Growers and Gatherers

In southern Idaho is a long, wide, open valley called Camas Prairie, named for a flowering plant that once grew there in abundance.  It’s sparsely populated by mostly farmers and ranchers raising mostly potatoes, wheat, barley, seed corn, alfalfa, and cattle.  But of course this was not always the case.  For perhaps millennia until less than 200 years ago this valley was inhabited by almost no one, but was visited annually by thousands of Shoshone and Bannock people, among others.  These hunter gatherer tribes were drawn to the valley to gather the edible roots of the camas plant, a staple of their diets. 

If one reads John Locke and other philosophers that deal with the topic of land ownership the agreed upon theme is that initial ownership of previous wilderness land is constituted by putting the land to use, by tilling it, improving it, and living upon it.  Locke went as far as to say that land has little or no value until improved by labor and that by pouring ones labor into the land, entwining the effort and the land together so that they are inseparable is what constitutes ownership, because one is certainly entitled to own the result of his labor and if that result is integral to the land, then he must also own the land that had virtually no value prior to his efforts to improve it.

So when white settlers came to Camas Prairie the Native Americans lost the right to harvest there because they had no claim to the land.  By no ancient definition did the Shoshone and the Bannock own Camas Prairie, and they did not want to “own” it; they simply wanted to continue visiting it and gathering camas roots every year as their ancestors had done for centuries.  They did not sow; they only harvested, but surely the centuries of occasional use count for something even if it does not constitute ownership.  

History tells us that even if they had lived on that land their claim would not have been respected, but that is not the question of the moment.  The question here is what claim they had or continue to have.  Did the visiting of Camas Prairie by their ancestors each year for millennia to gather food give nineteenth century Shoshone and Bannock a right to continue doing so? Do their descendents still have such rights?  If so does that right extend to the extreme of disallowing crops and cattle that feed millions rather than leaving nature to feed thousands?  The story of Camas Prairie in Idaho is not unique; much of the United States, indeed of the New World, would be left to nature if such claims were acknowledged and honored.  Millions would starve, but such pragmatism does not eliminate the claim, at least not the claim of those that went hungry when the valley was first occupied by the agrarians.  It is not justifiable to force a people to go hungry so that a larger group of people might be fed. 

So the Bannock and Shoshone had, and perhaps continue to have, rights to gather food in Camas Prairie, but if we are concerned with the greater good served by the feeding of vastly more people, then it cannot be concluded that the valley should never have been converted to agriculture.  We cannot lay Camas Prairie and other places of ancient food gathering aside perpetually for the decedents of those that visited them annually to gather food before an agrarian society came along.  Every bit of land on the globe save the poles has provided nourishment for a race of food gatherers at one time or another.  Abolishing agriculture in such places and setting them aside would eliminate all of the crops on earth.  So it’s not right that the gatherers were forbidden to gather food in Camas Prairie, and it wouldn’t have been right to forbid the farmers to settle and make use of land that was so little utilized.

Perhaps this discussion seems moot; there are not many hunter-gatherer societies left on earth and we probably don’t need additional moral guidelines for dealing with them, but when we can point to specific individuals that suffered and name them by name, when we can talk to their grandchildren; the history of Camas Prairie and hundreds of similar locations is not so far in the past that the moral dilemma should be ignored.  The debate is alive because the debate over Native American rights continues, and because the moral history of America is worthy of discussion.  It is a worthwhile exercise to find an answer to this moral dilemma.

But moral dilemmas don’t actually exist; every moral question has a moral answer if we break the situation into the fundamentals rights of those involved.  In this case the rights of both parties can be served if the food gatherers are granted the right to annually glean from the fields of the food growers, perhaps not perpetually, but at least for a few generations.  Perhaps this answer was employed long before Europeans set foot in the lands of the Shoshone and the Bannock.

In Deuteronomy we read of the ancient practice of allowing the poor to glean the fields of the landowners.  Perhaps this practice did not start as an act of charity at all but rather as a means of dealing fairly with those that lived off the land before it was tilled, before the agrarians came along.  Can we imagine an agricultural society with superior weapons and larger population that moves into a sparsely populated, fertile valley and endeavors to deal fairly with those that have wandered through it hunting and gathering for generations?  Can we imagine the leader of the agrarians saying to the leader of the wandering gatherers, “We will take possession of this valley and grow crops, and if your people choose they may live with us on the land and help work the fields for daily bread, or if they prefer to continue wandering they may glean from the edges of our fields when passing through our valley as they have always gleaned from this land.  And when we meet it will be in peace.” 

Perhaps the scene described never took place in all the history of human relations, or perhaps it was common practice at some time in some part of the world and led to the custom chronicled in Deuteronomy.  In any case we can imagine it and know that the Native Americans that gathered roots in Camas Prairie could have been treated fairly and still allow for white settlement.  As the camas became scarce they could have gleaned corn, wheat, barley, potatoes, and maybe even an occasional steer.  There is the answer to our dilemma, but one that was all too seldom, if ever, applied.  Instead there were inefficient, corrupt, too little too late, ineffective government programs.