Villages highlighted in green principle trails in red and waterways in blue. Map of American Indian trails and villages of Chicago, and of Cook, DuPage and Will counties in 1804. They also quickly came to understand the significance of the trails, adapting them for commercial and military purposes. Incoming European settlers, including French trappers traveling to the area during the 17th and 18th centuries, depended on this knowledge for survival. Indigenous tribes passed down their understanding of the land’s natural features through oral traditions. These high points held obvious value: most of the land was swampy, and very little stayed dry year-round. Those natural high grounds, rising no more than 10 or 15 feet above the rest of the terrain, became some of the pathways used by Native peoples as they began to inhabit the area about 11,000 years ago. Through the process of littoral drift, where small bits of sand and organic matter drifted from place to place on the tide, small but distinct ridges were etched into the land. ![]() Over the course of four distinct periods of glacial melting, stretching as far back as 14,500 years ago, Chicago’s terrain was shaped by the ebbs and flows of melting ice. We haven’t gotten much in exchange John Low Natural roots, indigenous routes ![]() Native people gave European settlers the ways and means of transportation.
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