Romanticizing American Indians

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Romanticizing American Indians
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The Ecological Indian . . . . . . a Romantic Myth
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Books by Vine Deloria
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This is the Sioux (not the Indian) version of
U.S. history.
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The Belief in the Unique Spirituality of American
Indians
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Cashing in on American Indians
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Indian Ten Commandments
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American Indian vs. Native American   You notice
that I use the term American Indian or Amerindian
rather than Native American when referring to my
people. There has been some controversy about
such terms.... Primarily it seems that American
Indian is being rejected as European in
origin--which is true. But all of the above
terms are European in origin the only
non-European way is to speak of Lakota--or, more
precisely, of Oglala, Brule, etc.
  ---Russell Means. "For the World to Live,
'Europe Must Die." Mother Jones
(December 1980, p.25 ff).
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Vine Deloria, an Oglala Sioux, claims that
Whites, not Indians, initiated scalping.
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Evidence for Indian vs. White Origin of
Scalping 1. Early European descriptions of
Indian scalping. 2. Early paintings depicting
Indians with scalplocks. 3. Number of
Indian vs. European words used to describe
scalping. 4. No evidence of scalping in
Europe. 5. Much Pre-Columbian evidence of
scalping in North America.
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Chief Seattles Speech
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Chief Seattle Quotes . . .

• I have seen a thousand rotting buffaloes on the
  prairie left by the white man who shot them from
  a passing train,
• What is there to life if a man cannot hear the
  lovely cry of a whippoorwill?
• Yonder sky that had wept tears of compassion
  upon our fathers for centuries untold ...
• This we know the earth does not belong to man,
  man belongs to the earth. All things are
  connected like the blood that unites us all. Man
  did not weave the web of life, he is merely a
  strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he
  does to himself.

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Chief Seattles Speech has been quoted by a
variety of groups, including

• The United Society for the Propagation of the
  Gospel
• The Womans Day World of Prayer
• Passages (Northwest Airlines in-flight
  magazine),
• Environmental Action
• Greenpeace
• The Sierra Club
• Canadas Green Plan
• NASAs Mission to Planet Earth
• Joseph Campbell in his book, The Power of Myth,
  with Bill Moyers and in his videoseries,
  Transformation of Myth through Time.

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Susan Jeffers chose a Plains Indian people
(Lakota) to illustrate her book, Brother Eagle,
Sister Sky, which contains the text of a speech
attributed to Chief Seattle.
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The cover of Jeffers book portrayed Chief
Seattle wearing a Plains Indian headdress, even
though Chief Seattle was not Lakota but rather a
Suguamish Indian from the Northwest Coast.
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In her book, Jeffers perpetuates popular notions
about Plains Indian ecology
To all of the Native American people, every
creature and part of the earth was sacred it was
their belief that to waste or destroy nature and
its wonders is to destroy life itself.
--Susan Jeffers (1991)
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The Myth vs. the Reality
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It is especially books by and about Plains
Indians that sell the most widely and that have
captured the imagination of people interested in
Native American Life.
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The Bible of the Indians?
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Black Elk denounced Black Elk Speaks just two
years after it was published, but it has sold in
the millions and been used in many colleges to
represent his philosophy and way of life.
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Many Native Americans have promoted the romantic
Indian myth as well
"My people, the Blackfeet Indians, have always
had a sense of reverence for nature that made
them want to move through the world carefully,
leaving as little mark behind them as possible."
  --Jamake Highwater (1983)
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Charlotte Black Elk, granddaughter of Nick Black
Elk, is also a strong promoter of the Romantic
Indian myth.
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Some Scholars have even romanticized Native
American Ecology
"Hunting was not a war upon animals, not a
slaughter for food or profit, but a holy
occupation. --Frank G. Speck (1939)
"Indians lived here for twenty, thirty, forty
thousand years. Everywhere they went, they
learned to live with nature. And they did this
without destroying, without polluting, without
using up the living resources of the natural
world. --Donald Hughes (1983)
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Evidence to the Contrary
However, ample evidence exists which demonstrates
that American Indians, including the Plains
Indians, exploited their environments to suit
their needs and at times treated those
environments badly.
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Plains Indian Use of Fire
1. Indians used fire to create clearings for
their villages and fields. 2. They used
fire to drive or enclose game. 3. They used
fire to reduce forests in order to expand
grazing lands for bison. 4. They set fire to
forests in order to improve traveling and
visibility, and to destroy unwanted pests. 
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Principal reasons why Indians set fire to the
plains 1. Improve vegetation 2.
Clear an area 3. Facilitate hunting
4. Ceremonial activities 5.
Interpersonal relations 6. Interethnic
and intra-ethnic relations --60 a.
Communication b. Warfare c. Increase
exchange rates in fur trade
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Early Observations of Fire on the Plains
"The prairies burning form some of the most
beautiful scenes that are witnessed in this
country, and also the most sublime. --Georg
e Catlin (1830's) Fires are made by war parties,
particularly when returning unsuccessful, or
after a defeat, to prevent their enemies from
tracing their steps.  --(Bradbury
1809) "Cree set the prairie on fire to drive
Assiniboine from Cree hunting grounds and force
them back into their own former
territory. --Rudolph Kurtz (1851)
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The Buffalo Drive
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Reports of waste by Indians
"The Osage leave one hundred to one hundred and
fifty pounds of excellent meat on every carcass."
--Victor Tixier (1839-40) A large
band of Sioux killed 1,400 buffalo and traded the
tongues for whiskey, leaving the meat and hides
to rot. --George Catlin (1832)
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Reported Buffalo Kills by Indians
1821 700 Cheyenne lodges were reported to be
consuming 100 bison per day or 36,500 per
year. 1830 25-30,000 buffalo robes exported
per year from the Missouri River region by the
American Fur Company 1846 100,000
buffalo robes traded annually at Bents Fort
in Colorado. 1847 75,000 buffalo robes
sold at Upper Missouri Agency. 1855 3,150
Cheyenne were killing 40,000 bison per year (44
per man) at Bents second Arkansas River Fort.
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Decline in Bison Population
Bison Year Population 1800
40,000,000 1850 20,000,000 1865
15,000,000 -- ----- 1870
14,000,000 1880 395,000 1889
1,091
Whites did not begin hunting bison in large
numbers until 1870.
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Rationalizations
"While the herds were falling in the thousands
before White men's guns, it is not surprising
that some Indians abandoned older practices of
conservation and killed as many buffalo as they
wanted, disregarding their elders' pleas and
admonitions, since they could see that if they
did not do so, the White men would shoot them
anyway. --Donald Hughes,
1983 ___________________________________
Does this statement agree with the table on the
previous slide?
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Such Rationalizations 1. Give different
explanations for the same behavior (Occams
Razor) 2. Treat Native Americans
Paternalistically 3. Assign blame to
adaptive and evolutionary processes
4. Violate the Uniformitarian Principle
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General George Armstrong Custer
The Battle of the Little Big Horn was in Crow
Territory. Custer was helping the Crow repel the
advancing Sioux from their land. Nearly 30 Crow
Indians served with the Seventh Cavalry.
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Plains Indian Alliances Blackfoot Assiniboine
- Cree Mandan-Hidatsa Sioux
Sioux
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X
Native Americans cannot be an exception to the
Uniformitarian Principle.