Keepers of the Game

Fülszöveg

KEEPERS OF THE GAME
Indian-Animal Relationships and the Fur Trade
CALVIN MARTIN
A new and challenging approach to a subject which incorporates aspects of history, anthropology, medicine, geography, and philosophy, Keepers of the Game combines conventional historical sources with ethnographic analogy to reinterpret the American Indian's participation in the Eastern fur trade. Traditionally, the Indians had a relationship of mutual courtesy with their wildlife brethren; man and animal has established a compact not to abuse each other. Respect and fear limited the hunter's depredations.
Yet early written records show the native hunter as curiously vindictive and hostile towards his prey. Soon after the first European-Indian contacts, Nature seems to have become largely inarticulate; the dialogue with Nature stopped for many persons. It seems that the advent of European diseases did much to sour the man-animal relationship. In many cases Old World diseases like smallpox and plague... Tovább

Fülszöveg

KEEPERS OF THE GAME
Indian-Animal Relationships and the Fur Trade
CALVIN MARTIN
A new and challenging approach to a subject which incorporates aspects of history, anthropology, medicine, geography, and philosophy, Keepers of the Game combines conventional historical sources with ethnographic analogy to reinterpret the American Indian's participation in the Eastern fur trade. Traditionally, the Indians had a relationship of mutual courtesy with their wildlife brethren; man and animal has established a compact not to abuse each other. Respect and fear limited the hunter's depredations.
Yet early written records show the native hunter as curiously vindictive and hostile towards his prey. Soon after the first European-Indian contacts, Nature seems to have become largely inarticulate; the dialogue with Nature stopped for many persons. It seems that the advent of European diseases did much to sour the man-animal relationship. In many cases Old World diseases like smallpox and plague had preceded any sustained contact with European visitors. Following conventional Indian logic, the Northeastern aborigine quite possibly blamed these mysterious, incredibly devastating epidemics on offended wildlife. It was a conspiracy of animals against man: wildlife had treacherously unleashed its arsenal of weapons against mankind. The animals had broken the compact. The dialogue became bitter; for many
it ceased altogether. Their spiritual complex shattered by diseases, the Indians now turned on their former colleagues, the game, with a cold vengeance and an improved hunting technology.
The epilogue of the book takes up this issue of the Indian-land relationship within the broader context of the environmental movement. Was the North American Indian indeed a natural conservationist-ecologist? As long as the Indian could talk with Nature, he was functionally a conservationist, largely out of fear of retaliation for indiscretions. Once hunting had become a secular affair for him, he became just as exploitative as his white counterpart. The upshot of all this is that the American Indian has nothing to teach us regarding the metaphysics of wise land-use. The Judeo-Christian tradition has presented us with a universe that is insensate and inarticulate—the very opposite of the qualities which called forth the Indian's sense of stewardship of the land. In our inanimate universe we can never hope to duplicate the traditional Indian's peculiar vision. The traditional Indian, in short, has nothing comforting to say to the troubled environmentalist; the two speak a different language.
CALVIN MARTIN is a member of the History Department at Rutgers College. Vissza