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.
