California and the "Myth" of American Indian Utopia

by Liberty and Power

A painstaking search of bird bones in California's ancient garbage dumps by Jack Broughton, an archeologist at the University of Utah, has cast more doubt on the view that American Indians lived in harmony with the environment:

Broughton concluded that California wasn't always a lush Eden before settlers arrived. Instead, from 2,600 to at least 700 years ago, native people hunted some species to local extinction, and wildlife returned to"fabulous abundances" only after European diseases decimated Indian populations starting in the 1500s....

Broughton says his study challenges"a common perception about ancient Native Americans as healthy, happy people living in harmony with the environment. That clearly was not always the case. Depending on when and where you look back in time, native peoples were either living in harmony with nature or eating their way through a vast array of large-sized, attractive prey species."
The study may have broader implications. Broughton speculates that"utopian perceptions" of a pristine California teeming with wildlife"probably even influence how Californians view themselves, and how the world views the Golden State. The dream world of Disneyland, the glamour and glimmer of Hollywood, the Baywatch fun-in-the-sun culture -- all of this may trace a link to early historic descriptions of the land that now appear to be worlds apart from pre-European conditions."

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Roderick T. Long - 2/15/2006

This may weaken the left-wing myth about natives living in Rousseauvian harmony with their environment, but it also weakens the right-wing myth that natives did not transform their environment and so had no property claim to it when European settlers arrived.

Dennis W. St George - 2/14/2006

Who subscribes to this myth of which you speak?

David T. Beito - 2/14/2006

I recall reading that the Indians also had a major hand in the buffalo slaughter. I'll try to dig up some sources on this.

Paul Noonan - 2/13/2006

I think it is commonly believed that Indians were responsible for hunting such megafauna as mammoths and mastadons to extinction.

On the other hand whites hunted the buffalo (actually bison) practically to extinction on the Plains in the 19th Century largely to deprive the Indians of a food source (carcasses often left to rot etc.) I suppose you could say that Indians weren't particularly good stewards of this continent's wildlife, they were just better than the whites were from the 17th Century till the early 20th Century.

Robert Higgs - 2/13/2006

Native Americans brought about major changes in the plant and animal environment, especially by using burning as a hunting technique, but also by mass killings, such as driving herds over cliffs. Charles Kay has done some serious and interesting research on this topic. See, for example, his "Aboriginal Overkill and Native Burning: Implications for Modern Ecosystem Management," Western Journal of Applied Forestry 10: 121-26. Or do a Google search with the search terms "charles kay" "burning" and "aborigines," to find other sources.