Human Interactions with Nature in the Rocky Mountain States

Human Interactions with Nature in the Rocky Mountain States

Human interaction with the Rocky Mountain States has shifted tremendously since the beginning of recorded history. These changes can be broken down into three phases. The first phase would be the communal posture held by Native Americans. This period of time ran from the Spanish colonization in the 16th century until the era of the mountain man. With the establishment of the United States a new period of exploration for exploitation began. A dramatic shift in human interaction occurred as the economic interests of the mountain men and the United States overrode the communal interests of the Native Americans, indeed, it began to envelop them. The era of exploitation would flourish until the Progressive Movement. The first generation of leaders to see the footprint left by the over-harvest of natural resources would start the shift in policy to one of sustainability. This shift has continued at different rates of change all the way through the modern era.

The Native American tribes of the American Rocky Mountain States were long characterized as being homogenous with little difference between them. In reality they are as diverse as European states, but like Europeans the religions that shaped their actions held a common theme. “[A]ll their religions had important characteristics in common… the Indian visionaries felt the universe about them and dedicated themselves to keeping man’s world in balance with the cosmos... All of them sought to communicate with the powers of nature.” (Hurdy 14) The words of Hopi chiefs and elders, declared in 1951, are true for all tribes: “Our land, our religion, and our life are one.” (Martin 15)

This communal living was sustainable and based upon the indigenous plants and animals, especially the bison herds which spread across the prairie like waves on an ocean. “Oglala Sioux spiritual leader Black Elk… recalled that his people ‘were happy in [their] own country, and were seldom hungry, for then the two-leggeds and the four-leggeds lived together like relatives, and there was plenty for them and for us.” (Spence 3) Native Americans saw a special sanctity in taking anything from the earth. The Hopi Indians, for example “express[ed] regret to the hunted animal that they must take its life to sustain their own with the substance of its flesh.” (Hurdy 19) Ruth Underhill writes that the Naskapi saw “Hunting [as] a holy occupation… [but] so was the gathering of plants, the cutting of trees, even the digging of clay.