Golden Eagles for the Gods

In the self-flagellation of the early Earth Days, America seized upon a passage reprinted in a now-defunct Native American tabloid and reported to have been uttered by Chief Seattle, patriarch of the Duwamish and Suquamish Indians of Puget Sound, to the territorial governor in 1855: "The earth does not belong to man. Man belongs to the earth. . . . Whatever befalls the earth, befalls the sons of the earth. Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself." Stirring words. But they did not issue from Chief Seattle; they were written for a TV movie by a Texas screenwriter named Ted Perry in the winter of 1970-71. Perry had urged the producers to explain in the credits that the passage was only what the chief might have (or, perhaps, should have) been thinking. The producers didn't get around to it, so for nearly three decades Chief Seattle's grand but make-believe sermon has been a mantra for the environmental community and the media in their condemnations of our nation's profligacy.

Of all the ways white society has exploited Native Americans (Indians, Aleuts, and Inuits), few have been uglier or more destructive than attempting to make them into something whites want them to be. Who really stands to benefit from the myth that Native Americans, when given the opportunity, can't make as good exploiters as other Americans? Can wrongs to people long dead be righted by wrongs to people living and yet unborn? And can it really be that what is bad for wildlife is good for Native Americans?

The truth about Indians, like the truth about other races, is that one can't generalize about them. Some Indians do indeed think like the movie version of Chief Seattle. For example, in 1995, when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service asked Idaho to manage wolves, the state decided it couldn't be bothered. So the Nez Perce Indians, who revere wolves, volunteered, doing such a spectacular job that wolves in Idaho were essentially recovered three years later. And only Trout Unlimited and the Nez Perce seem alarmed about genetic pollution of westslope cutthroat trout caused by the hatchery-produced rainbows that the Fish and Game Department flings around the state like gum wrappers.

In Arizona, on the other hand, a faction of the Hopi tribe, which for centuries has captured and killed young golden eagles for ritualistic sacrifice, is lobbying the National Park Service (with apparent success) to let it collect eagles from the 54-square-mile Wupatki National Monument, just north of Flagstaff.

Unlike national wildlife refuges, which have traditionally been open to state-sanctioned hunting and trapping, national parks and monuments have traditionally been closed. Save for a few in Alaska established by Congress in 1980, these units have always been sanctuaries where killing of wildlife by the public has been expressly forbidden. Of the 3,026,000 square miles in the contiguous 48 states, only 30,750 (about 1 percent) have been designated as parks and monuments; they act as reservoirs, replenishing wildlife elsewhere. Virtually all conservationists, including mainstream sportsmen, support this traditional sanctuary mission.

"Whatever [man] does to the web, he does to himself." That famous and accurate pronouncement by Chief Seattle's ghost writer is especially pertinent today in northern Arizona, where the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service hands out 40 permits a year to the Hopi for the collection of hatchling golden eagles. The Hopi may also take red-tailed hawks in any quantity they desire. The Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Bald Eagle Protection Act (amended in 1962 to include goldens) provide for such take by Indians, but only if it is "compatible with the preservation" of eagles. It is not. "If studies were done," declares one Interior Department raptor biologist who asked not to be identified for fear of political reprisals, "the criteria are there to list the golden eagle as at least threatened in northern Arizona. We might as well be putting DDT out there. There are no young birds coming along. We have absolutely no way to justify handing out 40 take permits a year. Some conservation group needs to sue us. It's a no-brain winner; if you can't win that one, you should get another lawyer."

Another raptor biologist, David Ellis of the U.S. Geological Survey, was willing to go on record as saying: "The biggest problem the eagle has on the Hopi and Navajo reservations [which occupy about 20 percent of the state] is overgrazing. The primary productivity has been destroyed, so there aren't very many jackrabbits or cottontails. The eagles are hurting already, and then they get hit by Hopi. The Navajos kill them, too [without permits, for their feathers]. I view the Hopi reservation as an aquiline black hole." According to Fish and Wildlife Service records, the permitted take of golden eagles by Hopi from 1986 to 1999 was 208. That's a lot of mortality for a predator perched atop the food chain. But the illegal kill by Indians (not necessarily Hopi) is many times more than that.

If there are two hatchlings in the nest, the Hopi invariably take both. To do otherwise would be "an affront to the gods," reports The Indian Trader, a monthly newspaper on Indian culture and history. (But tribal history suggests that this is a new concern. In the old days, when goldens were more plentiful, the gods apparently had no objection to the traditional practice of leaving one.) The eaglets are collected in early spring, then tethered to the tops of adobe buildings, where they are fed, given children's toys, and told how honored they should feel to be chosen for the ritual. In mid-July, they are ritualistically smothered in cornmeal or strangled by hand so that they may travel to the other world and explain, among other things, how well they were treated by the tribe. But the eagles may be delivering a different message. Occasionally their eyelids are sewn shut, and straps around their feet sometimes wear away the skin and sinew. After the carcasses are plucked, the longer feathers are used to make Kachina dolls. Other feathers are scattered under known aeries in ceremonies said to encourage the parents to return and nest again; but the practice appears to be increasingly ineffective.

Some Indians--in fact, some Hopi--think the ritual should be consigned to the past as was the sacrifice of children, from which anthropologists believe it may have derived. Hopi villages reportedly have suggested changing the ritual so that the eagles would be set free after only partial plucking. But the consensus among the Hopi practitioners is that this, too, would displease the gods. According to an Interior Department "report of investigation," a member of the Hopi Eagle Clan--which reveres free, living eagles--asked this of a Fish and Wildlife Service law-enforcement agent working undercover: "How would you like to be chained in the sun for 80 days?" The subject then stated that Indians from the Hopi First Mesa (the plateau on which the Eagle Clan lives) sometimes sneak up to the Second Mesa and release the eaglets. Finally, he opined that the tribe gets all the eagle feathers it needs from the Fish and Wildlife Service's Eagle Repository near Denver, which collects dead eagles and distributes about 1,500 of them a year, in whole or in part, to Indians who request them.

The Navajo Nation allows the Hopi to take eaglets on its land, but tribal members--particularly elders--abhor the practice. In 1999 the Navajo's chief warden, Larry Spencer, confiscated two dead eaglets from Hopi collectors, but they were later returned. Spencer says he doesn't see many eagles on the reservation now. "If you come around and take all the birds you can every year, it's going to affect them."