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3 In 1800, the land we call Indiana was just being settled by immigrants, and many Native Americans still occupied much of the territory. Indiana would become a state a few years later, in 1816. At that time, David Thomas (1819) in Travels through the Western Country in the Summer of 1816 provided an interesting look at the habitat. A dam and mill were being built in 1816 by Major Abraham Markle on Otter Creek, in what is now Vigo County. Thomas stated that everything to the north of the dam was Indian country. The mill burned in the 1930s, but the dam still exists (it has been repaired a few times). The dam is about a half-mile east of North Terre Haute, and is just above a major rock outcrop. It is situated in such a way that the water flowing over the dam provides a deep pool just below the dam and keeps the rock bare, providing bare rock habitat with some stones. Downstream are areas of progressively smaller rock fragments, then gravel, and finally the silt and sand bottom which forms most of Vigo County. The construction of this dam almost 200 years ago created a habitat which continues to have by far the greatest biodiversity of any stream in Vigo County (108 species of fish taken there to date), and one that could be unrivaled in the state. Indiana in 1800 consisted of 3 main habitats: forest (some 20.4 million acres) comprised 90% of the state; prairie (approximately 2 million acres) made up 10% of the state; and approximately 5.6 million acres of wetlands (25% of the state) were embedded within the forest and prairie. The state has now greatly changed. Although Markle ’s dam is still present and still affects the habitats and fish of Otter Creek, most of the Native Americans are gone, the forest is much reduced, many of the wetlands have been drained, and only scattered fragments of the original prairie remain. Much of the land is now agricultural. Forest covers only 25% (4.3 million acres) of the land, and many kinds of development are progressively eating away at the remaining natural lands, and also at the farmlands. Clearly, it is time, after 200 years of development by European settlers, with countless changes to the habitats and to the species present (introductions, increases, decreases, extirpations, extinctions) and ever-increasing rates of development (about 101,000 acres per year in Indiana in 2000), to document what was, what is, and where we might be heading from here, including how fast the changes are occurring. This should give future observers some baseline data for comparison. 1800. The 22,958,877 acres of land contained within Indiana have changed dramatically in the more than Land Use and Human Impacts on Habitats 1 200 years since 1800. They had undoubtedly been changed by several thousand years of Native American occupation prior to 1800, but our knowledge of this is limited. The early pioneers from the eastern United States found villages, camping places, dancing floors, burial grounds, earthworks, gardens, and large corn fields, particularly in the northern half of the state. The Native Americans also had an extensive trail system throughout the state (Parker 1997). Native Americans practiced extensive agriculture in Indiana prior to European settlement with crop fields of several hundred acres found around villages during the military expeditions of the late 1700s (Whicker 1916). Crops were grown in natural openings , or in forest clearings created by deadening large trees and using fire to clear the understory (Latta 1938). New clearings were made as soil productivity declined. The process of clearing, burning, cropping, abandonment, and forest regrowth strongly influenced forest structure in localized areas of Indiana. Native Americans also burned grasslands to attract and move game animals such as deer, bison, and elk (McCord 1970). The burning of grasslands releases nutrients, resulting in more succulent vegetation for 1–2 growing seasons. Such fires maintained prairies and savannas throughout much of the state, and also changed forest structure over large areas of the Indiana landscape by favoring the regeneration of fire-tolerant species, such as oaks and hickories. While Native Americans were important in affecting the plant and animal communities in Indiana , their estimated population of 20,000 in 1800 indicates the yearly combined extent of their farming activities would have been small, and a total of considerably less than 100,000 acres was under cultivation statewide. However, their use of fire influenced...

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