Debunking a Romantic Myth

Europeans, and European-descended Americans have been romanticizing American Indians since the days of John Smith and Pocahontas.  In recent decades that tradition has merged with environmental awareness to create the idea that the original Americans were somehow more "in harmony" with their natural surroundings.  The contrast is often drawn between their "living lightly on the land" and the forest-clearing, city-building habits of European-descended Americans.

Bad news.  A University of Utah archaeologist working in California has uncovered some skeletons in the Native American closet.  Several thousand skeletons, in fact.  Dr. Jack Broughton has spent the past decade investigating ancient settlement sites in the delta of the Sacramento River, including tallying up the contents of garbage middens. 

What he found was that the ancient inhabitants hunted several bird species to extinction in that area, and that bird abundances only recovered after imported Eurasian diseases depopulated the region.  By the time Spanish or English explorers arrived, the place looked like a terrestrial paradise, with teeming wildlife and small human communities seemingly in balance with their natural surroundings.  Read a more detailed account here.

This probably won't do much to put down the Noble Savage myth.  It's been solidly entrenched since before the American Revolution.  Even the discovery of great city sites like Cahokia or Poverty Point haven't done much to erase the notion of American Indians as "human wildlife" -- instead of the heirs of cultures rivalling anything the Old World produced.  That's unfortunate, because the actual story of the New World cultures is much more interesting than simplistic utopian parables.