The Ecological Indian. (Reviews).

by Shepard Krech III

$14.95. W.W. Norton, 2000.

It is refreshing to encounter a distinguished scholar who is willing to challenge popular environmental notions with scientific precision and who can tell a good story. Stephen Krech, a professor of anthropology at Brown University, wrote this book "to determine the extent to which Indians were ecologists and conservationists (as is commonly understood today)." His findings will disturb many who believe native peoples had "a kinder, gentler way of relating to the environment."

Krech examines the evidence for possible human culpability in Pleistocene extinctions, the causes of the decline of early native groups, and Indian use of fire and their role in affecting deer, beaver, and buffalo populations. The landscapes encountered by these newcomers, according to Krech, "was cultural not virgin, anthropogenic not primeval..."

He concludes that while indigenous people possessed a vast knowledge of their environment, "they were not conservationists." In many ways native peoples and Europeans were alike in placing subsistence and, later, economic security before conservation or environmental protection. The significant differences between them were the far greater numbers of the immigrants and their treatment of animals and plant products as economic commodities.

For some, Krech's undoing of the "ecological Indian" myth will seem harsh. A careful reading of this book, however, may suggest a more important insight. Rather than seek a better way to a sustainable environmental future in the myths of the past, we must come to terms with our own values and the scientific realities of what is happening to the world in which we live.