THE ORIGINS OF THE NATIONAL PARKS

The idea of land owned by the Authority for the benefit of the community has been in the minds of mankind for quite a long time. This is why it is not possible to determine exactly who was the first one to use the term `National Park', and even less who was the first one to imagine the notion of National Park in one of its current aspects.

Fontainebleau

Because the notion is so vague, with such a broad meaning, it is difficult to describe what a National Park is and where it comes from. The French-loving remark of Richard Carrington states that « the very first region of the earth to be set aside as a nature reserve [...] is said to have been the forest of Fontainebleau [...] where legislation was introduced [...] for human instruction and delight 3», but the reality is a bit more complicated. Several ways of dealing with this complexity are possible, but they all start with the same comment : the national parks movement is one aspect of a new approach to man's relationship with his environment, whether it focuses on the utilitarian aspect of nature's conservation or on the `discovered' beauty of nature. A utilitarian point of view Throughout history man has « always tended to misuse and often to destroy4 » his environment. Man's attitude to nature in Antiquity was respect for the Gods of the sun, wind, springtime, harvest, but it also was a quest for `profit' : forests were cleared to grow manioc, corn, wheat, regions were dryed out...

As Richard Carrington recalls in [2], the first attempts to conserve nature were made by sportsmen, aristocratic hunters who obviously didn't want to see the quarry disappear and who therefore protected the environment, necessary to the conservation of the game. From the earliest times, the rich and the famous established game preserves, created to allow the renewed killing of game animals but also incidentally protecting the flora and all the other animals in the region.

During the Middle Ages in Europe the protection of forests became still more widespread, saving hundreds of square miles from `civilization', keeping an unspoiled habitat and closely guarded animals, so the breeding and the supply of quarry could be maintained. And so, assumes Richard Carrington that the « areas set aside as preserves entirely for animals to be killed there were the forerunners of our present national parks 5» The aesthetic point of view The idea that nature carries an intrinsic beauty comes from times out of mind : since the earliest times humans `worshipped' Nature, singing the magnificence of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, writing lyrical poems about Huitzilopochtli, the Aztec god of the war, or contemplating the beauty of a flower as Ronsard did. In the newly colonized world, it wasn't just an idea : as Michael Frome points out, in the settlement of the New World, open squares, greens, and commons were set aside for community purposes 6, introducing a bit of nature to the city to humanize it, « softening its hard edges through nature 7».

Huitzilopochtli

Lake District

But this `urban nature' isn't what poets would call real nature : the first appearance of the concept, according to Charles E. Little, can be traced to 1810 in England, where the poet Wiiliam Wordsworth proposed the idea of « a sort of national property, in which every man has a right and interest who has an eye to perceive and a heart to enjoy8 », concerning the scenic Lake District. This bold concept of a park, a national property - a national park - open to all and not just to a happy few aristocrats made its way to America where George Catlin, in 1829, studying Indians in the Dakota Territory, became aware of the fact that their culture was endangered, and asked for « some great protecting policy of government...in a magnificent park...a nation's park 9» . As we can see, the idea of publicly owned land for the benefit of the majority was in the air. But we have yet to define how it all mixed perfectly in the United States at that particular time. We will study how the new territories to the West contributed to the progression of the idea, and how some religious aspects played an important role in the making of the National Parks.

The Frontier

During the first half of the XIXth century, the States are a quickly evolving, dynamic, expanding society. Immense territories are open to the West, free of humans (almost), filled with natural resources available in large quantities....but also with a natural environment completely new, with endless forests, astonishing mountains, deserts, rivers, animals, birds, serpents... as Thomas Jefferson called it : « Nature's Nation 10». But soon enough (maybe sooner than some would have expected), the continent was conquered, and the frontier had disappeared.

Bryce

Yellowstone

A simple example of this disappearing frontier is the discovering of Yellowstone. It all started with one of the best known expeditions to the `Wild West', the Lewis and Clark expedition, in 1804-1806, that went up to what is now Oregon. John Colter, a soldier attached to the expedition, was given permission to go off on his own, and in 1807 he came upon the Yellowstone region, `alone and afoot', the first white man to do so. He came back to civilization with tales of a smoking valley, of bubbling pools, of giant animals. The following expeditions began making the reputation of `Colter's Hell' as it was called at that time.

The descriptions of this `unordinary hunk of wilderness ¹¹' amazed everybody, but the ways of behaving with Nature were not quite clear : should it be used for commercial benefit, or should it be a non-profit recreation area ? The Hayden survey (a rigorously scientific enterprise) and the Washburn expedition answered these questions around a campfire in Yellowstone on the evening of the 19th of september of 1870. They decided they would campaign Congress to obtain a law protecting the newly surveyed land. Two years later, the American Congress set aside more than 2 million acres as a « public park and pleasuring ground, for the benefit and enjoyment of the people ¹²» : the Frontier had disappeared, but by law a bit of it was protected. This was the effective beginning of the National Park Idea .¹³

The vast and untouched territories are a determinant factor in the making of national parks, but there is something else : we will study (briefly) why the idea of national park germinated more efficiently in the United States.

Protestantism and nature

Banff

A simple fact that can be studied is the country of precedence of the first national parks. The first one to have a distinctive legal status was the Yellowstone Park in 1872. The next one was Banff Park in Canada (1887).In Africa, the national park movement found particular expression, with parks such as the Kruger National Park (1892). The British Commonwealth communities, particularly Canada, India, New Zealand and Australia, all have outstanding parks. One may argue that these countries have in common the immensity of their territories, but in the Far East and Central and South America parks have, in general, been slower to develop.

It is possible that some religious factors could have influenced the creation of the national park idea. The parks have often spread faster in protestant countries, which traditionally are inclined to protect the Lord's creation (nature that is) : as we saw before, the earliest American parks were based almost entirely on the idea that the preservation of natural beauty was a moral duty as opposed to the dominant way of dealing with nature that catholicism promoted : it is a quite frequent idea that « Christianity propagated an arrogant attitude towards the natural environment ¹⁴» : « and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth ¹⁵» . However, Protestantism « saw the mountains and forests as sacred places where mankind might find mystical experiences or moral renewal¹⁴ ».

Copyright Sebastian Perez-Duarte 1997 - homepage

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