Thomas,
At 09:47 26/07/99 +0000, you wrote:
(KH)
>> I don't disagree with most of what you have written below. But the matter
>> of the effects of direct confrontation between invaders and indigenous
>> people is really only confusing the issue. The real influence is that of
>> trade and the availability of new goods.
(TL)
>This is a very good point. But there is a deeper level which the new
>invaders, traders could not reach. The Native North Americans had developed
>a psychology, as we would term it today, that was totally foreign and in
>most cases, beyond the comprehension of the crude Europeans who came from
>wars, hierarchies of political organization and primarily greed motivation.
I really don't see how you can ascribe the sins of "wars, hierarchies of
political organization and primarily greed motivation" to Europeans alone.
They were, of course, exhibited on a vaster (and thus more cruel) scale
than in tribal society.
>One of the sad aspects of colonization, to me, was that those who were
>pursueing the agendas of materialistic trade, aggression and conquest were
>unable to see and learn from the political, social, pychological and
>spiritual resources the First Nations people had developed in the isolation
>imposed by the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
>
>Imagine how different the colonization period could have been if the
>alchemists, the practioners of witchcraft and paganism could have been
>included among the first explorers instead of soldiers and merchants.
>Later, when learned men like Ben Franklin and others who finally developed
>an appreciation of the concepts of democracy that the Six Nation
>Confederation had developed, they were able to incorporate some of these
>political innovations into their concept of democratic government.
>
>It is mostly assumed thae European culture brought civilization to the
>Natives. In fact, I could make the argument that the Europeans killed
>civilization by their focus on trade. It is not trade that makes for
>civility and justice. It is the worldview of peoples that create the
>systems they live under. The natives world view allowed them to develop
>certain forms of political, territorial organizations that were in many
>respects superior to the European model, especially in those years of
>exploration and conquest from 1600 to 1800.
There is a lot of historical confusion here because you are repeatedly
associating merchants and traders with the military. OK, there's collusion
sometimes (particularly in the defence industries) but the big lesson of
human history from post-tribal times onwards shows that merchants (who need
freedom) and governments (who want to establish control over their
populations) are basically antagonistic.
As it happens, I 'm a merchant (that is, I supply products for which people
pay without any form of coercion), and I'd rather not be labelled as an
associate of those who exploit others.
(KH)
>>This is the moment when customs
>> start to change. This moment is when goods actually cross into the market
>> places of indigenous peoples and can often be years (or decades) before
>> they ever meet new settlers or are directly affected by them. (Steel blades
>> made in Birmingham and Sheffield reached the tribes of central New Guinea
>> more than a century before these tribes were "discovered" by white man.)
>> Earlier still, look at the speed at which the atlatl (and, later, its
>> development as the bow-and-arrow) was accepted by the *whole* of mankind as
>> it was then (circa 15,000BC) -- because it instantly raised hunting
>> productivity many many times over. This totally transformed the customs and
>> social structures of pre-atlatl hunter-gatherers. Probably, only a trace
>> of their oral history survived the transition. Would we really want to
>> preserve their customs, too? (The atlatl and the bow-and-arrow wiped out
>> most of the big game species that were alive then. Before that time, many
>> of their customs and folklore would have included these animals in their
>> pantheon. How could their pre-bow-and-arrow customs have continued in a
>> realistic way when the objects of their veneration had become extinct?)
(TL)
>You bring some history into my awareness that I had not contemplated before.
>Let me rebut some of your conclusions with the understanding of hunter
>gatherer's. As they lived off the animal population and in much closer
>relationship to the natural cycles of animal population availability, they
>were also at effect of periods of surplus and lack. This led them to an
>ecological understanding that Europeans did not have. The bow, and later
>the horse allowed them to increase their ability to harvest food from the
>environment, it did not change the basic dynamics of balance. For if they
>overhunted, the result was starvation. It is my contention that their
>errors such as you have mentioned in the extinction of large species, that
>the Natives developed a relationship with their food supply that was very
>different than the Europeans relationship with their food supply which was a
>product of agriculture and domestic animals rather than wildlife.
No . . . there's no difference. Both Europeans and North American Indians
(and people everywhere else in the world) destroyed all the large species
that they could.
Keith
________________________________________________________________________
Keith Hudson, General Editor, Handlo Music, http://www.handlo.com
6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England
Tel: +44 1225 312622; Fax: +44 1225 447727; mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
________________________________________________________________________
