Modern Americans sometimes regard such rituals as evidence that Indians practiced conservation or had an innate understanding of ecology. Though such practices might indeed promote sound environmental practices, they could also have the opposite effect. For example, the Cherokees’ belief in the reincarnation of deer might have inclined the natives to worry less about killing the animals in quantity since the dead would quickly be replaced. In all likelihood, their native belief system served a more subtle and practical function. In the South—as elsewhere in North America—Indians had to rely on (and therefore destroy) plants and animals that they regarded as spiritual kin. The various rituals allowed them to do so without violating a sacred relationship between people and the natural world.
The native world was not a place of ecological perfection. When bad weather led to poor crops, natives had to rely more on game and wild plants. In regions of intensive agriculture, such as along the river floodplains of the piedmont and mountains, Indian farmers sometimes depleted soils and had to move their villages to more suitable lands. By the time Europeans arrived in the South, old fields, open forests subjected to periodic burns, and local fluctuations in game animal populations all attested to the native presence. Within the context of their culture and belief system, southern Indians simply did what was necessary to subsist and survive.
đang được dịch, vui lòng đợi..
