Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?
The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason.
I have never used any other, and I trust I never will.
Thomas Paine
Age of Reason
Sundry Christian organizations claim that the U.S. of America were founded
as a Christian nation, and that its constitution is based on Christian
values. Human rights, liberty and democracy likewise are presented as
deriving from Christian values, instituted by leading Christian
personalities. Claims of this sort can be found on pages on the web, which
quote a lot of Christians who have lived Christian lives and, in some way or
other left their mark on history.
Let us therefore take a look at some of the quotes of this kind, let's see
what these people really did and thought, in what way they represented the
values the Constitution is based upon, and let us see how these Christians
represented and propagated Christian values in the New World.
The original contents of one of these Christian pages is here given in brown
italics.
Skip Christian quotes and learn about history.
"A careful look into the past reveals landmarks which were essential in
guiding America along the pathway that led us to where we are today.
More often than not, at each one of these landmarks, there also appears
irrefutable evidence that a sense of divine destiny accompanied the
most important events of our history."
Here are indeed some of these landmarks:
1490-1492 - Columbus' commission was given to set out to find a new
world.
According to Columbus' personal log, his purpose in seeking
undiscovered worlds was to "bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the
heathens. .... It was the Lord who put into my mind ... that it would
be possible to sail from here to the Indies ... I am the most unworthy
sinner, but I have cried out to the Lord for grace and mercy... No one
should fear to undertake any task in the name of our Saviour, if ...
the intention is purely for His holy service." (Columbus' Book of
Prophecies)
Now let's keep in mind Columbus' claim to be the most unworthy sinner, and
bravely take a look in what way exactly he brought the Gospel and His holy
service to the natives:
Prior to his career as a sailor Columbus was a slave trader by profession,
so it can safely be assumed he must have known a lot about liberty and human
dignity. Accordingly, within hours of landfall on the first inhabited island
he encountered in the Caribbean, Columbus seized and carried off six native
people who, he said, "ought to be good servants ...," taken from a
population of "slaves, as many as [the Crown] shall order."
(Is that what he meant with "Holy Service"....?)
Should the Indians object to being converted and subdued, he read to them in
Spanish:
"...with the help of God, we shall ...make war against you in all ways
and manners that we can, and shall subject you to the yoke and
obedience of the Church and of Their Highness. We shall take you and
your wives and your children, and shall make slaves of them..."
(excerpt of the Requerimiento)
Indeed a pinnacle of political liberty! But not enough, on his second voyage
he had refined his methods, so he and his men gave an even superior example
of Christian conduct:
"The Spaniards found pleasure in inventing all kinds of odd cruelties
...They built a long gibbet, long enough for the toes to touch the
ground to prevent strangling, and hanged thirteen [natives] at a time
in honor of Christ Our Saviour and the twelve Apostles... then, straw
was wrapped around their torn bodies and they were burned alive."
[SH72]
Well, let us take a look at the next example of Christian participation in
bringing liberty and humane values to the uncivilized:
April 10, 1606 - The Charter for the Virginia Colony read in part:
"To the glory of His divine Majesty, in propagating of the Christian
religion to such people as yet live in ignorance of the true knowledge
and worship of God."
Again we can take this as an example of how Christians propagated the
superior morals they brought to the ignorant savages. But we must delve into
a little more detail.
Arthur Barlowe, one of the first Christians ever to set foot on Virginia
soil, described the natives he encountered in 1584 as follows:
"...we were entertained with all love and kindness and with as much
bounty, ...as they could possibly devise. We found the people most
gentle loving, and faithfull, void of all guile and treason ... a more
kind and loving people there cannot be found in the world, as farre as
we have hitherto had triall." [SH227]
Indeed it could not be more obvious, the natives were badly in need of
better, Christian morals. Thus it is only natural the Christian welfare
executioners described the way these same Indians were taught the said
better, Christian morals:
"...we burnt, and spoyled their corne, and Towne, all the people beeing
fledde." [SH227]
Again we have seen an impressive example of how Christians contributed to
the enactment of values upon which the U.S. Constitution is based.
Satisfied with our improved knowledge we move to the next instance of the
glorious Christian past (for better understanding the Mayflower Compact
quotation is here inserted in full).
November 3, 1620 - King James I grants the Charter of the Plymouth
council.
"In the hope thereby to advance the enlargement of the Christian
religion, to the glory of God Almighty."
November 11, 1620 - The Pilgrims sign the Mayflower Compact aboard the
Mayflower, in Plymouth harbor.
"In the name of God, Amen. We, whose names are underwritten, the
Loyal Subjects of our dread Sovereign Lord, King James, by the Grace of
God, of England, France and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith, e&.
Having undertaken for the Glory of God, and Advancement of the
Christian Faith, and the Honour of our King and Country, a voyage to
plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia; do by these
presents, solemnly and mutually in the Presence of God and one of
another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil Body
Politick, for our better Ordering and Preservation, and Furtherance of
the Ends aforesaid; And by Virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and
frame, such just and equal Laws, Ordinances, Acts, Constitutions and
Offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and
convenient for the General good of the Colony; unto which we promise
all due submission and obedience.
In Witness whereof we have hereunto subscribed our names at Cape Cod
the eleventh of November, in the Reign of our Sovereign Lord, King
James of England, France and Ireland, the eighteenth, and of Scotland
the fifty-fourth. Anno Domini, 1620."
Good! For the first time we hear about the Constitution, and the Christian
ideals of democracy are obvious even to morons: free and self-determinated
"Loyal Subjects of ...dread Sovereign Lord, King James," promised to devote
themselves to a life of liberty in "due submission and obedience."
It is time to move on to visit the next cornerstone of glorious Christian
"guiding America along the pathway that led us to where we are today."
March 4, 1629 - The first Charter of Massachusetts read in part:
"For the directing, ruling, and disposeing of all other Matters and
Thinges, whereby our said People may be soe religiously, peaceablie,
and civilly governed, as their good life and orderlie Conversacon, maie
wynn and incite the Natives of the Country to the Knowledg and
Obedience of the onlie true God and Savior of Mankinde, and the
Christian Fayth, which in our Royall Intencon, and The Adventurers free
profession, is the principall Ende of the Plantacion.."
This time we will witness the instalment of the important values of human
rights and equality, which later were put "...all men are created equal."
Here we can learn about the methods wherewith the glorious Christian
legislators planned to "wynn and incite the Natives of the Country." We
shall also be surprised what else the founding fathers were "disposeing of."
Let us now see the legal means the Christians of the Massachusetts Bay
Colony enacted only a year later to achieve these goals: In 1630 it was made
illegal to:
"shoot off a gun on any unnecessary occasion except an Indian or a
wolf." [SH241]
Again, we can only wonder at the genius of the Christian founding fathers,
ensuring the equality of all men and peaceful living in one and the same
law.
January 14, 1638 - The towns of Hartford, Weathersfield and Windsor
adopt the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut.
"To mayntayne and presearve the liberty and purity of the Gospell of
our Lord Jesus, which we now professe..."
With warm feelings we commemorate the means by which our forefathers later
on ensured to "mayntayne and presearve the purity of the Gospell of Our Lord
Jesus," namely the Great Hartford Witch Hunts of 1662 [HW].
We can now skip some similar enactments and move on to
April 3, 1644 - The New Haven Colony adopts their charter.
"That the judicial laws of God, as they were delivered by Moses ... be
a rule to all the courts in this jurisdiction ..."
Again the Christian founding fathers had made a wise decision, and four
years later this became the model for the Massachusetts Bay Colony Law of
1648, which likewise adopted the equally wise laws of Moses, namely the
death penalty for witches (Exodus 22:18) and disobedient sons (Deuteronomy
21:18) [BW79]
April 21, 1649 - The Maryland Toleration Act is passed.
"Be it therefor ... enacted ... that no person or persons whatsoever
within this province ... professing to believe in Jesus Christ shall
... henceforth be any ways troubled, molested (or disapproved of) ...
in respect of his or her religion nor in the free exercise thereof ..."
With satisfaction we note that this law made sure any persons not professing
to believe in Christ would henceforth be troubled, molested (or disapproved
of), and restricted in the free exercise of their own religions.
April 25, 1689 - The Great Law of Pennsylvania is passed.
"Whereas the glory of Almighty God and the good of mankind is the
reason and the end of government ... therefore government itself is a
venerable ordinance of God ..."
Here this glorious event may have been due to another Christian's efforts,
who also must be remembered for his remarkable tolerance and helpfulness,
namely the revered Pastor of the Second Church in Boston, devoted and
faithful Cotton Mather.
In a letter he had ensured his support and sympathy for the would-be
Pennsylvania Christians, the Quakers which were led by William Penn:
"September ye 15, 1682,
To ye Aged and Beloved Mr. JOHN HIGGINSON,
There is now at sea a ship called the
Welcome, which has on board an hundred or
more of the heretics and malignants called
"Quakers," with W.Penn, who is the chief
scamp, at the head of them.
The general court has accordingly given
secret orders to Master Malachi Huscott,
of the brig Porpoise, to waylay the said
Penn and his ungodly crew, so that the
Lord may be glorified, and not mocked on
the soil of this new country with the
heathen worship [sic] of these people.
Much spoil can be made by selling the
whole lot to Barbados, where slaves fetch
good prices in rum and sugar.
COTTON MATHER,
American Clergyman."
[MC145]
In passing we marvel at the business acumen of our Christian forefathers,
the foundation of the economical success of later times, and here again we
have a cornerstone of civil liberties.
May 20, 1775 - North Carolina passes the Mecklenburg County
Resolutions.
"We hereby declare ourselves a free and independent people; are, and of
a right ought to be, a sovereign and self-governing association, under
control of no other power than that of our God and the general
government of Congress."
Summer 12, 1775 - Continental Congress issues a call to all citizens to
fast and pray and confess their sin that the Lord might bless the land.
"And it is recommended to Christians of all denominations, to assemble
for public worship, and to abstain from servile labor and recreation on
said day."
Thus the founding fathers had planted the foundation of liberty and freedom
of a free and independent people. The servile labor of all other days was
wisely interrupted by one day of prayer and fasting.
Summer 2-4, 1776 - Declaration of Independence written and signed.
Since we have now arrived at the glorious Declaration of Independence, we
should be satisfied. But somehow there seems to be a number of questions
unanswered. Before we take a look at what exactly happened and follow some
missing links we should look at a few more quotes of famous founding fathers
and Christian statesmen. The following selection should also be considered
worth mentioning.
On the same day, Benjamin Franklin suggested that the national motto
be: "Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God."
We shall meet Benjamin Franklin again in a later paragraph on this page.
At least 50 out of the 55 men who framed the Constitution of the United
States were professing Christians. (M.E. Bradford, A Worthy Company,
Plymouth Rock Foundation., 1982).
This pleasing and agreeable fact was indeed the achievement of other
Christians, who had wisely enacted many centuries of equally Christian laws
in Europe (and the colonies, for that matter), which had made sure being not
a Christian had been a grave danger to one's health, not to mention one's
life.
Eleven of the first 13 States required faith in Jesus Christ and the
Bible as qualification for holding public office.
And here we have again a pinnacle of political and religious freedom:
absolutely weeding out all those not faithful to Jesus Christ and the Bible
from any position of political say.
1833 - Noah Webster:
"The religion which has introduced civil liberty, is the religion of
Christ and his apostles ... This is genuine Christianity, and to this
we owe our free constitutions and government ..."
In passing we wonder why it took Christianity more than one and a half
thousand years to achieve this goal. But yes, we are looking for answers to
this question: to whom we owe the free constitution ...
Before we look for answers let us just note another famous Christian:
Summer 8, 1845 - President Andrew Jackson asserts:
"The Bible is the rock upon which our Republic rests."
To learn what Andrew Jackson meant with these words look here.
In addition to all these quotes proudly exhibited by Christians, some
additional, if less famous quotes may be added here.
George Washington in 1779 instructed his troops on how to deal with the
Iroquois people:
"...lay waste all the settlements around... that the country may not be
merely overrun but destroyed," (and do not) "listen to any overture of
peace before the total ruin of their settlements is effected."
Also in 1779 his General James Clinton wrote about the same natives:
"Bad as these savages are, they never violate the chastity of any
woman,"
and from his remark we also learn something about the conduct of the
Christian soldiers.
Telling the Truth about History
Savages we call them, because their Manners differ from ours,
which we think the Perfection of Civility,
they think the same of theirs.
Benjamin Franklin, 1784
To understand what the state of society ought to be, it is
necessary to have some idea of the natural and primitive state
of man; such as it is at this day among the Indians of North
America. There is not, in that state, any of those spectacles of
human misery which poverty and want present to our eyes in all
the towns and streets in Europe.
Thomas Paine, Agrarian Justice
Finally curious what really lies behind the Christian claims of the
Constitution being founded on Christian values, we bravely lay aside our
prejudices and biases, go right back to Christopher Columbus, and take all
our courage to visit the world he came from, a world that had been deeply
Christian for at least a thousand years.
Let us follow a modern historian's description of the continent Columbus
came from:
"Europe in 1492 was a small affair. The British Isles had only 5
million people, Spain about eight. Political boundaries were
essentially those which had resulted from barbarian migrations after
the fall of Rome. The Franks had settled in France, the Germani in
Germany, the Angles and Saxons in England, the Vandals and Visigoths in
Spain. These patterns have altered remarkably little from the seventh
century to the twentieth, though frequent attempts to alter them have
made the soil of Europe among the most bloodstained on earth.
European secular Government was a tangle of decayed feudal loyalties
and personal ambition. The last proper roads had been built by the
Romans more than a thousand years before. The rapidly growing cities
were unplanned, ramshackle, seething with poverty and disease. If
famine struck a region, the state was quite unable to provide relief.
Life expectancy oscillated between the high teens and low thirties,
lower than in the most deprived nations of today." [WS11f]
In view of the mentioned famines one may add the remarkable observation of
another historian, namely the fact that in average one third of all fertile
lands in the whole of Europe were Church property. [CB55ff]
But let us take a still closer look. As a third historian described:
"The Spain that Christopher Columbus and his crews left behind just
before dawn on August 3, 1492, ... was for most of its people a land of
violence, squalor, treachery, and intolerance. In this respect, Spain
was no different from the rest of Europe.
Epidemic outbreaks of plague and smallpox, along with routine attacks
of measles, influenza, diphteria, typhus, typhoid fever, and more,
frequently swept European cities and towns clean of 10 to 20 percent of
their populations at a single stroke... one historian who has
specialized in the subject, [states, referring to London] 'every
twenty-five or thirty years - sometimes more frequently - the city was
convulsed by a great epidemic...'
Famine, too, was quite common... The slightest fluctuation in food
prices could cause the sudden deaths of additional tens of thousands
who lived on the margins of perpetual hunger. So precarious was the
existence of these multitudes in France that as late as the seventeenth
century each "average" increase in the price of wheat or millet
directly killed a proportion of the French population equal to or
nearly twice the percentage of Americans who died in the Civil War...
Roadside ditches, filled with stagnant water, served as public latrines
in the cities of the fifteenth century, and they would continue to do
so for centuries to follow. So too would other noxious habits and
public health hazards of the time persist on into the future - from the
practice of leaving the decomposing offal of butchered animals to
fester in the streets, to London's "special problem," as historian
Lawrence Stone puts it, of "poor's holes." These were "large, deep,
open pits in which were laid the bodies of the poor, side by side, row
upon row..." As one contemporary, quoted by Stone, delicately observed:
"How noisome the stench is that arises from these holes so stowed with
dead bodies, especially in sultry seasons and after rain."
Along with the stench and repulsive appearance of the openly displayed
dead, human and animal alike, a modern visitor to a European city in
this era would be repelled by the appearance and the vile aromas given
off by the living as well. Most people never bathed, not once in an
entire lifetime. Almost everyone had his or her brush with smallpox and
other deforming diseases that left the survivors partially blinded,
pock-marked, or crippled, while it was the norm for men and women to
"have bad breath from the rotting teeth and constant stomach disorders
which can be documented from many sources, while suppurating ulcers,
eczema, scabs, running sores and other nauseating diseases were
extremely common, and often lasted for years."
Street crime in most cities lurked around every corner... because of
the dismal social conditions and prevailing social values, it was a
place filled with malice and hatred, its only unifying bond being the
occasional episode of mass hysteria, which temporarily bound together
the majority in order to harry and persecute the local witch." Indeed,
as in England, there were towns on the Continent where as many as a
third of the population were accused of witchcraft and where ten out of
every hundred people were executed for it in a single year...
East European children, particularly Romanians, seem to have been
favorites of the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century slave trade... Child
slaves, however, were as expensive as adults, for reasons best left to
the imagination..." [SH59ff]
This then, was the world an ex-trader of African slaves named Christopher
Columbus and his shipmates left behind as they sailed from the city of Palos
in August of 1492, a world which, as stated above, had been under Christian
rule for at least a thousand years.
So we are supposed to believe that from this world came the men who
installed a Constitution of equality, liberty, and democracy - all of which
were, apart from a more or less unsuccessful experiment in Greece two
thousand years before, practically unknown - ?
Let us therefore visit one of the most populous, most magnificent, most
marvellous and beautiful capital cities of the whole world of the time,
which, according to Christian visitors, was more beautiful than Venice or
Seville.
The following description is compiled mainly from accounts given by some of
the first Christians, who visited it less than half a century after
Columbus' landfall:
The Twin Cities of Tenochtitlàn and Tlatelolco, today known as Mexico City.
The two cities grew into one, but each had its own central square,
temples, nobility, and royal palaces. Tenochtitlàn's great plaza,
measuring more than a quarter of a mile on each side, held some eighty
shrines; Tlatelolco's was almost as big, but much of it was taken up by
the marketplace... Beyond the squares were two-story stone palaces of
nobles, priests, and wealthy merchants, then thousands of single-story
houses belonging to artisans, soldiers and farmers. The buildings had
flat roofs and were brightly painted with bold murals... There were
also schools, ateliers, shops with hanging signs, and public
lavatories.
Unlike European cities of the day, Mexico was clean: wastes were hauled
away by barge and composted for fertilizer; a thousand men swept and
washed the streets every day. Refined Aztecs, who bathed daily, found
it advisable to hold flowers to their noses when they met Europeans,
who made a point of being filthy. (Spaniards considered bathing an
infidel Moorish custom; to be too clean was to risk the attentions of
the Spanish Inquisition.)
Most of Mexico's streets were canals... an aquaeduct brought drinking
water from mountain springs, and a long dike kept out briny waters to
the east. [WS20-21]
Quoting one Christian observer, a certain Hernan Cortéz:
"...all these houses have very large and very good rooms and very
pleasing gardens of various sorts of flowers..." [SH5]
and, according to this observer, this was by far the most beautiful city on
earth. Likewise the Christian visitors were astonished by the personal
cleanliness and hygiene of the colorfully dressed populace, and by their
extravagant (to the Christians) use of soaps, deodorants, and breath
sweeteners. [OA127f]
The Mexica [Aztecs] were tolerant of other peoples, such as the Otomí, who
lived among them. These had their own religion, culture, language,
"...tribal hatreds did not seem to exist within the Mexican body politic."
[TC19]
The inhabitants of this proud city, where famines were unknown, have sung
its praise:
"Proudly stands the city of Mexico-Tenochtitlàn,
Here no one fears to die in war...
Keep this in mind, oh, princes...
Who would attack Tenochtitlàn?
Who would shake the foundations of heaven?"
Cantares Mexicanos
Their question would soon be answered. As a consequence of Columbus'
"discovery," less than a century after his voyage the city had been sacked
by Christians, its buildings and beautiful gardens burnt and devastated. The
city's inhabitants, who before Columbus had known only temporary slavery as
a means of judicial correction, were either dead or permanent slaves to a
Church-approved colonial feudal government, or directly to a Church which
burned at the stake any survivors unwilling to be converted to a religion
which even faithful Christians of today could only describe as a hopeless
medley of absurd or revolting superstitions - one has only to think of the
reliquaries, collections of skulls, bones, teeth, or other remains of
so-called saints, enshrined and openly displayed to be worshiped - in any
given Christian Church of the time.
Well, we have visited some filthy cities, and a beautiful one, but so far
have found no answers yet. The questions become more pressing. We have
learned some facts about human dignity, but no root of any democracy has
crossed our path.
Since the U.S. Constitution and democracy was founded in Northern America,
let us now take a look at this continent at the time the first Europeans set
foot on the shore.
Let us try to find an answer to the question how far the Christian invaders
would have come, had they been on their own.
We follow the description given by Edmund S. Morgan, a historian, of the
events occurring in one of the earliest settlements of English Christians,
Roanoke in 1580, which were compiled from the accounts given by the
Christians themselves.
"Wingina [the local chief] welcomed the visitors, and the Indians gave
freely of their supplies to the English, who had lost most of their own
when the Tyger [their ship] grounded. By the time the colonists
settled, it was too late too plant corn [which was unknown in Europe at
the time anyway], and they seem to have been helpless when it came to
living off the land. They did not know the herbs and roots and berries
of the country. They could not or would not catch fish in any quantity,
because they did not know how to make weirs. And when the Indians
showed them, they were slow learners: they were unable even to repair
those that the Indians made for them. Nor did they show any disposition
for agriculture. Hariot admired the yields that the Indians got in
growing maize; but the English, for lack of seed, lack of skill, lack
of will, grew nothing for themselves, even when the new planting season
came round again." [MA39]
(adds another historian:)
"Indeed, Morgan later notes, 'the Indians could have done the English
in simply by deserting them.' [MA40]
They did not desert them, and in that act they sealed their fate.
The same was true throughout the Americas: Indian openness and
generosity were met with European stealth and greed. Ritualized Indian
warfare, in which few people died in battle, was met with the European
belief in devastating holy war. Vast stores of grain and other food
supplies that Indian peoples had lain aside became the fuel that
[later] drove the Europeans forward.
Indians who came to the English settlements with food for the British
(who seemed never able to feed themselves) were captured, accused of
being spies, and executed. Peace treaties were signed with every
intention to violate them: when the Indians 'grow secure uppon the
treatie,' advised the Counsel of State in Virginia, 'we shall have the
better advantage both to surprise them & cutt downe theire Corne.' "
[SH106]
And indeed, most of the plants which feed the world's population of today
were unknown to the Christians of the time: potatoes, corn, maize, beans,
pumpkins, peanuts, sunflowers, tomatoes, paprika, not to mention exquisite
spices such as cocoa, cayenne pepper, chili, vanilla, maple syrup, and many
others, all of which had been cultivated by Native American farmers for
thousands of years.
At least some of the English were able to easily avoid the pains of hunger:
those who had fled the Christian settlements to live among the Indians.
Admiration of Indian ways of living - particularly their peacefulness,
generosity, trustworthyness, and egalitarianism, all of which were
conspicuously absent from the social relations prevalent in England at the
time - led to eloquent praise of Virginia's native people. But if those who
spoke with their pens are sometimes regarded skeptically, those who voted
with their feet cannot be.
It is especially telling that while almost no Indians voluntarily lived
among the colonists, the number of whites who ran off to live with the
natives was a problem often remarked upon. Historian James Axtell has
concluded that the whites who chose to remain among the natives
"...stayed because they found Indian life to possess a strong sense of
community, abundant love, and uncommon integrity - values that the
European colonists also honored... But Indian life was attractive for
other values - for social equality, mobility, adventure, and as two
adult converts acknowledged, 'the most perfect freedom, the ease of
living, [and] the absence of those cares and corroding solicitudes
which so often prevail with us.' " [AI327]
After a century and a half of permanent British settlement in North America,
even Benjamin Franklin joined numerous earlier commentators lamenting that
"...when an Indian child has been brought up among us, taught our
language and habituated to our Customs, yet if he goes to see his
relations and make one Indian Ramble with them, there is no perswading
them ever to return.
[But] when white persons of either sex have been taken prisoners young
by the Indians, and lived a while among them, tho' ransomed by their
Friends, and treated with all imaginable tenderness to prevail with
them to stay among the English, yet in a Short time they become
disgusted with our manner of life, and the care and pains that are
necessary to support it, and take the first good Opportunity of
escaping again into the Woods, from whence there is no reclaiming
them." [AI303]
Since we have now for the first time heard of instances of freedom,
equality, and egalitarianism, not just the words, it is time to take a look
at some of the concepts of Native American political systems in Northern
America.
Perhaps one of the most common associations made with the congregations of
northeastern cultures concerns their sophisticated political systems and
their formal networks of international alliances, such as the Five Nation
Confederacy of the Iroquois League, founded some time between the tenth and
the fifteenth century, long before Columbus, and composed of the independent
Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca peoples. In the early
eighteenth century the Tuscarora were admitted to the League as the Sixth
Nation.
Many writers, both historians and anthropologists, have argued that the
League was a model for the United States Constitution, although some
controversy remains. The debate focuses largely on the extent of Iroquois
influence on Euro-American political thought, however, since no one denies
there was an influence.
As J.N.B.Hewitt of the Smithsonian Institution admitted more than fifty
years ago:
Some of the ideas incorporated in the League of the Five Nations were
far too radical even for the most advanced of the framers of the
American Constitution. Nearly a century and a half would elapse before
the white men could reconcile themselves to woman suffrage, which was
fundamental in the Indian government. They have not yet arrived at the
point of abolishing capital punishment, which the Iroquois had
accomplished by a very simple legal device. And child welfare
legislation, prominent in the Iroquois scheme of things, had to wait
for a century or more before the white men were ready to adopt it.
[TU28f]
But as another historian points out, referring to this quote, to limit the
description of female power among the Iroquois to the achievement of
"woman suffrage," ... is to not even begin to convey the reality of
women's role in Iroquois society. As the Constitution of the Five
Nations firmly declared: "The lineal descent of the people of the Five
Nations shall run in the female line. Women shall be considered the
progenitors of the Nation. They shall own the land and the soil. Men
and women shall follow the status of the mother." [SH29]
Likewise in regard to the education of children early European visitors such
as Jesuit missionaries inevitaby marvelled at the both successful and gentle
methods that were used by the Native parents to guide their children to both
dignity, self-control and prideful independence. The French Jesuit Pierre de
Charlevoix for example traveled through what is now New York, Michigan and
Eastern Canada, and remarked:
[While] "fathers and mothers neglect nothing in order to inspire their
children with certain principles of honour ... they take care always to
communicate their instructions ... in an indirect manner."
Some of the Indians, he added,
"... do begin to chastise their children, but this happens only among
those that are Christians, or such as are settled in the colony..."
But apart from such disturbing exceptions the Indian methods of child
education prevailed, and the results were evident, for example, in a report
on the Huron's councils by Father Jean de Brebeuf during the summer of 1636.
One of the most
"... remarkable things... is their great prudence and moderation of
speech,"
and exactly this was what also had impressed Charlevoix:
"It must be acknowledged, that proceedings are carried on in these
assemblies with a wisdom and a coolness, and a knowledge of affairs,
and I may add generally with a probity, which would have done honour to
the areopagus of Athens, or to the Senate of Rome..." [SH30]
And indeed it was an Iroquois orator named Canasatego, speaking for the
League of now Six Nations of Iroquois peoples who were tired of facing so
many different colonial governments, each disagreeing with one another, who
proposed just such a Union to his white audience at the Treaty of Lancaster
negotiations, Pennsylvania, in the summer of 1744, on July 4, oddly enough.
Frustrated by the bickering commissioners of Virginia, Pennsylvania, and
Maryland, Canasatego said:
We heartily recommend Union and a good agreement between you, our
[English] brethren...
Our wise forefathers established union and amity between the Five
Nations; this has made us formidable; this has given us great weight
and authority with our neighbouring nations.
We are a powerful Confederacy; and, by your observing the same methods
our wise forefathers have taken, you will acquire fresh strength and
power."
Taking notes while Canasatego spoke was Benjamin Franklin, then
thirty-eight, already a printer, writer, yet to become the inventor of the
lightning rod and coauthor of the American Constitution. Franklin used to
publish transcripts of the conferences at which Canasatego and other
Iroquois speakers shone, and thought about the Iroquois example (as did
others at the time), and in 1751 wrote:
"It would be a very strange thing if six nations of ignorant savages
were capable of forming a scheme for such a union, and be able to
execute it in such a manner as that it has subsisted ages, and appears
indissoluble; and yet that a like union should be impracticable for ten
or a dozen english colonies." [WS116]
So it is that some of the characteristic elements of U.S. democracy have no
equivalent in any other European democratic system, the caucus to name but
one example, which is not - as one is inclined to think - Latin, but an
Iroquois (precisely Algonquin) word. [WI137]
And so it is that the eagle on the United States shield is the
Iroquois Eagle, and the bundle of arrows in its grasp originally
numbered not thirteen but five. [NG399]
Suggested further reading:
Jack M. Weatherford, Indian Givers, New York / Crown 1988.
References
[AI]J.Axtell, The Invasion Within, New York 1985.
[BW]A.L.Barstow, Witchcraze, San Francisco 1994
[CB]C.M.Cipolla, Before the Industrial Revolution, London 1981.
[MA]E.S.Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom, New York 1975.
[MC]A.Manhattan, Catholic Imperialism and World Freedom, New York 1972.
[NG]National Geographic Vol.172, No.3, 1987.
See also V.Armstrong, I have spoken: American History Through the Voices of
the
Indians, Chicago 1971.
See also B.Johansen, Native American Societies and the Evolution of
Democracy in
America, 1600-1800, Ethnohistory 37, No.3, 279-290.
[OA]B.R.Ortiz de Montellano, Aztec Medicine, Health, and Nutrition, New
Brunswick
1990.
[SH]D.E.Stannard, American Holocaust. Columbus and the conquest of the New
World,
New York/Oxford 1992.
[TC]H.Thomas, Conquest. Montezuma, Cortés, and the Fall of Old Mexico, New York
1993.
[TU]E.Tooker, The United States Constitution and the Iroquois League,
Ethnohistory,
35, 1988, 305-337.
[WI]J.M.Weatherford, Indian Givers, New York / Crown 1988.
[WS]R.Wright, Stolen Continents. The Indian Story, London 1992.
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