Were American Indians Really Environmentalists? read and give your opinion :?

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Were American Indians Really Environmentalists?
By Thomas E. Woods
Posted on 7/19/2007
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The traditional story is familiar to American schoolchildren: the American Indians possessed a profound spiritual kinship with nature, and were unusually solicitous of environmental welfare.

According to a popular book published by the Smithsonian Institution in 1991, "Pre-Columbian America was still the First Eden, a pristine natural kingdom. The native people were transparent in the landscape, living as natural elements of the ecosphere. Their world, the New World of Columbus, was a world of barely perceptible human disturbance."

If we are to avert environmental catastrophe, the not-so-subtle lesson goes, we need to recapture this lost Indian wisdom.

As usual, the real story is more complicated, less cartoonish, and a lot more interesting.

In his 1992 book Earth in the Balance, then-Senator Al Gore cited a nineteenth-century speech from Chief Seattle, patriarch of the Duwamish and Suquamish Indians of Puget Sound, as evidence of the Indians' concern for nature. This speech, which speaks of absolutely everything in the natural world, including every last insect and pine needle, as being sacred to Seattle and his people, has been made to bear an unusually heavy share of the burden in depicting the American Indians as the first environmentalists.

The trouble for Gore is that the version of the speech he cites is a fabrication, drawn up in the early 1970s by screenwriter Ted Perry. (Perry, to his credit, has tried without success to let people know that he made up the speech.) Still, it was influential enough to become the basis for Brother Eagle, Sister Sky, a children's book that reached number five on the New York Times bestseller list in 1992.

Earlier versions of the speech, also cited by environmentalists, are suspect for reasons of their own. But experts say that the intention of Chief Seattle is clear enough, and that it wasn't to say that every created thing, sentient and non-sentient, was "holy" to his people, or that all land everywhere had an equal claim upon their affection. "Seattle's speech was made as part of an argument for the right of the Suquamish and Duamish peoples to continue to visit their traditional burial grounds following the sale of that land to white settlers," explains Muhlenburg College's William Abruzzi. "This specific land was sacred to Seattle and his people because his ancestors were buried there, not because land as an abstract concept was sacred to all Indians." Writing in the American Indian Quarterly, Denise Low likewise explains that "the lavish descriptions of nature are secondary" to the purpose of Chief Seattle's argument, and that he was saying only that "land is sacred because of religious ties to ancestors."

Environmentalists who have cultivated the myth of the environmental Indian who left his surroundings in exquisitely pristine condition out of a deeply spiritual devotion to the natural world have done so not out of any particular interest in American Indians, the variations between them, or their real record of interaction with the environment. Instead, the intent is to showcase the environmentalist Indian for propaganda purposes and to use him as a foil against industrial society.

The Indians' real record on the environment was actually mixed, and I give the details in my new book, 33 Questions About American History You're Not Supposed to Ask. Among other things, they engaged in slash-and-burn agriculture, destroyed forests and grasslands, and wiped out entire animal populations (on the assumption that animals felled in a hunt would be reanimated in even larger numbers).

On the other hand, the Indians often succeeded in being good stewards of the environment — but not in the way people generally suppose.

Although we often hear that the Indians knew nothing of private property, their actual views of property varied across time, place, and tribe. When land and game were plentiful, it is not surprising that people exerted little effort in defining and enforcing property rights. But as those things became more scarce, Indians appreciated the value of assigning property rights in (for example) hunting and fishing.

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"The real story is more complicated, less cartoonish, and a lot more interesting."

In other words, the American Indians were human beings who responded to the incentives they faced, not cardboard cutouts to be exploited on behalf of environmentalism or any other political program.

In some tribes, family- and clan-based groups were assigned exclusive areas for hunting, which meant they had a vested interest in not overhunting, and in making sure enough animals remained to reproduce for future years. They likewise had an incentive not to allow people from other families and clans to hunt on their land. In the Pacific Northwest, Indians assigned exclusive fishing rights that yielded a similar kind of stewardship: instead of catching all the salmon, some were left behind with an eye to the future. Whites who later established control over salmon resources unfortunately neglected this important Indian lesson.

Indians have not always recalled that lesson themselves. Consider the Arapahos and Shoshones on Wyoming's Wind River Reservation, who in recent years (and with the help of all-terrain vehicles and high-powered rifles) have all but wiped out entire animal populations. Whatever happened to their spiritual kinship with nature?

In fact, this is the predictable result when wildlife is said to belong to everyone. There is no incentive to preserve any stocks for the future, since anything you might leave behind will simply be killed by someone else. Without property rights in hunting, there is no way (and no incentive) for anyone to prevent such short-term, predatory behavior. That's why Indian tribes assigned these exclusive rights — it was the best way to preserve animal species and provide for the future.

Say, doesn't this lost Indian wisdom bear repeating?


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Thomas E. Woods, Jr., is a resident scholar at the Mises Institute. He is the author of 33 Questions About American History You're Not Supposed to Ask. His other recent books include The Church and the Market: A Catholic Defense of the Free Economy, The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History (a New York Times bestseller) and How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization. Send him mail. See his archive. Visit his website. Comment on the blog

Answer 1

I am not sure how to respond to such a long statement posed as a question.

Certainly the Indians lived closer to nature than we do. But nature is not what city people think it is. It is not nearly as nice and clean as they think. And the Indians knew this.

And I agree, that environmentalists are just using these stories for the propaganda value. Image is everything in politics.

Answer 2

The anti-Mormon argument citing DNA isn't worth the paper it's written on. Joseph Smith made mention of that point (interesting because had he made up the book of Mormon he might not have had some changes in his opinion over his lifetime as to where the story took place and which civilizations were involved - as this would have been the first thing he determined had he made it all up). For a fascinating article google " When Lehi's Party Arrived in the Land, Did They Find Others There?" After reading that article I'm not sure how anyone can stick with the "sole inhabitant" theory - which would also imply people walking from southern Argentina to Alaska faster than a person could drive that distance today. Obviously there are others in the america's during this time frame as the land is always mentioned as ending at "borders of . . ." Check my second link for a good rebuttal of the ignorant DNA debate that some Christians use as a suicide bomb (because it completely destroys the bible IF their science were correct).

Answer 3

Environmentalist by the modern terminology that you are referring to the answer is, no. Archeologists are digging up tons of American Indian trash, items of no value, for years. Items such as; remains of stone tool manufacturing, animal processing, and food caches while a true environmentalist would have little or no waste. While on the subject, let us discuss burial mounds. Moving tons of earth into one spot will disturb the natural ecology of the area; a true environmentalist would not do this.

Environmentally speaking the American Indian and todays “white man” are no different. Each uses what they need and throws the rest away. What is different is that the “white man” today has industrial waste which will not decompose, where as the American Indian used stone, wood, and skins to meek out a living, which will decompose after time.

Good luck with your rhetorical question.

Answer 4

Things were good before the HORSE came. Before it used to take 4 men to bring back a buck. Doe were not hunted even then. 4 men just out of sheer weight. We'd take what we needed, there wasn't much storage of food going on.

when the horse came, it was possible to drag the deer back by just 1 man.

The broad sweeping generalizations in this statement are beyond arrogant and disgusting.

My people did not think if you killed one 10 would just sproud out of the ground. I don't know of any tribe that believes this. It COULD be, but it's not mine.

There is no 'NATIVE AMERICAN WAY"

There are Miwok ways, Lakota Ways, Quamash ways etc.

Slash and burn? LOL
I seriously hope they're not thinking about the Clearing fires we lit on an annual basis to keep the fuel loads down in the forest. It works like this.
Dead wood = fire wood.
Pine needles, leaves, brush, = lightning strike, by by camp, deer, water, etc.

'entire animal populations' Like we all own helicopters and can see how many there are in an area.

Common thought, they moved on for the season.

It's a lot of generalization, speculation and outright LIES.

Answer 5

Everyone should know that Indians took great care of the Land and actually wasted very little of anything.
I am certain that most (not only) Indians would like to see a return to an older time.
Like living of the Land being at one with Nature,
There are many others that have had these ties to Nature,
The Maori tribes of NZ , The Congo tribes and the Indians in the Amazon delta.
Unfortunately because of our very destructive "civilization"
that will not be possible.
Maybe after the next ice age..???

Answer 6

Your ignorance and racism is showing !
The 'natives' were here for many centuries with no long term harm to the environment. When hunting ,they didn't go after just the biggest trophy animal ! They only hunted for pure survival,and if a hunter did get a larger than usual animal ,his pride was in the fact that more people would share in the feast ! They didn't waste anything ! We have garbage dumps !

Answer 7

I'd like to say they were in general, but running entire heards of buffalo off a cliff likely left some wasted meat/hides/etc. behind.

Answer 8

Sure, and clinton is a moderat, and obama not muslim, and the tooth fairy will bring you a new corvet tonight. just keep watching!!!!