Keepers of the Game

"A brilliant book which deals with the complex relationship between American Indians and animals, as it changed through time. Martin argues that an aboriginal ecosystem . . . was destroyed by 'European disease, Christianity and the fur trade,' and the symbiosis which had existed between hunters and their game turned into an adversary relationship."

--New Republic

 

"The nature of the relationship between Indian and animal, he argues, was essentially a contract of mutual obligation and courtesy. When European epidemic disease began to ravage them, destroying perhaps 90 percent of the native population, Indians took it to be a 'conspiracy' by game animals against them. When their own medicine men were unable to cure these diseases, the stage was set for a 'war of retaliation'--the sacred agreement with the Keepers of the Game having been broken. . . . [T]here is a fine and fair mind at work here."

--Harper's

 

"The clarity, directness and originality of this small book should. . . . earn it many readers who will wonder at the tangled web of the living world and the variousness of the human mind."

--Scientific American