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The Ecological Indian: Myth and History
The Idea of the Native American living in perfect harmony with nature is one of the most cherished contemporary myths. But how truthful is this larger-than-life image?
According to anthropologist Shepard Krech, the first humans in North America demonstrated all of the intelligence, self-interest, flexibility, and ability to make mistakes of human beings anywhere. As Nicholas Lemann put it in The New Yorker, "Krech is more than just a conventional-wisdom overturner; he has a serious larger point to make. . . . Concepts like ecology, waste, preservation, and even the natural (as distinct from human) world are entirely anachronistic when applied to Indians in the days before the European settlement of North America".
318 pages, Hardcover
First published August 1, 1999
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March 11, 2013Keep a secret? This is one of those books I was supposed to read for class and never did. Choose any and all of the myriad reasons books for class don't get read. Then it turns out to have great bearing on my intended research later in life--go figure. I am pleased, partly because this made me realize how much of a better, faster, less intimidated, more savvy reader I am today than when I tried reading it three years ago. I DID get something out of college after all! Hooray!
But as for the book and the argument: extremely useful bibliography, with the most detailed and non-distracting citation style I've seen in a while. Thank you, Mr. Krech. He does his duty by the prehistoric examples, but clearly seems more comfortable with the historic evidence. The chapters on "Eden" and "Beaver" are particularly good summaries (although he sometimes lets the profusion of numbers run away with him). I wish there had been at least one example from marine or aquatic resources, but that's nit-picking a bit. The points themselves are carefully argued--so carefully that the chapters are often lacking in strong conclusions. I have this writing problem all the time myself. Krech understands his job to be complicating our understanding of human-environment relationships in Native North America, not creating inflammatory or political statements.
Krech's delicate, non-confrontational writing makes the responses to this book even more surprising. I read several reviews in academic journals, and most are less intelligent than the book itself. However, highly recommend googling Kimberly Tallbear's astute response to understand how the ideas in this book impact our historical moment. Thank goodness at least one person got it.
Native North Americans of the past didn't understand nature in terms of 20th century conservation and preservation--SURPRISE! In fact, they had all kinds of their own ideas about how to relate to their resources--SURPRISE! Those ideas changed over time, because the situation (human demographics, relationships between groups, resource levels) changed--SURPRISE! Sheesh...sometimes I think we are too easily astonished.
But as for the book and the argument: extremely useful bibliography, with the most detailed and non-distracting citation style I've seen in a while. Thank you, Mr. Krech. He does his duty by the prehistoric examples, but clearly seems more comfortable with the historic evidence. The chapters on "Eden" and "Beaver" are particularly good summaries (although he sometimes lets the profusion of numbers run away with him). I wish there had been at least one example from marine or aquatic resources, but that's nit-picking a bit. The points themselves are carefully argued--so carefully that the chapters are often lacking in strong conclusions. I have this writing problem all the time myself. Krech understands his job to be complicating our understanding of human-environment relationships in Native North America, not creating inflammatory or political statements.
Krech's delicate, non-confrontational writing makes the responses to this book even more surprising. I read several reviews in academic journals, and most are less intelligent than the book itself. However, highly recommend googling Kimberly Tallbear's astute response to understand how the ideas in this book impact our historical moment. Thank goodness at least one person got it.
Native North Americans of the past didn't understand nature in terms of 20th century conservation and preservation--SURPRISE! In fact, they had all kinds of their own ideas about how to relate to their resources--SURPRISE! Those ideas changed over time, because the situation (human demographics, relationships between groups, resource levels) changed--SURPRISE! Sheesh...sometimes I think we are too easily astonished.
July 19, 2016
Shepard Krech sets out to find the truth behind the "Ecological Indian" stereotype. The book starts out with a bit of an attitude, as it is apparent that Krech finds the stereotype offensive and harmful. I was a bit wary at that point that he would allow this reactionary bent to color his scholarship, but this was apparently unfounded. The body of the book consists of short essays summarizing scholarly opinion on a range of early Native American environmental issues that shed some light on the true relationship native communities had with their environment. The presentations seem balanced and honest, and nearly always end with a sort of compromising shrug, which seems appropriate.
Krech points out that the Ecological Indian myth has its roots in two social trends. First, Native communities and their allies have apparently used the stereotype to gain moral high ground in arguments about land-use and land rights - which may be strategically appropriate and I may agree with the end of indigenous self-determination, but which still obfuscates the truth of the matter. Secondly, Western environmental thinkers and activists have used the Ecological Indian myth as a "counterweight," to borrow Krech's nice turn of phrase, against the incredibly strong currents of destructive overuse in our culture. This is, for instance, the way that Derrick Jensen often uses indigenous land use ethics.
The truth Krech determines is of course much more mixed than either the Ecological Indian myth of wise stewardship and respect or the other pole, Natives as abusers comparable to Europeans. Various Native American societies permanently damaged their environments, sometimes in ways that may have doomed their communities. When Europeans arrived, many Natives entered in the fur trade and in full knowledge and consent contributed to the near-extinction of many fur-bearing mammals, from deer to beavers to buffalo, despite the long-standing traditions of respect taboos and the knowledge of their dependence on these creatures. To attribute this consenting destruction entirely to the social erosion caused by imperialism, disease, and alcohol introduced by Europeans, no matter how important those factors were, still marginalizes the agency of Native communities in making decisions for themselves. Natives genuinely valued the items they received through trade.
The epilogue also speaks briefly about modern issues, in which natives have, due in part to the exigencies of modern capitalism and the economic wake of colonialism, often found themselves advocating industrial abuse of their own lands. While there are some hints in the text that these are often led by leaders engaged with external industry and politics without the consent of the rest of the communities, they still reveal Natives as complicated people responding the best they can to their situations. Often those compromises involve sacrificing the kind of principles ascribed to the Ecological Indian.
The question of cultures of land-use is the most interesting aspect of the book to me. People like Jensen and even David Abram premise some of their arguments on the idea that indigenous peoples, in close contact and with deep understandings of the mechanisms of their environments, develop cultures that preserve their land base. Jensen talks about a contract between predator and prey, in which eating another being is a tacit promise to maintain that being's community. Krech never questions the fact that Natives understand their environment very well. They burn areas with an understanding of what will happen several years down the road. They know where to find animals and how to kill them.
Yet these understandings do not necessarily translate into the equivalent of a conservation biology degree. Krech asserts several times that superstitious beliefs about animal populations prevented Natives from understanding how to conserve them in the face of growing fur trade pressure. For instance, some cultures believed that "the more you kill the more there will be in the future," which is a strange and backwards position to modern biologists.
On this question, and the question of waste, I was a bit curious if Krech wasn't simply imposing Western values on questions of science. For instance, it seems plausible that, in the conditions in which Natives developed their cultural understandings of animal populations, killing more really did increase birthrates (this happens when you mow grass and in human populations when mortality due to disease and conflict are high). Yet this idea is never entertained - it is simply proof that Natives weren't ecologists.
Krech also takes for granted the idea that conservation and land stewardship involve "taking only what you need and using all that you take," and that therefore, when Natives killed droves of any given animal and only took the tongues, or left 2/3s to rot, they were acting in ways that violated Western values. Of course, Western values may not apply to Native land relationships. For instance, we value getting every last bit out of the resources we have, since European culture was used to scarcity and dense populations. At the same time and for some of the same reasons, we value "wilderness," the untrammeled natural place. By killing and wasting resources like caribou or buffalo, Natives offend both of these sensibilities. But is it really true that they are using their resources unwisely? There can be logic in waste, and there may be things they understood that we still don't. It obviously worked well enough until Europeans arrived.
These questions raise a major doubt for me: if land-use ethics and conservation cultures are abandoned so easily in exchange for trade goods or a piece of the industrial economy, or if they don't change in response to changing ecological conditions, then what good are they? They in effect codify the pseudo-static practices that the community has adapted over many years, without actually providing a robust and adaptable system. This may unfairly downplay the rapidity and ferocity of the changes wrought by European conquest, but it places a major doubt about these ethics in my mind.
Krech points out that the Ecological Indian myth has its roots in two social trends. First, Native communities and their allies have apparently used the stereotype to gain moral high ground in arguments about land-use and land rights - which may be strategically appropriate and I may agree with the end of indigenous self-determination, but which still obfuscates the truth of the matter. Secondly, Western environmental thinkers and activists have used the Ecological Indian myth as a "counterweight," to borrow Krech's nice turn of phrase, against the incredibly strong currents of destructive overuse in our culture. This is, for instance, the way that Derrick Jensen often uses indigenous land use ethics.
The truth Krech determines is of course much more mixed than either the Ecological Indian myth of wise stewardship and respect or the other pole, Natives as abusers comparable to Europeans. Various Native American societies permanently damaged their environments, sometimes in ways that may have doomed their communities. When Europeans arrived, many Natives entered in the fur trade and in full knowledge and consent contributed to the near-extinction of many fur-bearing mammals, from deer to beavers to buffalo, despite the long-standing traditions of respect taboos and the knowledge of their dependence on these creatures. To attribute this consenting destruction entirely to the social erosion caused by imperialism, disease, and alcohol introduced by Europeans, no matter how important those factors were, still marginalizes the agency of Native communities in making decisions for themselves. Natives genuinely valued the items they received through trade.
The epilogue also speaks briefly about modern issues, in which natives have, due in part to the exigencies of modern capitalism and the economic wake of colonialism, often found themselves advocating industrial abuse of their own lands. While there are some hints in the text that these are often led by leaders engaged with external industry and politics without the consent of the rest of the communities, they still reveal Natives as complicated people responding the best they can to their situations. Often those compromises involve sacrificing the kind of principles ascribed to the Ecological Indian.
The question of cultures of land-use is the most interesting aspect of the book to me. People like Jensen and even David Abram premise some of their arguments on the idea that indigenous peoples, in close contact and with deep understandings of the mechanisms of their environments, develop cultures that preserve their land base. Jensen talks about a contract between predator and prey, in which eating another being is a tacit promise to maintain that being's community. Krech never questions the fact that Natives understand their environment very well. They burn areas with an understanding of what will happen several years down the road. They know where to find animals and how to kill them.
Yet these understandings do not necessarily translate into the equivalent of a conservation biology degree. Krech asserts several times that superstitious beliefs about animal populations prevented Natives from understanding how to conserve them in the face of growing fur trade pressure. For instance, some cultures believed that "the more you kill the more there will be in the future," which is a strange and backwards position to modern biologists.
On this question, and the question of waste, I was a bit curious if Krech wasn't simply imposing Western values on questions of science. For instance, it seems plausible that, in the conditions in which Natives developed their cultural understandings of animal populations, killing more really did increase birthrates (this happens when you mow grass and in human populations when mortality due to disease and conflict are high). Yet this idea is never entertained - it is simply proof that Natives weren't ecologists.
Krech also takes for granted the idea that conservation and land stewardship involve "taking only what you need and using all that you take," and that therefore, when Natives killed droves of any given animal and only took the tongues, or left 2/3s to rot, they were acting in ways that violated Western values. Of course, Western values may not apply to Native land relationships. For instance, we value getting every last bit out of the resources we have, since European culture was used to scarcity and dense populations. At the same time and for some of the same reasons, we value "wilderness," the untrammeled natural place. By killing and wasting resources like caribou or buffalo, Natives offend both of these sensibilities. But is it really true that they are using their resources unwisely? There can be logic in waste, and there may be things they understood that we still don't. It obviously worked well enough until Europeans arrived.
These questions raise a major doubt for me: if land-use ethics and conservation cultures are abandoned so easily in exchange for trade goods or a piece of the industrial economy, or if they don't change in response to changing ecological conditions, then what good are they? They in effect codify the pseudo-static practices that the community has adapted over many years, without actually providing a robust and adaptable system. This may unfairly downplay the rapidity and ferocity of the changes wrought by European conquest, but it places a major doubt about these ethics in my mind.
May 19, 2016
An important book, if only for the establishment of a counter-narrative to a pervasive stereotype. We always need reminders that everyone -- let alone a wide range of native cultures -- deserves to be taken for who and what they are, not the labels we want to assign them.
July 29, 2022
This is a tricky book to rate. For an academic-style book it is quite readable, but because I was already fairly familiar with the subject area it was easier to get bored with the dry style and dozens of footnoted examples. However, I could totally see building a very interesting college course around it, with some supplemental readings!
I don’t understand some of the other reviews on Goodreads going on about how this is an antidote to the “wokeness” of books like ‘1491’. The latter book talks much more clearly than this one about how reductions in native populations due to introduced diseases may have artificially inflated colonist’s views of the natural abundance of bison, passenger pigeons, etc…meaning that indigenous activities had been reducing their abundance previously. I was also waiting for this book to bring up the deforestation associated with the growth of the Cahokia civilization (which I’m pretty sure I learned about in ‘1491’ as well) but it never did.
Basically, the thesis of this book is: “Indigenous people are people - people with a wide variety of individual and societal beliefs and behaviors (which can also change over time), some of which are more sustainable than others.”
The most interesting part to me was the examples of how traditional beliefs that were sustainable in the past might become unsustainable. The way many native cultures related to game animals was based on concepts of “respect” rather than limiting hunting per se, and many game animals were believed to reincarnate or regenerate themselves from the spirit world. This was fine for millennia when people were hunting mainly for themselves plus occasional trade but, once European markets created a bottomless appetite for certain animal products, led to populations of deer, beaver, etc. plummeting. As this problem became apparent to both indigenous people and European settlers, new rules that more resemble our current ideas of conservation began to be developed: eg. rotating among hunting territories or not killing all the beavers in a pond. I feel like this point could have been made more clearly by combining examples rather than having separate chapters for each animal species, though.
If I were to teach a class based on this book, there are two areas I’d want to highlight important updates.
In one of the early chapters, Dr. Krech rightly points out that the ‘Blitzkrieg hypothesis’ – that paleoindians caused the megafaunal extinctions ~11,000 years ago through overhunting – is incorrect or at least a vast oversimplification, given that humans arrived in the Americas at least 1-3,000 years before the extinctions started, suggesting the climate change at the end of the last ice age was the most important factor. He dismisses even earlier dates, but the evidence for that is growing: Human footprints >21,000 years old were recently authenticated in White Sands National Park (https://www.nps.gov/whsa/learn/nature...). That means that humans coexisted with mammoths, giant sloths, etc. for at least 10,000 years before these animals went extinct. At the same time, North American megafauna had survived several previous interglacials. To me, that suggests that neither climate nor hunting alone was the cause, but rather the stresses of both together.
The other update would be to the last chapter that focuses on native groups today and their complex relationships to conservation. Specifically, he notes: “Few like the impact of strip-mining on landscapes, the contamination of groundwater, and air pollution, but many would like to be employed.” This is a conflict experienced by many marginalized communities around the world that deserves to be expanded upon. Even with this tension, however, there is accumulating evidence that supporting indigenous control over land can have positive effects for conservation. For example, a study published this year (2022) found that across the tropics, indigenous land control was as effective or more at preventing deforestation than formal park designations https://www.nature.com/articles/s4189.... Many other studies have found similar results, usually explained by resources for park protection being limited, while indigenous people have a vested interest in safeguarding local resources. However, it should be noted that the deforestation generally isn’t ZERO, just LOWER. That paper also notes: “Protected areas and Indigenous territories are often threatened by the same macroeconomic political forces”
I don’t understand some of the other reviews on Goodreads going on about how this is an antidote to the “wokeness” of books like ‘1491’. The latter book talks much more clearly than this one about how reductions in native populations due to introduced diseases may have artificially inflated colonist’s views of the natural abundance of bison, passenger pigeons, etc…meaning that indigenous activities had been reducing their abundance previously. I was also waiting for this book to bring up the deforestation associated with the growth of the Cahokia civilization (which I’m pretty sure I learned about in ‘1491’ as well) but it never did.
Basically, the thesis of this book is: “Indigenous people are people - people with a wide variety of individual and societal beliefs and behaviors (which can also change over time), some of which are more sustainable than others.”
The most interesting part to me was the examples of how traditional beliefs that were sustainable in the past might become unsustainable. The way many native cultures related to game animals was based on concepts of “respect” rather than limiting hunting per se, and many game animals were believed to reincarnate or regenerate themselves from the spirit world. This was fine for millennia when people were hunting mainly for themselves plus occasional trade but, once European markets created a bottomless appetite for certain animal products, led to populations of deer, beaver, etc. plummeting. As this problem became apparent to both indigenous people and European settlers, new rules that more resemble our current ideas of conservation began to be developed: eg. rotating among hunting territories or not killing all the beavers in a pond. I feel like this point could have been made more clearly by combining examples rather than having separate chapters for each animal species, though.
If I were to teach a class based on this book, there are two areas I’d want to highlight important updates.
In one of the early chapters, Dr. Krech rightly points out that the ‘Blitzkrieg hypothesis’ – that paleoindians caused the megafaunal extinctions ~11,000 years ago through overhunting – is incorrect or at least a vast oversimplification, given that humans arrived in the Americas at least 1-3,000 years before the extinctions started, suggesting the climate change at the end of the last ice age was the most important factor. He dismisses even earlier dates, but the evidence for that is growing: Human footprints >21,000 years old were recently authenticated in White Sands National Park (https://www.nps.gov/whsa/learn/nature...). That means that humans coexisted with mammoths, giant sloths, etc. for at least 10,000 years before these animals went extinct. At the same time, North American megafauna had survived several previous interglacials. To me, that suggests that neither climate nor hunting alone was the cause, but rather the stresses of both together.
The other update would be to the last chapter that focuses on native groups today and their complex relationships to conservation. Specifically, he notes: “Few like the impact of strip-mining on landscapes, the contamination of groundwater, and air pollution, but many would like to be employed.” This is a conflict experienced by many marginalized communities around the world that deserves to be expanded upon. Even with this tension, however, there is accumulating evidence that supporting indigenous control over land can have positive effects for conservation. For example, a study published this year (2022) found that across the tropics, indigenous land control was as effective or more at preventing deforestation than formal park designations https://www.nature.com/articles/s4189.... Many other studies have found similar results, usually explained by resources for park protection being limited, while indigenous people have a vested interest in safeguarding local resources. However, it should be noted that the deforestation generally isn’t ZERO, just LOWER. That paper also notes: “Protected areas and Indigenous territories are often threatened by the same macroeconomic political forces”
April 28, 2019
I get the point, but Krech only seemed to succeed in demonizing Native Americans. His cherry-picking is atrocious.
January 5, 2009
Krech, Shepard, III. 1999. The ecological Indian : myth and history. W. W. Norton & Company. New York. (Anacortes Public Library: 333.708997 Kre., 02/04/08) ISBN: 0-06-023461-8
This book dispels the myth that all Indians think alike ~ and also the thought that they are all great conservators of animal populations. Archealogical history shows that they did not always use all parts of the animal nor restrict their killing just to what they needed. Numerous cases of where this was not the fact are documented. Also discussed is the belief in animal reincarnation, which made conserving animal populations an unnecessary practice. Instead sacred practices with bones, etc. were believed to increase animal populations through incarnations.
An historical myth has been perpetuated about the Indian habits of conserving animal populations. Examples are given showing where this was not the case:
1.Clovis man (Paleoindians during Pleistocene – 11,000 years ago) running herds of mammoths and mastodons over cliffs, killing far more than was needed and eventually was not sustainable.
2.Hohokam disappeared by 1400's. Why? Earthquakes? Flooding? Higher water table? Environmental change due to oversalinization of canal irrigation system and cutting down of trees?
3.North American Indian deaths due to epidemics introduced by the white man put Indian populations at a low count by the 1600's, so animal populations were expanded.
4.Beaver trade facilitated Indians in gaining kettles, guns, cloth, alcohol, etc. To get these items Indians wiped out beaver populations.
This book dispels the myth that all Indians think alike ~ and also the thought that they are all great conservators of animal populations. Archealogical history shows that they did not always use all parts of the animal nor restrict their killing just to what they needed. Numerous cases of where this was not the fact are documented. Also discussed is the belief in animal reincarnation, which made conserving animal populations an unnecessary practice. Instead sacred practices with bones, etc. were believed to increase animal populations through incarnations.
An historical myth has been perpetuated about the Indian habits of conserving animal populations. Examples are given showing where this was not the case:
1.Clovis man (Paleoindians during Pleistocene – 11,000 years ago) running herds of mammoths and mastodons over cliffs, killing far more than was needed and eventually was not sustainable.
2.Hohokam disappeared by 1400's. Why? Earthquakes? Flooding? Higher water table? Environmental change due to oversalinization of canal irrigation system and cutting down of trees?
3.North American Indian deaths due to epidemics introduced by the white man put Indian populations at a low count by the 1600's, so animal populations were expanded.
4.Beaver trade facilitated Indians in gaining kettles, guns, cloth, alcohol, etc. To get these items Indians wiped out beaver populations.
December 14, 2010
I think Krech loses some of his message with his deliberately confrontational language (e.g., juxtaposing Ecological Indians and Non-Ecological White Men) but overall this is quite an interesting read. Some of his arguments are clearly flawed, such as assuming waste was inherent in the buffalo jump when in fact pre-historic natives would have had no way to reach, or butcher, the beasts on the bottom of 200 deep piles of buffalo in narrow arroyos. Yet for the most part he provides good research and well reasoned arguments that challenge looking at all Native Americans as defenders of untrammeled nature. Whereas Cronon is more measured and insightful, Krech is more provocative and challenging. Not my preferred methods in an academic piece seeking truth but as I stated above he has some valid points worth noting. I wouldn't pick this up for my first environmental history book but it helps round out the field. Solid 3 stars.
July 12, 2010
I really enjoyed this book. Krech illustrates there is no clear answer to whether Native Americans represent an "ecologist" or "conservationist" force. Rather, their views on reciprocity and relationship with human, non-person forces shape their interactions with the Earth. Krech is skillful in connecting the history of the Ecological Indian to the broad, modern problems of globalization.
I read this book to complement a Native American History/Culture college class, and this book integrates well with what I learned about fictive kinship and the active role of Indians with Europeans in the fur trade, among other trades.
I read this book to complement a Native American History/Culture college class, and this book integrates well with what I learned about fictive kinship and the active role of Indians with Europeans in the fur trade, among other trades.
May 5, 2015
Brilliantly written, amazingly researched (those notes at the end are amazing!), and well argued. It not only presents a wonderful case, it is through provoking and begs the reader to ask more questions -- inspires research and continued learning. Beyond that, it was just a good read, to say the least. Flew through the book. One of my favorites. Loved it.
March 27, 2021
I’m happy to have read this book. He pulls out a lot of examples citing tons of journals and other sources of instances where all humans have been wasteful or degraded natural resources. He doesn’t cherry pick examples of only Native Americans doing such things. The conclusion I gather from the book is that he doesn’t demonize Native Americans for getting necessities and even desires from their environment but wants to point out that they are human in this regard like the rest of us.
He seeks to address the broad brush assumption that all Native Americans were shining examples of ecologically harmonious humans. However, many of them were and he makes the case that conservation and even family territorial boundaries in regard to the beaver fur trade were influenced by scarcity that developed later on. He points out in multiple cases where spiritual beliefs led Natives to believe that proper respect for the animals they were hunting was the prime factor in whether or not they would surrender and make themselves available to humans. Many believed that if an animal died before their time from being hunted that they would simply reincarnate as much as seven in place of the one that died. They believed that more would always appear. Given the population of the wildlife in the continent early on in the commodification and marketization of natural resources it is understandable that natives as well as colonists believed that it was inexhaustible. Natives had beliefs that bison and deer came from caves underground in vast quantities.
He makes the case that conservation practices were presented and imposed on natives by the Hudson’s Bay Company in the latter years of the fur trade. Summer kills and cubs were no longer accepted as trading posts where the beaver population was suffering. Natives would simply sell them to natives who would present them at trading posts without those restrictions because the population there was still plentiful.
The epilogue of the book is a smorgasbord of contemporary examples where natives felt they had just as much of a right as white people to make money off of their land at the behest of environmentalists and conservationists. Examples of strip mining, oil drilling, and the hunting of endangered bowhead whales due to their religious philosophy of either utilizing nature’s gifts or spiritual relationships with certain prey were particularly striking.
Highly recommend this book. There are extensive citations that make up a third of the pages of the book for everyone to dig into.
He seeks to address the broad brush assumption that all Native Americans were shining examples of ecologically harmonious humans. However, many of them were and he makes the case that conservation and even family territorial boundaries in regard to the beaver fur trade were influenced by scarcity that developed later on. He points out in multiple cases where spiritual beliefs led Natives to believe that proper respect for the animals they were hunting was the prime factor in whether or not they would surrender and make themselves available to humans. Many believed that if an animal died before their time from being hunted that they would simply reincarnate as much as seven in place of the one that died. They believed that more would always appear. Given the population of the wildlife in the continent early on in the commodification and marketization of natural resources it is understandable that natives as well as colonists believed that it was inexhaustible. Natives had beliefs that bison and deer came from caves underground in vast quantities.
He makes the case that conservation practices were presented and imposed on natives by the Hudson’s Bay Company in the latter years of the fur trade. Summer kills and cubs were no longer accepted as trading posts where the beaver population was suffering. Natives would simply sell them to natives who would present them at trading posts without those restrictions because the population there was still plentiful.
The epilogue of the book is a smorgasbord of contemporary examples where natives felt they had just as much of a right as white people to make money off of their land at the behest of environmentalists and conservationists. Examples of strip mining, oil drilling, and the hunting of endangered bowhead whales due to their religious philosophy of either utilizing nature’s gifts or spiritual relationships with certain prey were particularly striking.
Highly recommend this book. There are extensive citations that make up a third of the pages of the book for everyone to dig into.
October 2, 2022
This is an okay book, one that for me was most successful at the beginning and end and crawled in the middle. It feels somewhat dated (and is by a couple decades), and I feel that it would have benefited more from placing a greater emphasis on indigenous voices - both in quantity and in offering them the same high level of trust Krech places in European-American sources. I also think it could be much shorter - a lot of the length comes from him bringing in lots of examples, but these don’t always come together to be more than the sum of their parts. 3/5.
April 25, 2024
This is definitely a worthwhile read. I highly recommend this to my PC friends.
This book dispels many narratives that have developed over the centuries.
Do we believe native peoples to be more ecological because we’ve created a mythology of the ecological Indian?
Or could it be because we (the average North American) are removed from daily interaction with modern natives?
To describe natives as wholly ecological seems to be a bit parochial, out of touch, and perhaps stemming from guilt over our countries actions against the native peoples.
This book dispels many narratives that have developed over the centuries.
Do we believe native peoples to be more ecological because we’ve created a mythology of the ecological Indian?
Or could it be because we (the average North American) are removed from daily interaction with modern natives?
To describe natives as wholly ecological seems to be a bit parochial, out of touch, and perhaps stemming from guilt over our countries actions against the native peoples.
April 20, 2022
The book does a really good job at enforcing the point that all stereotypes, even “good” ones, are bad. The stereotype of the “ecological” Indian is revealed to be dehumanizing and untrue.
While I do think this author was biased (he frequently discusses that historial accounts of native Americans are, without addressing his own account likely is as well) k still enjoyed this book. It really made me think and I think it’s good to read things that challenge beliefs you hold.
While I do think this author was biased (he frequently discusses that historial accounts of native Americans are, without addressing his own account likely is as well) k still enjoyed this book. It really made me think and I think it’s good to read things that challenge beliefs you hold.
September 18, 2021
Well written and an antidote to stereotypes about Native Americans, but I feel like a got the point pretty quickly and ended up skip-reading through chapter after chapter of evidence. The literary review at the beginning was very enlightening, and this will be a good book to come back to later for the references.
June 13, 2024
Man, this book is just written so incredibly poorly. Huge swaths of repetition, poor organization, awkward phrasing, etc.
Content was a bit one-note too. I’ll definitely refer back to it as a reference on occasion to point me in the direction of better primary and secondary sources. I’m glad it was written, just wish someone did it a bit better.
Content was a bit one-note too. I’ll definitely refer back to it as a reference on occasion to point me in the direction of better primary and secondary sources. I’m glad it was written, just wish someone did it a bit better.
April 6, 2021
Super interesting, definitely recommend this book if you’re interested in learning about land-to-people relations and a lot of falsehoods perpetuated about Native Americans. But at the same time it was very academic and at points kind of boring.
September 2, 2017
Just people with dreams and ambitions
February 22, 2022
school book vibe
Read
March 23, 2024Talks about Native American stereotypes and where they came from
June 18, 2025
A helpful overview of how Native Americans and their relationship to the land are mythologized.
October 8, 2025
dry as camel piss
April 19, 2023
As a history book, it reads incredibly smoothly. Though it helps me understand the damage a positive stereotype might have (i.e native Americans were in complete harmony with the land, which dehumanizes them and takes away their agency to shape their own environment), I think it does not fully explore how this trope is harmful.
One issue I have is it focuses almost too much on the native impacts on land and does not fully compare it to the apocalyptic introduction of Europeans to the landscape. European sources seem to have a heavier weight than accounts from native people, as well.
All in all, trying it's best but not free of all presuppositions of European-style of academia.
One issue I have is it focuses almost too much on the native impacts on land and does not fully compare it to the apocalyptic introduction of Europeans to the landscape. European sources seem to have a heavier weight than accounts from native people, as well.
All in all, trying it's best but not free of all presuppositions of European-style of academia.
July 2, 2012
I thought it was a very interesting and even handed overview of the american indian and their relationship with the environment. The executive summary, they were human societies that lived on the land, and much of what is written about them is more a reflection of the writers. Very interesting and enlightening read.
November 4, 2016
I'm a little torn about this book. On the one hand, Krech's scholarship is a lot better (and as a result, his arguments are better supported) than you see in, say, Charles Mann's "1491," and overall it provides a nice antidote to all those works that treat Indians like props or figures painted on a stage backdrop. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure I'm a better writer than he is.
December 31, 2015
The style on this is a bit dry, but he tells an interesting story about the complex relationship between Native Americans and their environment, and shows that Native Americans are far from monolithic on the subject.
July 16, 2007
A somewhat controversial book, but any interesting perspective to debate.
January 28, 2008
An excellent book detailing the myth that Native Americans lived in harmony with their environment.
September 19, 2008
Exams the myth of the Indian living in perfect harmony with nature. Carefully explores lots of information. Accessible to read. Lots of interesting bits about Indians lifestyle.
June 12, 2013
Interesting information, but the organization really turned me off and seemed repetitive. I think it could've been written better.
March 28, 2017
Really more of a 4.5, but Goodreads has yet to get on board with a more nuanced star rating system. Either way really interesting to read a book from an anthropologist after being buried in history for so long. Not always enjoyable for me, but I still found it well-written. More importantly, the perspective Krech is arguing is an important complication of a myth, that while as he states has been put to good use politically, is ultimately still a simplified story that "dehumanizes" those it is simplifying: American Indians.
A favorite aspect of this book for me due to the content of my studies the past couple of semesters is how Krech shows that his "Ecological Indian" is a sort of sub-stereotype to the larger juxtaposition of both the "noble" and "ignoble savage" that has, and sometimes still is, a popular dynamic for Anglo-Americans to describe American Indians. Ideally this book adds to the growing literature (both before its 1999 release and after) that shows how complex and varied the cultures of American Indians both were, and still are. As one aspect of this myth is that it situates Indians as a People of the past, dispelling it means bringing awareness to the fact that many Native American nations still live and thrive today.
A favorite aspect of this book for me due to the content of my studies the past couple of semesters is how Krech shows that his "Ecological Indian" is a sort of sub-stereotype to the larger juxtaposition of both the "noble" and "ignoble savage" that has, and sometimes still is, a popular dynamic for Anglo-Americans to describe American Indians. Ideally this book adds to the growing literature (both before its 1999 release and after) that shows how complex and varied the cultures of American Indians both were, and still are. As one aspect of this myth is that it situates Indians as a People of the past, dispelling it means bringing awareness to the fact that many Native American nations still live and thrive today.
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