Much of what we “know” about Native Americans comes from after they were almost wiped out by European diseases. From Early Calif. was Native American killing field:
University of Utah anthropologist Jack Broughton concluded in a paper published this month that California wasn’t always a lush Eden before settlers arrived in the 1700s to find an astonishing abundance of wildlife.Instead, from 2,600 to at least 700 years ago, native people hunted some species to localized extinction and wildlife returned to ‘fabulous abundances’ only after European diseases decimated Indian populations starting in the 1500s.
By the mid-1800s, geese and ducks “were so abundant you could kill them with a club or stick.”