Earley 1
Secrets
of the Longleaf Pine video
- natural or modified by native Americans
- biological diversity
the early botanical explorers such as the
Bartrams looked most of all at soils
- longleaf pine barrens had sandy thin soil
- longleaf also grew in richer soils, it was fire that made
it dominant
- but they were rich in grasses and flowers
- they were monotonous
early settlement of South Carolina:
- A land grant including present day North and
South Carolina in 1629 was never settled
- a second grant including North and South
Carolina and Georgia in 1663 led to the settlement of
Charles Town in 1670
- economic base was first the fur trade, some
tobacco, then rice and indigo
- and naval stores: pitch, tar, and turpentine
- settlers sought to bring the plantation
system from the Caribbean
- Charles Town was a major early center of
the Native American and
African slave
trade (Native Americans primarily 1680-1720)
- starting in the 1730s there was an effort to
encourage white settlement in the backcountry by offering
free land
The rest of this first section of the book is focused more
on understanding the ecosystem than on the human history