Appetite for Destruction: Indigenous Americans knew how to avoid starvation
laphamsquarterly.org
laphamsquarterly.org
I find interpretations like this strange. Sure, there's lots to learn from cultures of all kinds, and it's particularly relevant to hear from Natives of NA if we're talking about North American agriculture.
But there's an implication that the European colonizers bumbled their way through history, as if they didn't face and overcome their own issues with starving populations. I think it's objective fact that Europeans have been quite resilient themselves, being as how they managed to settle most of the planet.
However, other accounts suggest that the dinner was celebrated as an alliance between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag who were at war with other tribes such as the Narragansett.
I mention this because I have read accounts that the Pilgrims knew how to do agriculture fairly well and that disease was the culprit of many deaths. I think it is somewhat strange to assume that any colonists who arrived did not know anything about agriculture. Especially because English colonies had already been set up further to the north than Plymouth Colony prior to the arrival of the Mayflower. I am not an expert in this topic though. But it feels like this is an extremely contentious topic that has been heavily politicized.
I'd like to hear firsthand agriculturalists / agronomists on this. But heading into your first winter in a new climate with an unfamiliar crop (maize would like to say hello) , unfamiliar soil, make the likelihood of growing enough foodstuffs to store to last the winter a proposition fraught with risk indeed.
https://tlio.org.uk/1637-pequot-massacre-%E2%80%8Bthe-real-s...
At least when it comes to the Americas, the reason why the Europeans became dominant was mostly luck and genetics: American Indians (and the Siberians they descended from) don't have the genetics to fight European disease. Where European death rates from Smallpox are around 1/3rd, for American Indians it's at 90%.
Otherwise, compared to Europe, American Indians typically had a better diet and better hygiene.
You're also arguing with well established historical fact. Before the pilgrims, no European colony could establish themselves because the Indians would threaten them if they didn't leave. The pilgrims established themselves in Plymouth because smallpox killed off all the Indians shortly before their arrival. (It's so well known that it's even repeated in Charlie Brown's Thanksgiving special)
If you have about 30 minutes, the free sample of 1491 explains this: 1491 (Second Edition): New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000JMKVE4/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_FAD53K...
Almost one hundred years before the Plymouth settlement, the Spanish had conquered Mexico. Almost fifteen years before Plymouth, the English had settled Jamestown.
It's really worth reading 1491. The evidence for smallpox and other European diseases directly contributing to the fall of American Indians, both in North and South America, is undisputable and well-known.
1. I think a much appropriate term to use here is Native American instead of American Indians.
2. I disagree with your statement "the reason why the Europeans became dominant was mostly luck and genetics". I do agree that the disease brought by the Europeans played a very important role in the whole colonization effort but mostly it was violence the main driver. Saying otherwise is just downplaying the genocide.
I'm also following the book's terms. Native American is a confusing term, and the author includes an appendix explaining it
Don't take my word for it, though. Just ask any "American Indian" which term they prefer and you'll find your answer quickly.
And you'll get many different answers, especially as you travel. North and South America are two large continents; and the Indians were diverse and had many different names for themselves.
The article isn't helping itself with some its quasi-historical editorializations, though. "Indigenous Americans knew how to avoid starvation. Colonists were too hungry to notice" isn't exactly a balanced view of the history.
Acorns can be ground into flour and used if food, if the tannins are removed. We have never collected this resource in the U.S. in my living memory.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn#Culinary_use
I saw a video recently where a woman prepared a feast described in a 200-year-old cookbook. One of the recipes called for fruit set in horse hoof jelly. She said that she used regular gelatin, as the recipe would otherwise have a strong taste of beef.
I think that many unconventional foods sustained our ancestors, and we have forgotten them for a variety of reasons.
Even if you do get rid of them, you are left with a pretty bitter nut.
It's a strange incongruity. Not letting an animal go to waste after you've killed it is good, I firmly believe that. Why should it be framed as a bad thing in modern contexts, while it's widely acknowledged as good in the context of another culture a century or so ago?
Incidentally, "regular gelatin" is still made out of animal feet/etc unless you go out of your way to get vegetable gelatin. So this is another way our society still makes use of the full animal but without really appreciating it.
If you only eat the "best parts" of the animal, you must have a high status. Poor people must be practical in all respects, if they want to survive, but people who wish to signal will waste.
Simultaneously, pointing to the practices of natives is used in support of a different kind of power relationship narrative: the old regime(colonizers, imperalists, racists) versus the new(liberalized, diverse, equal). The actual goal is not to say "and therefore we should be more like the natives" or enact genuine policy supportive of the ideals, but to say "and therefore we(the new kid political organization) are so good because THEY(the old regime) are so bad." It's a way of deflection towards a scapegoat.
Thus you will frequently find examples of black-hearted activist types that copy-paste their ideology from some authentic source, but then reject it in their personal lives and mold the policy to be ineffectual. Because deep down, they see it as kayfabe to gain power. If they actually want to reach an elected office, prominent cultural role or significant appointment they have to knowingly compromise on the authentic and please existing stakeholders. Many would actually do the things they talk about(whether or not it's a good idea) except that the systemic forces are too strong most of the time; to get along with their political betters they have to live more like them, vote more like them, and so on.
Then you have tribes like the Comanche, engaging in actions that might well make a chattel slaver blush.
It’s all sentiment, posturing, and signaling and little consideration for the realities of the bygone times.
Insects is the most notable example of this. Pretty much every culture availed themselves insects as a ready source of protein, but now many would be utterly shocked by the suggestion.
*I don't know which species of Oak. Common ones in the Bay Area, I know that much.
I am sure you would notice the difference of resilience pointed out by the article in comparison to the European world wide "settling" resilience.
Not exactly "elite".
The rest were pretty much poor people who had little prospects in the old country, looking for a fresh start.
The two Irish famines are very telling. In 1740 almost no one emigrated across the Atlantic, business men didn't swoop on a chance to go indenture every able bodied Irishman, after 1840 parts of Canada became half Irish. The children of Irish share croppers were Europeans who could at least partially feed themselves without civil infrastructure.
Saying colonizers could learn a lot is sort of what ended up happening anyways, especially in the early days of colonization where plenty of skills to survive in a brand new continent came from the natives.
Did you read the article?
his comment was directly copied from it :
"Colonizers could learn a great deal from Indigenous resilience, as we all confront a twenty-first century that feels hauntingly like the seventeenth: beset by violence, disease, hatred."
By stating they could learn a great deal does imply they "bumbled along".
It also isn't very accurate as there was a lot of technology sharing at the start of things. The FN shared a great deal with the newcomers on how to survive here.
I always wonder if the academics writing this stuff actually believe it or whether they start by writing a normal essay and then throw in all the critical theory stuff at the end so it can get published.
It’s how it was done in the Soviet Union. You’d read a cooking recipe book and there might be some paragraph about serving the party’s goal or other stuff like.
The personal beliefs were more cynical towards the later years and it was done mostly to appease censors or gain a few virtue points with peers and superiors.
Here it could be the same. Write whatever, but make sure to insert a few critical theory du-jour points just in case.
A critical eye is important. It can also be overdone.
>Indigenous Americans knew how to avoid starvation. Colonists were too hungry to notice.
What's the point, civilization(s) that lived off the local land were better at subsisting in difficult situations than people from a different continent not very familiar with local food sources?
An exposition of native foods contrasting with colonial foods could be interesting but it's wrapped up in weird reverence and arguing against a centuries old idiot.
It seems to me that China still has this kind of diversity somehow. Going to a large Chinese supermarket is dizzying in the variety of vegetables, dried fungus, seaweed, spices, etc. on display. I wish I knew more about it, and how they maintained that diverse food culture.
My ex-wife is Chinese and I might be able to assist a bit.
China is a massive country and each province has their own "special dishes".
For the Chinese out there reading this - you can guess where she's from when i tell you their speciality is "Guìlín mǐfěn"
Anyhow, when you go to a large Chinese grocery store in North America you are looking at the fruits, vegetables, etc from a large number of provinces.
So if someone from Guangxi goes there for Hot Peppers they can find it. If someone else is looking to make Peking duck can find what they need as well.
Back in China, someone from Guangxi wouldn't be making a lot of Peking duck...
Hope this helps?
Mann's 1491 suggests this may be a myth, as passenger pigeon remains are nearly non-existent in native refuse piles, so they don't seem to have been a normal part of their diet (at least, before contact). Rather, he paints both their incredible abundance and subsequent demise as consequences of contact with Europe: the boom in the passenger pigeon population may have been a sign of an ecosystem experiencing a catastrophe, resulting from large areas of cultivated land falling out of use as entire cities were depopulated by disease, causing a temporary but enormous increase in easy, available calories for animals positioned to take advantage of it, and of course their decline and extinction is entirely a post-contact event.
[EDIT] I misread you as having written that the native people contributed to the demise of the pigeons, but I think the info's still broadly relevant so I'll let the post stand.
That would depend on the people in question. The list of indigenous tribes who wiped themselves out by destroying their environment is extensive. The Maya, the Anasazi, Easter Islanders, the Nazca, and countless more we'll never know about.
... after, ahum, erasing a third of the megafauna of North America with their ecological and wise techniques 13000 years ago
Same as natives did in South America 11000 years ago.
And same as Australians did 30000 years ago in the rainforested Australia
And same as Africans did in the green land of thousand lakes, Sahara
And the same thing as Europeans did in Europe
Lets face it, we all are complete morons in that sense. Every culture by equal.
Hey a winter without gas could be coming!, lets set fire to the forests in half Europe this summer so we don't have neither gas nor wood in winter!.
Knowl"edge (?), n.
2. That which is or may be known; the object of an act of knowing; a cognition; -- chiefly used in the plural.
There is a great difference in the delivery of the mathematics, which are the most abstracted of knowledges. Bacon.
Knowledges is a term in frequent use by Bacon, and, though now obsolete, should be revived, as without it we are compelled to borrow "cognitions" to express its import. Sir W. Hamilton.
To use a word of Bacon's, now unfortunately obsolete, we must determine the relative value of knowledges. H. Spencer.
- Webster's 1913
I figured it was some probably-from-critical-theory-because-aren't-they-always liberal-artsism, but looks like it's just an unusual-bordering-on-archaic sense.
I don't think that's correct (and the age of the dictionary quoted probably isn't helping); if you search Google Scholar for "knowledges", even since the year 2000 you get about 85,000 results. It's a term of art in sociology and anthropology fields, and marginally within philosophy too. It points to multiple understandings of the world which are disparate enough to be their own 'system' of knowledge; multiple such systems are known as knowledges.
The 17th century was far, far worse off with violence, disease, and hatred. Life expectancy was short in those days.
Huh. Seems probable that an early 17th-century missionary to North America knew a little bit about roughing it, maybe even more than the OP's poet... who also seems to have missed his point. Here's something he actually said:
"They are never in a hurry. Quite different from us, who can never do anything without hurry and worry; worry, I say, because our desire tyrannizes over us and banishes peace from our actions." [1]
[1] https://www.gutenberg.org/files/46218/46218-h/46218-h.htm#XI...
This is becoming a classic.