I read something today that caused me to reexamine my feelings about Native American exceptionalism. At least as far as I, and many people I know idealize them. It’s been easy for me to romanticize their culture as if they are the one example of how a society can be inherantly fair and egalitarian. A reverance for the Earth. Never taking more than they needed. No modern sense of ownership of land. If you take something out of necessity, you give something of equal value or meaning in return. Leaving my larger opinions of them aside, and back to what I read today….
I was given a book as a gift by my Mother 5 or 6 years ago. It’s title is Stolen Continents, The Americas Through Indian Eyes Since 1492 by Ronald Wright. I’ve already read this book. It’s not much different from many others that I have. It documents the discovery and near annihilation of indigenous American peoples. In rereading a section of this book today about the Iroquois I came upon a passage about an attempted forced ban on abortion within the Iroquois Confederacy in the late 18th century.
In 1799 the Iroquois found themselves decimated. After successive wars, the French and Indian War and the American Revolution, disease, and continual encroachment by the British, Americans and to a lesser degree, the French, what once was the most populous and organized tribe of the east found itself numbering about 4000. Handsome Lake, who had fallen victim to alcoholism and been bed ridden for several years, began to have visions. According to the book, his life had mirrored the decline of his people. He became an alcolholic soon after his ancestral lands along the Genesee river in New York were taken by whites and he was forced to live on the Allegheny Reservation. Although an alcoholic and destitute, he came from the royal lineage of the Turtle Clan. Half brother of Cornplanter and uncle to Red Jacket. The visions, as told in Gawasowaneh’s (Arthur Parker) translation:
“Then said the beings, addressing me, ‘He who created the world at the beginning employed us to come to earth. Our visit now is not the only one we have made…..
‘Do not allow anyone to say that you have had great fortune in being able to rise again. The favor of the four beings is not alone for you, and the Creator is willing to help all mankind…
‘We will uncover the evil upon the earth and show how men spoil the laws the Great Ruler has made…
‘Four words tell a great story of wrong, and the Creator is sad because of the trouble they bring, so go and tell your people.
‘The first word is One’ga (alcohol). It seems that you never have known that this word stands for a great and monstrous evil and has reared a high mound of bones'”.
The other evil words that Handsome Lake speaks of contain the reference to abortion that caught my attention. They are, Withcraft, Black Magic and Abortion. According to the author, “the ban on abortion was timely. Many pre-Columbian peoples had practiced birth control and abortion to keep their numbers in balance with the land. But in 1800, with only 4000 Iroquois left on earth and women aborting from despair, it had to be stopped”.
Okay, this is what caught me. I can’t say that I was shocked. Not for a people facing what to them must have felt like impending extinction. More than anything I’m curious what you all think about it. Remember too that the Iroquois are a matrilineal society. The women decide upon and appoint the leaders. As the authour alludes to, abortion was more a practical thing. Nature can only support so many in any given environment. Too many people and the resources cannot support them. But faced with imminenet destruction, needing to reconstitute the tribe, abortion was seen, I’m assuming, as self defeating.
I’m still thinking about all this. It just gave me much to think about, and as usual, I’m very interested in what you all think.
Peace
Update [2006-12-3 17:35:18 by supersoling]:links
Stolen Continents
South Dakota Abortion Rights
Fire Thunder Impeachment and the Rights of Women
of ProgressiveHistorians, a community site dedicated to the intersection of history and politics, I would be honored if you would cross-post this excellent diary there.
As the proprietor of my own skull I think it’s time for some Preparation H because it helps shrink the swelling :o) This is the second time in two days that I got this same reply from you. Not complainin’ though!
that I have to use a fairly standard form response for diaries.
But you should take it as a compliment. It means I like your stuff!
It’s cool. Didn’t mean to sound unappreciative at all.
I’m flattered really.
Now cross posted at Progressive Historians
Please forgive me for geeking out on you, but Battlestar Galactica tackled this same issue in the episode The Captain’s Hand.
Positive Liberty sums it up:
Women’s lives, imho, are the basic building block of a society. If you exploit them, by forcing them to give birth, for example, you’re sowing the seeds of a cultures destruction, yet one can see why a people already destroyed might panic in this way. The real solution, of course, is to be so supportive of families and mothers, not to force women to become mothers.
I agree with Thunder Hawk:
It is a very personal choice and none of us knows the circumstance that would color that choice. I have no idea whether I personally could or would have had an abortion. It was not anything I was ever faced with. But I do have the good sense to know that it is not for me to judge what any other’s choice might be.
I can understand the admonition of many particular groups of people needing and wanting to increase their numbers and thus not viewing abortion favorably. The Jews did it to increase their numbers, the early Christians did it to increase their numbers, the Mormon’s did it to increase their numbers. . .etc. etc.
It doesn’t mean that I agree with their decisions or their pompous presentations that “God” said so. As humans here on this planet we have free will to choose how we do everything. I am not in favor of rules and restrictions of individual’s free will choices.
Hugs
Shirl
Thanks Shirl,
I’m not in favor of rules to individual choices either. And I’m not sure what I was trying to get at with this diary. I thought maybe though that what I see as our general support of the plight of the Indigenous peoples of America could be used as a way to examine, for better or worse, how many of us might justify it, in their (the Iroquois) situation, or stick to our modern view that resistance to abortion is an attempt to subjugate women. Even that explains more than what I set out to learn from this diary. It was a question that struck ma as a bit of a contradiction. And I’m trying to communicate my confusion by asking for your opinion.
The “so-called” justifications for abortion bans, murder, genocide, torture, subjugation, enslavement, theft, abuse, humiliation and any of a long list of despicable acts often seem “reasonable” and perhaps even logical to those looking for a justification. The problem is, any act that takes rights and responsibilities away from another is a desecration of that person’s sovereign right to be. Whereas we might find such justifications informing as to the “why” of it, it is at the deepest level immoral and UNjustified. Putting lipstick on a pig doesn’t make her a Grand Dame, she is still a pig with lipstick on, and no offense intended towards pigs.
The choices of laws and rules that we make collectively are things that, in principle, we agree upon. . .or the majority of us agree upon. So then, we have an agreement that we believe these rules will help us as a society, a group, to live together more harmoniously. As an angel told me once, “The laws are for the lawless.” If and when humans ever rise up and accept responsibility for their own behavior and the consequences of that behavior, then we may begin to see that truly integrity requires us to live in such a way as to honor each person by loving them as we love ourselves and treating them with the respect and care we wish to have for ourselves.
There is a story of an African tribe that has this method of dealing with seriously unacceptable behavior by any member: All of the tribe come together in a circle around the offender. For the next days (as long as it can take) they take turns focusing on and telling out loud all of the good things about that offending person, from the minute to the obvious. It continues on hour after hour, day after day. I don’t think I have to spell out to any of you what effect this has on the offender. He or she has nothing to justify or defend themselves against, all they are hearing is their better behavior, their best points, their justification for being a useful, loved and contributing member of the tribe. This is all it takes. The offender gets the message and understands the failings of his/her offensive behavior.
Unfortunately, we have “civilized” ourselves out of this type of truth. We punish, we take revenge, we hate. . .so that is what we get more and more of and encourage in others.
The laws of the universe are simple and they always work. Whatever we focus on we get more of. The law of attraction. We really need to choose wisely what we focus on.
For me personally, I think a great deal of what our native ancestors lived by were truly enlightened and wonderful ways of living. They were not “perfect” and they had things that could certainly be improved upon. Yet, in my view, they did a better job of it over all than most any of us “non-native” groups have done over these thousands of years. It’s a journey, and so far we haven’t journeyed very well.
Hugs
Shirl
The Chinese have attempted to control explosive population growth by limiting couples to one child. Perhaps one day they will have to address the opposite problem, as did the Iroquois. Either way, it’s a little unsettling.
There’s no doubt that indigenous populations were and are decimated but I have to agree with some other posts that it remains up to the women to decide. Maybe bringing up children in the midst of the devastation of a culture is not a good idea, maybe adoption from related peoples or the outside is better if it’s just a matter of numbers. We are not factories geared up for production.
And what if a certain culture is NOT decimated but wants to uphold some status quo that is no longer viable? I’ve heard the panic about the Japanese population drop as well as in some European countries, all of them crowded and cramped places. Why not just provide decent pensions for the elders and gear down instead of expecting future generations to continue business as usual?
Thanks for this great reply soup. Many indigenous groups would often assimilate members of other tribes as a way to mitigate losses through war and disease. The Iroquois did this on a larger scale with the Huron. But as white’s encroachment intensified all tribes were paying the price and there were fewer and fewer numbers to draw from.
The author notes that during this period women were aborting out of despair. As you say, it wasn’t a good idea to bring up children amidst the devastation of their culture.
I was just interested to know you all’s opinions about this since it could be understood on a survival level why they might ban abortion even as we understand in our time that you cannot treat a woman as a machine or a tool or a vessel.
in the context of a death spiral.
It was not a way out of the death spiral.
He should have known that.
MitMP calls it panic. MitMP is right.
Great diary. I have just one small quibble. You start off with: “Native American exceptionalism. At least as far as I, and many people I know idealize them. It’s been easy for me to romanticize their culture as if they are the one example of how a society can be inherantly fair and egalitarian. A reverance for the Earth. Never taking more than they needed. No modern sense of ownership of land. If you take something out of necessity, you give something of equal value or meaning in return.”
I’m far from an expert on American Indians, but I inherited a whole shelf of books on the subject from my late brother, and I’ve spent some time with them. There was a really fantastic diversity of Indian cultures in North America, at least 500 different nations, and they were all over the map in culture. Some followed the virtues you mention. Others were very different! Some were war, slavery and torture cultures that preyed mercilessly upon more pacific groups. It can be argued that the diversity among Native Americans was much broader than the diversity among “Europeans.” So it’s not a good idea to paint with such a broad brush.
I agree.
I suppose I was speaking about the 20th century idealizazation of native Ameircan culture. It’s been put upon a pedestal. Bottom line, they were human. This particular Iroquois issue aside, yes, they represented a very diverse culture across their habitat. All the ugly practices that define humankind were represented within these diverse cultures. War, and it’s glorification being the main.
Thanks
The closest the US has come to idealization is perhaps a handful of movies (such as Dances with Wolves, which certainly was a romanticization).
For the first two thirds of the 20th century the common depiction of native Americans–shown in hundreds of movies–is that they were suitable for being slaughtered.
The movement for reparations, even the movement for ordinary justice, has barely got a start.
Instead we have casinos–which I suspect in many cases will prove to be a new form of destruction.
Be that as it may, “idealization” or “romantization” is pretty much restricted to that minority of Americans that finds something lacking in our own way of life and is wondering somewhat vaguely if someone else has managed things better. The yearning produces a sort of blindeness which, in its extreme, is almost a reversal of the reflexive hatred which is the American norm.
I write as someone who has spent enough time in the American “heartland” to last a lifetime–or more. I am now mostly surrounded by people who are more inclined to idealize. To me, this is preferable. But it is also a special situation, and a minority one.
Arminius, this is an excellent point. There really is no such thing as an Indian or Native American from the point of view of the indigenous people of North and South America. There are Lakota, Iroquois, Pequot, Cheyenne, etc. The symbols “Indian” and “Negro” are European inventions and actually are the invention of the very idea of race, which is a political not a biological construct.
If we are to understand any people and any society we first have to start with their self-understanding. This doesn’t mean that we have to accept it unconditionally and not make any judgements about it, but we can only start with that self-understanding.
And according to Handsome Lake in 1799, one of “The People”, of which most North American peoples called themselves, there were 4 things that kept his people fromm overcoming the white onslaught, One of which was abortion. This is the questiion I’mn asking: your opinion.
Yikes! Spell much supersoling? :o)
This is a very thought provoking and unsettling diary.
I, too, tend to romanticize the Indian tribes. Here in Santa Fe I see the ongoing legacy of the treatment of the Indians and I also see the beauty of their culture. I tend to feel very guilty about it and have bought way more Indian art and “art” than I have the need or budget for.
Yet for all the wonderful traits of Indians, they, like all other human beings, had flaws in their systems of governing and dealing with other groups. One culture around here is the Anasazi, called so by other tribes, and roughly translated as “the hated ones.”
As far as forcing women to give birth against their will, it is just wrong as far as I’m concerned.
Your diary also brings up the idea of continuation of a tribe — in this case at the price of women’s autonomy. I know I’m in the minority, and I don’t know how to express this well, but I really don’t get the idea of tribal identity (any kind of tribe) as being of overriding importance. John Lennon’s “Imagine” comes to mind. What would the world be like if we stopped dividing ourselves into categories and focused on our commonalities?
Hmmmm. I don’t know what you have been reading about balance with nature but I guessing none of it actually came from natural science or natural history.
Human arrival on this continent was a disaster associated with mass extinctions. The happy-natural-Indian is just the modern version of the “noble savage” and is as inane as it ever was.
Humans are a disaster. Technologically naive humans are not morally different from technologically advanced humans.
* Humans arrived in large numbers in North America roughly 12,500 years ago-and sites revealing the butchering of mammoths, mastodons and extinct buffalo are well documented throughout the continent. The demise of the bulk of the La Brea tar pit Pleistocene fauna coincided with our arrival.
—yep, happy hairy natives ACTUALLY HUMAN with same flaws as white people. Amazing. One would have to be some kind of person who believes morality is related to race to think otherwise —–
* The Caribbean lost several of its larger species when humans arrived some 8000 years ago.
* Extinction struck elements of the Australian megafauna much earlier-when humans arrived some 40,000 years ago. Madagascar-something of an anomaly, as humans only arrived there two thousand years ago-also fits the pattern well: the larger species (elephant birds, a species of hippo, plus larger lemurs) rapidly disappeared soon after humans arrived.