Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1998 15:31:28 -0400 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [PEN-L:928] Re: Re: sell-out Indians and western arrogance Reply-to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Ricardo Duchesne: > >RD: Ok, Craven, if it fits your political goals, let's say N. >American Indians did evolve into a state organized society. Raising an important point here, which I will return to later. For now, bands and tribes were quite democratic in their form of polity, but because there was no "discourse" behind such form they have been portrayed as "unreflective". Even as the Romans entered into Europe, and as feudalism later developed, many pockets of peasant (democratic) communities remained. I wonder if continued presence of these villages, or the memory of them, were an important element in the formation of democratic theory later on. Levellers? In the chapter "The Gift of Democracy," in Jerry Mander's "In the Absence of the Sacred" he makes the case that the Iroquois confederation had a big influence on the authors of the American constitution. The colonists wanted to make sure that a central government did not trample on the rights of individual states. The Iroquois confederation included the Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk, Seneca, Cayuga and Tuscarora nations and stretched from Ontario to Georgia. The Great Law, which was oral, served as its constitution. The anthropologist Lewis Morgan wrote extensively about the Iroquois and Frederic Engels leaned heavily on these writings in the Marxist classic "Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State." Engels thought that the Iroquois were a prime example of a successful classless, egalitarian, noncoercive society. While most leftists are familiar with Engels' respect for Iroquois government, far fewer are aware that people such as Benjamin Franklin held similar views. Citing Donald Grinde's groundbreaking "The Iroquois and the Founding of the American Nation," Mander makes the following point: "Grinde points out that James Madison made frequent forays to study and speak with Iroquois leaders. William Livingston [first governor of New Jersey] was fluent in Mohawk, and stayed with Indians over extended periods. John Adams and his family socialized with Cayuga chiefs on numerous occasions. Thomas Jefferson's personal papers show specific reference to the forms of Iroquois governance, and, says Grinde, 'Benjamin Franklin's work is resplendent with stories about Indians and Indian ideas of personal freedom and structures of government.'" Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
