The Good Old Days



I’ve been reading John Tanner’s autobiography, The Falcon, (Download).  He was born in Kentucky in 1780.  At age 9, he was kidnapped by the Ojibwa, and adopted by an Ottawa chief.  Tanner spent 30 years living as a wild hunter-gatherer, wandering in the wilderness between the Red River of North Dakota and Lake Huron in Michigan.  He once tried to return to his birth family, but white society was intolerably creepy.

One day on the prairie, he met an odd fellow.  The stranger brought news of a Shawnee prophet who had a vision for a great healing.  Ever since the disease ridden, pale faced, radicalized Christian terrorists had washed up on the shores of Turtle Island, life had gotten ugly for Native Americans.  The terrorists, who seemed incapable of honesty, kept pushing the tribes westward, generating much tension and bloodshed.  At that time, the Sioux of the plains were pushing back hard against the unwanted immigrants displaced from their traditional lands in the east.  Nobody was happy.

Tanner listened to the prophet’s list of instructions.  Never allow your fire go out.  Let no dogs live.  Never steal, lie, strike others, get drunk, or go against your enemies.  If you follow these instructions, you will become invisible to the Sioux, and can live in peace.  A flashback slithered into my boggy old thinker.  This story sounded familiar.  Computer magic remembered my notes on Alvin Josephy’s book, 500 Nations, pages 305-306.  Bingo!  They read:

305 In Indiana in 1805, Lalawthika (the noise maker), an alcoholic brother of the heroic warrior Tecumseh, fell into a trance, and visited with the Creator in a vision.  306 He quit drinking and changed his name to Tenskwatawa, meaning “the open door.”  He was later known as the Prophet.  He preached to many tribes about declining morals and the need to return to traditional values.  They needed to reject Christianity and return to their old religion.  They should drop the selfishness, envy, and lust for possessions that the whites had taught them, and return to the way of sharing.  They should cast out of their lives domestic animals, woven clothes, and metal tools.

Upon reading this, a name farted out of my boggy old thinker: Donald Trump.  I was startled at this weird association, and then burst into a big smile.  This led to another flashback, a passage on the Ghost Dance I had written for What Is Sustainable.  Here’s a bit of it:

In the 1860’s, deranged Europeans rode their brand new railroads into the Great Plains and commenced the Buffalo Holocaust.  By 1890, the buffalo were at the brink of extinction.  For the Indians, the buffalo were the core of their existence.  With the buffalo gone, their traditional hunting life became obsolete and impossible.

In January 1889, a Paiute prophet named Wovoka had a vision.  He encouraged folks to perform the Ghost Dance.  They should gather and dance five days and four nights, then on the fifth day bathe in the river.  It was powerful dancing, with up to 500 in a large circle.  Many enjoyed manic frenzy, some fell into hypnotic trances, some collapsed and became unconscious.  The Ghost Dancing spread from tribe to tribe, eventually expanding over a vast region of the American west.

The vision was that if the Ghost Dance was properly performed, a great flood would come and wash the whites back across the ocean to their European home, where they belonged.  The ancestors and the buffalo would be reincarnated, the epidemics of white diseases would cease, and life would return to the good old days.

A different version of the Ghost Dance story, described by Lame Deer, used the metaphor of rolling up and disposing a filthy old carpet, which was a symbol for the white man’s world.  Imbedded in the filthy carpet were roads, mines, cities, farms, factories — every form of ugliness that civilization brought with it.  When the old carpet was rolled away, beneath it was revealed a healthy wild Fairyland — the land as it was prior to the invasion of the whites and their diseases.

The Ghost Dance became so popular that the white invaders began to get spooked.  They were intimidated by the fact that large numbers of Indians were enthusiastically dancing, with the goal of cleansing their lands of the white race forever.  They perceived (incorrectly) that the natives were conspiring to launch a violent rebellion.  The army was called, and several hundred Ghost Dancers were exterminated at Wounded Knee on December 29, 1890.

This story spurred the recall of another memory, an old rant on the vision of Nongqawuse, in South Africa.  Some snips:

When the Dutch Afrikaners (Boers) invaded the Eastern Cape region of South Africa, the Xhosa tribe fought them long and hard.  Beginning in 1779, eight bloody frontier wars were fought.  In 1806, the British replaced the Afrikaners and continued the struggle to conquer Xhosa land.  In 1853, a lung disease began killing off the Xhosa’s cattle herds.  Problems worsened when a severe drought hit.  Things started looking grim.

Then, in 1856, after decades of terrible struggles and misfortunes, an 11-year old Xhosa girl named Nongqawuse had a vision.  She communicated with spirits of the dead and they informed her that the colonist invasion was the result of their cattle having been cursed by witchcraft.  The spirits then gave her some important instructions in order to remedy this situation.

To lift this curse and return to days of peace and plenty, the living Xhosa had to do three things:  stop cultivating their fields, destroy their grain reserves, and kill all of their cattle.  If they did this, the whites would be driven into the sea, the dead would return, and they would refill the granaries, restore the crops in the fields, and bring herds of immortal cattle.

At this point, the Xhosa split into two groups, the believers and the non-believers.  In 1856 and 1857, the believers did as the ancestors instructed them.  They dumped their grain and slaughtered 400,000 cattle.  Having destroyed their food supply, tens of thousands then proceeded to die of starvation.  Tens of thousands were forced to go to towns and take oppressive low-paying jobs.  Only 37,000 remained on their lands, out of 105,000.  By the 1870s, white settlers occupied most of the Xhosa’s lands.  The surviving Xhosa were rounded up and moved to reserves in British Kaffraria.

Anyway, these stories emerged from cultures whose good old days were behind them, following bloody collisions with civilization.  The present was out of balance, miserable, a dead end.  It was time to perform big ceremonial magic, return to the traditional path, and live in peace and prosperity.

As I write in early 2017, Donald Trump is the new U.S. president.  His mantra is “Make America Great Again.”  It’s time for Americans to perform the Trump Dance, and restore the good old days of cheap and abundant oil, coal, iron, and timber, when men had good jobs, mothers stayed home to raise large families, minorities knew their place, and Kennedys boogied in the White House.

To return to the traditional path, we must expel the crazy, dangerous Mexicans and Muslims.  We must replace public schools with private religious schools, and graduate kids who are blissfully ignorant about evolution, climate change, and overshoot.  We must let the Reaper take the commoners, and reserve health care for people who matter.  We must eliminate all restrictions on loggers, miners, ranchers, and bankers so our wheezing economy can have one last screaming squirting orgasm of mindless destruction.

This time, it will work, by golly!

Image: “The Ghost Dance by the Oglala Lakota at Pine Ridge.”  Illustration by Frederic Remington, 1890.

Before Dogs Became Pets

The saga of dogs is a long strange trip.  Experts agree that all dogs are descendants of wild gray wolves.  They don’t agree when dogs were domesticated, but most say around 14,000 years ago.  Could it be a coincidence that this occurred around the time when humans were getting really good at killing really big animals with stone-tipped lances, and the countryside was dotted with mastodon corpses, and other dainty delicacies?

As humans emigrated from our African home, we moved into wolf country, and learned important skills from our new neighbors.  Wolves were social creatures, like we were.  We both lived in hierarchical groups.  We both chased and ate the same critters.  We both scavenged each other’s leftovers. 

Wolves and humans coexisted for a long time before dogs emerged.  Wolves learned to hang out on the fringe of human camps from time to time, because they were a source of food to scavenge.  They found bones to gnaw and offal to wolf down.  They slobbered whilst inhaling the intoxicating aroma of meat roasting on our campfires.  They found human excrement to be indescribably delicious, an overwhelming passion that may be the prime reason for the creation of dogs.

This scavenging activity became a regular habit, and humans actively classified their canine visitors as naughty or nice.  Aggressive nuisance wolves were killed, while the presence of more timid wolves was tolerated.  By and by, over many generations, this selection process resulted in dogs.  Dogs were smaller than wolves, and had smaller skulls and brains.  We selected for dogs having juvenile characteristics, because they were less trouble to have around.  Dogs helpfully announced the arrival of humans and beasts, and they drove away other predators.

Before going further, I must reveal my motives.  I believe that the domestication of plants and animals played a major role in the process that got us into our current predicament, the Earth Crisis.  Wild humans and wild wolves once lived in a manner that worked quite well, for a very long time.  Today, both are endangered.  Meanwhile, the population of domesticated humans and dogs has grown explosively, because of a temporary bubble of abundant energy.  The family of life is temporarily out of balance.

Humans and dogs live in the highest density in poorer regions, where many are malnourished and unhealthy.  In prosperous regions, humans and dogs are more likely to be over-nourished, neurotic, stressed out, and excessive consumers of resources (trendy $1,500 purebreds are not shit-eating dogs).  

I am not here to judge or criticize dog owners, and I mean that sincerely.  My goal is to explore the dark side of domestication, because there are many lessons to be learned — knowledge that may be important for any attempts to return to genuine sustainability.

Many assume that dogs have always been pets, since our days in the caves, but this is not true.  Dogs had a semi-wild, pariah-like existence for thousands of years before being reduced to pets, and losing their freedom.  Dozens of gray wolves were interviewed for this story, and they unanimously agreed that wolves never had any desire whatsoever to become dogs.  In fact, they were grievously insulted by the mere suggestion of this.

In his book Of Wolves and Men, Barry Lopez told many wolf stories.  Once upon a time, in Alaska’s Goldstream Valley, wolves killed 42 dogs one winter.  The Athbascan Indians took a vote, and by a landslide chose not to retaliate against the wolves.  Why?  Because everyone knew that wolves hated dogs.  Case closed.

I was repeatedly surprised in my research to discover that hunter-gatherers had little respect for dogs.  Dogs were uniquely second-class animals.  Domestication had diminished them to the degree that they were no longer able to survive in the wild, outside the human sphere (similar to sheep, cattle, maize, and consumers).  This serious abnormality was perfectly obvious to every illiterate, uneducated savage.

Wild hunting people recognized that wolves were beings that possessed immense spiritual power, according to Lopez.  The Nunamiut understood that wolves had souls, but not their sled dogs.  In the Sioux language, the term for wolf was shunkmanitu tanka, “the animal that looks like a dog (but) is a powerful spirit.”  Dogs were banned from ceremonial lodges, except when they arrived in the stew kettle, as they often did.

In The Way of the Shaman, Michael Harner discussed the animals that shamans used as guardian spirits.  Guardian spirits were almost always wild and untamed.  Domesticated animals typically lacked the spiritual power required for shamanic purposes.  (Cars are often named after powerful wild things, never pudgy barnyard riffraff.)

In The Forest People, Colin Turnbull described how Pygmies treated dogs: “And the hunting dogs, valuable as they are, get kicked around mercilessly from the day they are born to the day they die.”

In The Continuum Concept, Jean Liedloff wrote that the Yequana people never imposed their will on others, but with dogs they used strict discipline, hitting them with fists, sticks, and stones.

Dogs inherited coprophilia from their wolf ancestors (an obsession for the smell and taste of excrement).  In Book of the Eskimos, Peter Freuchen wrote that sled dogs were often a nuisance when someone attempted to take a crap.  Sometimes a good buddy would drive the dogs away with a whip until you were finished.  Dogs would sometimes have bloody fights over fresh turds. 

Freuchen also mentioned that it was perfectly acceptable to copulate with a dog when she was in heat, as long as it was done outdoors, in the open.  Brighter lads never attempted this with wolves.

In The Harmless People, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas discussed the dogs that lived with the Bushmen.  They were typically skeletal and weak from hunger.  Dogs were owned and named, but they were only fed excrement.  When they tried to snatch human food, they were stoned or whipped.  In return for regular hot meals, the grateful dogs drove away leopards, jackals, and hyenas.

In Lame Deer: Seeker of Visions, John Lame Deer wrote, “There was great power in a wolf, even in a coyote.  You have made him into a freak — a toy poodle, a Pekingese, a lap dog….  That’s where you’ve fooled yourselves.  You have not only altered, declawed, and malformed your winged and four-legged cousins; you have done it to yourselves.”

In Ojibway Heritage, Basil Johnston told some dog tales.  In their creation stories, humans and other animals worked together in harmony.  All animals served the family of life in some way — except for the lowly dog, which had nothing to offer.  Dogs were dependent on humans for their survival, and the other animals had no sympathy: “He who allows himself to be servile deserves servitude.”

Other animals were outraged by the treachery of dogs, and considered killing them, but Bear objected.  He told the dogs: “For your betrayal, you shall no longer be regarded as a brother among us.  Instead of man, we shall attack you.  Worse than this, from now on you shall eat only what man has left, sleep in the cold and rain, and receive kicks as a reward for your fidelity.”

To a devout Muslim, a dog is an unclean animal that drives away angels, annuls prayers, and limits their owner’s benefits in paradise.  Muslims who touch a dog require ritual purification.  In 2011, a journalist commented that in the village of Novosasitli, Dagestan, dogs do not bark when the call to prayer beckons, because all unclean animals have been exterminated.

Likewise, their Jewish and Christian neighbors have been long-time hard-core dog haters.  “Dog” appears in the Bible 41 times, always harshly scribbled with venomous ink, never fondness.  For example:

“Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.”  (Matthew 7:6)

“Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.  For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie.”  (Revelations 22:14-15)

So, dogs have not been beloved pets since the beginning.  They were the first offspring of domestication, and they were diminished by it.  As many times has they click the Undo button, nothing happens — they remain dogs.  Woof!

To be continued.  Stay tuned.

Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions

Tahca Ushte (Lame Deer) was a Lakota medicine man from a land now known as South Dakota (“Sioux” is a white name that insults the Lakota).  His government-issued name was John Fire.  He was born some time between 1895 and 1903, and died in 1976.  His parents were of the last generation to be born wild and free.  Two of his grandfathers had been at the battle of Little Big Horn, Custer’s last stand, and one of them survived the massacre at Wounded Knee.

Lame Deer’s early years were spent in a remote location, where they had no contact with the outside world.  He never saw a white man until he was five.  At 14, he was taken away to a boarding school, where he was prohibited from speaking his language or singing his songs.  The class work never went beyond the level of third grade, so Lame Deer spent six years in the third grade.  He eventually gained renown for being a rebellious troublemaker.  When he was 16, he went on a vision quest, and discovered that he was to become a medicine man.

Sons destined to become medicine men were often removed from school by their families, because schooling was harmful to the growth of someone walking a spiritual path.  One father drove away truancy officers with a shotgun.  For medicine men, the skills of reading and writing had absolutely no value.

When Lame Deer was 17, his mother died, and the family fell apart.  The white world was closing in, making it hard for his father to survive as a rancher.  He gave his children some livestock and wished them good luck.  By that time, the buffalo were dead, their land was gone, many lived on reservations, and the good old days for the Lakota were behind them. 

Lame Deer straddled two worlds, the sacred path of Lakota tradition, and the pure madness of the “frog-skinners,” — people who were driven by an insatiable hunger for green frog-skins (dollar bills).  The frog-skinners were bred to be consumers, not human beings, so they were not fun to be around.

Lame Deer spent maybe 20 years wandering.  He made money as a rodeo rider, clown, square dance caller, potato picker, shepherd, and so on.  He always avoided work in factories or offices, “because any human being is too good for that kind of no-life, even white people.”  He enjoyed many women, did more than a little drinking, stole a few cars, and shunned the conventional civilized life.

Between jobs he would return to his reservation and spend time with the elders.  During World War II, just before Normandy, he was thrown out of the Army when they discovered that he was 39, too old.  Soon after, he abandoned the frog-skin world and became a full time Indian, walking on the sacred path of a medicine man.

For the Lakota, the Black Hills were the most sacred place in their world.  To retain possession of them, they surrendered much of what became Montana, Wyoming, and the Dakotas.  The treaty declared that the Black Hills would remain Indian territory “for as long as the sun shined.”  Soon after, whites discovered gold in the Black Hills, and flooded into the holy lands with drills, dynamite, whiskey, and prostitutes.  The Lakota were horrified by the behavior of these civilized Christians.

The frog-skinners exterminated the buffalo, and replaced them with livestock.  Buffalo were beings of great power and intelligence.  They even had a sense of humor.  Lame Deer said that if buffalo were used in bullfighting, the cocky matadors would promptly be trampled and gored into extinction.  Cattle were dullards that had the power bred out of them.  Sheep and goats would stand calmly while you cut their throats. 

To provide additional vegetation for the dim-witted livestock, the prairie dogs had to go.  Ranchers launched an intensive poisoning campaign that also killed more than a few children and pets.  With the prairie dogs gone, there was far less prey for the wolves, coyotes, bobcats, foxes, badgers, hawks, and eagles.  A diverse, thriving prairie ecosystem was replaced with monocultures of destructive sub-intelligent exotic species.

Sheep were amazingly frail.  They often fell over, with their feet in the air, and couldn’t get back up again.  If the shepherd didn’t rescue them, they would bloat up and die.  Lambs often had to be hand-raised because their mothers didn’t recognize them or feed them.

“There was great power in a wolf, even in a coyote.  You have made him into a freak — a toy poodle, a Pekingese, a lap dog. … You have not only altered, declawed, and malformed your winged and four-legged cousins; you have done it to yourselves. … You live in prisons which you have built for yourselves, calling them homes, offices, factories.”

In the 1880s, the Indians of the west were in despair, and the Ghost Dance movement was spreading from tribe to tribe.  It was a grand magic act intended to bring a new world into existence via sacred song and dance.  The dead would come back to life, the buffalo herds would return, the whites would get sent back home, and the civilized world would be rolled up like a dirty old carpet — the cities, mines, farms, and factories.  This would reveal a healthy unspoiled land, with many teepees and animals, as it once had been.

Dancers were not allowed to possess things from the white world: liquor, guns, knives, kettles, or metal ornaments.  They would dance for four days.  Whites feared an armed uprising, so they attacked the dancers.  Hundreds of unarmed Indians were murdered at the Wounded Knee massacre. 

The magic dancing did not succeed, but today many can see that a great healing is badly needed.  Obviously, the madness cannot continue forever.  Lame Deer was clear: “The machine will stop.”  He said that a young man would one day come who would know how to turn it off.  “It won’t be bad, doing without many things you are now used to, things taken out of the earth and wasted foolishly.”  We will have to learn how to live more simply, and this will be good for one and all.

Lame Deer asked Richard Erdoes to help write his story, to pass along important information.  He included several chapters describing the sacred culture of the Lakota.  He wanted hold up a mirror for us, to give us a different perspective, to feed a sane voice into our lost and confused world.  “We must try to save the white man from himself.  This can be done if only all of us, Indians and non-Indians alike, can once again see ourselves as part of this earth.”

Lame Deer, John (Fire) and Erdoes, Richard, Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions, Washington Square Press, New York, 1994.