American Environmental History. Группа авторов

American Environmental History

to keep the crows from pulling up the newly sprouted grain; such damage we were content to repair by replanting.

Girls began to go on the watchers’ stage to watch the corn and sing when they were about 10 or 12 years of age. They continued the custom even after they had grown up and married; and old women, working in the garden and stopping to rest, often went on the stage and sang.

Two girls usually watched and sang together. The village gardens were laid out close to one another; and a girl of one family would be joined by the girl of the family who owned the garden adjoining. Sometimes three, or even four, girls got on the stage and sang together; but never more than four. A drum was not used to accompany the singing.

The watchers sometimes rose and stood upon the stage as they looked to see if any boys or horses were in the field, stealing corn. Older girls and young married women, and even old women, often worked at porcupine embroidery as they watched. Very young girls did not embroider.

Boys of nine to eleven years of age were sometimes rather troublesome thieves. They were fond of stealing green ears to roast by a fire in the woods. Sometimes – not every day, however – we had to guard our corn alertly. A boy caught stealing was merely scolded. “You must not steal here again!” we would say to him. His parents were not asked to pay damage for the theft.

We went to the watchers’ stage quite early in the day, before sunrise, or near it, and we came home at sunset.

The watching season continued until the corn was all gathered and harvested. My grandmother, Turtle, was a familiar figure in our family’s field, in this season. I can remember her staying out in the field daily, picking out the ripening ears and braiding them in a string.

Images of Florida Indians Planting and Making an Offering of a Stag to the Sun

(Extract from Trustees of the British Museum, The Work of Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues, Vols I and II. London: British Museum Publications, 1977.)

The remaining items are engravings and captions by a Flemish artist, Theodore de Bry, who based his images on paintings by Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues, an artist who accompanied a French expedition to Florida in the 1560s. Le Moyne had come to know the Timucua people, who are the subject of these images. De Bry published these engravings in 1591, with the captions presented here. Look for the ways that different features of Timucuan economy connect to each other and to the earth. The first image (Figure 1.3) is of Timucuan men and women planting a field. Although the engraving is not always accurate (since these people did not have plows, the field would have been planted in hillocks, not rows), it remains one of the best pieces of evidence we have about Indians and the earth in the 1500s. How did men assist women in the preparation of these fields? Note the way that men fashioned hoes from fish bone. Who did the fishing? To what degree was fishing a vital part of the economy of these people as a source of food, and as a source of farm implements?

Figure 1.3 Method of tilling the ground and sowing seed. The Indians cultivate the soil carefully. The men know how to construct hoes out of fish bones for this purpose, to which wooden handles are fitted, and they dig the ground easily enough since it is rather light. Then, when it is thoroughly broken up and levelled, the women sow beans and millet or maize, several of them going ahead and making holes by prodding a stick into the ground, into which are dropped beans and millet grains. The sowing finished, they leave the fields in order to avoid the winter time which is rather cold – inasmuch as the region lies between west and north – and lasts for about three months from December 24 to March 15. Since they go naked they take themselves off to the woods. When winter is over they go back home and wait for the crops to ripen. After gathering the harvest they store the produce for consumption all the year round, not using it for any commercial purpose except perhaps bartering it for some common household article. H.S. Photos/Alamy Stock Photo.

Then note the second image (Figure 1.4), which depicts a ceremonial offering. Here, the Indians have filled the body of a deer with produce and raised it to the spirits in hopes that the spirits will respond by making “grow again in their kingdom good things similar to those offered.” Notice how the hunting of deer (these people were superlative hunters and farmers) is vital to the success of the harvest. Without hunting, there would be no offering to the spirits who make the crops grow. Without farming, there would be no gifts to place inside the offering. In this way, Native American hunters and farmers worked within the same villages to connect the nature of the hunt and the nature of the garden, balancing the spirits’ gifts, and making balanced offerings to the spirits in return.

Figure 1.4 The offering of a stag to the sun. Every year, a little before their spring (at the end of February, in fact), the chief Outina’s subjects take the skin, complete with antlers, of the biggest stag they have been able to catch (Source: Alamy Images). They stuff it with all kinds of the choicest plants that their land produces, sew it up again, and deck the horns, the throat, and the rest of the body with their more special fruits made up into wreaths or long garlands. Thus decorated, it is carried away to the music of pipes and singing into a very wide and beautiful plain, and there it is placed on a very tall tree trunk, with its head and chest turned towards the sunrise, prayers being repeatedly uttered to the sun that he should cause to grow again in their kingdom good things similar to those offered to him.

The chief with his sorcerer is nearest to the tree and gives the lead in what is said, with the people who are farther away responding. When they have greeted the sun the chief and the rest of the people go away leaving the skin there until the following year. This sort of ceremony is repeated each year. Artefact/Alamy Stock Photo.

Map of Bitterroot Forest Reserve

Our last document is a US Geological Survey map of Bitterroot Forest Reserve (today’s Bitterroot National Forest) in the Northern Rocky Mountains, along the Idaho–Montana state line. The surveyor who compiled the map, J. B. Leiberg, noted the extent of old fire scarring and woodland regrowth over hundreds of thousands of acres. Leiberg dated some fires as far back as 1719, long before American settlers arrived in the region. The area with multiple lines drawn through had seen successive burns. Some of these fires were doubtless the result of lightning, but many more were likely to have been ignited by Indians, who used fire to clear out dense undergrowth, encourage new growth of grasses for game, and preserve mountain mweadows from forest encroachment, among other reasons. How much was America’s “virgin wilderness” in fact a landscape maintained by Indians?

Figure 1.5 Map of Bitterroot Forest Reserve showing burned areas by J. B. Leiberg 1890.

(Source: US Geological Survey, Twentieth Annual Report (1990), pp. 384–385. Public Domain.)

American Environmental History. Группа авторов