When I go outside to change the hummingbird feeder I am greeted by a perfect misunderstanding. Allow me to explain. While I’m reaching up to take down the feeder, the hummingbird flies towards me and hovers about. This is an observable fact, not subject to interpretation. It’s when we start to think about WHY he comes that we run into trouble.
In my human-centered, anthropomorphic brain, it appears that he is happy to see me and flying up with his bright colors to greet me and demonstrate his enthusiasm for my refilling the feeder. In my fantasy it appears that he likes me. A nice Disney image that leaves me feeling cheerful for an hour afterwards.
In his hummingbird brain, however, it appears that the big featherless monster is coming to take away his special container of bottomless, unblooming nectar. He flies at once to the scene to make a dramatic display and scare me away. He is certain his arrival is threatening. When I do something with the feeder and leave he feels he has done his job frightening me off his territory. He sits down at the feeder, satisfied with his menance and enjoys a well earned snack.
He feels victorious and I feel appreciated. We have a perfect misunderstanding.
I mention this because as I’ve been reading through trapping records I’ve been startled to see how trappers record observations of native americans. (Obviously some of them were worth sleeping with–and not only the females) but for the most part they were regarded as lazy and savage. How did they come to this startling treatise by observing the behavior of native people upon whose knowledge they very often depended? Easy.
“Natives took what they needed.”
Here they were in a land of plenty with fish-thick rivers and luscious trappable animals all around and they took only what they needed to feed and clothe their family and then spent the rest of their days talking or playing with their children. How else could it possibly be described other than “lazy?”
Mind you these trappers were men who traveled thousands of hard miles in pursuit of the very last beaver pelt, trailing horses piled high with bales of so many pelts that they used them as currency. These were men who ‘trapped out’ entire rivers, sometimes just so no one else would want it. Decimating the beaver population up one river and down the next, over and over, with more and more piles of pelts. They demanded that natives find them a passage over the mountains through the thickest snows (when the pelts were worth more) and when the natives told them it was not possible and unsafe, they called them lazy and fools. Then they would prowl around the camp until they found the one miscreant indian who promised HE could show them (for a price) and were stunned and betrayed when he eventually left them stranded in the snow-drenched sierras.
They called wisdom: cowardice and sufficiency: indolence and they did it all without the smallest trace of dramatic irony.
Just thought I’d mention it.
If seven maids with seven mops
Swept it for half a year.
Do you suppose,” the Walrus said,
“That they could get it clear?”
“I doubt it,” said the Carpenter,
And shed a bitter tear.
Photos from the gulf yesterday were beyond horrible, and Cheryl spent the day at IBRRC answering panicked phone calls from people who were wanting to know that there was some one there to take care of these birds. There is. They are. And they could use your help. These are pictures that hurt your heart to look at.
AP photographer: Charlie Riedel
