By Kirsten Anderberg (www.kirstenanderberg.com)

Written October 11, 2008

“…A party of five or six hundred Sioux Indians on horseback, forded the river about mid-day, and spending a few hours amongst them, recrossed the river at sun-down and came into the Fort with fourteen hundred buffalo tongues, which were thrown down in a mass, and for which they required but a few gallons of whiskey, which was soon demolished, indulging them in a little, and harmless carouse,” writes George Catlin in 1841. He goes on to write that such behaviors serve “many appetites that can only be lawfully indulged, by proving God’s laws defective.” Reading the writings of explorers from the 1800’s in the western U.S territories, I hear people saying exactly what animal rights activists and environmentalists are saying today. And it is amazing that these words still seem to be falling on deaf ears! Why, in just the last few weeks, I have seen U.S. vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin pooh-pooh global warming and U.S. presidential candidate Senator John McCain blow off nuclear waste as a serious environmental issue!

In George Catlin’s book, Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Conditions of the North American Indian (New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1841), while speaking in annoying tones of overt racism, he does actually give accountable history of an era that is worth revisiting. He foresees the extinction of buffalo looming and shames the consumerism of “Whites” on the East Coast cities for their obscene overuse of buffalo furs and skins. He also connects some of the dots between Whites coming in and introducing artificial desires such as that for whiskey, amongst the “Indians.” And he notes that not all of the Indians were as susceptible to the whiskey trades. He notes that the Plains Indians were richer than some of the others he met, and that they had nicer clothing, food provisions fully stocked, and even luxuries due to the abundance of buffalo on their lands. He said these were proud and honorable people who were “above the imported wants.” Although Catlin was a racist white man writing about a culture he completely misunderstood, he did have some forward thinking vision regarding the waste of natural resources and mindless consumerism, and his historical documents are still valuable in their descriptions of events during that time.

Catlin sounds like a Portland ALF (Animal Liberation Front) member as he writes in the mid-1840’s, “It seems hard and cruel, (does it not?) that we civilized people with all the luxuries and comforts of the world about us, should be drawing from the backs of these useful animals the skins for our luxury, leaving their carcasses to be devoured by the wolves – that we should draw from that country, some 150 or 200,000 of their robes annually, the greater part of which were taken from animals that are killed expressly for the robe, at the season when the meat is not cured and preserved, and for each of which skins the Indian has received but a pint of whiskey!”

Catlin goes on to say, “It may be said, perhaps, that the Fur Trade of these great western realms, which is now limited chiefly to the purchase of buffalo robes, is of great and national importance, and should and must be encouraged. To such a suggestion I would reply, by merely enquiring, (independently of the poor Indians’ disasters,) how much more advantageously would such a capital be employed, both for the weal of the country and for the owners, if it were invested in machines for the manufacture of woolen robes, of equal or superior value and beauty; thereby encouraging the growers of wool, and the industrious manufacturer, rather than cultivating a taste for the use of buffalo skins; which is just to be acquired , and then, from necessity, dispensed with, when a few years shall have destroyed the last of the animals producing them.” Again, how alike is this to the current situation we have with logging corporations and the insatiable taste for old growth trees for logging purposes, or any other number of insatiable natural resource desires, such as our oil addictions? I see great correlations between what Catlin is saying in 1841 and what I am seeing in 2008. And all along, people have been, and continue to say, that this is not beneficial to the land or people to be so environmentally unconscious, yet it seems people will not listen, whether it be about buffalo or old growth ecosystems.

Regarding the 1400 buffalo tongues Catlin refers to above, he also says, “this profligate waste of the lives of these noble and useful animals, when, from all that I could learn, not a skin or a pound of meat (except the tongues) was brought in, fully supports me in the seemingly extravagant predictions that I have made as to their extinction, which I am certain is near at hand. In the above extravagant instance, at a season when their skins were without fur and not worth taking off, and their camp was so well stocked with fresh and dried meat, that they had no occasion for using the flesh…”

John James Audubon wrote about scenarios similar to those Catlin experienced in his essay, “Missouri River Journals,” (from the book, Audubon and His Journals, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1897). Eleven years after Catlin visited the West, Audubon followed in his footsteps, and writes of his own party, “it happened, by hook or by crook, that these two managed to kill four Buffaloes; but one of them was drowned, as it took to the river after being shot. Only a few pieces of a young bull, and its tongue, were brought on board, most of the men being too lazy, or too far off, to cut out even the tongues of the others; and thus it is that thousands multiplied by thousands of Buffaloes are murdered in senseless play, and their enormous carcasses are suffered to be the prey of the Wolf, the Raven and the Buzzard…” A few days later, Audubon’s journals detail this type of waste again; “What a terrible destruction of life, as it were for nothing, or next to it, as the tongues were only brought in, and the flesh of these fine animals were left to beasts and birds of prey, or to rot on the spots where they fell. The prairies are literally covered with the skulls of the victims, and the roads the Buffalo make in crossing the prairies have all the appearance of heavy wagon tracks…” Audubon also begs people to foresee the inevitable and says, “even now there is a perceptible difference in the size of the herds, and before many years, the Buffalo, like the Great Auk, will have disappeared; surely this should not be permitted.”

You can see the complexity of the political web going on here. Catlin argues if not for the Whites wanting buffalo robes in Manhattan, the White traders would not be there offering whiskey for the buffalo skins, and the Indians would not be killing the buffalo en masse for the whiskey. Yes, it is cyclical, but how paternalistic do people want to get? Prohibition was not fondly welcomed with open arms. If people want to trade their commodities for other commodities, that is the freedom of the open market. And sometimes people make trades that seem like bad trades to outsiders but for those personally involved, these are real life situations that they are making personal choices about. Even in current society we may want to tell people not to drink alcohol to excess, but it still happens where people lose their careers, houses, families, livers, all over alcohol. So, this cycle with alcohol, honestly, continues to date. It is not unique to just American Indians or the 1800’s.

And Audubon, while lamenting the fate of the buffalo, and even condemning the mindless overuse of these animals, takes part in several detailed murders of said creatures seemingly for sport, not for fur or meat. He details his own men being wasteful with buffalo lives, while simultaneously calling for people to stop their slaughter! In reading Catlin and Audubon, I found their work to be disturbing on many economic and political levels, from the racism to the consumption culture still with us, to the environmental issues still not heeded. But their works are most haunting in their descriptions of the massive slaughter of buffalo they were encountering and recording in their journals. Somehow the 1400 buffalo tongues for a few pints of whiskey has haunted me for days in its sheer gruesomeness, indecency, and downright consumptive human behavior. Beyond judgments as to who is right and wrong in the situation, the reality is this has happened and we can only study history as a lesson, looking back so as not to repeat history, and it seems we are not taking our history lessons seriously at all.