John Muir and the American Indians

John Muir is a key figure in the modem environmental movement. His enthusiasm for the protection of the American wilderness and the founding of the national park system was far beyond anyone else’s efforts. Trans cendentalism was his spiritual guide, but he found his own way in the West and in Alaska. In his splendid writings, he conveyed his zeal for the beauty of a pure wilderness, Muir tried to persuade the reading public. However, his writings on American Indians were ambivalent. On the one hand, he wanted to inform the public that the wilderness was safe because they wouldn’t see the fearful Indians. On the other hand, he lamented the disappearing of Indian tradition and their tameness. On the whole, however, Muir’s taciturnity about the sufferings of the Indians prevailed in his writings. Muir’s silence on the conflict between the whites and the Indians is meaningful in terms of the historical background. In the latter half of the nineteenth century-especially in the postbellum period-the battle between the two races climaxed. By the 1890’s, the conquering of the Indians by the whites was complete. Yosemite Valley National Park, the crystal of Muir’s paramount efforts, was also founded in 1890. Muir could have known of the ongoing battle, including the race related massacre. Compared with his emphatic writings about nature, however, he was relatively silent on the troublesome issue of the native Indians, following the footsteps of other intellectuals, as well as the public, representing his quandary and bias as a white American in that particular period of turbulent history.