And to that bogus point about the intimate relationship between the Native Americans and the environment........no human beings have been as destructive of their fauna and flora as the 'noble savages' were.
Yup, their factories and chemicals really fucked up the environment.
Slash and burn agriculture and over hunting.
. . . in now way shape or form was as destructive as you opine.
No, they were not as harmless as you opine, with your strawmen of "factories and chemicals".
You are correct, of course.
This is what the morons who see Disney's Hiawatha a Gospel truth don't know:
1. Let's start with the fastest way to destroy natural surroundings...
forest fires:how many times have we heard that such a destructive attitude towards the environment is the product of Western man’s alienation from nature?
American Indians were forest-burners par excellence:it was not the forests which impressed the early settlers but the absence of them.
a. Thomas Morton, a Puritan, wrote in 1637:
"...
the Savages are accustomed to set fire of the Country in all places where they come, and to burne it twize a year, vixe at the Spring, and the fall of the leafe. The reason that mooves them to doe so, is because it would other wise be a coppice wood, and the people would not be able in any wise to passe through the Country out of a beaten path."
Morton, T., "New English Canaan: or, New Canaan, 1637," rpt. pp.52-4, quoted in Chase, "
Playing God in Yellowstone: The Destruction of America's First National Park," p. 94.
b.
They hated the forests...they burned them down so they could see the animals they hunted.
" Once the forests have been burnt, however, and the land transformed to grasslands and savannah, these desirable species become available. The species which the Indians most wanted to hunt, like bison, moose, elk and deer, are found most easily in areas of recently burnt forest, which is why they burnt the forests over and over again."
Chase, Op. Cit.
OK....so....Hiawatha exists only in a fevered imagination.
