Shepherd Kretch

2 Pages 589 Words

Shepherd Kretch begins his novel with a very striking image which we all probably remember: who could forget the face of “the Crying Indian”? Kretch goes from this to explain that this add states that the Indian does not pollute, as his white counterparts do, and therefore “the white destroy[s] his land. He destroy[ed] planet earth” (Quoted in Kretch, 22), and Indians have this “noble image”. Ah,,the noble savage strikes again. Kretch explains both the noble savage and the ignoble savage and talks about the past and how people have revered Indians as “carefree, eloquent people living innocent, naked lives in a golden world of nature” (Kretch, 17), and consequently, the opposite on how they were bloodthirsty savages. He also touches on the French authors Rousseau and Montaigne, as we have read about previously, and their half-witted, daydream version on Native Americans. Kretch’s “Ecological Indian” is the Indian that we all know from the movies, television, on book covers and on T-shirts, who “feels sympathy with all living forms” (Kretch, 21) and always stays in balance. The noble savage idea.
The first chapter of Kretch’s book is on the Prehistoric peoples that were here or came here from somewhere else. He talks about these people possibly coming from northeastern Asia to North America, crossing a landmass that would appear every time the sea level would drop, known as Beringia. As they moved southward when they could when weather conditions were favorable, and through out the centuries continued to move south, leaving behind them a mass of extinction of “megafauna”, large mammals. (supposedly). A man, Martin, says that the extinctions of these animals were solely the work of the humans moving southward and because these humans were on the move all the time, would just kill as convenient. However, not only did the megafaunal species disappear, but lots of bird species as well. Martin explained thi...