tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4136626590097801169.post4657363457190059621..comments2024-01-10T11:19:56.456-08:00Comments on What Is Sustainable: Hunters of the Recent PastWhat Is Sustainablehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10227382786082159733noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4136626590097801169.post-62841866010637548462017-05-17T14:36:35.932-07:002017-05-17T14:36:35.932-07:00Hi Matt! Shepard Krech wrote The Ecological India...Hi Matt! Shepard Krech wrote The Ecological Indian, W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 1999. Here are two passages from page 133:<br /><br />That buffaloes drowned in great numbers cannot be doubted; John McDonnell, a North West Company trader, counted over 7,000 one day in 1795 on the Qu’Appelle River. Charles McKenzie wrote that the Mandan drove “large herds” onto the weakest sections of winter ice on the Missouri, where they fell through, drowned, and were subsequently recovered downstream and left to “take flavor.” Some Indians preferred drowned buffaloes over all other types of food. McKenzie wrote, “When the skin is raised you will see the flesh of a greenish hue, and ready to become alive at the least exposure to the sun; and is so ripe, so tender, that very little boiling is required.” Bottle-green soup made from it was “reckoned delicious,” and the Mandan were so fond of “putrid meat” that they buried animals all winter and ate them in spring. <br /><br />But on other occasions, people did not use all the meat from the buffaloes they killed. In 1793, Fidler left one Piegan pound “quite full laying 5 or 6 deep one upon the other, all thro which in the whole was above 250 Buffalo.” He added that “when the Wind happened to blow from the Pound in the direction of the Tents, there was an intollerable stench of the great number of putrified carcasses.” In 1804, Meriwether Lewis saw “the remains of a vast many mangled carcases of Buffalow which had been driven over a precipice of 120 feet by the Indians and perished; the water appeared to have washed away a part of this immence pile of slaughter and still there remained the fragments of at least a hundred carcases.” The following year, the Mandan killed “whole droves” of buffaloes and took only “the best parts of the meat,” leaving the rest “to rot in the field.” The trader Alexander Henry saw “mangled carcasses strewn about” in a Blackfeet pound in December 1809. The “bulls were mostly entire,” Henry reported, “none but the good cows having been cut up,” and the stench “was great.”What Is Sustainablehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10227382786082159733noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4136626590097801169.post-2519328462339430342017-05-17T12:29:15.177-07:002017-05-17T12:29:15.177-07:00Very interesting all around, but especially to see...Very interesting all around, but especially to see the two reports of animals left to rot. I'm so used to the romanticized image of indigenous people not wasting anything. Probably an unrealistic image. Thanks for the review! Matt Colombohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00362723804794789171noreply@blogger.com