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Show 294. call such growth healthy. Perhaps Muir's personal experience with Indians was limited to the observation of decaying or degraded cultures. The state of anthropology in the 1870's, when Muir formed his own attitudes, had not approached the kind of cultural relativism it has now achieved, so Muir's reading could help him little. One doesn't have to be sentimental about this issue and talk of "noble savages," but only notice with surprise that Muir didn't look seriously at the possibilities of life suggested by Native American Ways. The Old Ways, as Gary Snyder calls them, are not really very old at all, in the context of the natural history of Man. In purely practical terms, even if Muir wanted to introduce a heroic figure of the Indian, he would have faced great difficulty breaking the stereotype which used savage, wild, and degraded as synonymns for Indian. Such language indicated the fear which colored so much of the Victorian attitude toward wilderness, and was part and parcel of the consciousness Muir wanted to change. Yet he experienced fear of Indians himself as he grew up in Wisconsin. If one compares Darwin's portrait of the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego with Muir's portraits of the Sierran Indians, one sees the consequence of this Victorian fear. Both were appalled by the appearance of natives, Darwin to the point of repulsion, and Muir not quite so far. "Perhaps if I knew them better, I should like them better. The worst thing about them is their uncleanness," Muir said in First Summer. For |