Wanna Hug That Tree? Great. I Feel a Pinwheel Coming On

The conventional idea about the Native Indians of the Americas is that they were the original ecologists, tree huggers extraordinaire. Disney’s Pocahontas is perhaps the apotheosis of this notion in the popular mind; with its tiresomely didactic refrain:

“The rainstorm and the river are my brothers
The heron and the otter are my friends
And we are all connected to each other
In a circle, in a hoop that never ends

How high will the sycamore grow?
If you cut it down, then you'll never know
And you'll never hear the wolf cry to the blue corn moon…”

And so on. All very romantic.

Indeed, that’s exactly what it is: the Romantic myth of the “noble savage.” It should be transparent—and obviously absurd--to any second-year English major.

The truth is that, like most cultures, the Native Americans had no concept comparable to the European idea of “nature.” Much less the Romantic view of it.

And, rather than hug trees, most Indians were more at home burning them down. The early Dutch chronicler Adriaen van der Donck reports the Iroquois setting fire to the woods every fall (Mann, p. 246). Of the New England Indians, Thomas Morton reports that they “set fire of the country in all places where they come” (1637) (Mann, p. 250).

This was largely in order to hunt. Thomas Jefferson, among others, has recorded the technique: “by firing the leaves fallen on the ground, which, gradually forcing animals to the center, they there slaughter them with arrows, darts, and other missiles.” (Mann, p. 250). Yum.

This, of course, is not a terribly eco-conscious way to hunt. You kill all the animals; you eat a few. Indeed, Plains Indians were systematic about this. Let one animal escape, and it might tell the others.

But tree-burning was also done for just plain fun. Lewis and Clark report a group of Indians in the Rockies entertaining them by setting alight fir trees, which apparently go off like Roman candles (Mann, p. 250).

You might want to try this at home.

Not just trees, either. Surveyor Peter Fidler, passing through Southern Alberta in 1792, records nothing but scorched earth for days on end (Mann, p. 251). John Palliser, six decades later, complains of the Indians’ “disastrous habit of setting the prairie on fire for the most trivial and worse than useless reasons.” (Mann, p. 252).

Ecologists, hell. These were a bunch of good old boys looking for a party.


Most of this info is from Charles C. Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus. NY: Knopf, 2006.