THE LITTLE ICE AGE IN THE NORTH AMERICAN CORDILLERA AS RECONSTRUCTED FROM DOCUMENTARY SOURCES

Earth is a constantly-changing planet. As humans have come to dominate the globe, we have changed the physical landscape to suit our own needs. This idea of change, through time, represents a key concept for the purposes of this thesis. Our present-day climate is not uniform over time, and several oscillations have occurred over the millennia. The “Little Ice Age,” taking place from approximately A.D. 1500 to 1850, was one such oscillation of climate. Furthermore, humanity tends to keep written records of its activities. People record observations of weather, business transactions, extreme situations, and where they have traveled.

It is possible to better understand past changes of climate by examining these written records left behind by people. The fur trade era on the North American Continent represents a period of time when people left an indelible impact on the environment, recorded significant meteorological-observations, and wrote about their journeys westward over the mountains and to the Pacific Ocean. With this in mind, an examination of the Little Ice Age (from A.D. 1793 to 1842) in the North American Cordillera was possible by conducting a narrative analysis of fur traders’ and explorers’ journals for meteorological observations, and then comparing these with the contemporary instrument-record.

The term “Little Ice Age” (LIA) currently refers to the period just after the Middle Ages, and beginning before the “warm period of the first half of the twentieth century.” Matthes originally coined the term “Little Ice Age” when he described it as an “epoch of renewed but moderate glaciation which followed the warmest part of the Holocene.” The glaciers of the Sierra Nevada in California were the focus of Mat...

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