Indian old field

Indian Old Field, or simply Old Field, was a term used in Colonial American times and up to the early 19th Century United States, by white explorers, surveyors, cartographers and settlers, in reference to land formerly cleared and utilized by Indians for farming or occupation. The term appears in many old maps and land documents, often persisting for many decades. It also remains in a number of present-day place names of the Eastern US.

Infectious disease epidemics may partially explain why these areas were abandoned in advance of the arrival of white observers. These outbreaks killed in excess of 90% of the population in the hardest hit areas of North America in the wake of initial European contact.

Pioneer settlers, in applying for their land grants, exhibited a strong preference for sites located along major trails and particularly those coinciding with these Old Fields. Thus, early land survey plats emphasized these features and many place names from New England south to Florida represent vestiges of these places.

A mid-18th Century visitor to the colony of South Carolina noted:

"There are dispersed up and down the country several large Indian old fields, which are lands that have been cleared by the Indians, and now remain just as they left them. There arise in many places fine savannahs, or wide extended plains, which do not produce any trees; these are a kind of natural lawns, and some of them as beautiful as those made by art. [cite book | author = Glen, James| title = "A Description of South Carolina; containing many curious and interesting particulars relating to the civil, natural, and commercial history of that colony", London, R. & J. Dodsley; Reprinted in Chapman J. Milling (ed.), Colonial South Carolina: Two Contemporary Descriptions by Governor James Glen and Doctor George Milligen-Johnston (South Carolina Sesquicentennial Series, No. I, Columbia, S.C.: 1951)| year = 1761|]

"Old Field" place names

*Old Field, New York
*Old Fields, West Virginia
* Ocmulgee Old Fields, Georgia
*Indian Old Fields, originally "Eskippathiki", last Indian town in Kentucky

References