Been going through the history of the Old Northwest (now the Eastern side of the US Midwest) from pre-colonial days through the mid-1800s. The biggest impact of that stretch was ecological. I haven't seen Avatar but I get the idea that it's not so different from the historical record, but more like a parable.
One source for a good chunk of the era: Gregory Evans Dowd's A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745–1815. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.
The various tribes tried to deal with the invaders the same way they dealt with other tribes -- alternating between warring and peacemaking, containing and trading, coalition-building and autonomous survival.
I don't pretend to understand tribal thinking, nor do I tend to romanticize much. But I do know this: from a forest's perspective, the indigenous peoples of the Old Northwest left a light impact and did little harm, whereas the "Anglos" who poured in from the East and South especially after the American Revolution succeeded in decimating everything in their path. Virtually all of the "old growth" forests were brtually chopped down by the end of the 1800s, in a matter of decades. What's in their place can be seen in places like today's Ohio and Indiana.
Today's Rune: Possessions.
5 comments:
The anglos decimated (& continue to decimate) our longleaf pines, too. There's only one, small stand left in our immediate area. 97% of America's pine savannas are gone & but for a few conservation efforts, much of the rest is going to follow.
People suck.
Too many people came to fast and as ever it became more profitable to demolish the resources than t maintain them and use them at a sustainable rate.
I often think that the aboriginal way which relied heavily on the beating heart of the earth and actually mimicking that heartbeat in every drum circle and dance was what allowed the to be self sustaining. They respected the earth and what came from it.
The Europeans who conquered and then near killed the environment were "advanced thinkers," more concerned with words like justice and liberty than they were what actually gave them that freedom.
Avatar is definitely worth seeing in the theatre; it's the new standard for 3-D movies. I'm sure that if I'd've waited and seen it at home on my television, the story wouldn't've carried it as far.
Wall Street
"The name of the street derives from the 17th century when Wall Street formed the northern boundary of the New Amsterdam settlement. In the 1640s basic picket and plank fences denoted plots and residences in the colony.[3] Later, on behalf of the Dutch West India Company, Peter Stuyvesant, in part using African slaves,[4] led the Dutch in the construction of a stronger stockade."
Hey, thajks all for the comments -- appreciated, absorbed and appreciated even more . . .
Post a Comment