This quote like so many is as near as I can tell simply another example of romanticised revisionism. The white man still puts words in the red mans mouth that is. If it sounds like something that was written by a modern liberal environmentally aware individual, then it probably is....Native Americans have a cachet that many like to trade on...but the reality is they had no conception of environmental degradation and were extremely wasteful. They were simply fortunate in that the primitive living conditions they lived under kept their populations small enough that the environment could succesfully sustain them. You often hear the saying that native americans used every part of any animal they killed, the simple truth is that they HAD a use for every part of an animal, this does not translate into needing those specific parts each time they killed an animal....records of early settlers clearly show the Indians were quite profligate in their use of resources. Excavations have revealed buffalo slaughters by Native Americans where they ran so many buffalo over a cliff they literally could only harvest the meat from the top side of the ones on top, leaving hundreds to simply rot. Nice bonus for the scavenger animals but hardly sound wildlife management. The point being with their low population numbers it wasnt necessary to conserve in the same way we must, and they certainly wouldnt have sat around worrying about it because they did not live under conditions in which that potential was realized as a possibility.