I’ve written before about my functional new word Enlightendigenous. In that post I shared what I learned about the evidence for the philosophy and practice of indigenous people in North America influencing and inspiring Europeans into what became called the Enlightenment.
Europe at the time had little to no democracy or social mobility. Your status at birth—that is, the status of your parents—determined your place and role for life with rare exception. People lived under a dominance hierarchy based on access to resources like arable land enforced by a system of justice and military.
Meanwhile, on the east coast of North America, there were no river valleys like Mesopotamia or the Nile to precipitate dominance hierarchy on that scale so people practiced local politics. They learned the social and emotional skills of leadership that Europeans didn’t because they didn’t have to. The state enforced orders given by people of higher rank to those of lower rank.
I found a wonderful 2007 article in the Penn Gazette by two sisters and lawyers, Susan and Cynthia Feathers, on one path through which North American indigenous thinking and practice inspired Enlightenment development through Benjamin Franklin and his peers: Franklin and the Iroquois Foundations of the Constitution.
(The Pennsylvania Gazette is the University of Pennsylvania’s alumni magazine. Penn was founded by Benjamin Franklin and I was a graduate student there for the first three semesters of my PhD in physics. I also grew up in Philadelphia.)
I recommend reading the whole article, but I’ll tease you with the start:
In 1744, envoys from Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia met in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, with delegates, or sachems, of the Six Nations of the Iroquois Indians. During the discussions, the Iroquois leader Canassatego advocated the federal union of the American colonies, exhorting the colonists:
Our wise forefathers established a union and amity between the [original] Five Nations. This has made us formidable. This has given us great weight and authority with our neighboring Nations. We are a powerful Confederacy and by your observing the same methods our wise forefathers have taken you will acquire much strength and power; therefore, whatever befalls you, do not fall out with one another.
When an Indian interpreter and old friend of Benjamin Franklin’s brought him the official transcript of the proceedings, Franklin immediately published the account.
Seven years later, he wrote a letter to James Parker, his New York City printing partner, on the importance of gaining and preserving the friendship of the Iroquois Indians. Arguing for a union of the colonies, he mused:
It would be a very strange Thing, if six Nations of Ignorant Savages should be capable of forming a Scheme for such an 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, to whom it is more necessary, and must be more advantageous; and who cannot be supposed to want an equal Understanding of their Interests.
To clarify, the “ignorant savage” line isn’t insulting them. He’s saying something closer to “it’s so easy even a child could do it.”
Anyway, the rest of the article recounts how Franklin transmitted a centuries-old successful practice from North America to
the colonists
then revolutionaries
then drafters of the Declaration of Independence
then founders of the first and arguable most successful representative democracy in history
then drafters of its Constitution
The Declaration derives clear inspiration from the indigenous North Americans.
So does the confederation that preceded the Constitution. Quoting the article, for example,
In 1775, treaty commissioners from the Continental Congress met with the chiefs of the Six Nations “to inform you of the advice that was given about thirty years ago, by your wise forefathers.” While independence was debated by the Continental Congress, the visiting Iroquois chiefs were formally invited to attend.
So does the Constitution. Again quoting the article:
In 1787, John Rutledge, a member of the Constitutional Convention and chair of the drafting committee, used the structure of the Iroquois Confederacy as support for the proposition that political power comes from “we, the people,” an idea later expressed in the preamble to the Constitution.
Numerous scholars believe that the Albany Plan was a landmark on the road that led to the Continental Congresses, the Articles of Confederation, and the United States Constitution.
So did the people who created those documents. Another quote:
In 1988, the 100th U.S. Congress passed a concurrent resolution acknowledging the contribution of the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy to the development of the U.S. government.
As usual, when I find one source, I can’t help seeking others.
I found some other articles on the topic. I confess I’m posting this post before reading them all the way through:
