Indian Givers: How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World

In Chapter 8 Weatherford argues that the US political landscape was inspired by the abstract concept of liberty presented by the Indians as well as their very structures of governing. While many of the Founding Fathers had direct knowledge of Indian governance in some capacity, Benjamin Franklin was the greatest proponent of adopting Indian practices directly.

The League of the Iroquois, established sometime between AD 1000 and 1450, united the five primary Indian nations by assembling sachems, or delegates, in a council (136). This council made all major political decisions for the tribes and served as a model for the US federal system, which unites several states under one government (137).

The restrictions placed on sachems are closely mirrored in those set for US government officials. Charles Thomson, secretary of the Continental Congress, noted specifically that the sachem of each tribe comes to power by election, and that anyone naturalized as an Indian was eligible for office. The Kaianerekowa, the Iroquoian “constitution,” prohibited sachems from declaring war; the United States adopted this separation of civilian and military powers. A sachem who acted inappropriately could also be impeached, unlike European monarchs, who held their positions for life (138).

Iroquoian practices also had a broader impact on American political norms. In the early 18th century the League of the Iroquois admitted the Tuscarora as a sixth member of the nation, which presaged the US decision to admit new states rather than maintain colonies, unlike other imperial powers (139). Even details of the ways US politics are conducted seem potentially influenced by the Iroquois, including the taboo of using personal names in congressional sessions and the practice of speaking one at a time during assembly (unlike the Brits) (140).

While native chiefs had a ceremonial and spiritual function, ethnological research has showed many tribes in North, South, and Central America, including the Zuni in the Southwest and the Aztecs in Central America, functioned in a similar manner to the League of the Iroquois: tribes were ruled in some part by assembly (143). Even “caucus,” which sounds very Latin, is an Indian word from the Algonquin language (144).

American society, however, attributes its democracy to classical models, particularly those of the Greeks (145). This was especially true in the American South, where the Greek “cult” lead to general emulation of the Greek philosophical ideal of the “good life”—though, as Weatherford points out, there is irony in seeing oneself as a bastion of democracy in a slave society (146-47). It was on the western frontier, not in the eastern city centers, that true democratic reform and progress was made. There, women’s right to vote was first innovated, as was the separation of the right to vote from property ownership. According to Weatherford, it’s no coincidence that these innovators were the Americans in most prolonged contact with the Indians (148).

Chapter 9 focuses on the influence 19th-century Indian campaigns of resistance had on 20th-century liberation movements. Weatherford contends that these revolts have been overlooked as “‘uprisings,’ as though the Indians were much too primitive to have a high degree of social consciousness” (160), when in fact they were sophisticated political movements.

Weatherford’s primary example is the Creek Red Sticks revolt. For 300 years the Creek assimilated peacefully with their colonizers. Then in the 1770s Creek leader Alexander McGillivray sought sovereignty for his people through shrewd diplomacy. Two of his nephews, however, formed the more reactionary group, the Red Sticks, who advocated for a complete rejection of European culture and a return to traditional Creek ways of life (156). The band accepted any white or black person who shared their ideals; it was this union of Indians and black slaves that frightened white settlers the most (157).

On August 30, 1813, a Red Sticks band attacked anti-Creek forces at Fort Mims. In response Andrew Jackson led a ruthless war against the Creek Nation, culminating in stripping the Creek of their territories with the 1814 Treaty of Fort Jackson. As president Jackson pushed through the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which forced the Creeks and other tribes from their ancestral lands to “Indian Territory,” detention camps, or slavery along the Trail of Tears (159). While the Red Sticks revolt was crushed, it inspired other important 19th-century pan-Indian alliances, including the Ghost Dance movement and the rise of the Yaquis in Mexico (159).

German communist and philosopher Karl Marx recognized the significance of these movements. From his notebooks his collaborator Frederick Engels linked the Iroquoian lack of property and social class with the ideals of communism, though in its concentration on materiality the movement soon lost its connection with the Indians (162).

In 1911 Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa led “the greatest uprising of Indians ever” in Mexico. The movement sought not to replace one capitalist leader with another but to “destroy the cruel and oppressive system of dictators and the white oligarchy that kept the Indians enslaved” (163). Zapata’s movement was unique not as a proletariat revolution but a peasant one; rather than a rise of the working class, it was a rise of the very poor. Weatherford identifies the failure of these movements as the Indians’ lack of education and means to take over their respective governments to enact permanent change (167). Despite the losses, he ends on a somewhat optimistic note:

“In the United States, after centuries of losing on the battlefield and being shunned by the courts and government, the Indians started to win their cases in court and found a legal base upon which to protect some of their rights” (172).