Interesting story Louis but how do you account for the practice
whereby some tribes in the plains used to stampede whole herds
of bison over cliffs as a quick way of killing them and then
picking only bits and pieces of the bodies below. Incredible
waste and lack of concern for their natural
This, along with the disappearance of the saber-tooth tiger, is another one
of those "gotchas" that figures prominently in the right-wing repertory.
Hutchinson, in "Remaking of the Amerind", wrote that the Crow once drove
700 buffalo off the edge of a cliff. This anecdote has made the rounds of
An anecdote: An Aymara farmer once said here to a friend of mine:
"God forgives always, people sometimes, but nature never."
Tom Kruse / Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia
Tel/Fax: (591-42) 48242
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date sent: Tue, 27 Jan 1998 10:26:55 -0800
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From: James Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject:Re: Ecology and the American Indian
Devine writes:
With the development of the classical empires (Aztecs
Jim Devine:
In the Amazon,
there have been tribes that have been characterized as "extremely nice" by
outsiders (whites) just over a mountain or across a wide river from those
characterized as "extremely fierce."
This muddies the discussion. We are not talking about head-hunting but
Louis,
This largely reasonable posting would be more accurate
if "Indian" was modified by "many" or "most". This
generalizing about all Native American Indians is a bit
much. They identified themselves by tribes which varied
substantially from one to another in language, ethnicity,
Well, this is now the third list I am replying to
Louis P. on this on. Don't disagree fundamentally, but
find this generalized romanticization of "Indians" a bit
much. There is and was a lot of diversity among tribes on
many grounds. Many fit this idealized view that Louis
presents,
At 09:03 AM 1/27/98 +1100, you wrote:
Interesting story Louis but how do you account for the practice
whereby some tribes in the plains used to stampede whole herds
of bison over cliffs as a quick way of killing them and then
picking only bits and pieces of the bodies below. Incredible
waste
A visit to Cahokia (across the river from St. Louis) is fascinating in and
of itself and also for the evidence it provides that the large number of
residents there overused the local resources, which then led to its
decline. There may have been other factors, such as climate, but the
decline took
My impression from reading various anthropological works is that the
American Indians initially were far from in "harmony with nature" when they
first came to what we call the "New World." Thus various species of animals
became extinct, though it's quite possible that other animals (including
Jim Devine:.
I am far from being an expert on this stuff. I would appreciate factual
evidence for and against -- plus logical criticisms of the theory above.
In a couple of weeks I plan to write extensively about Mariategui, the
great Peruvian Marxist who believed that the ayllus could
Dear Friends,
But isn't it the case that in precapitalist societies, there is nothing
inherent in the societies which leads to the destruction of nature. On
the contrary, there appear to be many what we might call social
reproductive mechanisms designed to insure some sort of ecological
Barkley Rosser;
One famous counerexample to the view that Indians were
always "in harmony with nature" is the high probability
that the extinction of the sabre-tooth tiger and several
other large mammals in North America probably resulted from
overhunting arising from the initial
The last sentence of my reply to Louis P. should have
said that this did not imply that later tribes did not use
ecologically sound practices.
Another clear counterexample is the self-destructive
behavior of the Mayans. Not all Indians were or are the
same.
Barkley Rosser
On Mon,
Indian religious beliefs are intrinsically ecological since they regard
nature as sacred. The various tribes who inhabited North America before the
European invasion had been here for tens of thousands of years, where they
developed economically sustainable hunting-and-gathering economies that
I am generally in sympathy with Louis Proyect's
posting on ecological attitudes/practices of American
Native Indians in contrast with the European
invaders/settlers. But I fear that he overdoes both the
unity of views among Indian tribes and the universality of
these views among them.
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