Nurturing the Land - Harvesting Beauty
People AND nature created Spring Valley's natural landscape out of a desire to protect native plants and animals. These natural areas also serve as a living classroom to help today's and future generations learn about ecology and the local landscape.Using land to provide beauty and to serve the goal of conservation is quite different from many past uses of the land, such as hunting, farming, and extraction of minerals. Take a trip back in time to learn about the past relationships people had with this Midwestern landscape.
The First People
Evidence of the first people in Illinois dates back about 12,000 years, soon after the glaciers retreated. The climate became warmer and drier at that time, creating grasslands that were home to large herds of bison, deer, elk, and many smaller mammals. These early people were hunters who followed the migrating herds and gathered wild plants for food. They lived in temporary shelters and used tools made from wood, stone, and bone. Remains of these early tools provide evidence that these people lived here; however, their impact on the landscape was relatively minor.
Fire Shapes the Landscape
Archaic native Indian people learned early on how to use fire to manipulate the landscape. They used seasonal fires to clear away brush and undergrowth in forested areas, improve growth of grasses in order to attract grazing animals, drive animals during the fall hunts, and promote the growth of certain plants used for food and medicine. By the time Europeans arrived in America, there was evidence that native people were burning portions of the landscape on a fairly regular basis, particularly during autumn.Even as the climate became wetter in Illinois and trees began to spread into the grasslands, fire served to limit the spread of forests and maintained the prairie grasslands.
Illinois' First Farmers & Traders
Native American people were cultivating squash and other wild plants as far back as 7,000 years ago. When corn, beans and other plants were introduced via trade from Central America around 1,000 years ago, communal agriculture began to flourish. Many cultures began to settle into semi-permanent villages in order to tend their crops, a job usually overseen by the women. Men continued to hunt the surrounding land for wild game, and foraging for wild plants also continued.Trade routes connected settled areas throughout the continent, primarily following waterways. Traders travelling to Illinois were able to bring highly prized seashells, obsidian, copper, and seeds for new crops from other parts of the country.
Trading Wildlife for Wealth
From the early 1600s until around 1830, most of the Europeans coming to Illinois were fur traders. Animal furs, mainly beaver but also fox, wolf, buffalo, and others, fueled the first great commercial enterprise in the American heartland. Native people did most of the trapping and hunting, and the traders provided them with valuable manufactured goods - axes, knives, cooking pots, and guns - in exchange for the furs.The desire of Native people to acquire manufactured goods, which they could not obtain otherwise, led many to spend less time hunting, foraging, and growing crops. This disrupted the traditional livelihoods and seasonal rhythms of these Native cultures.
Green Pastures, Fenced Fields
During the period from 1820 until around 1860, settlement of Illinois' prairie landscape occurred rapidly. After cutting trees for homes and barns, the first thing many settlers did was fence fields to pasture their livestock. Illinois' expansive grasslands proved beneficial for cattle and horses, as the nutritious native grasses were plentiful and available for harvesting.Most native grasses mature during summer, so the best time to cut hay was in May or June. Settlers also planted European cool season grasses with which they were more familiar, and these transplants often replaced the natives in fallow crop fields.
From Marshlands to Croplands
The abundance of wet, marshy areas in much of northern Illinois meant that farmers were unable to plow and cultivate these wetlands. In the latter years of the 19th century, clay drain tiles were mass produced, and crews traveled the countryside, selling their services to farmers who wished to drain their wetlands. These crews would trench and then lay miles of drain tiles through seasonal wetlands in order to dry out the soils sufficiently for cultivation.There is evidence that Schaumburg-area farmers often resisted the expense of draining fields and opted to continue the practice of harvesting wild 'marsh hay' from these wet prairies on their land. By the 1920s, though, the cost-benefit of drainage made more sense, and many area wetlands were drained.
The Plow & the Prairie
The first settlers to break the prairie sod found the work to be difficult and time-consuming. The thick soil and dense tangle of plant roots defied the iron plows available at the time, even when pulled by a team of strong oxen. John Deere's development of the steel moldboard plow in 1837 changed everything! This new plow cut through the prairie sod easily. Within a generation, settlers had spread into most of Illinois' countryside and the native prairies were quickly replaced by cultivated crop fields. Today, less than 1/10th of one percent of Illinois' original native prairie remains.
