Subject: **FROM NEW PERSPECTIVES TO NEW REALITIES** ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Comments: Native Americans had vast influence on those early American writers who promoted a conservation ethic. Joseph Bruchac's talk at the National New Perspectives workshop took an in-depth look at the influence of Native American peoples on David Thoreau, Roderick Nash and others. As we grapple with the redefinition of conservation and the rethinking of land ethics today, we should take a few moments to contemplate Bruchac's perspective. This week and all others we should be grateful for the contribution by Native Americans to our emerging awareness of a 21st century conservation esthetic (as Aldo Leopold might have phrased it). 6 pages... Dve. -------========X========------- NATIVE CULTURES AND THE FORMATION OF THE NORTH AMERICAN ENVIRONMENTAL ETHIC* by Joseph Bruchac When the first Europeans arrived in North America, they had no idea of what we now call a "conservation ethic." They viewed the land, the plants, and the animals upon it as resources to be fully harvested, like cutting a field of grain. The idea of leaving some for the future so that the resource would be sustained was not in the minds of the market hunters who killed off the great buffalo heards, exterminated the passenger pigeons, and reduced the bird and animal populations of many parts of North America to the point in the early 1900's where even such now common birds and animals as the eastern whitetail deer and egret (hunted for its feathers to make women's hats) seemed on the verge of extinction. It was at that point that such organizations as the Audubon Society came into being and reversed the tide. Ideas of ecological balance, of wildlife conservation, of game management, of seasons and bag limits, of habitat preservation, all came to being within the space of a miraculously few years. When people seek the roots of this movement they look for European models. However, such models are few. With the exception of the private hunting preserves maintained for the pleasure of kings and nobles, the idea of preserving wildlife was not common in European thought or in European folklore. The most common theory on the birth of wildlife conservation is that it came about because of the realization on the part of a few good-minded modern Americans about what was happening--horrified by the extermination of the buffalo and passenger pigeon and the feather trade which was wiping out the American egret and many other birds. Look into the Enclylopedia Brittanica under the heading of "Wildlife Conservation" and you can read these words (1967 edition): "Although primitive man had a far more important stake in wildlife than modern man has, it is virtually certain that he had little concept of conserving his game. The disappearance of the moa and the mammoth taught no lessons; the disappearance of the passenger pigeon did. Modern man finds himself responsible for the fate of many products of creation and with a conservation tradition and code of conduct less than a century old to guide him." However, it is only when we look at widespread, long-existing Native North American ideas about the proper treatment of birds and animals as sources of human life, about the ethical and moral responsibility of the hunter to the _____________________________ *Particular thanks and credit go to George L. Cornell, professor and Ojibway friend of Joseph Bruchac, whose unpublished doctoral thesis at Michigan State, "Native American Contributions to the Formation of the Modern Conservation Ethic," is the basis for this discussion of the one-to-one relation between Thoreau, Grinnell, Seton, Eastman and Native ideas of a Conservation Ethic. *birds and animals which he must kill--especially as these ideas are expressed in the traditional stories of Native people, those stories which play such a central role in education and socialization--that we see the most important influences on the formation of this new movement towards ecological balance in America. A direct connection between American Indian ideas and the men who "discovered" conservation (just as a certain Genoan navigator "discovered" this Turtle Continent of America) is not just speculation. There is a direct one-to-one relationship between the men who were the founders of the American conservation movement and actual living Native North Americans who were their examples and their instructors. They sat around Indian campfires and listened to the stories and they walked with Native Americans and observed how those stories were played out in the everyday lives of Native Americans existing in a balanced relation with a natural world which was not seen as the adversary of human beings. It was no accident that these men encountered such tales among the Native nations with which they became familiar. The basic principles we now call "ecological balance" or "wildlife conservation," are expressed in traditional stories found among every Native American nation. Three men in particular (one of them an Native North American himself) stand out in that period between 1880 and 1920 when America began to wake up to the responsibility which humans have to the other living beings about them. But even before those three, we have the example of a man inspired by the "American Indian" to write books which would deeply influence world culture's way of seeing nature--Henry David Thoreau. It is well known that Thoreau was fascinated all of his life by Indians. (His last words were "moose" and "Indian.") Roderick Nash in his book Wilderness and the American Mind points out this link in his chapter on Thoreau. Born in 1817, Thoreau often bemoaned the fact that he was born at the wrong time, a century to late to see the New England of the native people as it was before their ways were replaced or reduced by western civilization. He studied Indians diligently and constantly. By his death in 1862, Thoreau had complied no fewer than twelve manuscripts, 3000 hand-written pages on American Indian perceptions of the land. At the time he wrote Walden, he was studying the American Indian Moons--those descriptive names which link each time of the year to the natural cycle. One of Thoreau's happiest times was spent with his Penobscot Indian guide in Maine, Joe Polis, who was an example for Thoreau of the natural man, one who lives with and understands nature. The Maine Woods chronicles how Thoreau went to Maine, seeking an Indian guide, a guide, it seems clear, to show both his body and his spirit the way to travel through the woods. Had Thoreau not died so young, there is no doubt that he would have traveled further with Native North American people and written more about them. It is easy to picture Thoreau and his cousin in the Maine woods, sitting around the campfire and listening to Joe Polis tell them about Gluskabe. Gluskabe is one of the central characters in Penobscot stories, a trickster figure who is vastly powerful but often innocent of the results of his actions--a perfect metaphor for the power of the human being as it affect the natural world. His grandmother, Woodchuck, is wise with knowledge of Earth and the balance need to preserve things for "their children's children." The anthropologist Frank G. Speck collected a number of such teaching tales from elderly Penobscot men and women, including Newell Lion, Hemlock Joe, Peter Nicolar, Newell Francis, Sarah Paul and Alice Swassion, people from the same community as Thoreau's guide, Joe Polis. Speck then published these traditional stories in The Journal of American Folk-Lore. In one of those stories, Gluskabe goes fishing and tricks all the fish in the world into entering his fish trap by saying to them "The ocean is going to run dry. The end of the world is coming and all of you will die. Enter in my river, and you shall live, because my river will always remain. Now, all who hear me, enter." However, when Gluskabe shows his grandmother what he has done, her response is not praise--as one might expect from an elder in a culture which supposedly had no idea of the dangers of extermination or the importance of natural balance. Instead, Grandmother Woodchuck says, "Grandson, you have not done well. All the fish will be annihilated. So what will our descendents in the future do to live" As a result of her wise words, Gluskabe releases the fish from his trap.1 If we jump ahead several decades, we encounter a man now called "the father of American conservation," George Bird Grinnell. From 1880 to 1921 (after getting his Ph.D. from Yale) he edited a magazine called Forest and Stream which held as one of its central purposes--stated in unequivocal language--the transfer of Indian environmental ethics to the larger American society. In 1886 Grinnell founded the Audubon Society--the first group to advocate the idea of wildlife refuges. In 1888, Grinnell was one of the founders of the Boone and Crockett Club, a group for hunters which, though best known today for keeping official records on game trophies, was the first organization to introduce ethics into hunting in North America. Such widely practiced American Indian ideas as not killing mother animals, limiting the number of birds or animals taken at one time, and hunting only during certain times of the year were introduced by the Boone and Crockett Club. Where did Grinnell get all this information? Directly from the Indians. In 1870, as a young man, he was invited to take part in the Peabody Museum expedition to the west to seek dinosaur fossils. He found more than bones. Pawnee scouts had been hired to guide the expedition and Grinnell was drawn to them by their knowledge, their dignity, and their humor. He found his new Indian friends willing and eager to share with him their stories, their lore about the land, the ethical practices which governed their hunting. The land around them was regarded by the Pawnee as sacred and the animals and birds were not just objects to hunt but nations--Bird People and Animal People who had to be treated with respect, even though some of them had to be sacrificed to allow the Pawnee to continue to live. Hunting was not sport, but a deadly serious relationship to be kept in balance. Grinnell's friendship with the Pawnee deepened as he learned--on that expedition and on succeeding extended trips to the west--their language and their stories and he was initiated in Pawnee ceremonies. He also became very close to the Cheyenne people, after accompanying his friend George Armstrong Custer, on an army expedition into the Black Hills. (It was common practice for civilian artists and scientists to accompany Army expeditions in the west at that time.) Ironically (and fortunately) Grinnell turned down Custer's later invitation to come with him on the expedition which ended at the Battle of the Little Big Horn. Grinnell continued, all of his life, to return to Indian campfires to learn and was the author of a number of books which presented, virtually for the first time, the traditional stories and histories of a number of the American Indian nations of the west as told by those people themselves. Those books, respected by Indian and non-Indian alike, are small classics still in print today. They include the Fighting Cheyenne, Pawnee Hero Stories and Folktales and Blackfoot Lodge Tales. A story told Grinnell by the old Pawnee warrior, Eagle Chief, who was the primary source for Pawnee Hero Stories and Folktales, is an example of the awareness the Pawnee had that the seemingly endless buffalo herds which they relied upon for survival were to be hunted in a respectful and a measured fashion--not killed to the last animal as was done by European hunters. The tale is called "Ti-ke-wa-kush, The Man Who Called the Buffalo." In it a man uses his own special power to help his starving people because when he "looked at the little children crying for something to eat . . . it touched his heart." He uses his power to call the buffalo, offering a sacrifice of "eagle feathers, and some blue heads, and some Indian tobacco." After four days, the people "saw a great buffalo bull come up over the hill to the place. He stood there for a short time and looked about and then he walked on down the hill, and went galloping off past the village. Then the man spoke to the people and said, 'There. That is what I meant. That is the leader of the buffalo; where he went the herd will follow." Sure enough, just as Ti-ke-wa-kush promises, the buffalo come close to the village. The people surround them and kill many animals for food. However, the man tells them several things. For one, "In surrounding these buffalo you must see that all the meat is saved. Ti-ra'-wa (the Creator) does not like the people to waste the buffalo. He also tells them "Be careful not to kill a yellow calf--a little one--that you will see with the herd or its mother." Further, they are told that there must be an end to their killing, "You are to make one more surround and this will be the end."2 As with the Penobscot story, the good of the people is foremost and wildlife is seen as the natural supplier of human food, but it is a supply which must be used wisely and must not be all used up. (The destruction of the mammoth and the other animals which died out in North America 10,000 years ago--probably at the hands of Indian hunters, very likely did have an effect. The actual birth of a conservation ethic in America probably happened then, and was embodied in traditional stories such as these). Further, there is communication between humans and animals and it seems that such communication is only possible when respect is shown by the humans being towards the rest of creation. The next important American conservationist deeply influenced by American Indian ideas was Ernest Thompson Seton. In 1902, already known as a writer of books about animals, Seton formed a special organization for boys (formed it in desperation because the local young men were hooliganizing his neighborhood for lack of something meaningful to do) called "Seton's Indians" or "The Woodcraft Indians." This was four years before Baden-Powell formed his scouts. The American Indian was selected as a model and, as anyone who has ever been in scouting knows, the study of ethical relationships to the land are at the center of scouting. In 1910, Seton and Baden-Powell chartered the Boy Scouts. Seton wrote about the Indians all of his life, basing his books on his experiences in the American west with native people and his The Gospel of the Red Man, published in 1936, was his last book before his death. There are other figures whose ideas of conservation and natural balance owed much to their intimacy with American Indian ways, including Theodore Roosevelt. But the last man we wish to mention in this essay was himself an Indian--Charles Alexander Eastman. His Indian name was Ohiyesa and he was born a Santee Sioux in Minnesota. The "Sioux Uprising" resulted in his father being separated from the family and Eastman was raised throughout his childhood, in the 1870's and 1880's, in the forests in the traditional Sioux way. This upbringing is recounted in Eastman's famous book Indian Boyhood (1902). When he turned fifteen, two strangers reappeared in their camp--Indians in the clothing of the whites. One of them was Eastman's father and he took his son with him back into the white man's world. There Charles Eastman received the education which took him through Dartmouth University and medical school in Boston. His first job was a physician at the Pine Ridge Reservation, where he witnessed the events that led to the Wounded Knee Massacre and was the first doctor to go to the site of that mass killing of Sioux people to rescue the few survivors who remained. From that point on, Eastman spent the rest of his life trying to help his fellow Indians survive by learning the ways of the white world while holding onto the best of their traditional cultures. In 1894, Eastman went to work for the YMCA and founded the YMCA camping experience, which introduced the American Indian land and conservation ethic into camping for the first time. One of Eastman's best known books is the recounting of his childhood in the woods, Indian Boyhood. In it a number of traditional tales are told the young Ohiyesa by the elderly storyteller Smoky Day. Each story contains lessons, but none are more memorable or appropriate to teaching the central importance of the natural balance than the story of the Stone Boy. The Stone Boy is a powerful being who, at first, plays a hero's role. He valiantly rescues his lost uncles, doing great deeds for his people. However, halfway through the story something happens. The Stone Boy apparently becomes overwhelmed with his own power and falls into the trap of pride. He begins to kill animals wantonly: ". . . bringing home only the ears, teeth and claws as his spoil, and with these he played as he laughingly recounted his exploits. His uncles and his mother protested and begged him to at least spare the lives of those animals held sacred by the Dakotas, but Stone Boy relied on his supernatural powers to protect him from harm." At last, the animal people gather together and decide they must join forces to destroy their enemy before he wipes them all out. Stone Boy uses his great powers, but the forces of nature are too great for him to overcome. The beavers dam the rivers and the gophers and badgers dig under the great wall which Stone Boy has created to defend himself and his relatives. His misdeeds, by upsetting the natural balance have doomed not only himself, but his family as well. Finally: ". . . the water poured in through the burrows made by the gophers and the badgers and rose until Stone Boy's mother and ten uncles were all drowned. Stone Boy himself could not be entirely destroyed, but he was overcome by his enemies and left half-buried in Earth, condemned to never walk again, and there we find him to this day. That was because he abused his strength and destroyed for mere amusement the lives of the creatures given him for use only."3 NOTES 1. Frank G. Speck, "Penobscot Tales and Religious Beliefs" in The Journal of American Folk-Lore, Volume 48, January-March, 1935. 2. George Bird Grinnell, Pawnee Hero Stories and Folk Tales, Forest and Stream Publishing Company, N.Y. 1889. 3. Charles A. Eastman, Indian Boyhood, McClure, Phillips and Company, N.Y. 1902. FURTHER READING Deshumukh, D.G., Thoreau and Indian Thought: A study of the Impact of Indian Thought on the Life of Henry David Thoreau. New York: AMS Press, 1974. Eastman, Charles Alexander, Indian Boyhood. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1971 Grinnell, George bird, Blackfoot Lodge Tales. Williamstown, Massachusetts: Corner House Publications, 1972 _______________, Blackfoot Lodge Tales: The Story of a Prairie People. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1962. _______________, The Fighting Cheyenne (Civilization of the American Indian Series, vol. 44). Norman, Okalahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985. _______________, Pawnee Hero Stories and Folktales, With Notes on the Origin, Customs and Character of the Pawnee People. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1961. Nash, Roderick, Wilderness and the American Mind (3rd ed.) New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1982 Sayre, Robert F. Thoreau and the Americans Indians. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1977. Seton Ernest Thompson, The Gospel of the Red Man. Thoreau, Henry David, Walden. Cutchogue, New York: Buccaneer Books, 1983. ________________, The Maine Woods. New York: Harper & Row Publications, Inc., 1987.