Читать книгу American Environmental History - Группа авторов - Страница 46

(Extract from Trustees of the British Museum, The Work of Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues, Vols I and II. London: British Museum Publications, 1977.)

The remaining items are engravings and captions by a Flemish artist, Theodore de Bry, who based his images on paintings by Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues, an artist who accompanied a French expedition to Florida in the 1560s. Le Moyne had come to know the Timucua people, who are the subject of these images. De Bry published these engravings in 1591, with the captions presented here. Look for the ways that different features of Timucuan economy connect to each other and to the earth. The first image (Figure 1.3) is of Timucuan men and women planting a field. Although the engraving is not always accurate (since these people did not have plows, the field would have been planted in hillocks, not rows), it remains one of the best pieces of evidence we have about Indians and the earth in the 1500s. How did men assist women in the preparation of these fields? Note the way that men fashioned hoes from fish bone. Who did the fishing? To what degree was fishing a vital part of the economy of these people as a source of food, and as a source of farm implements?

Figure 1.3 Method of tilling the ground and sowing seed. The Indians cultivate the soil carefully. The men know how to construct hoes out of fish bones for this purpose, to which wooden handles are fitted, and they dig the ground easily enough since it is rather light. Then, when it is thoroughly broken up and levelled, the women sow beans and millet or maize, several of them going ahead and making holes by prodding a stick into the ground, into which are dropped beans and millet grains. The sowing finished, they leave the fields in order to avoid the winter time which is rather cold – inasmuch as the region lies between west and north – and lasts for about three months from December 24 to March 15. Since they go naked they take themselves off to the woods. When winter is over they go back home and wait for the crops to ripen. After gathering the harvest they store the produce for consumption all the year round, not using it for any commercial purpose except perhaps bartering it for some common household article. H.S. Photos/Alamy Stock Photo.

Then note the second image (Figure 1.4), which depicts a ceremonial offering. Here, the Indians have filled the body of a deer with produce and raised it to the spirits in hopes that the spirits will respond by making “grow again in their kingdom good things similar to those offered.” Notice how the hunting of deer (these people were superlative hunters and farmers) is vital to the success of the harvest. Without hunting, there would be no offering to the spirits who make the crops grow. Without farming, there would be no gifts to place inside the offering. In this way, Native American hunters and farmers worked within the same villages to connect the nature of the hunt and the nature of the garden, balancing the spirits’ gifts, and making balanced offerings to the spirits in return.

Figure 1.4 The offering of a stag to the sun. Every year, a little before their spring (at the end of February, in fact), the chief Outina’s subjects take the skin, complete with antlers, of the biggest stag they have been able to catch (Source: Alamy Images). They stuff it with all kinds of the choicest plants that their land produces, sew it up again, and deck the horns, the throat, and the rest of the body with their more special fruits made up into wreaths or long garlands. Thus decorated, it is carried away to the music of pipes and singing into a very wide and beautiful plain, and there it is placed on a very tall tree trunk, with its head and chest turned towards the sunrise, prayers being repeatedly uttered to the sun that he should cause to grow again in their kingdom good things similar to those offered to him.

The chief with his sorcerer is nearest to the tree and gives the lead in what is said, with the people who are farther away responding. When they have greeted the sun the chief and the rest of the people go away leaving the skin there until the following year. This sort of ceremony is repeated each year. Artefact/Alamy Stock Photo.