Christopher
L. Bennett
Western
Native American History
Interpreting
the Legend:
Flores= and Ostler=s Approaches to the Bison Problem
Which is the more important approach to a historical issue: reconstructing, as far as possible, what actually happened, or examining how it was perceived and defined by the people who experienced it? Do these approaches complement each other? And does overemphasis on one approach impede one=s understanding of the other? Dan Flores= ABison Ecology and Bison Diplomacy@ and Jeffrey Ostler=s AThey Regard Their Passing as Wakan@ both examine the pivotal, legendary period in the 19th century when the bison herds of the American Plains declined rapidly toward near-extinction, forcing the end of the horse-nomad lifestyle of the Plains peoples. But they approach it from two completely different angles.
Flores is interested in digging beneath the romanticized image of the period, and questioning the prevailing assumptions about the reasons for bison decline: either overhunting by the Plains natives or slaughter by Euro-American settlers. He essentially engages in detective work, assembling the available evidence, sifting it methodically and making logical deductions from it in order to reconstruct what probably occurred. Though a historian, Flores relies largely on ecological, archaeological and anthropological data to construct his thesis. To lay the groundwork, he reconstructs the prehistory of the ecosystem, establishing how Ice-Age extinctions in their ecological niche left the bison free to propagate to extraordinary numbers -- suggesting that their fabled abundance was an atypical ecological situation to begin with, subject to change in response to changing conditions. He establishes that, although the herds were nowhere near as large as rumored, the subsistence needs of the Plains peoples were not in themselves sufficient to trigger population decline. But he makes little mention of hunting by whites. Instead, he offers a more complex explanation, involving a concatenation of factors including drought, grazing competition by horses, the introduction of exotic diseases and toxins as a side effect of white settlement, and the growing market demand for bison products. All of these, according to Flores, combined with the Plains peoples= hunting in order to decimate the bison herds. This is not to say that there was plenty of blame to go around; Flores seems uninterested in assigning blame, seeing population collapse as a part of the normal process of ecological dynamism.
Ostler, conversely, seems totally uninterested in exploring the actual reasons for bison decline. His article is not about ecology, but about thought and belief systems. The bison decline and the controversies surrounding it are the example he uses to illustrate the thesis that the Aalienness@ of Native American thought relative to AWestern@ thought has been exaggerated, and that different worldviews need not be mutually incomprehensible. For these purposes, the perceived reasons for bison decline are more important. Ostler focuses on the Native perception that white activity and presence were responsible for either killing off the bison or driving them back to the underground from which they were believed to come -- in either case diminishing their presence on Earth. Euro-American observers, he says, chose to interpret this as a supernatural belief, and assumed that the extinction of bison was inevitable and irreversible. Ostler points out that this view was borderline-supernatural itself, arising from their own myth of Manifest Destiny, the juggernaut spread of white civilization inevitably crushing all alternative ways of life; whereas the Natives perceived a more straightforward causality: if white settlement is wiping out the bison, a reversal of settlement would restore the herds. He does not deny the presence of mystical belief among the Plains peoples, but demonstrates that it was intertwined with pragmatism and reasoning comprehensible to Westerners, and that the Westerners= failure to see their point of view arose more from political expediency and power relations than from an essential, racial incompatibility of thought. Ultimately, Ostler=s piece is not about bison, but about politics and ideology. In this arena, the bison function as a symbol and a cause, rather than a species participating in an ecosystem.
The two historians are at their weakest when touching on each other=s turf. Ostler cites Flores critically, saying, ANoting that Plains Indians believed that the buffalo originated within the earth and... the earth would continue to produce buffalo in countless numbers, some scholars have argued that the idea of conservation was simply outside the Plains Indians= worldview.@[1] What Flores actually said was: A...it seems that the Indian religions... may have inhibited the Plains Indians= understanding of bison ecology and their role in it.... This religious conception of the infinity of nature=s abundance was poetic.... But such a conception did not aid the tribes in their efforts to work out an ecological balance.@[2] Flores is not saying that the Plains peoples could not conceive of conservation due to their beliefs, but simply that their beliefs did not in themselves encourage conservation. The principal reason Flores gives for the Plains peoples= failure to enact conservation measures was that their circumstances simply did not permit it: AThe Comanches could not afford to emulate their Shoshonean ancestors and limit their own population. Beset by enemies and disease, they had to try to keep their numbers high, even as their resource base diminished.@[3] This is fully compatible with Ostler=s statement: ANo Plains tribe implemented a successful policy of conservation; they were forced to compete for a diminishing resource.@[4]
But Flores does a weaker job when he reaches beyond the physical evidence and attempts to explore perceptions and motivations. Although his claims about the effects of Native belief on conservation efforts are not as overstated as Ostler alleges, they do appear naive in light of Ostler=s arguments. Flores is also too quick to read Comanche Aenvironmental insight@ into their deliberate choices to adjust to a hunting lifestyle, assuming an awareness of the big picture when it is more likely they were simply responding to immediate needs as they arose. He even assumes that Athey seem instinctively to have recognized and exulted in@ their efficient use of the thermodynamic energy available in the ecosystem.[5] Although Flores does a good job overall of making use of knowledge from outside his field, here he misapplies it, attempting to draw conclusions about human thought in the context of ecological data. To examine human thought, it is better to rely on the kinds of data Ostler employs.
Despite their differences, though, both these articles serve similar purposes. Both are examining a heavily romanticized period of American history and digging beneath the common assumptions and simplifications. Flores seeks to reconstruct what actually happened in the physical world and why, while Ostler seeks to reconstruct what the people involved actually thought about it and why. Both demonstrate that the causative factors and underlying dynamics are more complex and ambiguous than is generally assumed.