In 1891, Walter McClintock graduated from Yale, with plans to
join his father’s prosperous carpet making business in smog-choked Pittsburgh. Luckily, he was spared from a dull job by
getting very sick with typhoid fever. To
recover, he took a trip to North Dakota, where he fell deeply in love with the
west. He worked as a photographer for a
forest survey project, and became friends with the team’s Blackfoot scout, Siksikakoan. Later,
Siksikakoan introduced him to
the elderly chief Mad Wolf.
Once Mad Wolf came
to trust McClintock, he adopted the young lad as his son. Mad Wolf hoped that if his people had a white
leader, they would receive better treatment from the incoming settlers, many of
whom were not skilled at behaving with common decency. McClintock spent lots of time with a number
of elders, listened to many stories, and several years later wrote The Old North Trail. He also took more than a thousand photographs,
many of which illustrate the book. Today,
a century later, Amazon lists his book as a best seller. It’s fascinating and easy to read.
The Blackfeet lived on the plains east of the Rocky
Mountains, from Montana up into Alberta.
When the painter George Catlin met them in 1832, he said they were the
happiest Indians or all. The Old North
Trail was an ancient footpath that passed through their territory. In places, old ruts are still visible. Today, some suspect that it may have been
2,000 to 3,000 miles long, linking Canada and Mexico. Because many tribes used the trail, travel
was dangerous. It was a common place for
ambushes and tribal wars.
In the old days, the Blackfeet used dogs as beasts of
burden. Sometime before 1750, they
acquired horses, triggering radical change.
Horses greatly increased their ability to hunt, feed more people, wage
war, haul trade goods, and zoom across the plains at superhuman velocity. Corn farmers became highly vulnerable to
horse-mounted raids by neighboring tribes, forcing many to abandon their fields
and become nomadic. After 1780, the
Blackfeet were hammered by wave after wave of deadly diseases. Their population dropped by maybe 90 percent.
By 1883, white folks had succeeded in nearly exterminating
the buffalo, and this made the traditional Blackfoot life impossible. The tribe was forced onto reservations, given
ration tickets, treated like dogs, and were not allowed freedom of travel. Missionaries introduced them to sin, hell,
damnation, guilt, and submission. Teachers
taught youths the ABC’s of civilization, using the English language.
By the time McClintock arrived, many young Blackfeet were
disoriented victims of cultural genocide, largely indifferent to their tribe’s
customs, traditions, and religion. During
important ceremonies, many would be drinking, gambling, or horseracing. Only the elders still remembered the
traditional ways, and their days were numbered.
McClintock wanted to record the story of these people, before their
culture ceased to exist. The Blackfeet
people fascinated McClintock, and he described them in a respectful manner.
His book is a magical 500-page voyage into another time and
place. Readers can soar away from the
spooky nightmare world of automobiles and cell phone zombies, and imagine living
in wildness and freedom. The Blackfeet
elders shared fond memories of a way of life that was far more in balance with
the circle of life. In the good old
days, “the mountain slopes abounded in beaver, wapiti, moose, mountain sheep,
and grizzly bears, while immense herds of antelope and buffalo roamed over the
plains.”
One night, McClintock awoke to discover a huge grizzly bear
stepping over him to finish off his dinner leftovers. Grizzlies were still common. Wolves and coyotes often howled passionate
serenades under the stars. Humans were
not the dominant species; they were delicious two-legged meatballs. Modern folks, obsessed with glowing screens,
would not have lasted long in a reality where man-eating carnivores were never
far away. To survive, folks actually had
to pay careful attention to reality, and behave in an intelligent manner. Imagine that!
The people wore clothing of animal hides, and lived in tipis,
in an ecosystem of scorching summers and long blast-freezer winters. Powerful storms could race across the plains
at astonishing speed. On a pleasantly warm
November day, McClintock noticed distant turbulent clouds that were rushing
across the plains in his direction.
Danger! The temperature sharply
dropped, howling winds pounded him, and a whiteout blizzard commenced. He lost all sense of direction, and freezing
to death was a strong possibility. He
managed to return to camp. The storm
lasted ten days.
McClintock wrote, “The Blackfeet subsisted mainly upon buffalo
meat, when it could be secured. They
also used sarvis berries, wild cherries, buffalo berries and vegetables such as
camas, wild turnips, wild onions, wild potatoes, bitter root, and wild rhubarb. They secured wild ducks and geese by striking
them over the head with long sticks. Beaver
tails were considered a great delicacy.”
A vegetarian would soon starve on the plains. The Blackfeet survived by killing and eating
their animal relatives. When natives died,
their corpses were returned to the circle of life. The dead were placed upon scaffolds built in
trees, called death lodges (like THIS or THIS). The Blackfeet did not arrogantly interrupt
the circle dance of life with buried caskets or cremation.
McClintock was amazed by how well the Blackfeet lived without
thrashing their ecosystem. Whites did
amazing things with science and industry, but the Blackfeet were superior in
terms of their personal integrity. In no
Blackfoot community could you find the “depravity, misery, and consuming vice,
which involve multitudes in the industrial centers of all the large cities of
Christendom.” By thriving in a lifestyle
with few wants, they did not deteriorate into infantile consumers.
The last chapter in the book has pissed off many
reviewers. The preceding thirty-eight
chapters did not provide, in any way, a flattering impression of settler
society. In 1910, respect for savages
was politically incorrect, and publishers were not fond of risky projects. The Blackfeet were hopelessly screwed. Whites were here to stay. Happy endings sold more books.
So, the story concludes with a jarring shift. McClintock praised the integrity of the
Blackfoot people, and was proud of their heroic advance toward Christian
civilization. “The industrious are
rapidly becoming self-supporting. Some
of them live in well-made and comfortable houses, and own ranches, with large
herds of cattle and horses. They wear
white men’s clothes, purchased from the trading stores, own high priced wagons
and buggies and make use of modern farming implements.” Hooray!
Anyway, the book provides readers with a wonderful peephole
into a way of life that was not insane. Children
were raised in a land that was wild, free, and thriving — grizzly bears, not
teddy bears. The good power (Great
Spirit) was everywhere, in everything — mountains, plains, winds, waters,
trees, birds, and animals. Everyone was
on the same cultural channel, free from the friction of diversity and wealth
inequality. They grew up in coherent
communities where it was rare to see a stranger. [Cool
excerpt]
McClintock’s book described how a healthy culture
disintegrated into incoherence over the course of just one generation. Beliefs got us into this mess, not
genes. I’m very optimistic that the
coming decades of resource depletion, climate change, and the collapse of our economic
system will provide a miraculous cure for consumer fever. Survival will require paying careful
attention to reality, and behaving in an intelligent manner. Radical change in one generation is not totally
impossible when the time is ripe. Think
positive!
McClintock, Walter, The
Old North Trail, MacMillan and Co., London, 1910.
A free download of the book is HERE. Over 1,400 of McClintock’s photos are HERE
(click “View all images”).
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