Killing the Giants

Why might Bonhoeffer Living History the Pilchuck Living History Farm & Ethnobotanical Garden be important?  In 1493 seventeen Spanish ships with 1,500 men re-visited Christopher Columbus’ discovery of the year before with its 4 million Arawak native civilization, demolishing their established trade, agriculture, and culture. By 1552, the Caribbean Hispaniola Indians were extinct. That is, in 59 years, millions of people disappeared from this Earth!  350 years later, a Court and Census found the Pacific Northwest Cayuse Indians with but 1 living member (1902) when in 1847 at the time of the Whitman Massacre there may have been 1,000 remaining to govern 6 million acres. That is, in 59 years, another tribe was almost extinct, as was its culture and language. In 1939 two birding enthusiasts 2 days apart in separate locations sighted Bachman’s warblers, thought then extinct. Avid collectors, they independently shot their find. Extinctions occur in Nature; the accepted rate is 1 species per 4 years worldwide. With human help, it is now 120,000 x that rate. As described, human groups can become as extinct as warblers.  The only antidote to our destructive proclivity is the teaching of what once was … even though to the young, the past is like a foreign country. We humans are best at unthinkingly destroying what is not now useful to us.  Visually illustrating this to the next generation may contribute to their being more caring and careful than our and our ancestors’ generations. The Living History Farm visually shows that evidence: the largest Western Red Cedar alive is 20’ in diameter, the Gardens’ stump measures 22’.  In 1,500 years, humans could see live Red Cedars again this large.  All that is needed is for man not to kill them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheewhat_Giant
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Short_History_of_Nearly_Everything 
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/what-became-of-the-taino-73824867/
https://www.amazon.com/Historical-Atlas-Native-Americans-Barnes/dp/0785823328

The Cayuse Indians are today:

1,000s alive on their reservation
Their DNA survives in part here and there
Totally Extinct

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