"... turns one of his feathers into a woman, and brings the man to life with a flap of his wings (in a plot twist, Bald Eagle next orders a coyote to inseminate Eve)....
Though [Jack E. Davis, in 'The Bald Eagle'] writes that [Native Americans] 'spoke to animals as if speaking to an elder: with respect,' and that 'many people today think of Indians as the original environmentalists,' he also must acknowledge that they killed loads of eagles. He describes parkas sewed out of the downy skin of eaglets, a dance troupe dressed in the feathers of 300 birds, and a ritual in which eaglets were sprinkled with cornmeal and squeezed to death. Some of the customs persist: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s National Eagle Repository, the legally designated morgue for every dead eagle in the nation, distributes feathers, heads, and entire corpses to various tribes for use in ceremonies. The agency also recently authorized the Hopi to seize 40 eaglets a year from their nests, douse them in cornmeal, and strangle them."
From "America’s Love-Hate Relationship With the Bald Eagle/Revered as a national symbol, reviled as an actual bird" (The Atlantic).
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25 comments:
40 eaglets is a Biblical number
A Nez Perce gave my wife an eagle feather. When the fascists come for us that will probably get added to the list…
Revered as a national symbol, reviled as an actual bird
Okay, Atlantic, now do the working class.
...'many people today think of Indians as the original environmentalists,' he also must acknowledge that they killed loads of eagles.
Kinda like windmills?
Do you suppose any Native Americans actually believe in their "traditional" religions, or just use them for political leverage and shakedowns? (Kinda like black people pretending to be traumatized by hearing a white person (just not Eminem) speaking the "n-word").
i was A Lot more impressed with Bald Eagles, before i started fishing for trouts in Northeast Iowa
I see Bald Eagles (nearly) every time i fish; year round. In the winter i have to be careful not to run over any (eating road kill) while driving to the creeks. When i get there, there will be Bald Eagles gorging on trouts. They're worse than Otters!
The worst part is: You Know their feathers would make Great Flies*
their feathers would make Great Flies* Not that gilbar would Ever do such a nefarious** act
nefarious** to the best of Your Knowledge, gilbar does NOT approve of nefariousisms
“Though [Jack E. Davis, in 'The Bald Eagle'] writes that [Native Americans] 'spoke to animals as if speaking to an elder: with respect,' “
Was this before or after donning their new eaglet skinsuits?
...'many people today think of Indians as the original environmentalists,' he also must acknowledge that they killed loads of eagles.
And before those evil European colonizers showed up with horses, they used to hunt buffalo by driving whole herds off cliffs.
Lots of bald eagles in northern Wisconsin. They have great contests with the loons who try to protect the loon-grets while the eagles circle above waiting for a chance to snatch the baby loons.
It's hard to watch an eagle eating road kill or picking out of a dumpster, especially since they seem to really enjoy it...
They way things are going it is only a matter of time before they let tribes scalp 40 white men a year.
Isn't the whole Native American as environmentalists/sacred nature thing just a myth created by some white guy embellishing and adding to a speech by Chief Seattle?
The agency also recently authorized the Hopi to seize 40 eaglets a year from their nests, douse them in cornmeal, and strangle them."
Do they then drop them in a pot of hot oil?
Environmentalists...really?
If so, it's because they possessed only stone-age technology.
I hear a lot about how terrible the reservations are.
But here's the thing; anybody can leave whenever they want.
Unlike certain people on certain democrat, Southern plantations...
....but the state of Washington doesn’t want me to carry a 30 round magazine.
I see bald, and golden eagles in my inner-city Seattle neighborhood. You can count them on one hand. Forty birds would have profound impact.
I love the rich tapestry of our Native-American myths, especially the ones they make up as they go along.
There's an eagle pair living at our wild swimming pond here in Center Mass. The male looks almost as large as a child flying through the sky. They sometimes buzz us while we are swimming. They are hip to the size restrictions fishermen obey and dive bomb the babies tossed back in. My brother the helicopter pilot thinks that Golden Eagles are much more magnificent and should be our nations emblem.
Three Spicy Fried Eaglets, tots, corn muffin, coleslaw and a medium soda for $7.95 at…
Caliunicornia Fried Eaglets (CFE)
Some of the comments are a little overboard re: the American Indians, but the main point that the American Indians were not environmentalists is spot on. They exploited the natural resources, to the extent their technology allowed, as all people do. By way of example, they mined and smelted copper (this was huge in the UP and Northern Wisconsin) and there were over 30 species that were hunted to extinction long before Europeans set foot in the Americas. The exterminated animals include:
woolly mammoths
Columbian mammoths
American mastodons
three types of ground sloths
glyptodonts
giant armadillos
several species of horses
four species of pronghorn antelopes
three species of camels
giant deer
several species of oxen
giant bison
[Native Americans] 'spoke to animals as if speaking to an elder: with respect,'
So did Son of Sam.
Every hunter-gatherer culture was "environmentalist," using these definitions. And yet I struggle to think of any other hunter-gatherer cultures that we eco-romanticize the way we do the (generally North) American natives.
I'm watching 1883, the prequel to Yellowstone, and they're all in on the Native American stereotypes, with a touch of beta-male sensitivity layered on to woo the ladies in the audience. What's annoying is that they clearly know the history of the Comanche (said beta-warrior claiming to be from Quanah Parker's band), but just ignore most of it.
For “The Atlantic,” this is a fairly even handed treatment of our complex relationship with the eagle. They are beautiful to watch in flight; they are fierce predators, and they sit fairly high on the food chain. Watching them eat road carrion, however, can be grotesque, but environmentalists and others tend to overly romanticize them. Walt Whitman’s poem “The Dalliance of Eagles” captures the power and acrobatic ability of adult eagles without romanticizing them. Ben Franklin wrote a realistic assessmen of eagles in a letter to his daughter in 1784, claiming the eagles were birds of poor moral character that do not not get their living honestly because they steal their food from other birds and are too lazy to fish for themselves. Franklin, perhaps tongue-in cheek, nominated the turkey to be the national symbol, claiming it was a true native bird of courage that would not hesitate to attack British Redcoats.
On the claim that Indians were the first environmentalists, their record of environmental stewardship is spotty at best. What about the buffalo jump on the western plains that unnecessarily slaughtered thousand of unneeded buffalo?
"BarrySanders20 said...
Lots of bald eagles in northern Wisconsin. They have great contests with the loons who try to protect the loon-grets while the eagles circle above waiting for a chance to snatch the baby loons."
We put floating loon nests on our lake to protect the eggs from land predators, but the eagles do a pretty good job with the loon chicks or whatever they're called.
Howard said...
There's an eagle pair living at our wild swimming pond here in Center Mass. The male looks almost as large as a child flying through the sky. They sometimes buzz us while we are swimming. They are hip to the size restrictions fishermen obey and dive bomb the babies tossed back in. My brother the helicopter pilot thinks that Golden Eagles are much more magnificent and should be our nations emblem.
We would regularly feed the eagles on our lake fish, usually stunted smallies that had been gill hooked. As soon as you tossed the fish back that eagle would come off the tree and swoop down as snatch the fish. Pretty impressive sight.
"Dumpster chickens."
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