Subject: hunting by native people
Date: Apr 21 11:44:23 1995
From: Dennis Paulson - dpaulson at ups.edu


Sorry, I changed the name of this thread--it's confusing to go back several
iterations (I can imagine A: was B: was C: was D, etc.).

I don't have much personal experience with hunting by native people except
with those often called "Eskimos" in the Arctic. Two summers, one in
Alaska, one in Canada, convinced me there was no environmental ethic
present. I won't go into details with my many examples (summed up as
killing for the fun of killing). This may well be a response to the
problems of modern day, of which native people have many, but I was left
with the distinct feeling that if there had been rifles available a
thousand years ago, and a much larger population of Arctic natives, there
would be no eiders, polar bears, gray whales, or muskoxen in the world
today.

The other area in which I have some experience is the Amazon basin. There,
at every missionary base where Indians are encouraged to come out of the
forest, all the larger birds and mammals quickly disappear as the density
of forest hunting people increases at that place.

Finally, I'd like to point out some informed speculation. The tremendous
Pleistocene extinction of most of the large mammals of North America has
been attributed by at least some scholars to the spread of "native" Homo
sapiens from Siberia throughout this continent; at least the time frame is
right. If a benign environmental ethic or a profound respect for one's
fellow inhabitants is supposed to have the consequence of not extirpating
them, this doesn't compute.

Dennis Paulson, Director phone: (206) 756-3798
Slater Museum of Natural History fax: (206) 756-3352
University of Puget Sound e-mail: dpaulson at ups.edu
Tacoma, WA 98416