WEBVTT 1 00:00:21.039 --> 00:00:24.719 Hello, and welcome to Western SIEV. Today I continue my 2 00:00:24.920 --> 00:00:28.239 bonus little story arc here on North America and Native 3 00:00:28.239 --> 00:00:31.359 American cultures before the arrival of Europeans, so what we 4 00:00:31.440 --> 00:00:34.600 like to call pre Columbian America. The whole goal of 5 00:00:34.640 --> 00:00:37.280 this series is to try to paint a picture of 6 00:00:37.280 --> 00:00:40.320 the world before Europeans and the people who lived in it, 7 00:00:40.719 --> 00:00:43.119 and to explain how those people who did live in 8 00:00:43.159 --> 00:00:47.600 it were extremely effective in managing the resources that were 9 00:00:47.640 --> 00:00:51.359 available to them. I want to begin with a scene. 10 00:00:52.280 --> 00:00:57.439 So imagine a forest and what is today the American Midwest. 11 00:00:58.039 --> 00:01:00.640 You know, for me RepA Wisconsin where that is. You 12 00:01:00.679 --> 00:01:05.280 can be Illinois, Ohi. You can shop on Iowa, even Nebraska. Sure, 13 00:01:05.959 --> 00:01:09.480 let's imagine this forest. The canopy is moving with motion. 14 00:01:10.280 --> 00:01:14.519 You hear this roaring sound. It's like the sky itself 15 00:01:14.640 --> 00:01:18.000 is made of wings. You look up and the heavens 16 00:01:18.000 --> 00:01:23.120 are absolutely thick with birds, millions, millions upon millions, casting 17 00:01:23.239 --> 00:01:28.920 shadows that fall across the land. These are passenger pigeons. 18 00:01:29.400 --> 00:01:34.280 They were the most populace of all North American bird species. 19 00:01:35.040 --> 00:01:42.640 Today they're gone, not rare, not endangered, They're completely extinct. 20 00:01:43.120 --> 00:01:47.439 There is this enduring myth of American history that before 21 00:01:47.519 --> 00:01:53.799 European colonization the land was untouched, unshaped, a pristine wilderness. 22 00:01:55.159 --> 00:01:58.799 Historian Stanley Rice writes, quote, this image of a continent 23 00:01:59.239 --> 00:02:04.079 teeming with wildlife and wilderness is more fantasy than fact 24 00:02:04.239 --> 00:02:09.479 end quote. Those who lived in North America, the Native Americans, 25 00:02:09.479 --> 00:02:14.319 were not passive inhabitants of some untouched eden. They were 26 00:02:14.719 --> 00:02:19.360 ecosystem engineers, people who actively and skillfully managed their environment. 27 00:02:20.520 --> 00:02:27.240 There probably were somewhere between three to five billion passenger pigeons, 28 00:02:27.280 --> 00:02:30.919 just to continue with this one example in North America, 29 00:02:31.120 --> 00:02:36.520 when Europeans arrived, some flocks could, as they're moving, stretch 30 00:02:36.560 --> 00:02:40.960 for three hundred miles. If you were sitting below a 31 00:02:41.000 --> 00:02:46.120 flock as it passed, it might take fourteen hours from 32 00:02:46.280 --> 00:02:51.759 start to finish before their migratory pattern passed beyond your site. 33 00:02:51.960 --> 00:02:57.960 So these weren't just birds. These were a dominant ecological presence, 34 00:02:58.639 --> 00:03:04.080 shaping forests through their foraging and nesting behaviors. In fact, 35 00:03:04.120 --> 00:03:08.400 they're kind of like a superorganism when they need Imagine, 36 00:03:08.879 --> 00:03:12.599 they did so in such enormous numbers that their collective 37 00:03:12.680 --> 00:03:17.680 weight could actually break tree branches and flatten the undergrowth beneath. 38 00:03:18.680 --> 00:03:23.400 Their droppings altered the chemical composition of the soil. Their 39 00:03:23.479 --> 00:03:30.439 constant movement distributed seeds across vast distances. In short, passenger 40 00:03:30.479 --> 00:03:34.599 pigeons weren't simply residents of North America, not residents of 41 00:03:34.639 --> 00:03:38.960 the forests. They were architects of this. And do you 42 00:03:38.960 --> 00:03:43.520 know who understood this? Native Americans. They understood it deeply 43 00:03:43.520 --> 00:03:48.960 and understood it very very well. They hunted them, of course, true, 44 00:03:49.120 --> 00:03:55.280 but not mindlessly and pointlessly. The hunts were deliberate, timed 45 00:03:55.879 --> 00:04:02.400 and steeped in generation upon generation of ecolo knowledge. Tribes 46 00:04:02.439 --> 00:04:05.599 waited until the birds had nested and the young were 47 00:04:05.599 --> 00:04:11.400 nearly grown. This ensured a maximum yield while allowing the 48 00:04:11.439 --> 00:04:16.600 population enough time to recover. They never took all the birds. 49 00:04:17.319 --> 00:04:20.040 They took enough to eat, enough to dry and store, 50 00:04:20.079 --> 00:04:24.879 but they always left the rest. Hunting passenger pigeons is 51 00:04:25.079 --> 00:04:28.240 my example here today. But it's not a matter of 52 00:04:28.319 --> 00:04:33.879 happenstance or opportunism. This is sort of a larger practice 53 00:04:34.279 --> 00:04:39.560 and web of this seasonal pattern of using migratory patterns 54 00:04:39.600 --> 00:04:43.120 to your advantage, and something that Native Americans, particularly in 55 00:04:43.160 --> 00:04:47.959 North America, were very, very skilled at. In late spring 56 00:04:48.040 --> 00:04:53.040 and summer. Large nesting sites were predictable, and this is 57 00:04:53.160 --> 00:04:56.720 for various species. And tribes understood this, and they could 58 00:04:56.720 --> 00:05:00.800 converge on them. There would be whole communities that would 59 00:05:00.839 --> 00:05:05.160 participate in the hunt and other historian rights quote, children, elders, warriors. 60 00:05:05.160 --> 00:05:08.000 They all had roles to play. They used long poles, nets, 61 00:05:08.000 --> 00:05:12.560 and smoke to bring the birds down end quote. Hunting 62 00:05:12.639 --> 00:05:14.560 wasn't just an act of survival, It was an act 63 00:05:14.839 --> 00:05:21.240 of relationship. In many Native American traditions, there were prayers 64 00:05:21.480 --> 00:05:25.360 before the hunt and rituals afterwards. To kill an animal 65 00:05:25.399 --> 00:05:29.560 was to enter into a sacred exchange. To quote one 66 00:05:29.839 --> 00:05:33.759 Native elder, you must love your prey or you will 67 00:05:33.759 --> 00:05:37.959 not hunt it well. End quote. Now it's kind of 68 00:05:38.000 --> 00:05:41.360 easy to see how this system worked because it was 69 00:05:41.439 --> 00:05:46.519 broken so thoroughly by the Europeans when they arrived. With 70 00:05:46.600 --> 00:05:50.680 the arrival of European settlers, the careful balance that the 71 00:05:50.759 --> 00:05:53.920 Native peoples of North America had struck with the environment 72 00:05:54.240 --> 00:05:58.720 and the animals around them was totally upended. The newcomers 73 00:05:58.879 --> 00:06:02.199 saw the sky's thick with birds and assumed that the 74 00:06:02.279 --> 00:06:07.439 land was simply inexhaustible. They didn't have any cultural memory 75 00:06:07.720 --> 00:06:10.879 of scarcity. In this new world, they didn't have any 76 00:06:10.920 --> 00:06:15.800 inherited stories of balance and the need for restraint. Instead, 77 00:06:16.439 --> 00:06:20.360 the Europeans came with a market based logic to extract 78 00:06:20.399 --> 00:06:26.279 resources and profit from them. The pigeons, suddenly, like everything else, 79 00:06:26.879 --> 00:06:32.319 became a commodity. Commercial hunters simply slaughtered them by the millions. 80 00:06:33.079 --> 00:06:36.920 They used nets to trap entire flocks and shipped barrels 81 00:06:36.920 --> 00:06:40.600 of salted birds back to the growing European cities. They 82 00:06:40.600 --> 00:06:43.160 shot them out of the sky for fun, often leaving 83 00:06:43.160 --> 00:06:47.519 the body simply to rot. Here's one passage from a 84 00:06:47.519 --> 00:06:51.759 contemporary observer quote. The ground was covered with their carcasses. 85 00:06:52.319 --> 00:06:58.519 We used them as kindling for our fires end quote. Somehow, 86 00:06:59.439 --> 00:07:03.480 in just a few decades, a species that had once 87 00:07:03.639 --> 00:07:10.519 seemed all but eternal was gone. The last known passenger pigeon, 88 00:07:11.040 --> 00:07:14.920 a female named Martha, died in the Cincinnati Zoo in 89 00:07:15.040 --> 00:07:19.839 nineteen fourteen. Her body was sent to the Smithsonian, where 90 00:07:19.839 --> 00:07:23.839 it was taxidermied and put on display to become a relic. 91 00:07:24.680 --> 00:07:29.160 Really a warning, i suppose, to the dangers of unwarranted 92 00:07:29.519 --> 00:07:35.279 and overconsumption. But the extinction of the passenger pigeon was 93 00:07:35.360 --> 00:07:42.519 not an accident. It wasn't the slow result of climate change. 94 00:07:42.680 --> 00:07:45.759 It was a human decision. It was a decision that 95 00:07:46.199 --> 00:07:50.399 European settlers and the Americans made and then repeated a 96 00:07:50.439 --> 00:07:55.000 billion times. It didn't happen because the pigeons were weak 97 00:07:55.240 --> 00:08:00.439 or somehow preordained to vanish from this planet. It happened 98 00:08:00.439 --> 00:08:04.839 because we chose to ignore the limits of nature. We 99 00:08:04.959 --> 00:08:10.199 chose to ignore the lessons of Native American peoples before us. 100 00:08:11.240 --> 00:08:14.759 We rejected the idea that nature had limits at all. 101 00:08:16.480 --> 00:08:21.000 The Native American hunters knew the land. Those who came 102 00:08:21.040 --> 00:08:25.800 from Europe simply consumed it. Native American hunters took only 103 00:08:25.839 --> 00:08:32.519 what they needed. Europeans took everything they could. Now in 104 00:08:32.600 --> 00:08:36.159 the end, we tend to paint this, and it's been 105 00:08:36.200 --> 00:08:40.639 painted for a long time in American history as this 106 00:08:40.799 --> 00:08:45.000 view of Europeans as simply dominant as Europeans who use 107 00:08:45.039 --> 00:08:48.159 their technological superiority in it. The reason that they're able 108 00:08:48.240 --> 00:08:49.879 to get more from the land is that they're just 109 00:08:49.879 --> 00:08:54.600 simply better than Native Americans. I'm not sure that that's true. 110 00:08:54.799 --> 00:08:58.799 I wonder if it's more about understanding the world around 111 00:08:58.799 --> 00:09:03.759 you and participating in it. The reality was that native peoples, 112 00:09:04.519 --> 00:09:07.679 when they did hunt, they weren't just out to kill 113 00:09:07.759 --> 00:09:11.159 and eat. They were also shaping the world around them 114 00:09:11.200 --> 00:09:15.559 and guiding the cycles of life. Native peoples understood what 115 00:09:15.639 --> 00:09:20.799 ecologists today would probably call a sustainable yield. They knew 116 00:09:20.799 --> 00:09:23.240 that if they took without giving back, they would destroy 117 00:09:23.480 --> 00:09:27.159 this source of life itself. And that brings us to 118 00:09:27.200 --> 00:09:31.639 our ultimate paradox that when Europeans arrived, they simply misunderstood 119 00:09:31.679 --> 00:09:36.000 what they saw. They looked at a forest teeming with animals, 120 00:09:36.039 --> 00:09:39.240 flocks of passenger pigeons, and they assumed this was wild. 121 00:09:40.159 --> 00:09:43.600 They couldn't see the signs of management from last episode, 122 00:09:43.639 --> 00:09:47.159 the seasonal fires from this one, the selective hunting, and 123 00:09:47.320 --> 00:09:51.480 as we'll get to the cultivated plant patches. The newcomers 124 00:09:51.919 --> 00:09:56.519 forgot that landscapes weren't static, that there were stories written 125 00:09:56.559 --> 00:10:01.360 in the language of fire, migration, and memory. It's interesting, 126 00:10:01.480 --> 00:10:03.799 you know, the loss of the passenger pigeon isn't just 127 00:10:03.840 --> 00:10:07.720 a tragedy. It's really a cautionary tale. It reminds us 128 00:10:07.799 --> 00:10:09.840 I think that we would do well to remember this today. 129 00:10:09.879 --> 00:10:14.240 That abundance isn't forever, That even the sky once actually 130 00:10:14.320 --> 00:10:18.960 dark with birds can be empty, but it also offers 131 00:10:19.039 --> 00:10:22.799 a model for restoration. If we look back to the past, 132 00:10:22.960 --> 00:10:26.159 we learn that if we can be good hunters, then 133 00:10:26.159 --> 00:10:30.480 we can actually live well in coordination with nature around us. 134 00:10:31.399 --> 00:10:34.519 There are good hunters, those who listen to the land, 135 00:10:34.840 --> 00:10:37.720 who give thanks, who take only what is needed and 136 00:10:37.799 --> 00:10:41.960 leave enough for tomorrow. That's really the legacy that we 137 00:10:42.000 --> 00:10:43.879 can take and one of the legacies that we can 138 00:10:43.919 --> 00:10:46.639 take from the North American peoples who came before us, 139 00:10:47.279 --> 00:10:50.759 because it explains how we can live in balance with 140 00:10:50.879 --> 00:10:55.360 nature and those who did it so very very well. 141 00:11:08.799 --> 00:11:10.559 And before I begin this next section, I want to 142 00:11:10.600 --> 00:11:14.320 take a moment. Hopefully you're not driving, but if you are, 143 00:11:14.360 --> 00:11:16.440 don't do this part. But if you're not, close your eyes. 144 00:11:16.440 --> 00:11:20.080 Just picture a farm, not just any farm, but the 145 00:11:20.159 --> 00:11:22.720 ideal farm, the one that we've been trained, literally since 146 00:11:22.840 --> 00:11:27.279 kindergarten to see in our mind's eye. It's obviously vast, 147 00:11:27.279 --> 00:11:32.240 it's geometric. It's a checkerboard of corn or wheat, maybe soybeans. 148 00:11:32.919 --> 00:11:36.840 Each row is a perfect line, each plant genetically identical 149 00:11:36.879 --> 00:11:40.120 to the one next to them. It's quiet except for 150 00:11:40.240 --> 00:11:44.919 maybe a hum of a distant tractor. This image so familiar, 151 00:11:45.080 --> 00:11:47.159 so modern is what we've all been taught to call 152 00:11:47.240 --> 00:11:54.440 quote unquote civilized agriculture. Now, instead, imagine the edge of 153 00:11:54.440 --> 00:11:58.519 a forest dappled in light. There's no fence to divide it, 154 00:11:58.639 --> 00:12:03.480 no neat squares. Squash lines creep along the ground. Corn 155 00:12:03.559 --> 00:12:08.120 stalks rising clusters, not rows. Beans spiral up the stalks 156 00:12:08.200 --> 00:12:13.039 like green serpents around them. Sunflowers tilt their yellow faces 157 00:12:13.039 --> 00:12:17.039 toward the sun and interspersed with it all or berry 158 00:12:17.120 --> 00:12:21.120 bushes and nut trees, each one tended, remembered, and returned 159 00:12:21.159 --> 00:12:26.720 to it each season. This too, is a farm, It's 160 00:12:26.799 --> 00:12:29.279 just not the one that we've been taught to look for. 161 00:12:30.240 --> 00:12:35.240 These were the sorts of farms that dominated North America 162 00:12:35.360 --> 00:12:41.799 prior to the arrival of Europeans. There's a famous saying 163 00:12:42.399 --> 00:12:45.759 by Michael Bloomberg quote, I could teach anybody to be 164 00:12:45.799 --> 00:12:48.440 a farmer. You dig a hole, you put a seed 165 00:12:48.440 --> 00:12:51.879 in it, you put dirt on top, add water up 166 00:12:51.919 --> 00:12:58.799 comes the corn end quote. It's a statement that didn't 167 00:12:58.799 --> 00:13:03.120 win Michael Bloomberg whole up votes, but encapsulates a broader 168 00:13:03.159 --> 00:13:07.559 and more dangerous misunderstanding, the idea that farming is simple. 169 00:13:08.000 --> 00:13:10.240 Anybody who's tried at tend a garden knows this isn't 170 00:13:10.240 --> 00:13:14.399 the case, and that Native Americans, because their farms didn't 171 00:13:14.440 --> 00:13:18.120 look like theirs of Europeans, weren't actually farmers at all. 172 00:13:18.720 --> 00:13:21.639 This is a trope that's even repeated in history classes 173 00:13:21.919 --> 00:13:25.679 today that Native Americans were say it with me, hunter 174 00:13:25.840 --> 00:13:29.799 gatherers and they just kind of wandered from place to place. Well, 175 00:13:30.080 --> 00:13:32.799 we know that that's not true. We've learned it from 176 00:13:32.840 --> 00:13:37.480 the Jamestown series. The Native Americans of North America were 177 00:13:37.559 --> 00:13:42.480 cultivating props, just in a different way. Native American agriculture 178 00:13:42.559 --> 00:13:48.039 wasn't primitive. It was both brilliant and adaptive, ecologically sophisticated, 179 00:13:48.639 --> 00:13:53.279 and most importantly, given the environment, it was sustainable. To 180 00:13:53.360 --> 00:13:55.600 understand where it came from, we have to start at 181 00:13:55.600 --> 00:13:59.320 the beginning. When the first humans arrived in North America, 182 00:13:59.399 --> 00:14:02.879 whether fIF teen thousand years ago or as some evidence 183 00:14:02.919 --> 00:14:07.720 now suggests, even earlier, they were hunter gatherers. They entered 184 00:14:07.720 --> 00:14:10.639 a continent rich in game and wild fruit and nut 185 00:14:10.679 --> 00:14:13.679 bearing trees, in rivers full of fish, and for a 186 00:14:13.720 --> 00:14:19.679 time this bounty was enough. But humans are always learning, 187 00:14:19.799 --> 00:14:23.559 always innovating. As populations grew and As people began to 188 00:14:23.559 --> 00:14:27.159 settle in particular regions, they started doing more than just 189 00:14:27.279 --> 00:14:31.799 gathering what nature offered. They started to shape it. They 190 00:14:31.840 --> 00:14:36.399 saved seeds, they transplanted favored plants closer to home. They 191 00:14:36.480 --> 00:14:40.480 learned which soils grew the best sunflowers, which slopes held 192 00:14:40.519 --> 00:14:44.519 the right moisture for squash. A farm is as much 193 00:14:44.559 --> 00:14:48.320 an ecosystem as is a forest or a prairie, and 194 00:14:48.399 --> 00:14:53.720 of course every ecosystem is complex. One of the earliest 195 00:14:53.720 --> 00:14:57.080 crops domesticated in what is today the United States was 196 00:14:57.240 --> 00:15:02.120 sump weed, a plant with small, oily seeds. It's not 197 00:15:02.200 --> 00:15:06.000 exactly a crowd favorite today, but for early Native American 198 00:15:06.039 --> 00:15:11.600 farmers it was an amazing source of food. Alongside some weed, cane, sunflowers, 199 00:15:11.600 --> 00:15:15.480 and goosefoot and other seed bearing plants. These were the 200 00:15:15.519 --> 00:15:19.600 early ancestors of what would become a sophisticated agricultural toolkit. 201 00:15:20.679 --> 00:15:24.000 But of course the game changed with the arrival of 202 00:15:24.039 --> 00:15:27.159 crops from further south. And I'm sure we all know 203 00:15:27.159 --> 00:15:29.159 what we're talking about here. We're going to get into 204 00:15:29.200 --> 00:15:32.440 corn maze, whatever you want to call it. The agricultural 205 00:15:32.480 --> 00:15:35.720 revolution of North America didn't begin in North America. It 206 00:15:35.759 --> 00:15:39.360 began in Mexico, where native farmers developed one of the 207 00:15:39.399 --> 00:15:46.120 most important crops in human history. Maze. Maize, or corn 208 00:15:46.200 --> 00:15:49.120 as we call it, didn't exist in the wild. It 209 00:15:49.159 --> 00:15:53.480 was painstakingly bred from a grass called Teyacinthe, a plant 210 00:15:53.600 --> 00:15:55.919 so unlike modern corn it's hard to believe that the 211 00:15:55.919 --> 00:15:59.360 two are even related. Developing maize into a prop on 212 00:15:59.399 --> 00:16:02.200 which entire your native societies could be based on took 213 00:16:02.200 --> 00:16:05.559 a lot of work and time. It was a masterpiece 214 00:16:05.559 --> 00:16:11.320 of agricultural engineering. It took hundreds of years to develop 215 00:16:11.360 --> 00:16:14.399 this correctly, and then it took hundreds of more years 216 00:16:14.799 --> 00:16:19.799 for corn to slowly move north from Mexico all the 217 00:16:19.840 --> 00:16:22.200 way to what is the modern United States as native 218 00:16:22.200 --> 00:16:26.600 peoples learned where it would grow and where it wouldn't. Now, 219 00:16:26.639 --> 00:16:29.559 alongside maze came beans and squash. This is the famous 220 00:16:29.600 --> 00:16:32.919 three sisters grown together in mutual support, and it does 221 00:16:32.919 --> 00:16:36.039 work to grow these three together, I've tried. The corn 222 00:16:36.080 --> 00:16:38.960 provides a stock for the beans to climb. The beans 223 00:16:39.159 --> 00:16:42.480 fixed nitrogen in the soil. The squash spread out below, 224 00:16:42.559 --> 00:16:46.039 shading the ground, holding in moisture into turning weeds. Together 225 00:16:46.080 --> 00:16:51.200 they form an ecological symphony. But here's their twist. Despite 226 00:16:51.200 --> 00:16:54.759 their brilliance, these gardens didn't look like what Europeans bought 227 00:16:54.919 --> 00:16:58.559 arms should look like. There were any plows, there were 228 00:16:58.559 --> 00:17:01.360 any fences. There were no ox and dragging furrows through 229 00:17:01.399 --> 00:17:05.839 square fields. Crops were planted in mountains, often in forest clearings. 230 00:17:06.519 --> 00:17:10.079 They were interplanted. They weren't road and as a result, 231 00:17:10.240 --> 00:17:13.039 when European colonists arrived in North America, they didn't know 232 00:17:13.079 --> 00:17:16.279 what they were seeing. To them, they looked around and said, 233 00:17:16.680 --> 00:17:24.559 this is wilderness. Unfortunately, this blindness shaped policy and engendered violence. 234 00:17:25.319 --> 00:17:28.599 Take the Cherokee, for instance. By the seventeen hundreds, they 235 00:17:28.640 --> 00:17:32.319 were deeply agricultural. They still raised corn as they had 236 00:17:32.359 --> 00:17:35.920 in previous centuries, though they now used plows and oxen 237 00:17:36.039 --> 00:17:40.519 rather than digging sticks. They had livestock, barns, fences, and 238 00:17:40.599 --> 00:17:43.880 still the US government insisted they were not properly using 239 00:17:43.880 --> 00:17:48.759 the land. Why because their farms didn't match the colonial ideal. 240 00:17:49.880 --> 00:17:53.640 This misunderstanding wasn't just an intellectual exercise and a failure 241 00:17:53.680 --> 00:17:58.000 at that, it was very deadly. During the eighteenth century, 242 00:17:58.160 --> 00:18:02.400 American military campaigns to Live targeted Native American food systems. 243 00:18:02.960 --> 00:18:05.599 Heck We've seen this even in Jamestown with John Smith. 244 00:18:06.799 --> 00:18:10.799 In seventeen sixty one, British forces under Colonel James Grant 245 00:18:10.799 --> 00:18:15.359 destroyed Cherokee cornfields and orchards across the Appalachian South, driving 246 00:18:15.359 --> 00:18:19.279 thousands of people into the mountains to starve. American forces 247 00:18:19.279 --> 00:18:23.160 continued this practice during the Revolutionary War. The Cherokees were 248 00:18:23.160 --> 00:18:27.960 forced quote fled into the mountains, leaving behind their villages horses, cattle, dogs, 249 00:18:28.200 --> 00:18:31.200 and fowl, as well as forty to fifty thousand bushels 250 00:18:31.200 --> 00:18:35.079 of corn end quote. Destroying Native American agriculture wasn't just 251 00:18:35.359 --> 00:18:40.200 collateral damage. It actually was the strategy. The colonists needed 252 00:18:40.200 --> 00:18:42.119 a rationale for all this. We need this a lot 253 00:18:42.119 --> 00:18:45.359 in American history, and so they repeated a lie that 254 00:18:45.440 --> 00:18:48.359 Native Americans didn't farm, that they didn't improve the land, 255 00:18:48.759 --> 00:18:52.440 that they were savages wandering through unclaimed wilderness. And that 256 00:18:52.480 --> 00:18:57.319 lie still echoes today. Now we should also look at 257 00:18:57.319 --> 00:19:01.359 our modern agriculture esthetics, the way we prize flat fenced, 258 00:19:01.440 --> 00:19:07.240 square fields planted in vast monocultures. We actually adore this 259 00:19:07.400 --> 00:19:10.640 uniformity tried out. Look for a stock photo right now, 260 00:19:10.680 --> 00:19:13.799 if you're on a computer of a farm, there's going 261 00:19:13.839 --> 00:19:16.599 to be a lawn perfectly uniform except for maybe a 262 00:19:16.599 --> 00:19:20.240 couple of small weeds. There's going to be all kinds 263 00:19:20.279 --> 00:19:24.680 of squares and patterns. That's what we love. That obsession 264 00:19:24.680 --> 00:19:27.839 with order and control is deeply embedded in our American 265 00:19:27.880 --> 00:19:30.920 mindset because it was actually deeply embedded in the colonial mindset. 266 00:19:32.039 --> 00:19:34.359 It's the only way that we know how to farm, 267 00:19:34.359 --> 00:19:38.519 but it's not necessarily the best way. Traditional Native American 268 00:19:38.519 --> 00:19:42.400 agriculture was diverse, It was resilient and closely attuned to 269 00:19:42.480 --> 00:19:46.720 local ecologies. Fields were planted with many species. There was 270 00:19:46.759 --> 00:19:50.960 no reliance on chemical fertilizer or pesticide. Crops were rotated 271 00:19:51.480 --> 00:19:54.559 not just across years, but within years according to the 272 00:19:54.640 --> 00:19:58.720 rhythms of the sun and the rain. Forests weren't obstacles 273 00:19:58.759 --> 00:20:01.880 to farming to be flat, and there were partners in it. 274 00:20:03.400 --> 00:20:05.240 I think we need to think about, just like the 275 00:20:05.279 --> 00:20:08.000 colonial people, that how do we define farming? Because I 276 00:20:08.039 --> 00:20:10.119 think that that's a valuable exercise for us all to 277 00:20:10.160 --> 00:20:13.599 go about now, and I think it's something worth learning about. 278 00:20:13.839 --> 00:20:17.960 It's certainly something that the colonial Americans didn't Now next time, 279 00:20:18.160 --> 00:20:21.119 we're going to move from more broader exercises of how 280 00:20:21.319 --> 00:20:23.680 Native Americans farm and how they use the land. To 281 00:20:23.720 --> 00:20:25.799 look at more a couple of tribes a little bit 282 00:20:25.880 --> 00:20:28.920 closer up. If you're interested in more Western ZIV up 283 00:20:29.000 --> 00:20:31.000 until that point, please check out the link in the 284 00:20:31.000 --> 00:20:32.680 show notes, so it'll take you to Western SIEV two 285 00:20:32.680 --> 00:20:34.960 point zero. We're deep in the death throes of the 286 00:20:35.039 --> 00:20:38.240 Roman Republic at this point, moving on to the Empire 287 00:20:38.720 --> 00:20:40.599 a much more detailed fashion than I covered it the 288 00:20:40.640 --> 00:20:43.200 first time. You get your first week for free if 289 00:20:43.200 --> 00:20:44.359 you'd like to try it out, and it's the best 290 00:20:44.359 --> 00:20:49.920 way to support the show.