What We Can Learn from Native American History

I have just published my sixth book, Forgotten Landscapes: How Native Americans Created Pre-Columbian North America and What We Can Learn from It. I am starting a series of essays and videos to promote portions of this book.

I have posted a video about how pre-contact Native American cities had many practices from which we, in industrial society, can and must learn today, which corresponds to the last chapter of my book.

There are many things we can learn from Native American history, but in the video and book I focused on three things.

First, we could learn to live more sustainably. They had satisfactory and comfortable lives without making a big impact upon the Earth, over the long term. They practiced agriculture that we today call agroforestry, which requires less input of energy, chemicals, and labor than the “modern” agriculture we practice today. They did not do this because they were ecologically advanced but just because it was easier for them to leave the trees standing than to cut them down. The result was less soil erosion and fewer pests. They also lived sustainably because they allowed trees to keep their villages cool rather than, as we do today, cranking up air conditioning (which of course they did not have).

Second, they celebrated cultural diversity. They had to. There were five hundred different tribes, most of them with mutually unintelligible languages. No tribe was big enough to ignore all the others, with whom they had extensive trade networks. No wonder they were so good at sign language. They could live alongside other tribes who were different from them, which we seem unable to do today. They had wars, but not as many as Europe did at the time.

Third, they had a love of discovery. Modern politicians, and most other people, are boastfully ignorant of the natural laws of how the world works and our ecological impact on the planet. Modern people don’t know or care how to live on Earth. But if Natives had that attitude, there is no way they would have spread from Siberia to the tip of South America in about a thousand years, all the while figuring out how to survive in habitats totally unlike any they had ever encountered.

You can probably think of a lot more ways. I hope you read my book and think about this.

Darwin and Native American Agriculture

I have just published my sixth book, Forgotten Landscapes: How NativeAmericans Created Pre-Columbian North America and What We Can Learn from It (image). I am starting a series of essays and videos to promote portions of this book.

I have posted a video about Native American agriculture: https://youtu.be/cU5KeXESTMI which corresponds to chapter 4 of my book. This photo shows a reconstructed Cherokee field of maize, beans, and squash (watermelon), with gourd bird-houses for biological control of insect pests:

 

The first fact, which might surprise many people, is that there was such a thing as Native American agriculture. Not just a garden here or there, but large fields on which large Native populations depended for their food.

Many Native American tribes depended on agriculture, since their populations were too large to support by hunting and gathering. Their main crops were maize (corn), squash, and beans. Their European and white American conquerors wanted to depict Native Americans as savages who just gathered wild nuts and berries. But the English and American conquerors of the Cherokee tribe knew that this was not true. In order to subdue the Cherokees, English and then American generals had to go through the Cherokee farmlands and pull up the cornstalks one by one to starve out the villages: something that would have been unnecessary for hunter-gatherers.

Native tribes practiced polyculture, that is, different kinds of crops mixed together [image]. This differed from monoculture, such as is found in most modern American and European farms. Monoculture is huge fields of one kind of crop, while polyculture mixes them together. Each kind of crop depletes the soil a little differently, and in some cases (such as beans) enrich the soil. Native American style polyculture is superior to modern American monoculture.

Native tribes also practiced agroforestry, in which they grew their crops partially in the shade of trees. The trees helped to protect the soil and reduce the effects of heat and drought. Agroforestry is superior to modern American monocultures. Was this because the Natives were more scientifically advanced than we are today? Maybe not. Maybe it was just too much work to cut down the trees with stone tools before planting the field.

Native cultures were advanced societies based on agriculture, like ours only better. So much for the grossly unfair image of Natives as savages.