Books:
Shepard Krech, The Ecological Indian.
J. Donald Hughes, American Indian Ecology.
Shepard Krech, in The Ecological Indian, claims that the common European image of Native Americans living in “balance” with nature is based largely on myth. The presence of a newly discovered race of humans in the New World, he says, automatically triggered a false recognition in the imaginations of Europeans, of beings living in an “earthly paradise”. He describes how this image stayed with us through hundreds of years, enjoying much exposure in more recent decades of “counterculture” and environmental movements, coming to represent the antithesis of the polluting white person. Krech states that this dynamic is a construct of environmental and political publicists.
J. Donald Hughes, on the other hand, describes how the Indians’ way of life was firmly dovetailed with the surrounding ecology, illustrating their remarkable adaptability in vastly different continental biomes. The complex web of ritual, law and taboo stands as testament to the value the Indians placed upon their natural environment, where myriad uses were found for the simplest objects. Hughes depicts the coming of the Europeans as a degradation of this spiritual but ultra-utilitarian existence, documenting the rapid decline of (native) human and non-human populations after contact had been made.
Krech explains how modern ecologists have found the so-called “balance of nature” to be virtually non-existent. He cites the new paradigm, that ecology doesn’t necessarily “climax”, and that we have no reliable way of predicting the behaviour of systems. Chaos prevails, he says, and goes on to question whether there really are systems, in a bounded, physical sense. So, he says, the Indians couldn’t have chosen to “tread lightly”, even if they’d wanted to. Hughes dispenses with such philosophising, choosing instead to focus on what we do know. We know that this population managed to survive for many thousands of years, by recognising it was merely part of the whole, and that it was as much food for the whole as the whole was food for it. This resulted in a culture of respect and foresight, mindful of the finite nature of material and energy, regardless of which biome the Indian consciousness found itself in. There was always a solution to issues of nutrition and reproduction, and if it wasn’t sustainable, it wasn’t a solution.
Early in his book, Krech gives mention of the Cahokians and the Anasazi, who inhabited the two largest population centres (and who therefore constitute the two largest and easiest targets). He discusses their exhausting of resources and subsequent dissolution as a people, but there is no hard evidence that environmental degradation was the actual cause of these regions entering decline. Hughes tells how these towns have stood for centuries, and how the population of a town would divide and move if there was too much population pressure on productive land, as in the Oraibi forming a town in Moenkopi. It is more likely that war and climate change played major roles in these dissolutions.
Krech mentions that, generally, indigenous people hadn’t clustered in large population centres, nor become industrialised, and says this is responsible for Europeans’ vision of an “Eden” in North America. This supports Hughes’ perspective of a non-capitalist, harmonious people, who deliberately kept their numbers dilute relative to their world, and who, in Kech’s words, “were fully capable of transformative action in ecosystems they knew intimately.” That they chose not to, despite occupying these lands for ten millennia, is obvious: Hughes cites a Cherokee legend in which the animals worried that humans were becoming too numerous and burdening Mother Earth, as well as Pueblo observance of sexual continence and other examples of abstinence.
The belief that the Plains Indians contributed to the decline of plains buffalo populations is a major point of contention. Krech acknowledges that, because of the great numbers, the effects of natural disasters were magnified, but still maintains that Indians engaged in wasteful slaughter of buffalo. The animal’s importance to the Indians resulted in highly efficient hunting techniques, allegedly leading to surpluses where thousands were “left to rot where they fall.” This is a reference to the Indian practice of driving the bison over cliffs, or corralling them into pounds, where they were then systematically butchered. He also quotes Henry Hind, who, in 1857, came upon the remains of buffalo, each of which “deprived of its tongue and hump only”, and who saw Cree Indians constructing a new pound due to their old one being packed with dead animals, generating an overwhelming stench. Hughes counter-quotes, from sources that state that the Indian “would have looked upon it as sacrilege to destroy more than barely sufficient to supply the wants of his family.” (R.B. Marcy, 1850). Hughes says the buffalo may have been stripped of the best pieces only in exceptional circumstances, and that the bones were sometimes simply too heavy to transport, giving the illusion of wastefulness. He also says that the practice of buffalo hunting was strictly governed by military-police societies, such as the Cheyenne Dog Soldiers, and that people faced “severe punishments” if discovered hunting animals outside the announced tribal hunts. There are accounts of “disposable” corrals being burned as fuel once the hunt was over, as well as numbers as low as “41 animals” killed out of a herd of 2000. Both authors describe the tremendous versatility of the buffalo as a source of both food and material; the Indians had almost 100 major uses for these products, from boxes and chests, to spoons, moccasins and water buckets, as well as innumerable ornamental uses. The same is true of all other animals hunted.
Krech’s quote from Henry Brackenridge (“they have among them…..all the diversity of characters that exists among the most refined people”) is a refreshing truth. However, this does not take into account overall culture, specifically that culture which emphasises hozho, or environmental harmony – a Navajo expression. People are indeed people, and it is a fact that if they live in a culture committed to hozho, then even those who are without a natural inclination in this regard are bound to observe its tenets
Most of the clans were named after, and felt intimately related to, animals, according to Hughes. Tlingit Indians would refer to the bear as “my father’s brother-in-law”, which compares to “the mysterious interrelatedness of all that is” experienced by Lakota Sioux during the sacred pipe ceremony. The entire Indian world was steeped in rituals and taboos, including the giving of a speech to a bear that was about to be, or had been, killed. When an animal was captured, the hunter would apologise to it, and explain the needs of his tribe. Awareness of nutritional requirements was high. To offend the source of survival was to die. It was a dangerous thing to laugh or use obscene language during the hunt, and the first animal caught was often released, in order that it conveyed the needs of the Indians to its own “tribe”. These were people situated deep in the ecological web, who were, at a gut level, part of the material and energy flow in that world. Nowhere else do we see this utter reverence for the fellow energy-packets that represent the kaleidoscope of nature. In the absence of alcohol and the presence of psychotropic substances, this awareness can only have been intensified.
It is difficult to believe Krech’s claims that these people were capable of mindless slaughter, and that the image of the Indian as environmentalist is a myth. Their well-established belief system (which knew no tribal bounds) was steeped in the language of respect and moderation. The poems of the Sioux, Pawnee and others quoted by Hughes rival those produced by the so-called Zen Masters of 8th Century China in their simplicity, depth and clarity. The Buddhists have long been courted by the West for the wisdom they can offer us, but it seems that we may have as rich if not richer a source of inspiration right on our doorstep. The medicinal properties of New World plants has always been a topic of interest to the chemical-Eurocentric West, and the opportunity to discover even a miniscule percent of this knowledge is dwindling fast. An accurate climate record of the Americas is surely contained in the thousands of stories told for millennia by these people. The histories of the great civilisations, such as the Cahokians and Anasazi lie embedded in scholarly accounts and stories, akin to our own documentation of Ancient Egypt or Babylon.
Four hundred languages and traditions were reduced to a handful, and millions of people were decimated by alien diseases from a crowded, filthy continent far away – a tragedy second to none in history. Westerners should be proud and humbled to call the American Indian one of their own, and the study of these still mysterious people has yet to be truly realised by the academic establishment.