Brad DeLong, a man whose arrogance is such that he makes me seem humble and quiet, is holding a “Stupidest Man Alive Contest.” He writes:

“Correspondents ask, “Is everybody who writes for National Review as stupid as Donald Luskin?”
The answer appears to be: It sure looks like it, and in Jonah Goldberg’s case–definitely.”

Why am I apparently as boneheaded as DeLong thinks our colleague Don Luskin is?

Because in my Madison speech I said:

“Some say that Native Americans were great environmentalists don’t know history. Some think that Indians were like a Disney movie, with Indians talking to bunnies. The great plains used to be a giant forest. The Indians burnt it to the ground to hunt buffalo.”

Me: DeLong doesn’t provide any specific complaint, treating the entire statement to be self-evidently stupid.

Well, I guess I’ll compound my stupidity by not only defending what I said, but daring to think DeLong’s the one being an idiot.

On the first point, that people think American Indians lived in perfect harmony with nature, like in the Disney movies, I hope he’s not going to contest this. At this point it’s simply a cliché, taught in schools and prevalent throughout pop culture and the writings of countless left-liberals and environmentalists. Must we trot out the tear of Iron Eyes Cody (born Espera DeCorti of Sicillian parents)?

My second point, that the Indian myth isn’t true is simply incontrovertible. American Indians — obviously a diverse bunch so some unfair generalization will be involved — radically transformed the American landscape, had little concept of “conservation” in the European sense, and practiced hunting “overkill” in a horrendous fashion. In some regions, Indians wiped out beaver and deer populations. Some tribes chased whole herds of buffalo off cliffs. Earlier native Americans strongly contributed to or caused the extinction of many large mammals in North America. I could go on but, again, I don’t think this is partcularly controversial either.

As for my last point, that the “The great plains used to be a giant forest. The Indians burnt it to the ground to hunt buffalo” contains some hyperbole (let’s not hear much from DeLong protesting hyperbole, please) but it’s a basically sound point. I suggest DeLong pick up a copy of The Ecological Indian, Myth and History by Shepard Krech. He writes, “The evidence that Indians lit fires that then were allowed to burn destructively and without regard to ecological consequences is abundant.” He has a whole chapter simply called “Fire.”

“By the time Europeans arrived, North American was a manipulated continent,” Krech continues. “Indians had long since altered the landscape by burning or clearing woodland for farming and fuel. Despite European images of an untouched Eden, this nature was cultural not virgin, anthropogenic not primeval, and nowhere is this more evident than in the Indian use of fire.”

Charles Mann in his wonderful book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus writes at length about the profound transformation of the American environment wrought by native Americans. Here is a sample passage:

Indian fire had its greatest impact in the middle of the continent, which Native Americans transformed into a prodigious game farm. Native Americans burned the Great Plains and Midwest prairies so much and so often they increased their extent; in all probability, a substantial portion of the giant grassland celebrated by cowboys was established and maintained by the people who arrived there first. “When Lewis and Clark headed west from [St. Louis],” wrote ethologist Dale Lott, “they were exploring not a wilderness but a vast pasture managed by and for Native Americans.”[Emphasis mine]

I guess these guys are equal competitors for the title of “stupidest man alive.” The only shame is that the judge of the contest is ineligible.