GW's sources are trade press and from only the settlers's POV to start with and among other errors, this stuck me early in the essay:
" Before the horse, bison hunting was essentially a “hit or miss” proposition. Occasionally a herd could be led over a cliff killing hundreds of animals. Still, the right circumstances, including an available cliff site and a nearby herd that one could stampede over it, were relatively rare. Hunters could sometimes kill large numbers of bison mired in deep snow by approaching on snowshoes, but again the circumstances were relatively rare. All of these were like winning the lottery; as anyone buying a lottery ticket today knows, most never result in a win." This is unsupported and in conflict with current research. This passage also demeans the thousands of years native people hunted; yes, the horse changed everything but American Indians were not the "primitives" portrayed. No sources given for his claims and no mention of the stone hunting wall technology of the Plain Tribes. However, there is this from wiki: " Charles C. Mann wrote in *1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1491:_New_Revelations_of_the_Americas_Before_Columbus>*, pages 367 ff, "Hernando De Soto's <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hernando_de_Soto> expedition staggered through the Southeast for four years in the early 16th century and saw hordes of people but apparently didn't see a single bison." Mann discussed the evidence that Native Americans not only created (by selective use of fire) the large grasslands that provided the bison's ideal habitat but also kept the bison population regulated. In this theory, it was only when the original human population was devastated by wave after wave of epidemic (from diseases of Europeans) after the 16th century that the bison herds propagated wildly. In such a view, the seas of bison herds that stretched to the horizon were a symptom of an ecology out of balance, only rendered possible by decades of heavier-than-average rainfall. Other evidence of the arrival circa 1550–1600 in the savannas of the eastern seaboard <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_savannas_of_the_United_States> includes the lack of places which southeast natives named after buffalo."[2] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bison_hunting#cite_note-2>[3] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bison_hunting#cite_note-Juras1997-3> The wikipedia article goes on to examine other hunting strategies recorded by native peoples as well as using scholarly sources. With 30+ books under his belt, you would have thought Wuerther would be aware of the work done. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bison_hunting -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#9091): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/9091 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/83419535/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
