With the opening of the new museum in Washington, I have heard a fair amount of discussion regarding the American Indian culture recently. There are common themes about how these people lived in harmony with nature and were spiritual as well as other things that I would view as great aspects of any society.
I question whether or not this is a fair appraisal of the situation, or is it just nostalgia for simpler times. Was the early American Indian experience as great as it sounds, or has the true experience been changed and remembered more fondly than it actually was? Also, I am curious if the choices the Indians made regarding the environment were made due to a sense of stewardship, or if this was just the best way they knew. For example, I have often heard that when the Indians killed a buffalo, they always used every part of the animal and rarely killed more than one at a time. While this sounds great from an environmentalist aspect, another ‘motivation’ could be that maybe it was just too hard to kill more than one buffalo with their technology and the people were too poor to waste any of the dead animal.
I wouldn’t be surprised to find that some people do idealize indigneous American cultures, but you need to cite a specific example of it happening for people to evaluate and discuss. Can you point to an instance where, from your point of view, American Indian culture is “being seen through rose-colored glasses”?
It absolutely is. Here in Canada the romanticization of aboriginal cultures is practically national policy.
But this is true, I suspect, of most endangered or lost cultures, is it not? Look at the obsession some people have with mythical versions of Celtic/Gaelic culture.
South Park made a super stab at this a season or two ago.
They had two American Indians come into town and start selling all natural, American Indian products. The townspeople bought it all up, including the “Cherokee hair tampons.” At the end, they found out they weren’t American Indians: they were really Mexicans! This changed everything, of course, despite the fact that, if they were Mexicans, they probably had plenty of Native American (in the “American continent” sense, not the “USA” sense) in them.
From what I’ve read, American aboriginal culture is full of examples of inter-tribal war, slavery and torture. I read My Captivity Among the Sioux Indians by Fanny (snarf) Kelly, who was captured by them in the mid-1800s after her wagon train was attacked. Her small daughter (again IIRC, she was three or four years old) was captured as well, and was killed when Mrs. Kelly contrived to allow her to escape. (The warrior showed up with her scalplock.)
Granted, Mrs. Kelly’s account is bound to be biased; but should her accounts of what she saw be discounted because of it? It seems to me that, even reading between the lines, the American aboriginal existance was not as idyllic as it’s made out to be in such films as Dances With Wolves or Little Big Man.
The Mexicans were just pans in Ms. Information’s plot to sell more holistic products. It was less their doing and more the town’s obsessition with ‘exotic’ cures. By the way the Cherokee hair tampon commercial was hysterical!
It depends on the tribes involved. N America was peopled by many different tribes, as varied as the nations of Europe. For example, the Hopi and navajo people of the Southwest were mainly peaceful farmers and herdsmen. The Plains Indians were nomadic, and many of their tribes were warlike and vicious…scalping and killing were common. In the east, some of the woodland tribes were semi-nomadic and peaceful…like the Abenakis . However, the Mohawks (who inhabited most of upstate NY) were warlike and addicted to raiding other tribes for captives/slaves. The Seminole peoples of Florida were peacfuluntilprovoked into violence by the invading europeans.
Heck, I wouldn’t be too nice to people who move into my house and throw me out!
As always, the facts of history are not easily pared down to simple soundbites or sweeping generalizations. A recent and thorough analysis of the cumulative data on the environmental impact of American Indian cultures can be found in The Ecological Indian: Myth and History by anthropologist Shepard Krech III.
Well, using all the parts of animal is quite common in all cultures. Look at all the blood poodings, organ pies, brain cheese, ect that you see in “traditional” European recipes. Even in modern times, a very little of an animal being slaughtered for food will be wasted. Blood is dried & used as an animil feed additive/fertilizer, bones & excess bits of meat are turned into cat & dog food, ect.
Myth, a good chunk of it - “How it should have been, and how we want to see ourselves…”
The American Indian was never one monolithic entity, as already addressed.
Harmony with nature? Sort of. It used to be a bigger deal up here than it is now. Had to be careful with harvesting some things, because if you overdo it, there isn’t any left anymore. Legend has it that the First Nations up here are the reason there are no more mastodons - they ate the last one sometime in the 1800’s. (source: can’t remember if it was Annie Ned, Alice Frost, or Johnny Johns, noted elders and prime sources of ethnographic materials, incidents referenced also in turn-of-the-century northern newspapers, specifically the Klondike Nugget.) Good eats for a long time, those suckers.
One buffalo at a time? The curators of the Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump World Heritage site would be fascinated to hear that. Stampede a whole herd over a bluff, that’s the ticket. Lotsa meat, less risk, but considerable wastage, at times. Hard to fully process a hundred buffalo with a handful of people before they start to stink.
There are the remains of rock walls here and there across the caribou migration routes, where some of the northern First Nations and Inuit funnelled the herds through killing notches.
Solo hunting though…well, you were expected (and still are, I might add) to respect your kill. The use-every-bit mindset comes partially from that, and partially from “waste not, want not”. It’s hard enough living through starving times, without adding the memory of all the times food was wasted.
Some hunters in the North, both First Nations and not, still carry tobacco even though they don’t smoke, to provide offerings to the spirit of the dead animal. This ensures that said animal will continue to offer itself to your needs. There are many stories about what happened to hunters (and their tribe, sometimes) that failed to respect their kill.
As a side note, the above has been kind of an issue with many younger First Nations adopting a very European attitude about it. There is now an ad campaign on CBC that runs every fall, reminding hunters to “take only what you need, use all that you take”. There were a considerable section of younger first nations hunting out of season because they could, not because they needed to, and only taking the choice bits. The elders were very angry, as, well, there was half a moose they COULD HAVE BEEN EATING left to rot. The hunters were supposed to share out the parts they didn’t want with those who didn’t have any. Moosemeat is way better than beef or pork. Once upon a time, before heavy metal poisoning in the North became such a big issue, it was better for you too. Don’t get much more organic or free-range than that…
Anyways.
Spiritual? No more and no less than anyone anywhere else. Some individuals were very spiritual, some were exceedingly secular. Part of the Northern Tuchone genesis cycle “The Story of Crow” has episodes talking about precisely this.
Peacable, non-violent cultures? Has anyone else been following the archaeology of Chaco Canyon? There is a growing amount of evidence that ritual cannibalism was practiced there, at least for a while. The Navajo and Hopi are furious about this, as it profoundly disturbs their world view of themselves and their ancestors. Furious to the point of attempting to shut down research, IIRC (but I can’t find that particular article anymore).
Oddly enough, I don’t have a problem with MOST of the romanticization. I think it’s a lovely set of ideals to aim for. However, one has to bear in mind that it IS romanticization, and to claim superiority of any kind on that basis is absurd. And to claim that everything was perfect until the white man came is even more absurd. And making unproven claims that directly contradict historical evidence is so absurd the only word I have for it is “STUPID”.
This is only anecdotal, but this is the transcript of a real conversation I had with a 9 year old kid:
9yo: Native American culture was perfect until white people came.
Me: The phrase “perfect culture” is an oxymoron. (brief explanation of oxymoron ensues). They had wars, took slaves, and made mistakes just like everyone else.
9yo: Nope, you’re wrong. They lived in harmony with nature and they were peaceful and one with the earth.
Me: Which nation are you talking about? There were as many tribes of Native Americans as there are countries in Europe, if not more.
9yo: America is messed up. We should live like the Native Americans.
Me: Where are you getting this from?
9yo: From school. And my stepfather. His great grandfather was an Indian.
This is just one example of a phenomenon I’ve seen in schools for a while.
Nothing I could say could persuade this kid that there is no such thing as a “perfect culture,” or even such a thing as “Native American culture” as some sort of singularity that could be summed up as a whole. It really bugs me when people fail to realize that each nation is a separate entity with a discrete identity, with some overlap (again, a comparison to Europe could be made).
There has been a trend to idolize indigenous cultures in order to counteract the horrible crimes committed against them in life and the history books. I think some overcompensation is definitely happening. It’s not the worst thing that’s ever happened, but I think the best service one can do to any culture is see it for what it is. JMO.
Several years back the fifth and sixth grade classes from my daughter’s school went on a field trip to an event that was supposed to teach them about Indian culture. It was held in a big field and there were several exhibit areas with native crafts and such being demonstrated. At least that’s what it was supposed to be. In reality it was a major new age propaganda party. We watched as people representing several different Indian nations showed us how they did “war” by using peaceful competitions such as races and target shooting. This included the guy they introduced as an Aztec. Basically the kids were given the idea that nobody was actually killing anybody else in battle or because of any kind of disagreement until the white men arrived and brought their violent ways. I was somewhat amused since I had just the day before read an article about human sacrifice in Aztec culture, which said they used captives for this purpose. I wanted to ask about that, but I thought it might be rude to disrupt things. I was just a parent along to chaperon, I didn’t want to cause trouble. (I still think it would have been fun, though.)
At another tent, the kids were emphatically given the idea that they should only eat vegetarian foods. The woman who was “teaching” there made a big deal out of telling the kids that Jello is made from horses’ hooves. “I wouldn’t want to eat horses’ hooves!” I kind of gave up about the time she said something like, “think of all the things horses walk in”.
The whole day was like that, just one bit of misinformation after another, with a whole lot of pseudo-enlightenment thrown in. Not to mention the subtle message that everything bad that ever happened on this continent was the fault of the white guys.
I think the kids (at least the ones who actually were paying attention) pretty much accepted what they were told. It’s what they were prepared to hear. At least the school didn’t do that field trip again.
Nike ran a print ad a few years ago about how the Aztecs used to play a game that was sorta like basketball, except they wore sandals made of plant fiber and the losers were sacrificed to a certain god, and this made them very hardcore, and therefore modern hardcore people should wear Nike shoes. Or something. There was a big uproar, people calling Nike racist and such, but they were actually pretty accurate in their facts.
The first nations ate the last mastodon in the 1800’s?
I just googled for times of last ice age and found that it started about 70,000 years ago and ended 10,000 years ago.It said the mammoths and mastodons were extinct by then. Are you postulating a lost valley somewhere where they lived unknown to any but a tribe of hungry,selfish Indians,a la “The Land That Time Forgot” or something?
There may have been some running around in the woods a couple hundred years ago–nobody can disprove for certain the existence of sasquatches & long-necked aquatic dinosaurs in Scotland, why not Oliphaunts in North America? How many people have to see a critter before the rest of the world believes in it? I’ve never seen a barracuda, but I believe in them.
According to my sources for the legend (and yep, I DO consider it a legend until somebody shows me the bones and we date them), there weren’t very many, they wandered a lot, and it was a Big Deal when tracks were found.
The date of the 1800’s comes from a story told to a newspaper reporter around the turn of the century - I’ll try to find the book the article is in tonight so I can tell you which paper in whose archives (Yukon/Alaska).
Getting actual dates and times from the elders is VERY difficult if we are trying to pinpoint anything older than their parents’ time. It’s all “Grandfather time”. As in, “In the time of our grandfathers” - which could mean anything from sixty or seventy years to several hundred to perhaps thousands (but that’s a stretch even for me).
Pinpointing exact extinction times is not an easy task. Witness the supposedly extinct animals that are occasionally rediscovered. This was the first and fastest article I could find, there was an I-think-Mexican-or-South-American parrot rediscovered in the last couple years as well.
I could see dating this sort of thing being rather tricky, too. We have occasionally had corpses of frozen mastodons emerge from glaciers, and I’m not convinced that this couldn’t be mistaken for relatively fresh deaths.
Annie Ned, Alice Frost, Johnny Johns, and Angela Sydney are all absolutely impeccable sources for Yukon ethnography, as per this cite, and both volumes of this one. Only, I got the story from the elders themselves, not the books. I just can’t remember which one - I grew up with these people. For what it’s worth, I might have even heard it from Tommy or Harry McGinty - noted Northern Tutchone shamans. IIRC, Louis L’amour collected a Siouxan legend of something that mightily resembled a hairy elephant…
I live just across the highway from the Beringia Centre, which is a pretty nifty baby museum in sore need of attention and support. I got to have a ringside seat for the investigation of Kwaday Dän Sinchi, the Yukon Iceman. I s’pose I can call up there and see if I can track down somebody who’s more current than most of us on mastodon research. I didn’t go to the Mastodon Conference, more’s the pity.
One of my hobbies is following the archaeology of the peopling of the Americas. Loads of evidence, including some of the earliest evidence of human habitation on the continent, is found up here - the Old Crow Flats have been particularly fruitful.
As for my own personal cites, I was raised with the Na-Cho Nyak Dun (Northern Tutchone) for part of my childhood, and as a teen, my family lived in Carcross/Tagish - the Tagish Kwan and Carcross (Southern Tutchone and Tlingit) have sort of merged. Unfortunately, I was in high school, and didn’t get the benefit of classes in Southern Tutchone culture taught by Angela Sydney like my siblings did. But when we lived in Mayo, I got to be eyes for Gramma Kendi when she would run away from the village now and again (for the afternoon), and she told me stories and gave me some of the basics of Northern Tutchone traditional herbal medicine.
Another cite, I happen to be friends with the Carcross/Tagish dreamspeaker.
On a slightly different note, how do you successfully support a first-hand cite 'round hereabouts? I’m afraid I sound defensive, boastful, or like a liar. But dammit, I DID hear the stories, direct from the elders. And the university anthropologists considered them authoritative enough.
I’ll stop now, while there’s still some semblance of coherency here. I need lunch…
