Did the American Indians Have it Right?
 

Did the American Indians Have it Right?, by MMJ

In these trying times when civilizations are at the brink of disaster and many people are already in personal collapse, we should look back through history to find out how to salvage what we have and how to survive what is to come. [Minor rant snipped.] It seems that economic collapse is imminent and that at some point in the near future it is going to be every man for himself. As we watch countries collapse, global economies fail and people across the world starve and die, I ask myself has any culture or civilization in history gotten it right?

The nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle led by the American Indians may be the way that many in the future may need to survive. The thought of a survival retreat is nice, but what if a toxic gas cloud is coming your way? Or a band of starving armed men and women discover your location and decide that you have what they want? Are you equipped for a small arms battle? Lets face it, most of us are not. Many of us still need to live in an urban environment to make a living (while we still have the need) and having a stocked retreat is just not feasible. When the sh*t hits the fan you have to ask yourself, will you have enough time or even be able to get to your survival retreat? For most of us the answer is simply no. So how can we prepare for the impending collapse that most certainly awaits all of us? Thinking like an Indian may be the answer to your concerns. Mobility can be the key to survival. Having a plan of escape for several different scenarios and banding together with other like-minded people and loved ones who have also planned ahead to deal with the inevitable collapse of our society. Going where you can survive for short periods of time comfortably and being able to use the natural resources available to you wherever you may end up, can be the answer to survival for you and your loved ones.

The Indians moved with the food, with the climate in small tribes, which was best suited to their survival. They learned to use what was provided by nature to live, wild edibles and medicinal uses of plants, as well as some amount of farming and of course hunting. But they also learned to take only what they needed so that when they were to return they would have what they needed again. This is a lesson that most of us in modern society have long since forgotten. We have for so long here in America lived the life of gluttony (which has probably led to collapse of more societies than we realize) that when the end comes most of us will not know what to do or how to survive, which will not end pleasantly for those of us stuck in the urban areas. Those of us who plan ahead and have the ability to survive on the go while getting out of the way of the sh*t storm that will be left behind in most urban areas after the end comes. We will be the ones that will thrive in the face of adversity. We will be the ones left to create a better way--a way that works.

As I contemplate the future happenings I know with utmost certainty that the plan that I have derived will keep my loved ones and me safe and out of harm's way. For I have thought and planned like an Indian would, made preparations to survive on the go with a minimal amount of supplies but with the knowledge required to get what I need from what nature has to offer. But you may ask what if nature is damaged beyond repair, then how will you survive? Well my answer is simple, at that point nobody will survive and mankind will cease to exist. A gloomy thought but still one worthy of contemplation.

The reality is there is no right or wrong answer or single philosophy that is the definite end all to be all correct way to do it for any situation. Survival is fluid and every situation has to be dealt with accordingly. Creativity as well as preparation will see you through. Remember that nature taught the Indians how to survive, they didn�t have books, schools, survival manuals or hospitals etc� and they did just fine until the European man came with their gluttony and took from them what was theirs, to exploit it for their gain and greed.

As I end my letter, I leave you with this:
�Prepare yourself with the knowledge that you hope you never have to use, and you and yours will be just fine.�

JWR Adds: I will append MMJ's article with the caveat that based on studies of skeletal remains, the average life expectancy for pre-Columbian Native Americans was only 18.6 years. That was before white men brought with them European diseases. As Hobbes put it so succinctly: "...the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." A pampered sedentary lifestyle may be bad for one's cholesterol numbers, but a hunter-gatherer nomadic lifestyles is no picnic.

At this juncture, for the sake of balance I'll also re-post something that I originally posted to SurvivalBlog back in September of 2005:

You should discard any fantasies that you might have had about strapping on a backpack and disappearing into nearby National Forest to �live off the land.� IMHO, that is an invitation to disaster. Too many things can go wrong: You will lack sufficient shelter. You will not be able to carry enough food reserves. Your one rifle and your one pistol, and your one axe, once lost or broken will leave you vulnerable and unable to provide for your sustenance or self defense. Any illness or injury could be life threatening. Even just a dunking in a stream in mid-winter could cost you your life. Also, consider how many thousands of urbanites will probably try to do the same thing. Even if you manage to avoid encounters with them, those legions of people foraging simultaneously will quickly deplete the available wild game in many regions. Furthermore, on your own you won�t be able to maintain sufficient security. (You must sleep, after all!) For countless reasons, playing �Batman in the Boondocks� just won�t work. So forget about the "one pack" solution, other than as a last resort--for example, in the event that your retreat is overrun.

Any of you that do not live at your intended retreat location year round should have a �Get out of Dodge� (G.O.O.D.) pack ready at all times. Keep it in the trunk of your car in case circumstances force you to hike all or part of the way to your retreat. (A sub-optimal situation, as described in my novel "Patriots".) Be sure to inspect your G.O.O.D. pack regularly and rotate any first aid supplies, chemical light sticks, jerky, dried fruit, or other perishables.

While MMJ's planned approach of traveling in a group is preferable to a solo �Batman in the Boondocks�, I still have my doubts about its viability, especially in harsh climates.

http://www.survivalblog.com/

Re: Did the American Indians Have it Right?
 

The writer is ignorant of how life was for nomadic tribes. If he read a little history, he'd know that starvation was a fact of life and dogged tribes in the winter. He'd know that life was so brutal for the women, who did the all the work except hunting and raiding, in the nomadic tribes that suicide was not uncommon and was considered a "woman thing," the women of at least one tribe were known for often killing their girl infants as an act of mercy (explaining to horrified fur traders that they wished their mothers had done the same for them), and Native American women of many tribes eagerly left their tribes to take up with the white fur traders (it's reported that at one fur trading post, the Indian women joked that if the trade company sent more white men, their tribe would cease to exist). Europeans were horrifed that Indians were so quick to kill women and children, but in the life of nomadic tribes, where competition for resources was often fierce and thus raiding other tribes was business as usual, a child of another tribe was a future enemy and a woman was the mother of a future enemy. Life in a Stone Age culture wasn't the rosey Garden of Eden existence the writer imagines. I really get tired of the new agey cluelessness so many people have about history.

Re: Did the American Indians Have it Right?
 

Yes, they did -

Re: Did the American Indians Have it Right?
 

What a refreshing breath of fresh air and sanity! :23_28_100s:

Re: Did the American Indians Have it Right?
 

No they did not have it right and our only hope for survival is to make this country work without going into a revolution. That means everyone needs to get invloved with your local and state governments and start making them work for the people. Demand that we go back to personal responsibility and each and eveyone contribute their best to make the pie larger. We need to go back to the traditional family and start helping our own. Until we do these things the future will be bleak no matter what form of government survives.

Re: Did the American Indians Have it Right?
 

https://wholesale.changingworld.com/...ages/Z-SUR.gif

Always liked that one.

Re: Did the American Indians Have it Right?
 

Well done, Maddie! Amerindians lived a neolithic lifestyle, prior to the Whiteman. I too, have issues with those who think that lifestyle represents any kind of "wisdom".

Re: Did the American Indians Have it Right?
 

Can someone please explain to me exactly what "RIGHT" is?

Re: Did the American Indians Have it Right?
 

Re: Did the American Indians Have it Right?
 

Every culture has some piece of the pie. Question is, can we combine them to create our eternal brotherhood?:565:

Re: Did the American Indians Have it Right?
 

Maddie, the problem I have with what you say is that it assumes that the "Indians" were monolithic, when they were anything but. Of couse we really don't know what life for many of them was like since they were wiped out by diseases, often before any contact with Europeans. Some tribes lived a very peaceful existence, others were warlike. They were proably more diverse than the europeans.

Obviously it was not a Garden of Eden for all. However, various cultures had (and still have) a lot to teach us. The Amazon indians created soil (Terra Preta) that is still fertile after thousands of years (this in an area where modern agriculture destroys the soil in a few seasons). Around here (western Massachusetts), many women who were captured by Indians in raids refused to return to their husbands - obviously life was far better for them with the "savages" than in the pilgrim society. Many feel that the US constitution was modeled in part on the Iriquois confederacy.

Re: Did the American Indians Have it Right?
 

The best jokes are the ones that aren't really all that funny.

Re: Did the American Indians Have it Right?
 

Very good post and my thoughts as well. The author is of course thinking monolithic of the tribes that his story applies to and Maddie is thinking monolithic of the tribes that she chooses to represent the monolithic. Both are wrong in their original assumption.

The tribes were anything BUT monolithic. A simple case would be to compare the Lakota to the Crow. There are of course many, many more comparisons that disprove the monolithic assumption.

Both are right in representing a specific tribe or group of tribes, but both are quite wrong in representing their study as the rule.

I'm sure the author is speaking in terms of tribes that actually were representative of the author's philosophy. In that regard the author is correct.

Maddie is also correct that we should not apply the most ruthless of tribes as a good model.

Re: Did the American Indians Have it Right?
 

Morals and pornography are mirrors.

The South had it Right!
 

The group that "had it right" were the southern states that seceded during the War Between the States. Their distaste for the growing usurpation of power by the Federal government was not contrived, but well founded and proved prescient, as one looks today at the monolithic central government in Washington. Of course, their desire to perpetuate the evil institution of slavery vitiated their cause, which is unfortunate, since their battle-cry of "states' rights" was (and still is) a legitimate constitutional issue.

After abortion, slavery remains the greatest moral stain in the history of our great nation. Regrettably, euthanasia, fetal stem-cell research and homosexual marriage have emerged as growing evils. Cloning seems to have been put, temporarily, on hold.

Re: Did the American Indians Have it Right?
 

I've spent some time as a wilderness guide in the canadian heartland and I can tell you, even with a stove, wall tent, pre-packaged food, pots, pans, bowls, axe, knife and the best clothing money can buy . .it's no picnic.
Go take a crap at -35 or try and bath in a bowl. After 3 days even I had enough and was glad to see civilization.
Nomadic societies would only have the option of a "summer" camp and a "winter" camp. Winter camps were usually inland and used waterways as transportation routes. The forest provided the best winter protection, fuel supply and hunting.
The summer camp was usually in more exposed areas or along the coast. This gave better exposure to agriculture and catching and drying fish.
I don't care what you say, give any normal person the "best" supplies he can carry and he'll be dead within 72 hours in the winter forest. Make your winter camp permanent.

Re: Did the American Indians Have it Right?
 

I've been reading the Journals of Lewis and Clark. It is very eye-opening. I recommend it to anyone interested in understanding primitive living.

There are many abridgements (the complete journals are nearly unreadable and over 7 volumes in length). I recommend this edition. It is also endorsed by National Geographic:


(I found a hard cover on E-bay.)

Re: Did the American Indians Have it Right?
 

++++++++++++

As are "survival" and "living alive"

scyth

Re: Did the American Indians Have it Right?
 

Definitive edition is, in my opinion

Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition 1804-1806

Edited by Rueben Gold Thwaites

With an introduction by Bernard De Voto

Copyright 1953 by Bernard De Voto

Copyright 1969 by Arno Press, Inc.

7 volumes plus a volume of their original maps.


scyth

Re: Did the American Indians Have it Right?
 

The problem is that most of those 7 volumes include duplicate information (both journals) as well as abundant natural information (cataloguing new species). The abridgment I recommend is very tastefully done, easy to read, and gets to the point of the actual expedition.

Re: Did the American Indians Have it Right?
 

I spent a few days touring cliff dwellings and other sites a couple of years ago, and I remember thinking that it was obviously not a nomadic society. Not to say there weren't nomadic tribes, but there were large communities who either hunted/gathered only in the immediate area of their dwellings, or actually practiced agriculture -- an example of the latter would be the Hohokam, who established an agricultural civilization. The few remaining dwellings in the southwest belonged to people who traveled only to trade, and some of the trade looked more like shopping to me: trading excess output for luxury goods a few miles downriver.

One thing is far from clear: that agricultural societies were more peaceful. I think it may be quite the opposite. I think there were several agricultural civilizations within the past 8000 years in North America, and that the hunter-gatherers, while predominant at the time that European "settlers" (?) invaded their land, were never the whole story among the Indian cultures.

The noble savage stuff is an oversimplification. The early cities in the Phoenix area all collapsed, and there was poor land stewardship in the northwest. But there was still a series of civilizations, most of which collapsed before Europeans arrived, and the rest of which we wiped out.

I wish I had a photo of that funny brass plaque I have seen in AZ: something about how much the white man "improved" life by bringing in technology, 40-hour weeks, and taxation. Wheee!

Re: Did the American Indians Have it Right?
 

We can't go back to that way, not enough resources unless massive die off, and even if we could, it would be a hard life fighting off all the other tribes :)

I do think mobility is key to survival in really tough circumstances like starvation, but us American's can't really follow the food...unless we all conglomerate into the big cities where it is trucked in, shipped in, or brought in via rail car.

Or, hit the meat/veggie farms, that wouldn't last long...that would be the modern version of natives following the food trail, raiding farms, trucks, ships, stores, and rail cars and sleeping in a tent (modern day tepee) and fighting off the local cowboys. Water would be a problem since everything is somewhat polluted, even mountain streams.

I say the people that have the best chance of survival will be the ones that have lived in depression like conditions their entire lives anyway, they still exist in the U.S.

Re: Did the American Indians Have it Right?
 

Prior to the Great Depression the majority of America was agrarian( Farm based)

It was only after the money supply dried up did people lose there farm (for pennies) that the cities started to swell.

Cities are unstainable by nature.

T