American Indians and Plants in the Great Basin: An Ancient Relationship
Submitted by coldrum on Tuesday, 31 July 2007 Page Views: 2985
EnvironmentCountry: United States State: UtahInternal Links:
Botanists and Ecologists now recognize the role of native peoples as plant developers in a symbiotic relationship during the pre-history of the American West's Great Basin. As this relationship developed and became more intricate and complex, American Indians flourished in the seemingly desolate Great Basin environment for thousands of years.
Over time, as American Indians seasonally harvested the natural floral resources, and the resources accordingly responded to this process, a symbiotic relationship developed between the American Indians of the Great Basin, their cultural lifeway, and the regions plant life.
Originally, many scholars viewed the possibility of this ancient relationship with some skepticism, primarily because of the early anthropological work of Julien Steward, and the overall general unfamiliarity with the Great Basin environment. Rather than according the American Indians of the Great Basin the knowledge and cultural sophistication they deserved for sustainably and symbiotically living in their homeland, scholars hypothesized that indigenous Great Basin peoples were:
- the least developed in terms of cultural sophistication and complexity,
- had only recently migrated into the Great Basin from more resource rich areas, and
- had little or no knowledge of Great Basin ecology.
Therefore, they were a dying cultural group that required little or no consultation in contemporary Great Basin resource issues.
As researchers began to actually work with Great Basin peoples, and slowly learned the epistemic value of their traditional ecological knowledge, a very different understanding has emerged. It became apparent that the indigenous people of the Great Basin had only recently been displaced from their homelands by Euroamericans, and that their traditional lifeways and the general Great Basin ecosystem were only recently altered. The apparent desolate situation of Great Basin peoples that anthropologists first encountered and their seeming demise was simply the result of Euroamerican colonial processes. Further, it became clear as more research was conducted that an ancient relationship between American Indians and plants in the Great Basin existed, and that knowledge from such a relationship could offer insights into restoring the Great Basin ecosystem and other contemporary resources issues.
The archaeological evidence, which has become more refined and extensive since the time of early theories discussing American Indians of the Great Basin, argues that American Indians and plants of the Great Basin have shared an 8,000 year or longer relationship. In the eastern Great Basin, for example, the earliest evidence of people in the area comes from sites located along prehistoric lakeshores in the basin floors where people subsisted largely on seasonally available lacustrine resources. Later, evidence indicates that Great Basin peoples began to also utilize upland regions that were situated in the piñon-juniper ecozones, allowing access to sage and grass communities as well as higher montane resources. Faunal and floral macrofossils, coupled with pollen analyses from across the Great Basin, further evidences a dependence on wetland food resources augmented with small seeds from dryland plants beginning in the early Holocene (9600-7000 years ago) and continuing into the ethnographic period. Although other resources apparently fluctuated over time in the diets of Great Basin peoples, plant-based resources remained constant.
For more on how ancient peoples used the resources of this 115,800 square mile region covering much of Utah, and how current folkways record some of this deep history see the linked article at American Chronicle.
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