River Cane

Expansive stands of river cane were seen by early travelers in the mountains.Some wereseveral hundred yards wide and several miles long. River cane was used in almost every aspect of Mississippian and Cherokee material culture and required annual harvests of tens of thousands of stalks. It is likely that Native Americans set periodic fires along mountain riverbottoms to encouragedcane growth (Davis 2000).

River cane along Cumberland
River. Whitely County, Kentucky

River cane normally propagates itself via protected underground shoots, so the periodic burning of the mature stalks causes the plant to spread quickly, choking out other competing vegetation. Aided by the release of phosphorous, potash, and other essential nutrients from the accumulating ashes, river cane would have dominated riparian bottomlands in the Southern Appalachians, growing to remarkable heights and widths. F.A. Sondley reported that canebrakes along the French Broad River in North Carolina once extended for many miles (Sondley 1930). James Adair once observed a herd of150 horses in a single Blue Ridge canebrake (Davis 1993).

The most conspicuous change to come about as a result of early frontier settlement and trade on the mountain landscape was the loss of the regions many canebrakes. River cane was extremely valuable as a livestock food source, since very few native grasses could survive year-round in the shaded understory of the upland forest. In fact, James Adair observed places in the Cherokee country where the perennial reed was no longer growing abundantly as early as the 1750s (Adair 1775). As late as 1816, Major John Norton reported seeing lush stands of the reed in the extreme southern end of the region, where the cane enabled the Cherokees to raise cattle with less effort (Klink and Talman,1979).

By the early20th century, most of the great canebrakes had vanishedfrom the Southern Appalachians and along with them numerous species dependent upon the plant, including the threatened swamp rabbit. This once dominant ecosystem regime is now found only in a small portion of our bottomland forests,but there are some local efforts to restore canebrakes on public and private lands.