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Resource Competition and Population Change: A Kaibab Paiute Ethnohistorical Case

1976; Duke University Press; Volume: 23; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/481516

1527-5477

Richard W. Stoffle, Michael J. Evans,

Rangeland Management and Livestock Ecology

This paper is a case analysis of resource competition, population fluctuations, and ethnicity change resulting from Euroamerican intrusion into Kaibab Paiute territory. The various adaptive strategies employed by the Paiute to cope with resource depletion, pressures to relinquish traditional ethnicity patterns, and depopulation are examined. Since the Kaibab Paiute were one of the last Native American peoples to resist Euroamerican expansion, a study of their case permits an assessment of the process and implications of the Invasion of America (Jennings 1975) from a perspective of more than 300 years. Today as never before the talents of behavioral and social scientists are being focused upon the issue of how ethnic groups compete with one another for scarce social and environmental resources. Some researchers are discussing the process of group competition from a cultural ecological perspective (Bennett 1969, 1976; Harner 1977;Polgar 1975). Others perceive of the issue in terms of cultural persistence (Barth 1969; Depres 1967, 1975; Fitzgerald 1966; Hoetink 1971; Spicer 1971 ;Whitten 1974). Still others see the issue in terms of population fluctuations (Dobyns 1966, 1976; Cook 1971, 1974, 1976; Denevan 1976; Montgomery 1977). Spicer (1971:797) has even suggested that competition for resources and attempts at forced cultural change set up an oppositional process that . . . is the essential factor in the formation and development of persistent identity systems. Whatever the point of departure, all of these discussions indicate that in culturally pluralistic settings there is a clear relationship between the way a group manipulates its ethnicity and its access to subsistence and prestige resources. While technological, biological, and numerical differences are critical factors when different ethnic groups come into contact, resource competition will eventually be conducted by ethnic manipulation unless one group is