Native Americans weren't very kind to the environment

Human Events, May 12, 2000 by Bartlett, Bruce

This Saturday, April 22, was Earth Day, the day set aside annually for condemning civilization's devastation of the environment. Around the country, there were many events applauding Native Americans for living in harmony with the environment before the evil white man came and destroyed paradise. People were encouraged to restore the earth to the time before Christopher Columbus came and ruined everything. 'Wild in the Woods'

The school children who mainly participate in these Earth Day brainwashing exercises did not hear anything about the incredible environmental destruction by the native peoples of North and South America. A vast amount of research by anthropologists and archaeologists, however, shows clearly that in many ways Native Americans treated the environment far worse than we do today.

The notion that they lived in harmony with nature, taking from it only what they needed to live, simply is mythology. The truth, frankly, is gruesome.

A recent study, Wild in the Woods: The Myth of the Noble Eco-Savage by Robert Whelan (London: Institute of Economic Affairs, 1999), documents the many ways in which pre-Colombian man absolutely ravaged his environment.

For starters, Native Americans were big forest burners. Indeed, before the white man came to this hemisphere there was virtually no virgin forest because it had all repeatedly been burned.

The reason is simple: Forests had almost no value to Native Americans and interfered with hunting. Says Whelan, "The species which the Indians most wanted to hunt, like bison, moose, elk and deer; are found most easily in areas of recently burnt forest, which is why they burnt the forests over and over again."

Moreover, Native Americans often burned forests simply for fun. The great American explorers Lewis and Clark recorded that Indians in the Rocky Mountains would set trees on fire "as after-dinner entertainment; the huge trees would explode like Roman candles in the night."

When hunting, Native Americans were not shy about using extremely brutal methods, with no concern whatsoever for sportsmanship. A favorite buffalo hunting technique was to stampede huge herds of them over cliffs. Many such Buffalo jump sites have been found in the West, some with remains of as many as 300,000 buffalo.

Furthermore, Native Americans often hunted animals into extinction. Among those that disappeared due to Native American over-hunting are the woolly mammoth, saber-toothed tiger, giant sloth, giant beaver, camel, horse, two-toed horse and dire wolf, according to environmental writer Alston Chase.

Australian Aborigines and the Maoris of New Zealand were also responsible for hunting numerous species into extinction long before white men arrived on the scene.

Such extinctions are unsurprising, given the Native Americans' utter disregard for conservation. For example, they hunted pride-age female animals most heavily, because they had greater stores. of fat and better hides.

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Native religious ceremonies also contributed to extinctions. Women of the Crow Tribe wore dresses decorated with the teeth of 350 elk. In Hawaii, natives made beautiful capes from the feathers of as many as 80,000 birds, some of which became extinct in the process.

Finally, it should be noted that Native Americans didn't treat the earth any better than they treated the wildlife. Soil erosion was common long before white settlements were established. When the land became exhausted, Native Americans simply moved on. The idea that they treated the land with special reverence simply has no basis outside the imaginations of gullible utopians.

The truth is that in many ways we treat the land better today than pre-Colombian man did, are better conservationists and stewards of the environment. Earth Day enthusiasts should cease celebrating an Eden that never was.

Mr. Bartlett, a nationally syndicated columnist, is a senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis.