Forgotten Founders Quotes
James Adair’s History of the American Indians (1775) “prefers simple Hebraic-savage honesty to complex British civilized corruption.” Indians, wrote Adair, were governed by the “plain and honest law of nature…”:
Their whole constitution breathes nothing but liberty; and when there is equality of
condition, manners and privileges, and a constant familiarity in society, as prevails
in every Indian nation, and through all our British colonies, there glows such a
cheerfulness and warmth of courage in each of their breasts, as cannot be described.
Iroquoian notions of personal liberty also drew exclamations from Colden, who wrote:
The Five Nations have such absolute Notions of Liberty that they allow of no Kind of
Superiority of one over another, and banish all Servitude from their Territories. They
never make any prisoner a slave, but it is customary among them to make a
Compliment of Naturalization into the Five Nations; and, considering how highly
they value themselves above all others, this must be no small compliment…
The writer sought to refute assumptions that Iroquois women were “slaves of their husbands.” “The truth is that Women are treated in a much more respectful manner than in England & that they possess a very superior power; this is to be attributed in a very great measure to their system of Education.” The women, in addition to their political power and control of allocation from the communal stores, acted as communicators of culture between generations. It was they who educated the young.
Wynn R. Reynolds in 1957 examined 258 speeches by Iroquois at treaty councils between 1678 and 1776 and found that the speakers resembled the ancient Greeks in their primary emphasis on ethical proof.
-Forgotten Founders by Bruce E. Johansen
James Adair’s History of the American Indians (1775) “prefers simple Hebraic-savage honesty to complex British civilized corruption.” Indians, wrote Adair, were governed by the “plain and honest law of nature…”:
Their whole constitution breathes nothing but liberty; and when there is equality of
condition, manners and privileges, and a constant familiarity in society, as prevails
in every Indian nation, and through all our British colonies, there glows such a
cheerfulness and warmth of courage in each of their breasts, as cannot be described.
Iroquoian notions of personal liberty also drew exclamations from Colden, who wrote:
The Five Nations have such absolute Notions of Liberty that they allow of no Kind of
Superiority of one over another, and banish all Servitude from their Territories. They
never make any prisoner a slave, but it is customary among them to make a
Compliment of Naturalization into the Five Nations; and, considering how highly
they value themselves above all others, this must be no small compliment…
The writer sought to refute assumptions that Iroquois women were “slaves of their husbands.” “The truth is that Women are treated in a much more respectful manner than in England & that they possess a very superior power; this is to be attributed in a very great measure to their system of Education.” The women, in addition to their political power and control of allocation from the communal stores, acted as communicators of culture between generations. It was they who educated the young.
Wynn R. Reynolds in 1957 examined 258 speeches by Iroquois at treaty councils between 1678 and 1776 and found that the speakers resembled the ancient Greeks in their primary emphasis on ethical proof.
-Forgotten Founders by Bruce E. Johansen
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