Beaver, Bison, Horse

The Traditional Knowledge and Ecology of the Northern Great Plains

R. Grace Morgan

• Publisher: University of Regina Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9780889777880
  9780889777941
• eBook ISBN:
  9780889777927
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Ecology
• Index: Biological Sciences

As one of North America’s most unique ecologies, the Great Plains have fostered symbiotic relationships between humans and animals for millennia. Among these, Indigenous bonds to beavers, bison, and horses have been the subject of numerous anthropological and scientific surveys.
 
Beaver, Bison, Horse is an interdisciplinary account that centers on Indigenous knowledge and tradition. R. Grace Morgan’s research, considered essential reading in the field, shows an ecological understanding that sustained Indigenous Peoples for thousands of years prior to colonial contact, with critical information on how the beaver manages water systems and protects communities from drought on the Plains.
 
Morgan’s work is a game-changer. For the first time in print, her important research now appears with a foreword by James Daschuk, bestselling and award-winning author of Clearing the Plains, and an afterword by Cristina Eisenberg, author of The Carnivore Way and The Wolf’s Tooth.

University of Regina Press designates one title each year that best exemplifies the guiding editorial and manuscript production principles of long-time senior editor Donna Grant.

BEAVER, BISON, HORSE

The Traditional Knowledge and Ecology of the Northern Great Plains

R. Grace Morgan

© 2020 University of Regina Press

All rights reserved. No part of this work covered by the copyrights hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means—graphic, electronic, or mechanical—without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any request for photocopying, recording, taping or placement in information storage and retrieval systems of any sort shall be directed in writing to Access Copyright.

Cover art: “Beaver” by Szymon Bartosz; “Bison Walking Out of the Mist” by Effect of Darkness; and “White horse, black and white portrait” by Laure F. / all Adobe Stock.

Cover and text design: Duncan Campbell, University of Regina Press

Copy editor: Alison Jacques

Proofreader: Kendra Ward

Indexer: Patricia Furdek

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Beaver bison horse : the traditional knowledge and ecology of the Northern Great Plains / R. Grace Morgan.

Names: Morgan, R. Grace, 1934-2016, author.

Description: Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200301438 | Canadiana (ebook) 20200301500 | ISBN 9780889777880 (softcover) | ISBN 9780889777941 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780889777903 (PDF) | ISBN 9780889777927 (EPUB)

Subjects: LCSH: Grassland ecology—Great Plains. | LCSH: Traditional ecological knowledge—Great Plains.

Classification: LCC QH104.5.G73 M67 2020 | DDC 508.315/30978—dc23

University of Regina Press, University of Regina Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, s4s 0a2 tel: [phone] fax: [phone] web: www.uofrpress.ca

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada. / Nous reconnaissons l’appui financier du gouvernement du Canada. This publication was made possible with support from Creative Saskatchewan’s Book Publishing Production Grant Program.

Contents

Publisher’s Note on Terminology

Foreword by James Daschuk

Introduction

Chapter 1 The Regional Setting

Chapter 2 Human-Animal Relationships

Chapter 3 The Ecological Evidence

Chapter 4 The Historical Evidence

Chapter 5 The Archaeological Evidence

Chapter 6 Changing Lifeways on the Northern Plains

Conclusion

Afterword by Cristina Eisenberg

Appendix “Dynamics of Fire and Grazing by Bison on Grasslands in Central Alberta” by R. Grace Morgan and R.J. Hudson

References

Publisher’s Note on Terminology

In 2018, the publishing industry saw the release of Greg Younging’s influential text The Elements of Indigenous Style: A Guide for Writing by and about Indigenous Peoples. In this 2020 publication of R. Grace Morgan’s important research into the ecological impacts of beaver, bison, and horse on the Indigenous populations of the Northern Great Plains, the publisher has endeavoured to reflect the current preferred terminology in Younging’s guide where it was deemed possible, while at the same time trying to maintain the integrity of the author’s original text and her voice as it was at the time of writing.

Foreword

James Daschuk

Grace Morgan has written an ecological lament for a lost way of life in an environment that no longer exists: the prairies of western Canada prior to contact. The relationships that she illuminates among humans, beaver, bison, and later horses are key to understanding the ancient ecology of the Northern Great Plains. They also shed light on our current and precarious occupation of the prairies in this age of climate uncertainty. Today our political leaders debate the true impacts of climate change as we continue headlong with industrial farming using genetic modification and other scientific methods to buffer the impacts of drought and other climatic anomalies in the 21st century. This book points to both what was and what might have been, to sustainable land management practices that kept Indigenous communities protected for thousands of years from climatic variability. This is the story of traditional environmental knowledge at its most elegant.

As with so much Indigenous knowledge and so many ancient practices, the balance among species was forever lost as the modern world economic system took the North American Plains into its grasp. In a real sense, this is the story of an extinct ecology that can never be remade. The disappearance of the bison, the defining species of western North America, is widely recognized as the greatest environmental catastrophe to befall the continent. Almost a century earlier, at the turn of the 19th century, the extirpation of the beaver from the grasslands not only signalled the loss of a commercially valued species but also marked the end of a truly Indigenous way of life that used the species as the centre of an ancient system of water management in an arid and potentially dangerous environment.

By the 20th century, not only had the plains environment been irrevocably changed but also Indigenous institutions of governance, religion, and education had endured decades of state-sponsored attacks against what Canadian authorities called “tribalism.” The forcible relocation of Treaty Indians to and their confinement on reserves through the pass system, along with the establishment of Indian residential schools, in many cases broke the connections among Indigenous people, the land, and the animals that had endured since time immemorial. So complete was the assault on Indigenous ways of knowing that, for some, their traditional practices and even their histories were suppressed.

For much of the 20th century, scholars were even uncertain about the historical occupation of the prairie region. Were the Plains Cree the ancient inhabitants of the region, or did they come west as agents of the nascent global economic system? In the 1930s, American anthropologist David Mandelbaum was a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Publisher’s Note on Terminology
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 The Regional Setting
• Chapter 2 Human-Animal Relationships
• Chapter 3 The Ecological Evidence
• Chapter 4 The Historical Evidence
• Chapter 5 The Archaeological Evidence
• Chapter 6 Changing Lifeways on the Northern Plains
• Conclusion
• Afterword
• Figures
• Appendix “Dynamics of Fire and Grazing by Bison on Grasslands in Central Alberta”
• Notes
• References
• Back cover