In the Beginning: the Importance of Wildlife in the Development of Human Thought
Sometimes it is possible to say more with broken structure than with straightforward text.
I wanted a causeway in coastal thought that has nothing to do with wetlands, but rather with the historic Cherokee woodlands and the Book of Genesis.
How naming animals caused what may have been a first act of poetics.
A creative attempt to create the use of animals in creating creative thinking.
Animal from the Latin animalis, having breath, living being. Meaning acknowledgment for its being.
And finally, how the animal and the word converge in the act of nomenclature.
Could-be animals. Unexplained weather. Maybe they see
us that way. Knowing better, the closer they get.
“Driving at Night,” Rio Cortez
Or maybe we know them better once they’ve been named and shaped by the word. The word and the animal as one.
An historical perspective —
Early, the Cherokee were evangelized and assimilated. They thought it would save them from removal from their land.
The Cherokee were a Woodland tribe with an abundance of animals in the woods. Deer. Elk. Bear. Wolf. Fox. Turkey. Rabbit. Squirrel.
There was meat. Hides for shelter and clothing. Hides for trading.
Early, the Cherokee took the ways of the European. They had cattle, pigs, chickens on their farms.
The Europeans wanted deer hides. The Cherokee supplied them — until realizing there were fewer deer to hunt. They traded for metal pots and instruments. They traded for calico for dresses and fabric for men’s turbans.
The word “deer” comes from the Middle English deere, dere, der, dier, deor, small animal. From the Old English deor, animal. Proto-West Germanic deur. Proto-Germanic deuza. Proto-Indo-European dhewsom, meaning living thing, from dhews, breath.
The cougar and owl also were acknowledged — because they were nocturnal. They were watchmen. Keepers of the woods until daylight would claim itself as watchman again.
Dogs were pack and food animals. The word “dog” comes from the Old English docga. Its origin is unknown. It was picked up in other languages. French dogue. Danish dogge. German dogge. Spanish perro, origin also unknown.Old Church Slavic pisu. Polish pies. Serbo-Croatian pas.
It is words that inhabit our language. As many words as animals in the woods —
[The compilation of Cherokee explanation tales by James Mooney — The Girl Who Married an Owl. The story of the turtle’s segmented shell and how it was sewn back together — as if quilt work. Stories of how the squirrel stretched its skin and became a flying squirrel that saved someone from harm. The Possum and the Terrapin who went out to hunt persimmons. The use of the wolf’s ears for hominy spoons.]
First Act of Wildlife Management: Naming —
Genesis 2:19, out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.
In Biblical tradition, it was animals that provided a useful use of language. The fundamental act of naming. A port for the imagination.
The earth is 4,543 billion years old. There were past encampments of life. Unknown except for what we know from fossils and bone fragments and evidences in rock formations.
But as for the beginning of our present encampment — after the void the earth was in again in Genesis 1:2 — we begin with a new beginning in the book of Genesis.
There had been men before Adam who could split a stone and tie it to a stick for a weapon and eventually sharpen the stone and tie it to the stick for a spear. But as for Adam — according to the Bible — God formed man from dust and breathed his breath into him.
He named man and woman but left the animals nameless. A horrific act — not to be named. But left the naming to Adam as a stronghold against the void.
Cattle, fowl, every beast of the earth — How did God bring them before Adam? Was it one by one? How long did Adam observe the animal? Did he consider its characteristics? What to name one animal in contrast to another? How did he remember the names he had named? Was someone taking notes? If so, what did they write on? What did the writing look like? — a clutter of twigs after a storm?
In Native stories, the imagination continued past naming and reliance upon.
In “Two Dogs in One” from Cherokee Narratives, a Linguistic Study, Recovering Language and Literacies of the Americas Initiative, University of Oklahoma Press, 2018, Durbin Feeling, William Pulte and Gregory Pulte tell stories without grammar and the standard subject / verb / object construct of the English language —
They are stories transcribed from the Cherokee, such as the story about a dog who walked home one night both with a boy and the boy’s parents and brother after they visited a neighbor who had television. The boy started home first. The parents and younger brother stayed behind talking to the people. How could one dog be in two places?
Two Dogs In One
a few years when it was I just a boy yet when it was we liked it was television for us to watch it but not also we ourselves we didn’t have television and not also electricity even we didn’t have where we lived house however near we apart they had television and not also really near not close to each other somewhere I suppose one mile distant they lived at a distance however we would go for us to watch television approximately ten half time until we would go there and return news after the telling of until and that what we had thought it was one time we went father mother brother and I and my sister who is yet Washington operation schools that place she lived there and that the reason not she was not with us and dog also brown we had good hunter and also house watcher and obedient stay when you tell him he would stay and also if we took him with us he would go it was and that dog he followed us when we went and when we arrived there at their home and just there outside toward the porch he lay down he waited for us as we returned until and at that time then as we got ready to upon our return as we got up all and the door toward as we walked they began again to talk father mother and others and that again when they did he just went on out my brother and about two minutes about ahead he started out and for ourselves which was father and mother together then as we came out the brown dog ours he got up outside toward porch he was lying and that dog he joined us the distance to our home as far as and when we returned to our home my brother already he was home and our bedtime then we were preparing we were talking I mentioned the dog him following us home the distance and my brother silent he became for a while but then when he spoke up this he said how can that be me also also the distance he followed me
/ / /
There are places in the Bible where I see Native thought. “Thou shalt be in league with the stones of the field” — Job 5:23 “But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach you, and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell you. Or speak to the earth, and it shall teach you, and the fishes of the sea shall declare unto you — Job 12:7.
/ / /
In “Reading the Indigenous night sky to interpret wildlife patterns,” Trevor M. Leaman, Wildlife Australia Magazine, 2019, says, an Aboriginal constellation is the Emu in the Sky. “It is found in the dark dust lanes of the Milky Way between the Southern Cross (head), Scorpius-Sagittarius (body) and Ophiuchus-Aquila (feet).” The changing orientation of the celestial emu fits the migration and breeding patterns of the terrestrial emu.
/ / /
In the long memory of recorded time — the thought process of poetics was first among us as causeway over the unstable waters of our existence.