[MD] On Indian Values (Part I?)

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Arlo previously]
I believe Pirsig's (and William Sidis') argument was not that the actual 
phrase "all men are created equal" came from the Indians, but the value of 
this belief. Europeans formalized it, but the premise came from the Indian.

[Scott]
Then they're wrong. {rest snipped}

[Arlo]
You may be right. I'm not a historian, nor an expert on this. I do know 
Pirsig had said, "Jean Jacques Rousseau, who is sometimes given credit for 
this doctrine, certainly didn't get it from the history of Europe or Asia 
or Africa. He got it from the impact of the New World upon Europe and from 
contemplation of one particular kind of individual who lived in the New 
World, the person he called the "Noble Savage."". Perhaps Pirsig would say 
that while for the Indians "social equality" was a way of life, for the 
Europeans, it had emerged only recently, whether through internal evolution 
or cultural conflict with the Indian.

You also mention the Iroquois Confederacy's contribution to American 
democratic government (although, I should mention that recently SA has 
reminded me that America is not a true democracy, but a Republic. Just for 
point of fact.), and I applaud that. This is another Indian contribution 
that is often neglected, or actively attacked, usually out of the need to 
base all that is Right and Good on the white, European founders. As Pirsig 
does point out, "This clash, Phaedrus thought, explained why others hadn't 
seen long before what he had seen at the peyote meeting. When you borrow 
traits and attitudes from a hostile culture you don't give them credit for 
it. If you tell a white from Alabama that his Southern accent is derived 
from Negro speech he is likely to deny and resent it, although the 
geographical congruity of the Southern accent with areas of huge black 
population makes this pretty obvious. Similarly if you tell a Montana white 
living near a reservation that he resembles an Indian he may take it as an 
insult. And if you'd said it a hundred years ago you might have had a real 
fight on your hands. Then Indians were fiends from hell! The only good one 
was a dead one."

[Scott]
One cultural difference was that by the 19th century, Indians were still 
torturing their captives "for the hell of it" (as the whites saw it -- for 
the Indians it was more of a social ritual, a test of bravery), while the 
whites saw this as barbaric. Of course, whites all come out of cultures 
that practiced all sorts of barbarities, but by the 19th century had begun 
to see such stuff *as* barbaric. So when a white got captured, they would 
scream and beg for mercy -- something an Indian wouldn't do -- and so the 
Indian saw the white as inferior, and vice versa. A culture clash, in 
short, which we now mark against the Indians of that time, while marking 
other things (like "plain-speaking") in their favor.

[Arlo]
Interesting thoughts, I never thought about the torture difference. 
Although, I would point out that while our soldiers may not have 
systematically "tortured" Indians during the Indian wars, I do know that 
little value was placed on their lives. Indeed, the rounding up and death 
marches for Eastern Tribes, not to mention the pox blankets used to wage 
biological war, don't really conform to the notion of the heroic, brave 
noble white warrior (not that this is what you were implying). And, of 
course, *I* find the practice of cutting out the tongues of children who 
refused to speak English when forced into "white parish schools" to be most 
barbaric, and quite torturous. Although, admittedly, cutting out their 
tongues was a last resort, they scalded them with hot water first.

So, I think barbarism has many faces, and while torture was one the Indians 
may have worn, there are others that may have been worn by the whites.

So your points are well taken. I was not setting out the glorify-vilify 
here, obviously many values of the Europeans I find of high value hence I 
am not living like an 1800's American Indian. And, obviously, my post was 
aimed at combatting the nonsensical dribble of the Party Jesters, because I 
do feel that this "conflict", as Pirsig calls it, is a core issue in the 
American cultural crisis, and the Party Line Preachers (left and right) 
give us no resolution, only a seemingly absolutist choice. Pirsig, I 
believe, saw the hybridity of the Victorian-Indian value patterns as a 
chance for something better to emerge, a synthesis or an assimilation (as 
he calls it). Others want to push us back to one or the other, with one 
representing Good and the other representing "evil". Orwell, as I said, 
evidences one possible synthesis of the Victorian-Indian values that 
shatters the absolutist dichotomy of the Party Jesters.

Finally, I am glad you see the Newspeak issue as one being waged from both 
sides in our little American political war. I'm pretty confident, that 
apart from the Wihio Party Jesters, most do see this.

Arlo

PS: That the whites saw the Indian as "barbaric" led me to this passage, 
quoted at length.

"To the early Calvinists and to ourselves too this debasement of the word 
[grace] seems outrageous, but it becomes understandable when one sees that 
within the Victorian pattern of values society was God. As Edith Wharton 
said, Victorians feared scandal worse than they feared disease. They had 
lost their faith in the religious values of their ancestors and put their 
faith in society instead. It was only by wearing the corset of society that 
on oneself from lapsing back into a condition of evil. Formalism and 
prudery were as to suppress evil by denying it a place in one's "higher" 
thoughts, and for the Victorian, higher spiritually meant higher socially. 
There was no distinction between the two. "God is a gentleman through and 
through, and in all probability, Episcopal too." To be a gentleman was as 
close as you would ever get, while on earth, to God.

All this explains why Victorian robber barons in America aped European 
aristocracy in ways that seem so ludicrous to us today. It explains why it 
was so fashionable for Victorian nabobs to pay large sums to be included in 
biographies of "distinguished citizens." It explains why Victorians so 
despised the frontier part of the American personality and went to 
ridiculous extremes to conceal it. They wanted to strike it from their 
history, conceal it in every way possible.

It explains why the Victorians were so vehement in their loathing of 
Indians. The statement, "The only good Indian is a dead Indian," was a 
Victorian statement. The idea of extermination of all Indians was not 
common before the nineteenth century. Victorians wanted to destroy 
"inferior" societies because inferior societies were a form of evil. 
Colonialism, which before that time was an economic opportunity, became 
with Victorians a moral course, a "white man's burden" to spread their 
social patterns and thus virtue throughout the world."

Just something else to think about...