Democracy’s indigenous origins in the Americas

April 17, 2021 5:42 AM

"One could make a case that some of the very earliest Enlightenment salons were held not in Europe but in Montreal, during the 1690s. It was there that an indigenous statesman called Kandiaronk, acting as liaison between the Wendat (“Huron”) confederation and the regime of Louis XIV, sat down regularly with the French governor-general, the comte de Frontenac et de Palluau, and his deputies—including a certain Baron de Lahontan—to debate issues such as economic morality, law, sexual mores, and revealed religion."

Kandiaronk was widely hailed by French observers as the most brilliant logician and wittiest debater anyone had ever met (one slightly irritated Jesuit wrote, “No one has perhaps ever exceeded him in mental capacity”), and a book based on notes from these debates later became a best seller across Europe.

Published in 1703, Lahontan’s Curious Dialogues with a Savage of Good Sense Who Has Traveled inspired, among other things, a long-running theatrical production. Almost every major Enlightenment thinker came up with their own variant on it, featuring a foreign observer (usually Native American but sometimes Polynesian, Persian, or Chinese) who picks apart the absurdities of French society and typically apes Kandiaronk’s signature style of skeptical rationalism, his piece-by-piece dissection of Christian doctrine, advocacy of sexual freedom, and his insistence that all the social ills of Europe are ultimately rooted in inequalities of wealth. Conservative thinkers would later place blame for the violent excesses of the French Revolution directly at the feet of The Jesuit Relations and texts such as those of Lahontan, which they claimed first introduced such infectious ideas into a stable, hierarchical social order.

Over time the terms of this debate have veered to the other extreme. These days any attempt to suggest Europeans learned anything at all of moral or social value from Native people is met with mild derision and accusations of indulging in “noble savage tropes” or occasionally almost hysterical condemnation.

In The Myth of the Stupid Savage, Graeber and Wengrow argue that "what really drove the conversation [about human rights and equality in Europe], much more than the kind of legal theories from which it started, was they started actually talking to people in the New World, and those conversations had a huge impact on Europe." They argue that we have failed to see the impact because we believe that only Europeans could've thought up sophisticated critiques of their own societies:

Any statement or opinion attributed to a non-western person can be written off as a "noble savage" trope: "They didn't really say that." So you don't have to think about what they might have actually been thinking or saying. These people were basically suck puppets. So when Montesquieu or Lahontan or somebody writes a dialogue with a savage what they're actually doing is supposedly having a dialogue with themselves but avoiding going to prison by putting it into the mouths of a savage (so-called) person they have invented. It's an incredibly patronizing point of view.

And it's fascinating that that is absolutely assumed by everyone with the exception of scholars who are themselves Native Americans, who say well, no, actually a lot of these arguments are the kind of arguments people like that would have made...

If you look at what actually happened in the French Enlightenment... it's absolutely clear what's going on. You can reconstruct the whole thing, because starting in the 1600s you have these Jesuits writing reports from what's now Quebec which are incredibly popular. The Jesuit Relations are 112 volumes [and] everybody bought them... One of the things which was always in there, and which attracted the most attention, were the critiques by Indigenous people of French and European society.

Graeber and Wengrow go on to argue that the great variety of Indigenous political structures in the Americas - from egalitarian to slave-holding - were shaped by the same sophisticated political reflection and comparison which have shaped political structures in all human societies. The European encounter with some of those reflections (the Jesuit Relations were printed starting in 1632) was one of the sparks which lit the Enlightenment.

In There Never Was a West – Or, Democracy Emerges From the Spaces In Between, Graeber talks about the debate around the impact which the Iroquois had on the Constitution of the United States:

That Iroquois federal institutions might have had some influence on the US constitution was considered a completely unremarkable notion, when it was occasionally proposed in the nineteenth century. When it was proposed again in the 1980s it set off a political maelstrom. Many Native Americans strongly endorsed the idea, Congress passed a bill acknowledging it, and all sorts of right-wing commentators immediately pounced on it as an example of the worst sort of political correctness. At the same time, though, the argument met immediate and quite virulent opposition both from most professional historians considered authorities on the constitution and from anthropological experts on the Iroquois.

The actual debate ended up turning almost entirely on whether one could prove a direct relation between Iroquois institutions and the thinking of the framers of the constitution. Payne (1999), for example, noted that some New England colonists were discussing federal schemes before they were even aware of the League’s existence; in a larger sense, they argued that proponents of the “influence theory” had essentially cooked the books by picking out every existing passage in the writings of colonial politicians that praised Iroquoian institutions, while ignoring hundreds of texts in which those same politicians denounced the Iroquois, and Indians in general, as ignorant murdering savages. Their opponents, they said, left the reader with the impression that explicit, textual proof of an Iroquoian influence on the constitution existed, and this was simply not the case. Even the Indians present at constitutional conventions appear to have been there to state grievances, not to offer advice. Invariably, when colonial politicians discussed the origins of their ideas, they looked to Classical, Biblical, or European examples: the book of Judges, the Achaean League, the Swiss Confederacy, the United Provinces of the Netherlands.

Proponents of the influence theory, in turn, replied that this kind of linear thinking was simplistic: no one was claiming the Six Nations were the only or even primary model for American federalism, just one of many elements that went into the mix—and considering that it was the only functioning example of a federal system of which the colonists had any direct experience, to insist it had no influence whatever was simply bizarre.

Previously: The Untold Story of The Iroquois Influence On Early Feminists

posted by clawsoon (12 comments total)

Two things that stick out to me so far as I read through the article:
I like the author describing Hume and Smith as people "whom Plato would no doubt have considered barely civilized descendants of Celtic savages."
Nice and succinct.
More on topic, though, is a part you quote above:
"...debate issues such as economic morality, law, sexual mores, and revealed religion."
I suspect the "debates" between Koandiaronk and the invaders from overseas had the same power dynamic as the "debates" held between Jews and Christians around the time of the Inquisition.
I'll keep reading... It's a great read so far.
posted by Flight Hardware, do not touch at 5:56 AM on April 17, 2021

I see a problem here. My admittedly brief readings suggest that Lahontan's "Savage" was as much a literary device for Lahontan's own critique of religion (in particular) and natural law. Susan Pinette writes:

Lahontan refers here to Kondiaronk, one of the main chiefs of the Huron-Petuns of Michilimachinack (Havard 199). This reference to “The Muskrat” functions, however, as a truth claim, not as a sign of mimetic representation. To begin with, Kondiaronk died in 1701 at the age of fifty. Publishing in 1703, Lahontan says that Adario is 35 years old. More importantly, Kondiaronk, unlike Adario, never went to France. Yet Adario's overseas experience is what lends authority to his numerous reflections and criticisms.

Others have pointed out that Lahontan chose to give his Indian a fictional name, Adario, after a character in a popular opera by Rameau. (Zima, the daughter of an Amerindian chief, rejects her Spanish and French suitors to live with an Amerindian, a Huron, named Adario.)

While this doesn't negate the idea of native influence on Europeans, it should be clear that these are not direct quotes and the Europeans could easily be putting their words in the mouths of "natives" for their own purposes.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 7:17 AM on April 17, 2021 [2 favorites]

Flight Hardware, do not touch: I suspect the "debates" between Koandiaronk and the invaders from overseas had the same power dynamic as the "debates" held between Jews and Christians around the time of the Inquisition.

I'm not an expert by any means, but the impression I've formed is that a number of northeastern First Nations remained independent and formidable throughout the 1600s, despite European diseases and missionary efforts. It wasn't like the collapse of the Aztec and Inca empires, in part because what the Europeans wanted (furs versus gold) created different dynamics. By 1700, though, a Huron like Koandiaronk may have had the kind of relationship with Europeans that you're talking about, in part because of the defeat of the Huron by the Iroquois. Sounds like he at least pissed off the Jesuits with his arguments, which suggests he wasn't cowed.

I've also formed an impression (based mostly on Northern Enterprise: Five Centuries of Canadian Business) that when the French dominated the early Canadian economy they were mostly interested in trade and alliance with the First Nations, and it wasn't until the British took over that the relationship took a turn to being primarily about settlement and domination. The French just couldn't convince very many settlers to come over, so the big money for them was alliances with First Nations which brought in furs.

This summary no doubt dramatically simplifies the situation which actually existed.
posted by clawsoon at 7:50 AM on April 17, 2021 [9 favorites]

CheeseDigestsAll: My admittedly brief readings suggest that Lahontan's "Savage" was as much a literary device for Lahontan's own critique of religion (in particular) and natural law.

Graeber takes on this idea in La sagesse de Kandiaronk : la critique indigène, le mythe du progrès et la naissance de la Gauche. Here is Google's translation:

Most of the existing literature on Lahontan's work simply assumes that the dialogues are made up, and the arguments attributed to 'Adario' (the name given to Kandiaronk in the Dialogues) simply the opinions of Lahontan himself. In a way, this is not surprising. Adario not only claims to have visited France, but he expresses opinions on everything from monastic politics to legal affairs. In the debate on religion, he often sounds like a deist, embracing exactly the kind of rational skepticism that was becoming popular in more daring intellectual circles in Europe, including Lahontan himself, at the time. It is also true that the style of the dialogues seems to be partly inspired by the Greek satirist Lucien of Samosata...

It is only very recently that indigenous scholars returned to the subject in light of what we know about Kandiaronk himself, and came to very different conclusions. The real Adario was, in fact, famous not only for his eloquence, but also for participating in debates with Europeans, as Lahontan's book indicated. As Barbara Alice Mann notes:

Despite the almost unanimous refrain of Western scholars who insist that the dialogues are 'imaginary', there are good reasons to accept them as genuine. First of all, those closest to the historic Kandiaronk were uniformly in awe of his oratorical skills ... Everywhere he went, his contemporaries begged him to speak to the delight of listeners to hear him. His mind was legendary...

Moreover, everything suggests that Kandiaronk had visited France; at least we know that the Wendat Confederacy sent an ambassador to Louis XIV's court in 1691, and Kandiaronk's office at the time was chairman of the board, which would have made him the logical person to send. While the intimate knowledge of European affairs and the understanding of European psychology attributed to Adario may seem implausible, it must be borne in mind that Kandiaronk was a man engaged in political negotiations with Europeans for years and that he surrounded them. regularly by anticipating their logic, interests, blind spots and reactions.

It's interesting that the first volume of the Jesuit Relations were printed in 1632, and Wikipedia dates the first glimmer of the Age of Enlightenment to 1637. It would take a lot of digging through the libraries of Enlightenment thinkers to see who had copies and what notes they made in the margins to fully trace the impact. Intriguing idea in any event.
posted by clawsoon at 8:08 AM on April 17, 2021 [10 favorites]

Here's the full Barbara Alice Mann reference: Are you delusional? Kandiaronk on Christianity
posted by clawsoon at 8:14 AM on April 17, 2021 [2 favorites]

Almost every major Enlightenment thinker came up with their own variant on [Lahontan's 1703 text], featuring a foreign observer (usually Native American but sometimes Polynesian, Persian, or Chinese) who picks apart the absurdities of French society

I think what's meant here are texts like Montesqieu's Persian Letters (1721), Graffigny's Letters from a Peruvian Woman (1747) or Goldsmith's The Citizen of the World, (1760-1761) etc., and I don't doubt Lahontan figures into that genealogy influentially, but it's also worth mentioning the wildly popular Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy (various authors, 1684-1697). I think it's probably an overstatement to say Montesquieu or Graffigny were simply writing variations of Lahontan's text when Turkish Spy (not to mention Amazonlide) remained such a big deal, continuing to inspire for example Defoe's Continuation of Turkish Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy in Paris (1718) and having a place too in the much larger trend kicked off by Galland's translation of Les mille et une nuits (1704-1717), where European authors made up stories also purportedly from Asian sources, e.g. "contes turcs," "contes indiens," and "contes tartares / contes chinois" among others. Again, I think it's great to find and trace a Native American source in the overall picture of Enlightenment thinkers picking apart the absurdities of French society via inspiration/appropriation--makes total sense, even if a lot else was going on at the same time.
posted by Wobbuffet at 9:11 AM on April 17, 2021 [6 favorites]

related:
Forgotten Founders, Bruce E. Johansen (1982)
The Great Law of Peace, "Iroquois" Confederacy (c. 1100?) (three sources of many)
posted by 20 year lurk at 10:01 AM on April 17, 2021 [2 favorites]

From the Barbara Alice Mann article:

In a high temper over Kandiaronk's ploy [which Kandiaronk pulled off after Dennonville had double-crossed him], Denonville issued orders for him to be hanged in 1689, but Kandiaronk dared him to try and even journeyed to Montreal to make it easier for Denonville to accomplish his execution. The staring contest was on, but Denonville blinked, and Kandiaronk won, as he did every other round with Denonville.

Sounds like he was fully capable of holding his own in an extremely difficult situation, squeezed between the French and the Iroquois.
posted by clawsoon at 11:34 AM on April 17, 2021 [1 favorite]

I have no doubt that Kandiaronk was highly intelligent, learned, and witty. But given Lahontan's use of a fictional name and that even Graeber admits the dialogs were "enhanced and embellished," it's difficult to know how to parse which of Adario's words truly being to Kandiaronk (I assume that many, in fact, do) and which fall to Lahontan.

Also, placing him in France while he was running a war with both the Iroquois and the other Huron faction is speculative.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 12:27 PM on April 17, 2021 [5 favorites]

I suspect the "debates" between Koandiaronk and the invaders from overseas had the same power dynamic as the "debates" held between Jews and Christians around the time of the Inquisition.

The French allied themselves with the Huron, who they saw as an advanced trading nation, so that dynamic did not happen between the two. The French also supported the Huron in their conflicts against the Haudenosaunee/Iroquois. But contact with the French and other Europeans did devastate Huron society through smallpox and other diseases, unfortunately.
posted by Apocryphon at 4:57 PM on April 17, 2021 [3 favorites]

This bit from Barbara Alice Mann puts a different spin on the French relationship with First Nations than I've seen before:

Louis XIV added ominously that he looked forward to receiving prisoners of war, having need of fresh blood "in his Galleys," i.e. he intended to use League prisoners as galley slaves.

posted by clawsoon at 3:57 AM on April 23, 2021

Maybe relevant to this thread: Nicole Eustace (LitHub, 4/29/2021): "One of the Most Important American Documents You’ve Never Heard Of: Colonial Lessons in Civility from the Five Nations of the Haudenosaunee." It's a brief excerpt from the introduction to this new book: Covered with Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America. The Amazon preview actually has more of the content than LitHub. The author is a history prof at NYU.
posted by Wobbuffet at 8:14 AM on April 29, 2021