the john muir exhibit - john_muir_newsletter - indian views
Muir's Early Indian Views:
Another Look At My First Summer In The Sierra
by Ross Wakefield
(Reprinted from
The John Muir Newsletter
, v.5, no.1, Winter 1994-
95)
(John Muir Newsletter Editor's note: The author is a student
at the University of the Pacific, majoring in Religious
Studies. He is a member of the Mescalero Apache tribe.
This paper was prepared in the fall of 1994 for an
undergraduate history course, "John Muir and the American
Environment.")
In many ways, John Muir walked a path ahead of his own time.
In western culture, he was among the first to express a limited
"biocentric" view--that is to say, he often expressed the idea
that humans had no more intrinsic value than any creature of
nature. Many times, in fact, he disparaged humans as something
less than natural. However, Muir could not escape his own
culture, nor could he ignore his own upbringing by a Calvinist
father. At times Muir's new thinking brought apparent
contradictions in his own mind, being unable to meld his "nature
on a pedestal" views with those still buried in his own
conscience. On the subject of Indians this seems to be
particularly true. Muir at times observes and even envies their
near harmony with nature, thus nearly elevating them to his
nature pedestal. On other occasions, however, he regards them as
little more than dirty beggars. All in all, there seems to be in
Muir some grudging respect for Indians, but it is often masked
behind the institutionalized racism that underlies his writing.
He recognizes that Indians are human, yet seems disappointed that
they are not quite able to reach the imagined cleanliness of the
pedestal upon which he places nature.
Before going into the Sierra for the first time, Muir had to
figure out how to fund his trip. Above all he needed bread. At
first he considers "...trying to believe I might learn to live
like the wild animals, gleaning nourishment...from seeds,
berries, etc." However, this is never a serious thought. Muir
makes it seem a fanciful thing indeed, and turns to sheepherding
for larder. Indians, though, lived for several millennia by
"gleaning" from nature what they needed.
Perhaps because of his own periodic bouts with hunger while
in the mountains, food gathering was a recurrent theme in My
First Summer. Often he acknowledged the native experience and
contrasted their natural bounty with the gastronomic limitations
of western culture. "The Indian puts us to shame," he wrote, "so
do the squirrels--starchy roots and seeds and bark in abundance,
yet the failure of the meal sack disturbs our bodily balance...."
Later he complained: "Like the Indians, we ought to know how to
get the starch out of fern and saxifrage stalks, lily bulbs, pine
bark etc. Our education has been sadly neglected for many
generations." Still later he wrote: "We should boil lupine
leaves, clover, starchy petioles, and saxifrage rootstocks like
the Indians."
Time after time Muir implied that Indians were closely tied
to nature, and not just in the area of foodstuffs. He observed
with obvious approval the fact that for uncounted centuries,
natives have lived among the hills of the Sierra with little
noticeable effect on the land. He noted the similarities between
Indian and animal trails, in contrast to what one might expect of
western man after thousands of years of habitation. "Indians walk
softly and they hurt the landscape hardly more than the birds and
squirrels, and their brush and bark huts last longer than those
of wood rats..." "Along the main ridges and larger branches of
the river Indian trails may be traced, but they are not nearly as
distinct as one would expect to find them." These faint marks
stood in sharp contrast to the irrevocable damage done by white
culture. He condemned "roads blasted in solid rock, wild streams
dammed and tamed, and turned out of their channels and led along
the sides of canyons and valleys to work in the mines like
slaves." Even trestles led to the erosion of the "mountain
face."
While Indian trace faded quickly, white structures were
built to last. "Long will it be ere these marks are effaced...,"
he wrote. Yet Muir recognized that even the finest monuments
eventually give way to natural forces. "Nature is doing what she
can, replanting, gardening, sweeping away old dams and flumes,
leveling the gravel and boulder piles, patiently trying to heal
every scar."
On at least two occasions in My First Summer Muir credits
Indians with developing instinctive behavior, an ability he
thought was in short supply among civilized humans. Although
today we tend to emphasize learned behavior, Muir's appreciation
of native instinct is evidence of his belief that Indians were
close to nature and its natural virtues. Speaking of their
stealthy movements, for example, Muir wrote that the "wild Indian
power of escaping observation...was probably slowly acquired in
hard hunting...and this experience transmitted through many
generations seems at length to have become ...instinct."
Up to this point we have witnessed a certain admiration of
Indians by Muir. While never coming out right and saying it, he
nevertheless seemed to believe that Indians were indeed living in
harmony with Nature. One would have to conclude that white
culture has a lot to learn from the Indians. But his views
turned abruptly in later chapters of My First Summer. Despite
his previous favorable observations, he ultimately argued that
Indians were not part of nature: "...most Indians I have known
are not a whit more natural in their lives than we civilized
whites." The basis for this apparent contradiction in Muir's
thinking appears to rest on a western bias against Indian forms
of personal hygiene. "The worst thing about them is their
uncleanliness," he wrote. Nothing wild is unclean." Here Muir
utterly ignores all objective evidence. His Nature was a clean
place, and natives should also be clean to be part of the natural
world. Perhaps Muir himself had never seen a dirty animal, or
simply couldn't see the dirt through romantic eyes. Yet most
people who have spent time in deserts or forests are familiar
with dirt in various forms: infected wounds on animals, mud
encrusted forepaws, leaf-strewn fur, etc. Moreover, Muir ignored
things that might explain dirt on natives. Many coated their
faces to protect from the wind, as was likely the case of the
women whose face had enough dirt to be of "geological
significance." Muir also didn't seem to recognize the connection
between the failure of even the dogs to notice the approach of
Indians and their "dirty skins." As scent camouflage, dirt was
not washed off. It helped to hide the human scent.
The evidence of Muir's ethnocentric bias goes beyond the
matter of Indian hygiene. Though he frequently complained of
lack of food for his own needs, he was intrigued by the native
custom of eating such natural foods as larvae and fern starch.
Yet Muir himself avoided wilderness food, even though he had
ample opportunity to try it. One of his fellow shepherds was an
Indian who never seemed to be hungry. On other occasions Muir
traded with Indians who came to his camp. Whether Muir simply
couldn't stomach native food, or whether he wouldn't stoop so low
as to ask for food from a non-white we cannot know, but clearly
this anomaly must be taken into consideration when Muir's opinion
of Indians is discussed.
Muir acknowledged that he knew little about a group of
Indians living around Mono Lake. "Perhaps if I knew them better
I should like them more," he wrote. Perhaps, but unlikely.
Although he often described his discussions with other travel
companions, even a bit with a Chinese man, not once does Muir
mention a conversation with an Indian. We can note that in the
beginning the Indian guide who accompanied the expedition was
stand-offish, a characteristic of many native people when around
strangers, but after several weeks, surely with any sign of
friendship from Muir, this barrier might have been overcome.
In one final odd occasion, Muir's cultural bias shows
through in My First Summer. He met an Indian who, after a few
minutes of looking over his party, "cut off eight or ten pounds
of venison for us, and begged a 'lill' (little) of everything.".
This sounds suspiciously like barter, or trade. In fact, if a
white person had done the same thing it would surely be termed
'trading' but for Muir, the unclean Indian could not trade, only
beg.
John Muir was in fact a radical. He placed value on nature
as few people in his culture had ever done before. And as an
observer he excelled. When dealing with Indians, however, he
could not escape his own cultural biases. Muir tended to be
rather unorthodox in his thinking, and regarded nature with
something akin to worship, but his portrayals of native people
and their culture closely resemble contemporary Christian
teachings about the ways of the "heathen." His observations
acknowledged Indian harmony with nature, but his cultural values
and his new view of nature meant that the Indian was in a no-
man's land. The pedestal of John Muir's Nature was too high for
the Indian to attain, and his "uncivilized" behavior such as
begging kept him from being an equal of the white. John Muir was
an exceptionally talented advocate for nature, but let no one
then conclude he was a friend of the Indian.