France would not be the first country to enter a new region under the assumption that the indigenous population must be at some low level of culture and in need of introduction to the enlightened civilization of the invaders. In particular, the French were determined to introduce their notions of an all-powerful God and an all-powerful king who set rules for how people must live to the indigenous peoples they encountered in New France—the Americans. In their book, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, David Graeber and David Wengrow provide a delightful account of this clash of cultures and point out that it was the French who would be reconsidering their notions of how to live.
“We will examine early missionary and travel accounts from New France—especially the Great Lakes region—since these were the accounts Rousseau himself was most familiar with, to get a sense of what its indigenous inhabitants did actually think of French society, and how they came to think of their own societies differently as a result. We will argue that indigenous Americans did indeed develop a very strong critical view of their invaders’ institutions: a view which focused first on these institutions’ lack of freedom, and only later, as they became more familiar with European social arrangements, on equality.
“One of the reasons that missionary and travel literature became so popular in Europe was precisely because it exposed its readers to this kind of criticism, along with providing a sense of social possibility: the knowledge that familiar ways were not the only ways, since—as these books showed—there were clearly societies in existence that did things very differently. We will suggest there is a reason why so many key Enlightenment thinkers insisted that their ideals of individual liberty and political equality were inspired by Native American sources and examples. Because it was true.”
There is good documentation about this interaction because the Jesuit missionaries supplemented random travel reports with detailed records of their interaction with the Americans. The authors claim “seventy-one volumes of missionary field reports” as available reference material. What was most striking to the French was the Americans’ concept of liberty. Consider this description from a missionary in 1642.
“They imagine that they ought by right of birth, to enjoy the liberty of wild ass colts, rendering no homage to anyone whomsoever, except when they like. They have reproached me a hundred times because we fear our Captains, while they laugh at and make sport of theirs. All the authority of their chief is in his tongue’s end; for he is powerful in so far as he is eloquent; and, even if he kills himself talking and haranguing, he will not be obeyed unless he pleases the Savages.”
This view was certainly foreign to a Jesuit missionary and any French citizen. Both state and church had established rigid hierarchies defining who could tell who what they had to do. Trying to convince an American that his life would be better if he gave up his liberty and subjected himself to some otherworldly power was frustrating.
“…scandalized missionaries frequently reported that American women were considered to have full control over their own bodies, and that therefore unmarried women had sexual liberty and married women could divorce at will. This, for the Jesuits, was an outrage. Such sinful conduct, they believed, was just the extension of a more general principle of freedom, rooted in natural dispositions, which they saw as inherently pernicious. ‘The wicked liberty of the savages’, one insisted, was the single greatest impediment to their ‘submitting to the yoke of the law of God’. Even finding terms to translate concepts like ‘lord’, ‘commandment’ or ‘obedience’ into indigenous languages was extremely difficult; explaining the underlying theological concepts, well-nigh impossible.”
A system whereby each individual had the liberty to go one’s own way unless that person could be convinced to do otherwise by negotiation was recognized as working rather well for the Americans. It forced missionaries and French administrators to ponder how such an approach could possibly function in a Christian kingdom.
One interesting aspect of the American societies was that having to negotiate for agreement on any particular issue developed a citizenry of capable speakers: people adept at making compelling arguments. They were generally seen as more intelligent than the typical French person. The authors report on the findings of Brother Gabriel Sagard.
“Sagard was surprised and impressed by his hosts’ eloquence and powers of reasoned argument, skills honed by near-daily public discussions of communal affairs; his hosts, in contrast, when they did get to see a group of Frenchmen gathered together, often remarked on the way they seemed to be constantly scrambling over each other and cutting each other off in conversation, employing weak arguments, and overall (or so the subtext seemed to be) not showing themselves to be particularly bright.”
This unpleasant behavior by the French was seen as an extension of their basic selfishness. The traditions of the Americans called for hospitality for all and a sharing of any wealth that might accumulate.
“People who tried to grab the stage, denying others the means to present their arguments, were acting in much the same way as those who grabbed the material means of subsistence and refused to share it; it is hard to avoid the impression that Americans saw the French as existing in a kind of Hobbesian state of ‘war of all against all’.”
The Americans also exhibited a different sense of justice which only added to the fascination Europeans would experience at learning of their ways. Consider the comments of Father Lallemant on his dealings with the Wendat (Hurons) from 1644.
“I do not believe there is any people on earth freer than they, and less able to allow the subjugation of their wills to any power whatever—so much so that Fathers here have no control over their children, or Captains over their subjects, or the Laws of the country over any of them, except insofar as each is pleased to submit to them. There is no punishment that is inflicted on the guilty, and no criminal who is not sure that his life and property are in no danger…”
“After expanding on how scandalous it was that even murderers should get off scot-free, the good Father did admit that, when considered as a means of keeping the peace, the Wendat system of justice was not ineffective. Actually, it worked surprisingly well. Rather than punish culprits, the Wendat insisted the culprit’s entire lineage or clan pay compensation. This made it everyone’s responsibility to keep their kindred under control. ‘It is not the guilty who suffer the penalty,’ Lallemant explains, but rather ‘the public that must make amends for the offences of individuals.’ If a Huron had killed an Algonquin or another Huron, the whole country assembled to agree the number of gifts due to the grieving relatives, ‘to stay the vengeance they might take’.”
It is important to note that the Jesuits recording their troubling encounters with native Americans were the intellectuals of that era; they were the best educated and the most trained in “classical rhetoric and techniques of disputation.” Yet they had met their match with people who they considered savages.
“How could such rhetorical facility have come to those with no awareness of the works of Varro and Quintillian? In considering the matter, the Jesuits almost always noted the openness with which public affairs were conducted. So, Father Le Jeune, Superior of the Jesuits in Canada in the 1630s: ‘There are almost none of them incapable of conversing or reasoning very well, and in good terms, on matters within their knowledge. The councils, held almost every day in the Villages, and on almost all matters, improve their capacity for talking.’ Or, in Lallemant’s words: ‘I can say in truth that, as regards intelligence, they are in nowise inferior to Europeans and to those who dwell in France. I would never have believed that, without instruction, nature could have supplied a most ready and vigorous eloquence, which I have admired in many Hurons; or more clear-sightedness in public affairs, or a more discreet management in things to which they are accustomed.’ Some Jesuits went further, remarking—not without a trace of frustration—that New World savages seemed rather cleverer overall than the people they were used to dealing with at home (e.g. ‘they nearly all show more intelligence in their business, speeches, courtesies, intercourse, tricks, and subtleties, than do the shrewdest citizens and merchants in France’).”
The French intelligentsia of the seventeenth century believed that society and its actions were controlled by the laws of the Christian God and that the Church and the king who ruled in collusion with God had the right and the need to inflict punishment on that society in order to ensure that the laws would be followed. Yet, they encountered those they considered savages who were their intellectual equals, and who believed they had developed the better society where individuals lived in greater freedom and had more satisfaction with their mode of existence. And they had the nerve to criticize the French and other Europeans for their foolish way of living.
The Jesuits surely had some troubling times pondering this period, but they were not likely to lose their faith over it. It would be a different matter almost a century later when the spirit of The Enlightenment swept through France and Europe and the foundations of society were being questioned.
“In the years between 1703 and 1751…the indigenous American critique of European society had an enormous impact on European thought. What began as widespread expressions of outrage and distaste by Americans (when first exposed to European mores) eventually evolved, through a thousand conversations, conducted in dozens of languages from Portuguese to Russian, into an argument about the nature of authority, decency, social responsibility and, above all, freedom. As it became clear to French observers that most indigenous Americans saw individual autonomy and freedom of action as consummate values—organizing their own lives in such a way as to minimize any possibility of one human being becoming subordinated to the will of another, and hence viewing French society as essentially one of fractious slaves—they reacted in a variety of ways.”
“Some like the Jesuits, condemned the principle of freedom outright…In fact, the indigenous critique of European institutions was seen as so powerful that anyone objecting to existing intellectual and social arrangements would tend to deploy it as a weapon of choice: a game, as we’ve seen, played by pretty much every one of the great Enlightenment philosophers.”
These philosophizers were taking on a mighty task: undermining the power of both the Church and the kings that created and enforced the laws.
“Above all, though, all these appeals to the wisdom of ‘savages’ were still ways of challenging the arrogance of received authority: that medieval certainty which maintained that the judgements of the Church and the establishment it upheld, having embraced the correct version of Christianity, were necessarily superior to those of anyone else on earth.”
The philosophers had words at their disposal; the powers that be had salvation or hellfire, police, armies, and money at their disposal. A backlash to the indigenous critique would create a history of the world in which the indigenous Americans were deemed irrelevant to inevitable progress based on increasingly sophisticated technology. Complex societies would always require hierarchical organization with orders streaming down from the top. The status quo would be protected.
“Portraying history as a story of material progress, that framework recast indigenous critics as innocent children of nature, whose views on freedom were a mere side effect of their uncultivated way of life and could not possibly offer a serious challenge to contemporary social thought (which came increasingly to mean just European thought).”
“As a result, the same portrayers of world history who profess themselves as believers in freedom, democracy and women’s rights continue to treat historical epochs of relative freedom, democracy and women’s rights as so many ‘dark ages’.”
This story of the native Americans and their critique should convey to us the notion that the way we live today, essentially the way we have lived for centuries, is not the only way a functional society can be constructed. The authors continuously raise the question as to why essentially all human societies have managed to get stuck in the same rut. After many thousands of years of social experimentation why have we fallen into our current mode—our current trap if you prefer. The Wendat told the French that they possessed more things than them, but they exceeded the French in “ease, comfort and time.” Can we really claim that our society has provided us with increasing ease, comfort, and time—or are those things disappearing. The authors relish reminding us that for most, we submit ourselves to indentured servitude, if not outright slavery, at least eight hours per day and for at least five days a week—yet we claim to be living in the land of the free. We claim to live in a democracy, but our only influence on society comes when about half of us have the energy or knowledge to cast a vote. And on those occasions, only about half of that half have taken the time to try and understand what they are voting for. For many, the motivation is merely “What’s in it for me.” Would the indigenous critique change any if the Wendat encountered our twenty-first century society?
John Maynard Keynes predicted that we would one day, not
far off, have enough wealth that we could work little and spend more time
enjoying “the good life.” Keynes was
correct. That time came, but then it
went on with wealth continuing to accumulate.
Meanwhile, we are left with neither the time nor the knowledge to even consider
what a good life might entail. Should
the time ever present itself, thoughts toward gaining ease, comfort, and time
might be a good starting point.
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