I'm going to focus on one answer that relates to a post of Doug for now.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Erik Reuter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Killer Bs Discussion" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Saturday, July 19, 2003 6:25 PM Subject: Re: Morality is just self interest? > On Sat, Jul 19, 2003 at 04:49:49PM -0500, Dan Minette wrote: > > This was clearly in the best interest of the Iroquois, but not the > > slaughtered tribes, nor humanity in general. Yet, it was a perfectly > > rational act, if you assume the Iroquois acted in the self interest of > > their own tribe. > Until they got slaughtered in turn by a stronger "tribe". Not so > rational, after all. Perhaps if they had cooperated with the other > tribes, they (collectively) would have been much stronger when the > Europeans arrived, and could have negotiated a peace from a position of > strength. Well that's an interesting hypothesis. I realize that history cannot be tested experimentally, but I do not consider it meaningless. So, it is important to me to realize that they were strong when the Europeans arrived. Indeed, amazingly they were able to maintain their strength, as the first nation of the six nations, for over 100 years (from before 1650 to the Revolutionary War). This was in spite of the ravaging of their nation by disease imported by the Europeans. Part of this is attributed, to the "adoption" of some of their slaves, to keep their numbers up in the face of disease. Some slaves became junior members of the tribe. It was found that slaves with no home tribe were especially ameanable to such identity changes...which reiforced the massacre of tribes from which they had slaves. They were well known and received a measure of respect from the Europeans. Indeed, one of the documents studied before the writing of the US constitution was the Iriquois constitution. They were fairly unique in how they were treated as "players" by the Europeans. I can think of no other example of Native Americans in North America retaining a reasonable amount of power with respect to the Europeans for so long. If you wish to remark that this is just a function of my poor memory, then I'd invite you to show a counter example. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
