930:1-17; E. George Kuhlman, “The Devastation of
American Chestnut by Blight.” In Proceedings of the American Chestnut Symposium, College of
Agriculture and Forestry, West Virginia University, Morgantown, West Virginia, January 4-5,
20
1978, pp. 1-3; George H. Hepting, “Death of the American Chestnut,” Journal of Forest History,
Vol.18, 1974, pp. 60-67; Joseph R. Newhouse, “Chestnut Blight,” Scientific American 9 (July
1990): 106-111.
3. Although the popular literature on the American chestnut is extensive, these publications
represent some of the best attempts at describing the tree’s impact on American life and culture:
Arthur H. Graves, “The Future of the Chestnut Tree in North America,” The Popular Science
Monthly (June, 1914): 551-566; Eyvind Thor, “The American Chestnut, 1973,” The
Environmental Journal (September 1973): 9-12; Stephen Nash, “The Blighted Chestnuts,”
National Parks (July/August 1988): 14-19; M. Ford Cochran, “Chestnuts—Making a
Comeback?,” National Geographic, Vol. 177 (February 1990): 128-140; Ellen Mason Exum,
“Tree in a Coma,” American Forests (November/December 1992): 21-59; Donald E. Davis and
Margaret Brown, “I Thought the Whole World was Going to Die: The Story of the American
Chestnut,” Now and Then (Spring 1995): 30-31; Corby Kummer, “A New Chestnut,” The
Atlantic Monthly (June 2003): 119-122; Chris Bolgiano and Glenn Novak, eds., Mighty Giants:
An American Chestnut Anthology, Bennington, Vermont: American Chestnut Foundation, 2007.
4. Donald Edward Davis, Where There Are Mountains: An Environmental History of the
Southern Appalachians, Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2003, pp. 192-198; Cory Joe
Stewart, “Chestnut Blight,” in Rudy Abramson and Jean Haskell, eds., Encyclopedia of
Appalachia, Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 2006; pp. 111-112; K.L. Burke,
“History of Chestnut Survival in the Appalachians,” Journal of the American Chestnut
Foundation, Vol. 21 (Fall 2007): 18-25; Scott Osborne, “The Influence of the American
Chestnut in Appalachian History and Culture,” Journal of the American Chestnut Foundation,
21
Vol. 24 (June 2010): 12-15; ibid, “The Influence of the American Chestnut in Appalachian
History and Culture, Part II, Journal of the American Chestnut Foundation, Vol. 24 (July 2010):
12-15.
5. A July 2012 search of the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), the Federal
Government’s database of U.S. geographic nomenclature, revealed 1,167 chestnut place names
in the tree’s native range c. 1800. Several place names were eliminated due to duplication or as a
result of an obvious reference to the surname Chestnut. The national GNIS database does not list
roads or boulevards in the official repository, so streets are not included in the above tally. A
July 2012 Google search of “Chestnut Street” (with apostrophes) yielded 9,250,000 results. For a
more scholarly discussion of chestnut place names and their distribution in the U.S., see Songlin
Fei, “The Geography of American Tree Species and Associated Place Names,” Journal of
Forestry 105 (March 2007): 89-90, Fig. 5.
6. Ramseur quoted in Bethany N. Baxter, “An Oral History of the American Chestnut in
Appalachia,” Master’s Thesis, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, 2007, p. 15.
7. William Stryker, The Affair at Egg Harbor, New Jersey, October 15, 1778, Trenton, NJ: Naar,
Day & Naar, 1894, pp. 8-9, 16, 25-27; Leah Blackman Tuckerton, Old Times in Little Egg
Harbor, Fifty Years Ago, Little Egg Harbor, NJ: Tuckerton Historical Society, 2000, p. 185-190.
Chestnut Flats, a small community in northwest Georgia, is one of dozens of locales where one
could observe the trees growing at altitudes of less than 1,000ft above sea level, James Alfred
22
Sartain, History of Walker County Georgia, Lafayette, GA: A.M. Mathews and J.S. Sartain,
1972, p. 279.
8. New York Times, “Cheap and Lasting Monuments,” July 9, 1859, p. 6.
9. The Morning Herald, “Roland Park,” Classified Advertisement, May 3, 1893, p. 4.
10. The Sun, October 19, 1902, p. 7.
11. Samuel Farmer quoted in Lewiston Evening Journal, Lewiston, Maine, February 28, 1893, p.
4.
12. Susan Freinkel, American Chestnut: The Life, Death, and Rebirth of the Perfect Tree,
Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007; Chad McGrath, “The Perfect Tree,” sidebar
article in Exum, “Tree in A Coma,” p. 59.
13. Philip L. Buttrick, American Forestry 21 (October 1915), p. 961.
14. Boston Daily Globe, “Story of the Roasted Chestnut,” October 23, 1904, p. 41; Lawrence
Daily Journal, “The Chestnut Roaster, November 25, 1904, p. 7; The Milwaukee Sentinel, “The
Hot Chestnut Man,” December 13, 1912, p. 11. See also Scott Enebek. “The Holiday Nut,” The
World and I (December 1990), pp. 333-334.
23
15. Boston Evening Transcript, November 15, 1989, p. 4.
16. Frederick Law Olmsted, A Journey in the Backcountry, 1853-1854, New York, NY: Mason
Brothers, 1860, p. 224; Karen Cecil Smith, Orlean Puckett: The Life of a Mountain Midwife,
1844-1939, Boone, NC: Parkway Publishers, 2003, pp. 58-59, 65; Ralph H. Lutts, Like Manna
From God: The American Chestnut Trade in Southwestern Virginia, Environmental History 9
(July 2004): 501-503.
17. Marie Washburn quoted in Baxter, “An Oral History of the American Chestnut in
Appalachia,” p. 22.
18. Bradford Torrey, ed., The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, 1859-1860, Boston: Houghton
Mifflin and Company, 1906, pp. 400, 406.
19. Roland D. Sawyer, “New Hampshire’s Most Friendly Trees,” The Granite Monthly: New
Hampshire’s State Magazine 52 (August 1920), p. 334. While Sawyer found the chestnut
bouquet a “delicate” one, he added that the blossoms possessed “an odor that mosquitoes do not
like,” making the ground beneath the trees “a fine place to camp.” See also Inez N. McFee, The
Tree Book, New York, NY: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1919, p. 193.
20. Wilbur G. Zeigler and Ben S. Grosscup, The Heart of the Alleghenies, or Western North
Carolina, Raleigh, NC: Alfred Williams & Company, 1883, p. 194.
24
21. U.S.G.S., Geographic Names Information System (GNIS). Accessed July 15, 2011. The town
of Castanea, Pennsylvania derives its name from the Latin term for chestnut, castanea, which is
also part of the tree’s scientific name, Castanea dentata. The ridges above the town were home
to large numbers of chestnut trees and the town’s train depot also served as a major transfer point
for chestnuts shipped to major cities along the east coast.
22. Watershed texts in early environmental history include, Alfred Crosby, The Columbian
Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press,
1972; Donald Worster, Nature’s Economy: The Roots of Ecology, San Francisco, CA: Sierra
Club Books, 1977; Carolyn Merchant: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution, San
Francisco, CA: Harper & Row, 1980; Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World: A History of
the Modern Sensibility, New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 1983; William Cronon, Changes in the
Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England, New York, NY: Hill and Wang,
1983.
23. See, for example, Michael Pollan, The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World,
New York, NY: Random House, 2001; Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural
History of Four Meals, New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2007.
24. Alfred Crosby, The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492,
Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1972; Charles C. Mann, 1493: Uncovering the New World
Columbus Created, New York, NY: Vintage, 2012, pp. xxii-xxiv.
25
25. David A. Taylor, Ginseng, the Divine Root, Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books, 2006.
26. This number was derived by adding the total surface area of all states and provinces within
the proposed range of the American chestnut and then subtracting the proportion of the surface
area comprised of lakes, ponds, streams, and rivers. Sources include eyewitness accounts, fossil
pollen records, botanical studies, deed records, and the many witness-tree surveys cited
throughout the text. Numerous published sources also corroborate this as the natural range of the
American chestnut, including George B. Emerson, A Report on the Trees and Shrubs Growing
Naturally in the Forests of Massachusetts, Boston, MA: Dutton and Wenworth, 1846, p. 165;
Alvan W. Chapman, Flora of the Southern United States, New York, NY: Ivison, Phinney &
Company, 1865; Charles S. Sargent, A Catalogue of the Forest Trees of North America,
Washington, DC: U.S. Department of the Interior, 1880, p. 54; William P. Corsa, Nut Culture in
the United States, Embracing Native and Introduced Species, U.S. Department of Agriculture,
Division of Pomology, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1896, p. 77, 78;
Henry A. Gleason, “Additional Notes on Southern Illinois Plants,” Torreya 4 (1904): 167-170.
27. Paul Hoffman E., “Lucas Vázquez Ayllón’s Discovery and Colony,” in Charles Hudson and
Carmen Chaves Tesser, eds., The Forgotten Centuries: Indians and Europeans in the American
South, 1521-1704, Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1994, pp. 36-38; Paul E. Hoffman,
A New Andalucía and a Way to the Orient: The American Southeast During the Sixteenth
Century, Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 2004, pp. 8-12. Although
palynological studies along the South Carolina coastline record trace amounts of Castanea pollen
dating to the early modern era, the source of the pollen is likely the Allegheny chinquapin.
26
28. Douglas T. Peck, “Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon’s Doomed Colony of San Miguel de Guadalpe,”
The Georgia Historical Quarterly 75 (Summer 2001), pp.186-187.
29. Thomas Suárez, Shedding the Veil: Mapping the European Discovery of America and the
New World, River Edge, NJ: Scientific Publishing, 1992, pp. 92-93, Plate 20.
30. Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdéz, Historia General y Natural de las Indias, Islas y
Tierra Firme del Mar Océano, Volume II, Part II, Madrid, Spain: Real Academia de la Historia,
1853, pp. 631, 629. The translations in the quoted text were made by Donald E. Davis, with the
assistance of Ms. Liliana Silva, a native Spanish speaker.
31. Chinquapins are frequently mentioned in the historical record along the Carolina coast,
especially in the accounts of Native American subsistence practices, Lawson, A New Voyage to
Carolina, London: J Knapton, 1709, p. 17.
32. Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés, Historia General y Natural de las Indias, Islas y
Tierra Firme del Mar Océano, Volume One, Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 1851, pp.
544-577.
33. Hudson, Knights of Spain, 106.
27
34. Nuttall, The Genera of North American Plants, and a Catalogue of the Species to the Year
1817, Volume II, Philadelphia, PA: D Heartt, 1818, p. 217. It is further described and illustrated
as the “Dwarf Chestnut” in François Michaux and Thomas Nuttall’s The North American Sylva,
published in Philadelphia in 1842, Michaux and Nuttall, The North American Sylva, Volume 4,
Philadelphia, PA: J. Dobson, 1842, pp. 24-25, Plate VI.
35. Oviedo, Historia General y Natural de las Indias, Volume One, p. 551.
36. ibid., p. 568.
37. Mark Van Doren, ed., The Travels of William Bartram, New York, NY: Dover Publications,
1955, p. 321. For additional commentary on Bartram’s route through southern Alabama, with
specific references to chestnuts, see Francis Harper, ed., The Travels of William Bartram, New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1958, pp. 403-404, 410-411, 472, 501.
38. Patricia Galloway, “The Incestuous Soto Narratives,” p. 18. An original copy of the Relaçam
Verdadeira is found in the John Carter Library at Brown University and has recently been
digitized for public viewing. See
http://openlibrary.org/books/OL24609510M/Relaçam_verdadeira_dos_trabalhos_q_ue_ho_goue
rnador_do_m_Ferna_n_do_d_e_Souto_e_certos_fidalgos_port. Accessed May 18, 2012.
39. Robertson, True Relation, Vol. I, p. 311.
28
40. Richard Hakluyt, ed., Virginia Richly Valued by the Description of the Maine Land of
Florida, Her Next Neighbor: Out of the Foure Yeeres Continuall Travell and Discovrie, Four
Above One Thousand Miles East and West of Don Ferdinando de Soto and Sixe Hundred Able
Men in His Companie…,” London: Felix Kyngston for Matthew Lownes, 1609, p. 178.
41. Ferreira, personal communication, April 11, 2012.
42. Ferreira, personal communication, April 14, 2012.
43. According to Ferreira, “it was not uncommon at the time to have such typos: between the
author and the text were the editor (Andrés de Burgos) and, at least, one assistant,” personal
communication, June 6, 2012. Dr. González-Seoane of the Instituto da Lingua Galega, Santiago
de Compostela, Spain, similarly thinks “terras” was likely the intended word-choice in the Elvas
manuscript, González-Seoane to Ferreira, personal communication, April 13, 2012.
44. Damiano Avanzato, ed., Following Chestnut Footprints: Cultivation and Culture, Folklore
and History, Traditions and Uses, Scripta Horticulturae No. 9, Leuven, Belgium: International
Society for Horticultural Science, 2009, pp. 106-111; Rita Costa, et al., Chestnut Varieties in the
North and Central Regions of Portugal, European Union Agricultural Report 448, Lisbon,
Portugal, Instituto Nacional des Recursos Biologicos, 2008, p. 39; Santiago Pereira-Lorenzo, et
al., “Chestnut,” in Marisa Luisa Badenes and David H. Byrne, eds., Handbook of Plant
Breeding: Fruit Breeding, Vol. 8, New York, NY: Springer, 2012, p. 741, Table 19.6: “Most
Important Portuguese Cultivars of C. Sativa.”
29
45. Ferreira, personal communication, June 6, 2012.
46. J.G. Johnson, “The Spaniards in Northern Georgia during the Sixteenth Century, Georgia
Historical Quarterly 9 (June 1925),pp. 159-168; Mary Ross, “With Pardo and Boyano on the
Fringes of the Georgia Land,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 14 (December 1930), pp. 267-285;
Chester DePratter, Charles Hudson, and Marvin T. Smith, “The Route of Juan Pardo’s
Explorations in the Interior Southeast, “The Florida Historical Quarterly 62 (October 1983), pp.
125-158; Robin A. Beck, “From Joara to Chiaha: Spanish Exploration of the Appalachian
Summit Area, 1540-1568,” Southeastern Archaeology 16 (Winter 1997), pp. 165-168; Margaret
Pickett and Dwayne Pickett, The European Struggle to Settle North America, Jefferson, NC:
McFarland & Company, 2011, pp. 17-46, 91.
47. Lee Ann Newsom, “Wood Remains from Structures 1 and 5 at the Berry Site,” in Robin A.
Beck, David G. Moore, and Christopher Rodning, Joara and Fort San Juan, pp. 89-90, 94-95,
Figs. 77, 78, Table 1. It is my own assertion that the sawn chestnut plank was used as a bench
inside the structure. Archaeologists working at the site have not, to date, ventured an informed
guess as to its primary use.
48. DePratter, Hudson, and Smith, “The Route of Juan Pardo’s Explorations,” p. 135-142;
Charles Hudson, The Juan Pardo Expeditions: Explorations of the Carolinas and Tennessee,
1566-1568, Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2005, pp. 32-35.
30
49. Ross, “With Pardo and Boyano,” p. 277. Ross’s source for the quote is a 1600 document
entitled Ynformacion hecha de Oficio ante Don Gonzalo Mendez de Canço, Gobernador de las
Provincias de la Florida, Sobre la situación de la Florida, Sobre le Situación de la Fama y sus
Riquezas y de la Publicación de Yngleses that was copied from the original and is found in the
Archivo de General Indias in Seville, Spain (AGI 54-5-9), Fol. 17. Historian Woodbury Lowery
also deposited a hand-written copy of the document in the Library of Congress during the early
20th century. I have utilized the copy transcribed by Lowery, “Spanish Settlements in the United
States, 1522-1803,” Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Container 5, Teresa Martín to
Don Gonzalo Mendez de Canço.
50. Martín Alonso Pedraz, Encyclopedia del Idioma: Diccionario Histórico y Moderno de la
Lengua Española (Siglos XII al XX), Vol. I, Madrid, Spain: Aguilar, 1958, p. 420. According to
Alonso, the adjective “apilado” refers specifically to chestnuts that have been “secada al
humo”—“smoke dried.” I am deeply indebted to Paul E. Hoffman for sharing this source as well
as his expert advice in translating several relevant portions of the Canço letters.
51. On the history and process of drying chestnuts in Europe, see Pennsylvania Forestry
Association, “The Chestnut Harvest and Manufacture of Chestnut Meal,” Forest Leaves 9
(1903), pp. 73-75; Bruce, Ecologies and Economies in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, pp.
39-42; Antoinette Fauve-Chamoux, “Chestnuts,” in Kenneth Kiple and Kriemhild Ornelas, eds.,
The Cambridge World History of Food, online edition:
http://www.cambridge.org/us/books/kiple/chestnuts.htm. Accessed June 11, 2012.
31
52. Paul Hoffman, trans., “The ‘Short’ Bandera Relation,” in Hudson, Juan Pardo Expeditions,
p. 302. A more contemporary, albeit brief summary of the Pardo entrada (which includes a brief
discussion of its impact on the environmental history of Appalachian region) is found in Timothy
Silver, Mount Mitchell and the Black Mountains: An Environmental History of the Highest Peaks
in Eastern North America, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2003, pp. 52-54.
53. Hudson, Juan Pardo Expeditions, p. 104. See also Karen Booker, Charles Hudson, and
Robert Rankin, “Place Name Identification and Multilingualism in the Sixteenth–Century
Southeast,” Ethnohistory 39 (Autumn 1992), p. 429.
54. Richard Hakluyt, The Voyages, Navigations, Traffiques, and Discoveries of the English
Nation, Vol. III, London: George Bishop, Ralfe Newberie, and Robert Barker, 1600, p. 243.
55. Original documents confer that “Master Hariot” was among those who “remained one whole
yeere in Virginia, under the Governement of Master Ralph Lane,” Hakluyt, The Principall
Navigations, Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation, London: George Bishop and Ralph
Newberie, 1589, p. 736. Pickett and Pickett, The European Struggle to Settle North America, pp.
103, 107, 111.
56. Thomas Hariot, A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia, New York,
Dodd, Mead, & Company, 1903, folio 12, verso.
57. Wayne Gisslen, Professional Baking, Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2013, pp. 61, 154,
167, 721.
32
58. Edward Arber, ed., The Works of Captain John Smith, 1608-1631, Birmingham, UK, The
English Scholar’s Library, 1884, p. 58.
59. ibid., p. 57.
60. William R. Gerard, “Virginia’s Indians Contributions to English,” American Anthropologist
9 (January-March, 1907), pp. 89.
61. Arber, ed., The Works of Captain John Smith, p. 56.
62. ibid.
63. Samuel de Champlain, Voyages du Sieur de Champlain, Vol. I, Paris: Government of France,
1830, p. 194. In 17th century French the phrase actually reads: force châtaigniers. An English
version of the text, originally published in the late 19th century, also translates the phrase as
“many chestnut trees,” Henry Percival Bigger, ed., The Works of Samuel de Champlain, 16081613, Vol. II, Toronto: The Champlain Society, 1925, p. 91.
64. William Henry Harrison Murray, Lake Champlain and its Shore, Boston, MA: De Wolfe,
Fisk and Company, 1890, p. 216. Further evidence that Champlain was in the Burlington Bay
area comes from the 19th century physician Clinton Hart Merriam, who noted that it was possible
to see Red squirrels swim “easterly” across Lake Champlain in that general vicinity “in years
33
when the yield of chestnuts is large,” Merriam, The Vertebrates of the Adirondack Region,
Northwestern New York, New York, NY: L.S. Foster, 1884, p. 119.
65. Henry Percival Bigger, ed., The Works of Samuel de Champlain, 1615-1618, Vol. III,
Toronto: The Champlain Society, 1929, p. 63.
66. See Samuel Champlain, Voyages de la Nouvelle France, Part 3, p. 7. A digital copy of the
1632 volume is available from Gallica Bibliothéque Numérique:
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k2139088/f1.image. Accessed June 15, 2012.
67. Samuel de Champlain, “Carte Geographique de la Nouvelle Franse Faictte Par Le Sieur De
Champlain…1612,” in Les Voyages du Sieur de Champlain Xaintongeoisi, Capiotaine ordinaire
pour le Roy, en la marine, Paris: Jean Berjon, 1613, David Hackett Fischer, Champlain’s Dream,
Toronto: Random House of Canada, 2009, p. 787; Osher Map Library and Smith Center for
Cartographic Education, “The Cartographic Creation of New England,” University of Southern
Maine, Portland, Maine, http://usm.maine.edu/maps/exhibition/2/2/sub-/samuel-de-champlainand-new-france. Accessed June 16, 2012.
68. Victoria Dickenson, “Cartier, Champlain, and the Fruits of the New World: Botanical
Exchange in the 16th and 17th Centuries,” Scientia Canadensis: Canadian Journal of the History
of Science, Technology and Medicine 31 (2008), p. 38.
34
69. David W. Stahle, et. al., “The Lost Colony and Jamestown Droughts,” Science 280 (April 24,
1998), pp. 564-567; Karen Ordahl Kupperman, The Jamestown Project, Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 2008, pp. 169-174; Stockton Maxwell, et. al., “A Multicentury
Reconstruction of May Precipitation for the Mid-Atlantic Region Using Juniperus virginiana
Tree Rings,” Journal of Climate 25 (February 2012), pp. 1045-1056. Dendrochronologist Neil
Pederson, of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, has observed
exceptional tree “recruitment” (an increase in the number of new trees) in areas across the
eastern U.S. during the second half of the 17th century, personal communication, April 30, 2012.
In a dendrochronological study of a single old-growth timber stand in the Allegheny National
Forest of northern Pennsylvania, as many as twenty chestnut trees became part of the local forest
canopy between 1640 and 1660, A. F. Hough and R.D. Forbes, “The Ecology and Silvics of
Forests in the High Plateaus of Pennsylvania,” Ecological Monographs 13 (July 1943), p. 311,
Fig. 10. For the impact of beavers on the colonial landscape, see Carolyn Merchant, Ecological
Revolutions: Nature, Gender, and Science in New England, Chapel Hill, University of North
Carolina Press, 1989, pp. 36-38.
70. On Native American population losses, see Sherburne Cook, The Indian Population of New
England in the Seventeenth Century, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1976, pp. 1314, 31-37, 46-47; Henry F. Dobyns, Their Number Become Thinned: Native American
Population Dynamics in Eastern North America, Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press,
1983, pp. 8-32; Marvin T. Smith, Archaeology of Aboriginal Culture Change in the Interior
Southeast: Depopulation during the Early Historic Period, Gainesville, FL: University of
Florida Press, 1987, pp. 55-60; Russell Thornton, “Population History of Native North
35
Americans,” in Michael R. Haines and Richard H. Steckel, A Population History of North
America, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000; Peter H. Wood, “The Changing
Population in the Colonial South,” in Gregory Waselkov and Thomas Hatley, eds., Pohawtan’s
Mantle: Indians in the Colonial Southeast, Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 2006,
pp. 57-132.
71. Grace Somers Bush, “Forests Before and After the Colonial Encounter,” in Philip D. Curtin,
Grace S. Brush, George W. Fisher, eds., Discovering the Chesapeake: History of an Ecosystem,
Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 2001, pp. 47, Fig. 3.1, 51-52, Fig. 3.2.
Environmental historian Gordon G. Whitney maintains that “the earliest phases of forest
clearance on the East Coast were extremely slow,” and that much of the landscape “required at
least a hundred years to clear 50% of the land,” From Coastal Wilderness to Fruited Plain: A
History of Environmental Change in Temperate North America from 1500 to the Present,
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 153.
72. Although American chestnut was probably being harvested for the illegal timber trade in
northern New Jersey as early as the 1630s, few records of those activities remain. See Emily B.
Russell, “Vegetation of Northern New Jersey Before European Settlement,” The American
Midland Naturalist 105 (January, 1981), p. 6; John Perlin, A Forest Journey: The Role of Wood
in the Development of Civilization, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991, pp. 301307. Pollen studies document an increase in the prevalence of the American chestnut in much of
colonial America, even in areas heavily impacted by 17th and 18th century settlement, including
New England and the Virginia and Maryland Tidewater, David R. Foster and Tad M. Zebryk,
36
“Long-Term Vegetation Dynamics and Disturbance History of a Tsuga-Dominated Forest in
New England,” Ecology 74 (1993), pp. 990, Fig. 12, 993; Emily W.B. Russell, People and the
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