[spanalot]

Youre watcfhing too much TV - the conventional wisdom re: indians is largely myth.

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Similarly, where game was plentiful, Indians used only the choicest cuts and left the rest. When the buffalo hunting tribes on the Great Plains herded hundreds of animals over cliffs in the 18th and early 19th centuries, tons of meat were left to rot or to be eaten by scavengers - hardly a result consistent with the environmental ethic attributed to Indians. Samuel Hearne, a fur trader near Hudson's Bay, recorded in his journal in the 1770s that the Chipewayan Indians would slaughter large numbers of caribou and musk ox, eat only a few tongues, and leave the rest to rot.

Indians also manipulated the land to improve hunting. Upland wooded areas from east to west were burned to remove the undergrowth and increase forage for deer, elk, and bison. Indeed, because of this burning, it's possible that fewer "old growth" forests existed in the Pacific Northwest when the first Europeans arrived than exist today.

[Antoninus]

Indians also manipulated the land to improve hunting. Upland wooded areas from east to west were burned to remove the undergrowth and increase forage for deer, elk, and bison. Indeed, because of this burning, it's possible that fewer "old growth" forests existed in the Pacific Northwest when the first Europeans arrived than exist today.

Not to mention the Eastern Woodlands tribes habit of setting up a village, tilling the soil to exhaustion and hunting everything in sight for a few years. Once the game got too scarce, the soil worn out, and the timber far enough away, they simply burnt the village and moved someplace else to start over again. That's assuming they weren't annihihlated by their enemies from other tribes first.

[fish hawk]

Read my profile and shut up.

[razorback-bert]

The Smith brothers' book about their life with the Comanches details their killing a pony and eating a meal leaving the rest to rot.

Great book by two bothers kidnapped and raised by the Comanches in West Texas.