Chapter 13
Mother Love
In This Chapter
Understanding the Indian perception of the Earth
Hunting and farming
Mining the sea
Exploring the good and bad of the fur trade
Mother Earth, Father Sky. It’s a simple and elegant idea when you come right down to it: A mother feeds her children; a father watches over all.
.jpg)
A Mother Feeds Her Children
The Native American idea of the Earth being the mother of all living things is ancient, bespeaks a respect for the circle of life, and embodies the belief that our mother must be protected and, in exchange, she will provide the things we need to survive.
Native peoples formed relationships with the environment that mirrored more personal relationships among individuals. The concept of the earth as Mother indicates the human responsibility to give her respect. In return, the earth provides life for the people.
Tribes did not originally possess a separate concept of ecology, nor of resource management. Embedded in traditional lifestyle was a practice of working within the constraints of landscape and environment, and this emerged in tribal tradition as the practice of behaving with respect for the earth.
The traditional respect given to the earth should not be seen as representing the stereotypical one-with-nature Indians who cry at the first sign of a piece of litter. Indian tribes were and are like all human groups. Today, some people adhere more closely to traditional practices, while others seek to use resources in a less conservative manner.
It should be noted, however, that there is a backlash of sorts these days regarding this “one with nature” perception of Native Americans. In fact, the argument always seems to revolve around a perverted necessity to define Indians mythologically as either a “noble red man” or “bloodthirsty savage.”
The reality is that both stereotypes are true, and both stereotypes are false. Indians were known to be savage in battle — as were the white Europeans. Nature was respected and worshipped.
Food on Four Legs
Whether or not you believe in killing and eating animals, Native Americans depended enormously on all living things for food, clothing, tools, and weapons.
Hunting for survival
Since food is life, Natives understood that their lives were sustained by the taking of the lives of animals. This profound realization resulted in animals being honored for their role in sustaining tribal people, with the resultant accompanying rituals and iconic representations.
Different animals became important to different tribes according to where people lived. A community of Inuit, for example, had no real interest in the bison, while caribou never made much of a dent in the traditional life of the Florida Seminole. However, it is possible to list some of the animals that were important to different tribes:
Bear
Beaver
Buffalo, bison
Deer, caribou
Moose
Muskrat
Rabbit
The smaller animals like muskrat and squirrel were also trapped as well as hunted. (See Chapter 16 for more information on Native American trapping practices.)
Hunting practices today
Today, there are three types of hunting practiced in North America:
Sport and trophy hunting
Subsistence hunting
Commercial hunting
Sport and trophy hunting
This is what it sounds like: hunting for fun. And it is an oftentimes volatile issue for both avid hunters and animal rights activists and environmentalists.
Over three-quarters of Americans support legal hunting as a sport, yet very few people actually go out and hunt.
Subsistence hunting
Subsistence hunting is hunting and fishing for food and other uses. It is an important part of the lives of people today (both Natives and non-Natives alike). For some tribes, hunting and fishing provides not just food, but also a tangible link to their ancestors. Conflicts sometimes arise when non-Natives misunderstand that tribes aren’t simply hunting for food.
Subsistence hunting is a controversial topic in Alaska, mainly because of two reasons:
It is necessary to define and regulate who are official subsistence hunters; that is, who specifically is allowed to hunt and fish as needed.
It is necessary to differentiate between federal wildlife authority and management, and state authority and management, and in many instances, the twain don’t meet. What happens when state wildlife regulations conflict with federal guidelines?
The state of Alaska has a bigger tent regarding who is eligible for subsistence hunting than does the federal government, which regulates federal lands and waterways and commonly limits hunting and fishing access to rural Alaskan natives who qualify based on a criteria of need and access to other sources for food and resources. Alaska allows all residents to be eligible for subsistence user status.
For the most part, subsistence use guidelines include using natural resources for:
Food
Shelter
Fuel
Clothing
Tools
Transportation
Use in barter, sharing, and customary trade (United Fishermen of Alaska)
In 1978, the conflict between commercial hunting and subsistence hunting was decided by the Alaskan government. They stated that if an area becomes scarce of game, or a waterway of fish, subsistence hunters get priority. Commercial hunters were not happy about this, and fought the ruling at the polls, but were defeated.
The Alaska Supreme Court stepped into the fray and in 1989 ruled that giving rural hunters priority was a violation of the state’s constitution. It was then that the feds took over and even now, there are no definitive standards regarding who’s who, and who can hunt what in Alaska.
Many tribes have experienced significant backlash over the exercise of their traditional rights to hunt animals on land and in the sea. Some tribes have the right to hunt out of season according to treaties signed with the federal government. A tribe may have given up thousands of acres of land, but did so with the understanding that they would maintain the right to continue to interact with the environment according to cultural ways.
A famous case of backlash occurred with the Makah tribe’s right to hunt whales. This was a right that they had reserved, but voluntarily not exercised during a time of low whale population. When the tribe decided that it was necessary to continue whaling as part of their traditional culture, non-Makah were outraged. Particularly disturbing were the protestors who believed that the Makah should not have the right to hunt with modern technology, as if only non-Indians should be allowed to participate in the 21st century!
Commercial hunting
Commercial hunting is practiced by both Native peoples and all other strata of society. In most cases, this type of hunting is state-regulated.
Making Good Use of Rich and Fertile Land
The seemingly boundless natural riches and resources of pre-industrialization America were breathtaking and awe-inspiring. They were also, in a sense, recognized as bounty for the taking.
Over two thousand years ago, the earliest Indian farmers were domesticating corn, beans, and squash. Later on, some tribes in the Southwest developed elaborate irrigation systems to carry water to their fields. Some of the earliest agricultural tribes included the Hohokum, the Pima, and the Maricopa Indians in Arizona and northern Mexico.
The first crops
If it weren’t for Indians, we wouldn’t have popcorn. And Italy would have never known about its now-hallowed tomato. And the importance of the potato (which originated among the Aymara Indians in Peru) to Ireland was so enormous that when the Potato Famine hit in 1845, by the time it was over, the population of the country declined from immigration and death by 12 percent.
Native Americans grew crops that are now disseminated all over the world, and important foods for countless cultures. Among many other foods, some of what we can thank Indian agriculture for include
Avocado
Corn
Pecans
Plums
Potatoes
Squash
Sunflowers
Tobacco (see Figure 13-1)
|
Figure 13-1: A tobacco plant. |
|
Tomatoes
Walnuts
Native American farming today
In 1991, a nonprofit seed conservation program in Arizona called Native Seed/SEARCH conducted a survey of Native American farmers in Arizona and New Mexico and learned one very salient fact about the state of farming as an occupation: young Native Americans didn’t consider agriculture a viable profession. The organization described this lack of interest as “startling” and attributed many of the Native American woes — specifically poor health and social fragmentation within communities — to the decline in sustainable Indian agribusinesses.
In the past eighty or so years, the number of American Indians working in farming plummeted, but has shown signs of improvement. Today, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s 2002 Census of Agriculture, the number of Native American farm operators is around 24,000. This is up from 13,000 in 1997.
Seeking Seafood
Fishing has been a human endeavor for over 10,000 years.
When John Smith first arrived in Jamestown in 1607, he was absolutely astonished by the abundance of fish in America. The rivers, lakes, brooks, and coastal waterways were so rich with fish, he and his crew tried catching them with a frying pan! (True story.)
The Europeans quickly learned that the natives had been catching and living on fish for centuries, and to both the Indians and the colonists, fish stocks were considered inexhaustible.
Fish was an important component of the diet for tribes living within reach of sea or river, providing protein, while requiring little risk in obtaining. Killing and transporting a slain buffalo wasn’t an easy job. Trapping or catching fish, on the other hand, often was.
Fish weirs
A fish weir is essentially an underwater cage in which large numbers of fish were trapped, and from which they could be harvested later at the tribe’s convenience.
Fish weirs were also used in the Midwest, although there were always, of course, riverine weirs. Archaeological evidence attests to the use of weirs by the Sac Indians across the St. Francis River to trap migrating sturgeon.
Other fishing methods
Native Americans also used other methods besides the very clever “trapping” method of the fish weir. The fishing methods varied according to the tribe and according to their environment. You wouldn’t expect folks living along the rivers in the Southeast to get very far using a giant hook like that used by Northwest tribes when fishing for halibut!
These included:
Hand-and-line baited hook: Carved bone fish hooks have been found in many archaeological sites near fishing sites. The lines were made from deer sinew and twisted bark.
Barbed harpoons: The tips of these hurled sticks were usually made from carved bone or even metal, hardened by fire, and could pierce even the thick hide of a leviathan swordfish.
Nets: Nets were used to capture huge quantities of fish. On some days, several hundred pounds of cod could be caught by net. Captain Smith, writing about the Powhatan, noted, “The women . . . make nets for fishing, for the quantities as formally braided as thread from the bark of trees and the sinew of deer.”
Some tribes have signed treaties which allow them to fish in certain areas. These “treaty rights” allow them to fish in areas where non-Indians are not allowed to fish, or at times others are not allowed to fish. For example, the Makah are known for their annual whaling trip. They often take one gray whale as part of a ceremonial/religious/traditional event.
The Klamath Tribe originally had a treaty with the federal government that guaranteed the tribe a reservation of close to 2 million acres. The treaty also guaranteed other rights for the tribe, including the right to hunt and fish. Several subsequent federal actions shrunk and eventually eliminated the tribe’s land reservation. However, the tribe’s hunting and fishing rights survived the termination of the tribe’s reservation because the tribe was not compensated for their hunting and fishing rights.
Do Indians get special advantages?
In most ways, Indians do not enjoy any of the special advantages many imagine they receive. Indian fishermen are regulated by tribal governments for protection of the fisheries, just as non-treaty fishermen are regulated by the state.
But unlike non-Indians, Indian fishermen have a treaty-guaranteed property right to fish that goes beyond any state or even federal law. For both moral and practical reasons, the first Europeans to arrive in America recognized the Indian’s rights to their tribal lands and properties.
In 1778, the Continental Congress declared that Indian lands and property could never be taken without Indian consent. When the U.S. Constitution was drafted, Congress was given the power to make treaties — and the treaties were made “supreme law of the land.” Thus, when Northwest Indians retained their fishing right and agreed to give up claim to this land, the agreement was, and still is, backed by the U.S. Constitution.
Skins: The Lucrative Fur Trade
The fur trade was an enormous fiscal engine that shaped the U.S. economy from almost the moment the first Europeans set foot on the North American continent. And it was a business that lived and breathed on the skills, experience, and knowledge of the American Indian.
For 250 years — from 1600 to 1850 — the fur trade thrived.
The three periods of the North American fur trade
Historians divide the history of the fur trade into three periods:
The French period, which included Dutch fur traders and ran from around 1600 to 1760
The British period, which spanned the years 1760 through 1816
The American period, which began when the British period ended in 1816 and continued through the end of the fur trade in 1850
The tribes traded furs for a wide range of items and materials that they otherwise would not have had available to them, including:
Iron based products, such as axes, cooking pots, knives, and tools
Utensils
Cloth and other textiles
Beads
Guns
Alcohol
The European clothing and hat industries were voracious consumers of North American furs. The beaver hat was big in Europe, as were expensive, luxury clothing items. The abundance of fur-bearing animals in the New World, combined with a skilled Native population able to consistently and dependably trap and skin fur-bearing animals and transport the furs to trading posts resulted in a thriving transatlantic business.
The demand for fur hats in Europe in 1668 was around 5 million hats. To put this number in perspective, think of it like this: that was more than one hat per person. Every person. (The only consumer item that comes close to that level of market penetration these days is probably the television.)
The impact of the fur trade on the Indians
The effect of the three-century fur trade on the native Indigenous population of North America is something of a mixed bag.
There were positive effects on tribes, including:
The new availability of labor-saving tools
The increased power over neighboring tribes that came from having guns
The access to supplies like different types of food, as well as European medicines
The negative effects, on the other hand, included, of course, exposure to often devastating European diseases, plus:
A rapid appearance of a new scourge, alcoholism
The necessary and sometimes destructive interaction with more and more whites
A willingness to go to war with other tribes
A reconstruction of the way in which tribes related to their environments
Also, the fur trade depleted the environment of fur-bearing animals, and made the Indians change the way they lived to accommodate the insatiable needs of the European fur traders.
Tribes that participated in the fur trade altered how they behaved toward the animals that were a part of their cultural world. A hunter might thank an individual deer who provided food and clothing, but once the numbers of deer killed rose, it seems like it might be difficult to thank each one individually. In a cultural sense, this in turn might have angered the spirits of the animals who were not being properly thanked.
One study of the fur trade in eastern Canada has produced the intriguing idea that tribes participating in the fur trade deliberately broke with traditional ways in order to participate in a war against the animals who were blamed for bringing epidemic disease upon the people. In his book, Keepers of the Game, Calvin Martin explores the theory that tribes believed that the animals had broken their ancient pact and therefore people felt free to engage in the fur trade as a means of revenge. This theory, although not fully accepted, shows how tribal relationships to the earth were altered through the colonial process.
Today, furs and skins are an important part of traditional culture, particularly in traditional dress. Apache parents may talk about finding exactly the right deerskin to make clothing for their daughter’s puberty ceremony. Young people go through the vendor tables at powwows looking for skins and furs to work into new and elaborate powwow outfits. It’s no longer necessary that someone hunt the animal that provides the material for clothing, but it is important to many Native people that we know to whom we are indebted.
The lucrative fur trade resulted in Indians changing somewhat from their ecologically friendly lifestyle of only taking what they needed, to a more profit-based program.