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(As appeared in Journal of the West, Vol. XXVI, No. 3, July 1987, pp. 17-25. Kansas (5,144 wds.) Were These America’s First Ecologists? © Bernard W. Powell
AMERICAN Indians have been greatly romanticized and misrepresented by the Whites who displaced them across this Continent. Two distorted views of the American Indian date at least to the late nineteenth century, when they were noted in guilt complexes of Americans by early psychiatrists of the Vienna School. In the first distortion, Indians are seen as mystics -- poets of stream and forest, tuned to forces of an unseen Nature, and brothers to a spirit world of plants and animals. This romantic view found depiction in nineteenth-century calendar art, where "Indian princesses" cast themselves into great waterfalls or over cliffs. Often, a ghostly moon or rainbow rides the night skies above. In literature, Longfellow's Hiawatha exemplifies the mystic, poetic, at-one-with-Nature, noble Red Man. And currently, there is a pop revival, largely among the young, of the Indian-as-Mystic.
Ironically, it might be observed that littering by ancient Indians (indeed, all ancient men) provides archeologists with their subject matter! In middens, mounds, and campsites, ancient litter supports much of the inferential knowledge we have about bygone cultures… from The Northwest Territories to the Straits of Magellan. A second distorted view of the Indian, which the Freudians saw in their American patients (at that time not far removed from subjugation of the last free Tribes), was rejection of Indians as "red devils," savage, treacherous, irrational, and heathen. They and their forefathers had blocked westward expansion by peaceful, industrious Whites. From Cotton Mather's preachments in the New England colonies to the genocide that closed the Indian Wars on the Plains, this view provided Whites justification for wresting the land from the Indians. The notion of Indian-as-Savage lived on in the popular Wild West Shows which toured the nation at the turn of the century. It remains the preferred theme in most Hollywood "Westerns." I believe all stereotypic views are wrong, including specifically the view that Indians have instincts or culture norms as natural ecologists, or insights into Nature denied to Whites or to other races. I also believe that objective data exists bearing on the subject, and the balance of this article presents some of this data. In the Beginning
A matter that intrigues paleozoologists and archeologists alike is the
sudden, continent-wide extinction of many Pleistocene mammals about 12,000
years ago. At about this time mammoths, mastodons, ground sloths,
horses, and camels decline precipitously in the fossil record.
Predation from other animal species, competition among and between species, climatological and physiographic changes - even disease - have been invoked to explain the passing of the great Ice Age megafauna, but not to everyone's satisfaction. The sudden demise of so many species so close in time - and many known to have been taken as food by early men - has prompted a number of investigators to finger the Paleohunters, the Indians of the Llano and Plano complexes, as the culprits. Interestingly, it is just about the time of extinction that most studies place Man's arrival in the New World.
Paul S. Martin, a spokesman for this view, says that the first Americans
may have literally swept the North and South American continents clean within a span of only a thousand years, totally decimating
the native fauna.2
To a charge that Ice Age hunters did not cause extinction of similar
species in Europe and the Ukraine, defenders of the view point out that
hunter and hunted had a longer, more intimate co-evolution there, favoring
an inbred wariness in the game. Cave paintings of extinct animals
and carved animal fetishes of ivory and bone found in the Old World
suggest rites based on hunting magic and may have been used to placate the
spirits of the wary beasts. Wholesale extinction seems unique to
North America, but many animal species do vanish from the record in
Africa, Asia, parts of Europe, and in the archipelagoes of southeastern
Asia everywhere at the time of and along the routes of Man's presumed
migration and dispersal. No Ice Age paintings or fetishes are reported in the Americas. Here, naive animal populations, surprised by the men suddenly trickling in across Beringia, failed to develop defense mechanisms. The Paleo-hunters indiscriminately slew pregnant females, young animals, and breeding couples, reducing population levels below reproductive norms and sealing their doom. In Martin's words, Early man may not have
been able to avoid killing the herd animals in excess. To capture any
members of a bison or elephant herd, it was necessary to kill them all,
for instance, by driving them over a cliff. Even when big game
became scarce and small animals became more important in the human diet,
the pride and prestige associated with killing an elephant may have
continued.3 Superpredator had arrived in the New World! Martin concludes, To certain comfortable
concepts about pristine wilderness and ancient men, the implications of
this hypothesis are startling, even revolutionary. For example, that
business of the noble savage, a child of nature, living in an unspoiled
Garden of Eden until the "discovery" of the New World by Europeans is
apparently untrue, since the destruction of fauna, if not of habitat,
was far greater before Columbus than at any time since.
4 [italics mine] Yet other views of the ecological unsophistication of these Paleohunters are those of the geographer Carl Sauer and the anthropologist Omer Stewart, who hold that the early use of fire by the aborigines of the New World greatly expanded the central grasslands. This would have been partly the result of fire drives used in the hunt which would have inhibited forest growth and favored the spread of prairies. Acknowledging the work of these two researchers and others who have investigated this phenomenon, Loren C. Eiseley in a recent article says, In short, the
so-called primeval wilderness which awed our forefathers had already felt
the fire of the Indian hunter. Here, as in many other regions, man's
fire altered the ecology of the earth.5
Thus, there is evidence to suggest that rapacious hunting practices of the Paleohunters in North and South America 12,000 years ago may have caused - at the least hastened - the demise of the very animals they hunted and upon which they depended.6 And this strongly suggests that these Paleohunters, ancestors to every Indian who ever lived, possessed little insights into the ecological consequences of their acts. The Buffalo Jumps The archeological literature contains many descriptions of the celebrated "buffalo jumps" of the Western Plains. Martin, as noted, mentions drives "over a cliff." From a beginning in the Paleo Period, such "jumps" evolved with refinements through the succeeding Archaic Period and well into Protohistoric times on the Plains. Typically, jumps entailed low bluffs or cliffs, often along creek bottoms, over which buffalo herds were stampeded to their collective destruction. Variants of the technique included "pounds" or natural cul-de-sacs (box canyons) where animals were surrounded, and driving of hapless bison onto river ice in winter where they broke through from their great weight and were easily taken while floundering among the floes. All these methods, coupled with fire drives and cleverly constructed stone and brush alignments and "deadmen" or dummies to channel and concentrate stampeding herds, were used on the High Plains of North America. Between June 1958 and August 1960, Joe Ben Wheat, a Colorado archeologist, supervised a party which excavated one of these ancient bison kills on the barren, windswept plains in the eastern half of that state. Of his work at the Olsen-Chubbock Site, Wheat's own words give the most graphic portrayal, as on page one of his final report where he transports us back across the millennia to the day the kill came into being: Suddenly the pastoral
scene was shattered. At a signal, the hunters arose from their
concealment, shouting and yelling, and waving robes to frighten the
herd. Spears began to fall among the animals, and at once the bison
began a wild stampede toward the south. Too late, the old cows
leading the herd saw the arroyo and tried to turn back, but it was
impossible. Animal after animal pressed from behind, spurred on by
the shower of spears and the shouts of the Indians now in full
pursuit. The bison, impeded by calves, tried to jump the gully, but
many fell kicking, twisting and turning on top of them, pressing those
below ever tighter into the confines of the arroyo. In a matter of
seconds, the arroyo was filled to overflowing with a writhing, bellowing
mass of bison, forming a living bridge over which a few animals
escaped. Now the hunters moved in and began to give the coup de
grace to those animals on top, while underneath, the first trapped animals
kept up the bellows and groans and their struggle to free themselves,
until finally the heavy burden of slain bison above crushed out their
lives. In minutes the kill was over.7
Of the bone-filled arroyo marking the spot today, Wheat goes on to say: Except for the shallow
west end of the arroyo, the lowest level of bones consisted mainly of
whole animals or animals which, because of their relatively inacessible
position in the arroyo, were only minimally butchered. In
general, the elements or units which were cut off of these partly
-butchered animals reflected not a general pattern of butchering, but only
what the hunters were able to reach.8 [Italics mine]
Continuing, he notes, Based on the weight
values of recent bison, from the 80 adult, immature, and juvenile males
and the 110 adult, immature, and juvenile females in the kill, there was
total of 28,645 kg (63,130 lbs) of usable meat available to the
hunters. Of the 190 animals killed, 10 percent were not butchered
in any way, a waste of some 2864 kg (6313 lbs). Sixteen percent
of the kill was only partly butchered. Many of this group were
nearly intact.... Approximately 74 percent of the kill was completely
butchered, resulting in about 21,187 kg (46,717 lbs) of usable meat.
When combined with the meat taken from the partly butchered animals, the
total weight of usable meat actually butchered ... was some 21,663 kg
(47,726 lbs).9 [Italics mine]
Thus, in the precise language of this archeological report, we learn that only 75 percent of the meat taken in this ancient buffalo jump was actually used. The ancient hunters wasted one animal in every four taken. Surely, this is not natural conservation! Millennia before White hunters reportedly killed bison just for their tongues (a delicacy), a comparable wantoness among native Amerinds was not unknown on the High Plains of North America. Slash-and-Burn Removed in space and time from the events we have been considering are the Maya, who sometime after 300 A.D., created a true civilization on the Yucatan peninsula. The Maya were to last 500 or more years, then - mysteriously - pass into oblivion after 800 A.D. Why their decline? To some investigators, the answer is clear. The Maya practiced (and their descendants still do) the ruinous form of agriculture variously called forest-fallow agriculture, swidden agriculture, or simply slash-and-burn. In slash-and-burn, trees are girdled with axe or machete and left to dry in the hot tropical sun. Eventually the wandering agriculturalists return, and fire the dead trees. The resultant clearing (milpa) lets sunlight through to the ground. Soil is stirred lightly with a digging stick, and maize and sometimes other crops are sown. The ashes fertilize the first year's crop. However, in time tropical rains leach the thin jungle soils, hastening formation of laterites (brick earths). These are the red soils that symbolize poverty in tropic lands around the globe. The rains and the demands of heavy feeders like maize deplete the soil and diminish crop yields. Where fallowing is short or infrequent, gulleys start, and eventually broad, grassy, useless savannahs evolve. Many professional archeologists for years have felt that something like a too-sensitive swidden cycle came into being with the Mayan city-centers and the increase of population in Classic times. Ultimately, this brought collapse due to widespread crop failure and the inability of slash-and-burn to produce enough food. Interestingly, this view has been challenged recently by the geographer B. L. Turner II, who cites new data pertinent to Mayan agriculture.10 In the Rio Bec area of southern Campeche, Turner notes the presence of relict artificial terraces and raised fields (for better drainage) as evidence of former intensive agriculture. He suggests intensive agriculture in raised fields developed after early slash-and-bum, and thus favored the Maya with higher crop yields during Classic times. This is interesting, and Turner may well be right, though it remains to be demonstrated that intensive raised-field agriculture was practiced beyond the Rio Bec. It does not in any event change the basic thesis here that the native Americans, including the Maya, were unsophisticated ecologists, whatever their other merits. Turner concedes that raised-field agriculture was probably attended by adverse "environmental ramifications and monocropping disasters." The basic thesis still stands; the burden is merely shifted from a suspicion of swidden farming to a suspicion of raised-field farming. Turner describes it best: The evidence of
intensive agriculture gathered from Campeche and Quintana Roo raises
questions about the validity of swidden-collapse theories as applied to
the Rio Bec Maya.... If terraces and raised fields prove to be as common
throughout the central lowlands as they are in the Rio Bec region, the
validity of swidden-collapse theories must be questioned in terms of the
entire Classic Maya civilization.11 But he goes on to suggest that in the end, unwitting agricultural practices of whatever origin, hastened the fall of the Maya: The concept of
intensive lowland cultivation lends its support to several previously
suggested collapse theories, those concerning environmental ramifications
and monocropping disasters. According to the former, large sections
of the lowlands were stripped of forest vegetation, and drainage patterns
were altered. Such physical tampering might have led to short-term,
but large-scale, environmental repercussions to which the Mayan farmer did
not have sufficient time to adjust. More plausible, however, is the
possibility of a monocropping disaster. Throughout the world,
intensive cultivation is associated with specialization in crop as well as
in cultivation technique. Over-emphasis on terrace maize, or
raised-field root crop production might have left the lowlanders' crops
vulnerable to diseases and pests and consequent failures ....
12 Although Turner seems content to indict "primitive farming technique" only as a contributing factor and not the direct cause of the collapse of Lowland Maya civilization, it is interesting that this traditional view of why the Maya fell is apparently still in favor with many Mayanists, who in a recent symposium cited five "stress factors " related to the fall. Of these, the first and second mention agricultural problems as "the most likely internal stresses and weaknesses in Maya Lowland society during its seventh to eighth-century zenith, just prior to its downfall." 13 Thus, however we may come to the problem of the collapse of the Maya, or just which form of agriculture, or what specific agricultural failing was involved in, or the paramount cause of the fall, it seems we must conclude that the Maya-as-Farmers lacked a variety of "natural" and ecological insights into their problems, and, as is said on Wall Street, they "spent their futures" to their ultimate ruin. Diggers of the Ditches Ruinous farming practices also may have played a role in the Desert Southwest of our own country. Here, as early as 500 A.D., arose a unique culture called the Hohokam (Pima for the "ancient ones" - and from whom the modern Pima and Papagoes may in part be descended). The Hohokam have been celebrated for their use of advanced irrigating methods in bringing a dry and parched land to fruition along the Salt and the Gila Rivers in southern Arizona. Near their height, they may have had as many as 200,000 acres of desert land under cultivation. One giant canal has been traced for more than 30 miles, and there are many miles of other irrigation ditches in a complex network. Their best chronicler is Emil Haury, who excavated their great site of Snaketown. For reasons cited as “undeterminable," Snaketown declined around 1100 A.D. Although others have long suspected that unforeseen consequences of irrigating desert lands may have ended the onetime Hohokam success in farming an arid region, Haury, perhaps understandably, prefers to emphasize a side of the Hohokam which ...came to grips with,
but did not abuse, nature. They became a part of the ecological balance
instead of destroying it…. For our generation, with its soiled streams…..
its shortage of water ... the achievement of Snaketown holds a profound
meaning 14 We may forgive the grand old man of Southwestern archeology his emotional attachment to his beloved Hohokam. Even professional archeologists are not immune to the thesis of Indian-as-Ecologist. It is a fact, nonetheless, that many ancient farmlands of the Hohokam became calichefied as a result of watering desert soils with the mineral-laden waters of the Salt and the Gila. This is a problem known to desert agriculturalists everywhere and is a paradox of the "richness" of desert soils. They often yield bumper crops when first watered, but in a region of high temperature, and evaporation, rivers and water sources may be alkaline, and this plus unleached minerals in the soil spells trouble for farmers. When watered, such soils give up their disseminated mineral content, particularly the carbonates, as a crusty, limey pavement which forms on and just under the surface. In time these caliche cements (hardpans) make the ground impermeable and unsuited to further agriculture. Indeed, one way ancient Hohokam canals have been traced is by the lining of caliche cement which preserved their form over the years since their abandonment; this is used to trace their extent across the desert.
White farmers in the region still contend with hard-pan where desert soils
are even temporarily water-logged. Silting and alkaline waters, as
well as falling levels in the Salt and Gila, may have hastened the
downfall of the Hohokam - Haury's views notwithstanding. His Hohokam
may have less to tell us moderns about water management, with our soiled
streams and water shortages, than Haury admits.
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In this update, the Indian is credited with "ecological insights" and is
held to be intuitively in harmony with Nature in a way that his
contemporary (usually) Caucasoid peer is not.1 An
example is the anti-litter advertising campaign launched by Keep America
Beautiful. Every TV viewer knows Iron Eyes Cody, the Cherokee who
weeps silent tears over beer cans being tossed from car windows and rides
his pony across trash-choked, polluted streams. Voice-over on the
series tells viewers that pollution is a "crying shame" and suggests that
Indians somehow knew better in their time. 
What can have caused this? 
He holds this extinction of
animals and the arrival at approximately the same time of hardy,
well-equipped nomadic hunters to be more than just coincidence and
believes in fact that the latter caused the demise of the former. 
(Fig.
3)