国立公園の起源 : 国立公園の創設を導いた画家G. Catlin

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It is not well-known that a painter advocated the idea of a `Nation's Park' in 1832 and his vision resulted in the concept and foundation of national parks as we know them today. The first person generally credited now with conceptualizing a "national park" was George Catlin (1796-1872), a self-taught artist who traveled extensively among the native peoples of North America while sketching and painting portraits, landscapes, and scenes from daily Indian life. On a trip to the Dakotas in 1832, he worried about the impact of America's westward expansion on Indian civilization, wildlife, and wilderness. They might be preserved, he wrote, "by some great protecting policy of government . . . in a magnificent park . . . . A nation's park, containing man and beast, in all the wild and freshness of their nature's beauty!" Hidden in the shadow of the more famous John Muir, the "Father of American National Parks", George Catlin has not been highly regarded, but his original idea of a national park is the source of conservation of wilderness together with the idea of lifestyle and culture being fostered and developed in the arms of Mother Nature. The national parks embody a radical idea, as uniquely American as the Declaration of Independence, born in the United States nearly a century after its conception. It is a truly democratic idea that the magnificent natural wonders of the land should be available not to a privileged few, but to everyone.
2010-10-20