The Art of John Uibel

Kudzu believe in Magic?

Smallpox, smallpox everywhere and not a crop to harvest. Er something.

Basically the premise is this: Indians planted the vast chestnut, walnut, beachnut and hazelnut (masta) forests of the North American East Coast. Then they created the savannahs of the Great Plains as a great continental holding pen for wandering large animals. The Amazonian basin? Just dem Indians practising eco-agriculture on a scale the size of France and Spain combined. Maize? who knows how it got here (earth), but Indians knew what to do with it. Incan string theory? Knot!

Then Columbus & Co. established a beachhead with pigs, runny noses, and religious intolerance. The neighborhood was never the same.

The book is thorough, if exhausting in its account of how all those stampeding herds of buffalo, flocks of carrier pigeons and mats of kudzu flourished beyond belief once disease destroyed their predators (indians) and cleared the way for them and hundreds of other indigenous and foreign species to run amok.