Abstract: We collected multiple historical documents including gazettes, government archives, traveling notes and so on, from which the primary natural vegetation information is complied.Using the information, the primary natural vegetation pattern prior to significant agriculture (i.e.late 17th century) was reconstructed.The results show that woodland and grassland were dominant vegetation over the Northeast China in the late 17th century.Woodland occupied the mountain areas, of which the northern of the Da Higgan Mountains was occupied by boreal forest, southern of the Changbai Mountains were covered by temperate broadleaf deciduous forest and the other mountains were occupied by mixed forest.Grassland covered Northeast China Plain and Inner Mongolia Plateau.The boundaries between woodland and grassland were nearly consistent with topography contour lines.Besides, swamp had small area and nearly covered the whole Sanjiang Plain.The macro pattern of historical nature vegetation was similar with the potential natural vegetation; however, the boundaries of woodland and grassland from the two datasets were evidently different and there was no swamp in potential natural vegetation dataset.