The Founding Sachems - New York Times
The Founding Sachems - New York Times
This is a really excellent article about the Iroquois Confederation's Great Law of Peace and its influence on the Constitution. Interaction between Europeans and Native Peoples resulted in the Europeans easing some of their concepts of class and social structure. Natives considered all people equal, and lived in societies organized by consensus among matrilineal groups. Their dislike of centralized power and their equal treatment of women influenced the form of our government as well as the later Women's Suffrage Movement.
It would do us all well to get back to the idea that we are all equal. We've let a Conservative Elite wield far too much power and shift too many resources to the benefit of the very wealthy at the expense of the people. It's time to take our power back.
posted by Morgaine @ 4:10 AM
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1 Comments:
Morgaine, I just love this article! Here are some of my favorite passeges:
"Compared to the despotisms that were the norm in Europe and Asia, the societies encountered by British colonists were a libertarian dream....
"Indians, for their part, were horrified to encounter European social classes, with those on the lower rungs of the hierarchy compelled to defer to those on the upper.
"As many colonists observed, the limited Indian governments reflected levels of personal autonomy unheard of in Europe. "Every man is free," a frontiersman, Robert Rogers, told a disbelieving British audience, referring to Indian villages.
"Not every European admired this democratic spirit. Indians "think every one ought to be left to his own opinion, without being thwarted," the Flemish missionary monk Louis Hennepin wrote in 1683. 'There is nothing so difficult to control as the tribes of America,' a fellow missionary unhappily observed. 'All these barbarians have the law of wild asses - they are born, live, and die in a liberty without restraint; they do not know what is meant by bridle and bit.'
"Because Europeans had to kowtow to their social betters, Lahontan later reported, '[Native Americans] brand us for slaves, and call us miserable souls, whose life is not worth having.'
"INFLUENCED by their proximity to Indians - by being around living, breathing role models of human liberty - European colonists adopted their insubordinate attitudes.
"Historians have been reluctant to acknowledge this contribution to the end of tyranny worldwide. Yet a plain reading of Locke, Hume, Rousseau and Thomas Paine shows that they took many of their illustrations of liberty from native examples."
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