George Bird Grinnell

George Bird Grinnell

George Bird Grinnell (born September 20, 1849 in Brooklyn , New York , † April 11, 1938 in New York City ) was an American scientist , historian , ethnologist and author . He campaigned for nature conservation and the preservation of the Indian culture . His greatest success is the protection of the American bison after the herds of millions of animals were destroyed in the 1860s.

Life

Grinnell came from a wealthy and politically influential family. He graduated from Yale University , graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1870, and earned a Ph. D. in Zoology in 1880 . After his first degree, he went to the West, where he was able to take part in the last great bison hunt of the Pawnee Indians in 1872. In 1874 he was in government service as a scientist on the George Armstrong Custers expedition to the Black Hills , during which Custer illegally invaded the exclusive hunting ground of the Lakota Sioux and discovered and examined gold deposits in the mountains . Two years later he was invited, but declined to take part in Custers' successor expedition, which led to the battle of the Little Bighorn River , the death of Custer and the destruction of the 7th Cavalry Regiment . In 1875 he took part in an expedition to Yellowstone National Park , founded in 1872 .

Author and conservationist

In 1876 he took over the post of editor of Forests and Streams magazine , which published literary articles on hunting, fishing and life in and with nature and was dedicated to a romantic view of nature. Here he published his first articles on the Yellowstone Expedition with a focus on nature conservation and the preservation of natural resources. In 1885 he first came to the Rocky Mountains in Montana near the Canadian border and was enthusiastic about the majestic mountain landscapes. But he also came into closer contact with the Indians of the region and the administration of the reservations by the Bureau of Indian Affairs .

In 1886 he founded the precursor of the Audubon Society as an ornithological society with a strong focus on the protection of the bird world, in contrast to the existing American Ornithologists' Union , which proclaimed the hunt for birds in the interest of scientific data collection.

The following year he co-founded the Boone and Crocket Club , a society for responsible hunting, nature and landscape protection, which the future US President Theodore Roosevelt , soldier and Boy Scout founder Frederick Russell Burnham , General William Tecumseh Sherman , the later founding director of the US Forest Service Gifford Pinchot and Grinnell started.

A Blackfoot Indian, watercolor by Karl Bodmer, 1840s

In 1895 he was back in Montana and, at the request of the Blackfoot Indians, with whom he had had a close relationship for several years, was appointed to a government commission that concluded a contract on the assignment of the mountain portion of the Blackfoot reservation to the federal government Negotiated food supplies for Blackfoot and a $ 1.5 million trust. The reserve had included the plains east of the Rocky Mountains and the mountains up to the main ridge . The government actually wanted to open the mountains for mining because mineral deposits were suspected in them. Due to his good knowledge of the mountains, Grinnell did not believe in abundant deposits and planned to unite the eastern flank of the northern Rocky Mountains with the forest reserve that Gifford Pinchot and the nature philosopher and conservationist John Muir were currently preparing on the western flank of the mountains. In 1897, President Grover Cleveland proclaimed the extensive Lewis and Clark Forest Reserve . Grinnell was already planning further and called for a national park in the northern Rocky Mountains.

He was a member of the Harriman-Alaska Expedition of 1899, some of which was the first to scientifically investigate the coastal waters of Alaska . From 1910 he published the reports of the scientific participants. He also wrote various books on hunting.

Culture of the Plains Indians

From 1889 he wrote about the life and culture of the Plains Indians . Beginning with a work on the Pawnees , in which he mixed the reproduction of myths and legends of the people with his own accounts of the way of life, a similar book followed in 1892 on the Blackfoot. In 1893 he called for the enforcement of the existing alcohol bans in Indian reservations and from 1895 onwards he wrote several comprehensive works on Indian culture.

From 1899 he wrote a series of eight books for children and young people about life in the western United States, about Indians and the cowboy era , which was almost a thing of the past. He gave a variety of lectures on Indian cultures and campaigned against corruption and mismanagement of the reservations.

American bison

Protection of the bison

The bison had been nearly extinct in the United States by the 1850s. While an estimated 30 million animals still lived in the Great Plains in the 1830s and formed the basis of the diet and culture of the Plains Indians, they were almost destroyed when the railroad was built . Initially shot en masse to supply the railway workers, they soon fell victim to hunting tourism made possible by the railway. In 1894, only around 200 animals remained in Yellowstone National Park as the last wild bison in the United States. Despite being protected by law, poaching caused their numbers to drop to a low in 1902 with only 23 animals left. Since the beginning of the 1890s, Grinnell called for the protection of the species in a variety of publications and organized political pressure on the US Department of the Interior until the army units in Fort Yellowstone responsible for the national park made repelling poachers a priority and the basis for a recovery of the population laid.

Lake Josephine with Grinnell Peak (right) in Glacier National Park

Grinnell Glacier

The Glacier National Park

Since 1891, the Great Northern Railway ran across the ridge of the Rocky Mountains at Marias Pass in the Lewis and Clack Forest Reserve . Louis W. Hill, son of the President of the Great Northern Railway James J. Hill, became Grinnell's ally in the demand for a national park, as he hoped that tourism would improve the utilization of the railway line. Grinnell argued with the size and beauty of the landscape, which he called the Crown of the Continent in an influential 1901 article . But it also demonstrated the practical benefit that a national park on the main ridge of the Rocky Mountains, which was also the continental divide and thus the central source area of ​​North America, would have for the water quality in the western United States. In 1910 the longstanding lobbying work was successful and the United States Congress dedicated the north of the Rocky Mountains as Glacier National Park . A mountain, two lakes, a stream and a glacier in the park now bear the name of Grinnells.

In 1911, Grinnell gave up the editing of Forests and Streams . In 1919 he became a co-founder and temporarily president of the National Parks Association . In 1920 he wrote When buffalo ran another book on the central themes of his life. In 1923 he published his main ethnographic work The Cheyenne Indians in two volumes about the Cheyenne and subsequently historical works on topics from the time of the Wild West . He died in New York City in 1938 and was buried in Woodland Cemetery in the Bronx .

Work (selection)

• Pawnee hero stories and folk-tales, with notes on the origin, customs and character of the Pawnee people , New York, Forest and stream publishing company, 1889.
• Blackfoot Lodge tales; the story of a prairie people , New York, Scribner, 1892.
• Hunting in many lands; the book of the Boone and Crockett club . Editors: Theodore Roosevelt, George Bird Grinnell. New York, Forest and stream publishing company, 1895.
• The story of the Indian , New York, D. Appleton and company, 1895.
• The Indians of to-day , Chicago, New York, HS Stone and company, 1900.
• Harriman Alaska series in twelve volumes. Editor: George Bird Grinnell. City of Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1910–1914.
• Jack, the young ranchman; or, A boy's adventures in the Rockies , New York, FA Stokes, 1899 (and seven other children's books).
• When buffalo ran , New Haven, Yale University Press, 1920.
• The Cheyenne Indians , New Haven, Yale University Press, 1923.
• The fighting Cheyennes , New York, C. Scribner's sons, 1915.
• Two great scouts and their Pawnee battalion; the experiences of Frank J. North and Luther H. North, pioneers in the great West, 1856-1882, and their defense of the building of the Union Pacific railroad , Cleveland, The Arthur H. Clark company, 1928.

literature

• Michael Punke: Last Stand - George Bird Grinnell, the Battle to Save the Buffalo, and the Birth of the New West . Smithsonian Books, Washington DC, 2007, ISBN 978-0-06-089782-6
• Richard Levine: Indians, Conservation, and George Bird Grinnell . In: American Studies , Volume 28, No. 2, autumn 1987, pages 41-55 (also in full text online: Indians, Conservation, and George Bird Grinnell ) - about the Indian image of Grinnell and his motifs as a conservationist, with biographical information
• John Taliaferro: Grinnell - America's environmental pioneer and his restless drive to save the West , New York; London: Liveright Publishing Corporation, A Division of WW Norton & Company, [2019], ISBN 978-1-63149-013-2

Web links

• Works by George Bird Grinnell in the English-language Project Gutenberg