Shepard Krech: Spirits of the Air

Shepard Krech’s attractive volume is an appealing introduction to the ways native people thought about their observed environment in southeastern North America. That said, Krech is obviously not an ornithologist, and birders may be troubled by such lapses as the occasional misspelling of names or the misuse of terminology.

In his field of expertise, however, Krech offers much of interest. His discussion of captive birds includes the suggestion that the Congaree kept cranes (!) in their gardens. Prohibitions on eating chickens are the subject of an interesting excursus on food taboos. And the appearance of avian images on tobacco pipes is explained as more than mere ornament: “as birds fly…so, by extension, do those who consume tobacco” for ritual purposes.

Krech is able to cite only a few original texts, but still manages to give an overview of the literary significance of birds among the tribes he considers. Fascinatingly, the Turkey Vulture is said by the Cherokee to have carved the valleys with its wingtip, just as in the Piman creation stories related by Amadeo Rea; much of the owl lore Krech recounts also seems to have been widespread among the continent’s native inhabitants. The Red-headed Woodpecker, aggressive and boldly colored, occupies an important position in the myths of the origin of the ball game.

There is much we will never know about the perspective of native peoples on their environment: time, linguistic distance, and cultural difference make it impossible to recover and report the complete range of natural history knowledge once possessed by the continent’s original inhabitants. We’re fortunate to have in this book a corrective, if only incomplete, illustrating the ways in which American Indians regarded their environment, adding nuance and sophistication to modes of thought so often dismissed as merely primitive.

My full review of this title will appear in Birding magazine later this year.