I’m reading White Savage, a book about William Johnson by Fintan O’Toole, the first history book I’ve read in a while. One advantage of technology is the way it allows us to learn more about historic events, even while those events recede farther from us in time.

William Johnson was an Irishman who converted to Protestantism and came to America in the early 1700s to manage an estate in what is now northern New York, an estate very much entwined with the homeland of the Mohawks, the easternmost tribe of the Five Nations, or Iroquois Confederacy. While Johnson was largely a man of his times, he treated the natives more fairly than most of the other traders, which gave him a competitive edge. Eventually he became fluent in the Iroquois language and participated in and even led some of their rituals.

I’ve just started this book, and already I’ve learned a lot about the Iroquois that I did not know, where I refers to a person who is very interested in, and an avid lay reader of information about, native Americans. The Iroquois thought the Europeans were naive traders–Willing to give ten knives for a beaver skin!–which is why they were happy to hunt and skin animals they previously had little use for in the tens of thousands. They were early adapters of new technology, thrilled to replace many items of bone, clay, and stone with items made of iron, and to use woolen fabric for blankets and clothes. They were the vanguard of the now-ubiquitous consumer society, in which all people, as opposed to only the elites, participate.

The natives could not create or even repair these items of course, and though they repeatedly requested the Europeans to teach them how, the industrial centers of production could not easily be transported to such a different society; I won’t call it more primitive, since it was much healthier and equitable for its people as well as less destructive of nature than pretty much any “civilized” society I can think of.

A darker reason for keeping the natives non-producers was a European fear of being overmatched. At least those Europeans who worked closely with the natives knew them to be intelligent and dexterous, as well as completely exposed in terms of alcohol consumption, having never tried any substance stronger than tobacco. All the traders, including Johnson, were careful to have alcohol on hand, viewing it as another way to deter possible competition.

Ultimately, as we know, the natives were unable to function independently, and forced to capitulate to the demands of the newcomers. Technology may be helping us unravel the past now, but it is as much bane as boon for people, and essentially a bane for Nature in all her guises.