The theories about Atlantis were a lot more realistic, and this might well be a lost Atlantean colony. But the humans had died out. And the nearest thing that had developed from the monkey line to replace them was the creechie—a meter tall and covered with green fur.
The creechies are a vital element to the story and not just for the purposes of the literal narrative storytelling. The novel as a whole is most assuredly allegorical and its publication date (1972) more than hints at what the underlying story of invaders and colonization may be about. One needs only think of what was the single most divisive issue of the day in the United States in the years before this date.
Creechies all looked alike.
Davidson is, well, to put in the best frame possible: malevolently evil. He is a misogynist with a profound hatred toward women and as expressed in this simple thought, he is pungently racist. The racism toward those who are different yet essentially the same is another expression of the allegorical nature of the novel. Davidson is a representative of the military’s need to dehumanize an enemy in order to allow the less psychopathic among soldiers to kill without feeling. The racism is here directed toward enemies that directly contradict one’s own appearance: creechies to an American soldier might be Nigerian, Ecuadoran or even Vietnamese. Essential to mass extermination is engendering a belief that if they all look alike they must all be alike.
“We do not employ slaves, sir. Some of the natives serve a useful role in our community. The Voluntary Autochthonous Labor Corps is a part of all but the temporary camps here. We have very limited personnel to accomplish our tasks here and we need workers and use all we can get, but on any kind of basis that could be called a slavery basis, certainly not."
The Colonel is spouting typical military doublespeak, of course. Replace “Labor Corps” with “Labor Camps” and the entire name makes absolutely no sense. Who ever heard of a “voluntary” labor camp? A voluntary labor corps, however, well that’s an entirely different sort of deal. Sentient beings that don’t resemble colonizers, racist attitudes and enslavement of segments of the native population. Ah, this must be an allegory of the Nazis and World War II, right? Except that World War II did not take place in the years just before the publication date. Not every military atrocity committed during the 20th century took place in Germany by the Nazis. But those that did not usually mandated being discussed in allegorical terms which helps to blunt the criticism both from the author and toward the author.
"Sometimes a god comes. He brings a new way to do a thing, or a new thing to be done. A new kind of singing, or a new kind of death. He brings this across the bridge between the dream-time and the world-time. When he has done this, it is done. You cannot take things that exist in the world and try to drive them back into the dream, to hold them inside the dream with walls and pretenses. That is insanity."
The term “god” in this context comes with a broad and expansive connotation. Gods are not always supernatural beings, but merely those with greater firepower and ability to rule. And, sometimes, holding a much different sort of morality than those they expect to look up to them. Selver is really speaking here less of gods than of colonizers and when colonizers are expelled by the natives or choose to leave on their own account for whatever reason, the change enacted never goes with them entirely. What Selver is speaking about specifically here in this case as something which now exists and can never go back is that alternative sense of morality: the natives know how to kill each other without reason.
