Paul Alper writes:
Early this July Fourth morning I was listening to NPR’s Morning Edition do its annual Declaration of Independence reading; deep into the reading of grievances against the King of England I suddenly heard the unsettling phrase, “merciless Indian savages”:
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
I [Alper] have never been a fan of Jefferson but how is it I have never heard the above sentence to cement my dislike and suspicion of him? I go back far enough in time to remember the common phrase, “the only good Indian is a dead Indian” and the use of the term “Indian giver.” I even know that my favorite radio program of my youth, The Lone Ranger, was initially criticized because Tonto was portrayed positively—well only somewhat positively because “Me go um store” was the best he could do with the English language. Yet, I had not known about Jefferson’s blatant screed.
Anglos like us are deaf and blind to how easily the dominant culture can exclude and condemn those on the economic bottom who look different from us. The Declaration of Independence may be sacred to the overtly patriotic but they ought to be conscious of how it might be viewed by others.
Given that this sentence from the Declaration of Independence is dreadful, what to do? Erase it? Put an asterisk on it? Make it the focus of discussion? Ask Native Americans for suggestions? I look forward to your blog participants views.
I dunno. It doesn’t seem right to erase the above passage. Better to be aware of such racism rather than to hide it, right?
We can find objectionable quotes from just about any historical figure, so the existence of the quote should not be taken as a reason to dismiss the whole document. But I agree there’s something wrong with saying it with a straight face.
Hey Paul, I’ve heard people refer to the individuals who sawed Judea Pearl’s son’s head off as “unforgiving Takfiri barbarians”. Should I have screamed “racism” at this “blatant screed”? Or was it ok for me think good people getting their heads sawed of was infinitely worse that forbidden words ever could be, and that anyone who thinks otherwise needs to loosen their corset and/or otherwise grow the hell up?
Laplace:
I think your point is that racist murder is worse then racist writing. And I agree with that. Nonetheless, I would feel uncomfortable reading aloud a reference to “merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions,” without some explanation of where it came from. After all, the European invaders and settlers of America were pretty notorious for slaughtering Indians all over the place. I guess I’d need to know more of the context. If Jefferson described European-Americans as “merciless and proud of it” or somesuch, then I guess it wouldn’t be so bad for him to characterize American Indians in the same way.
Did 18th century Europeans typically slaughter women & children when they fought other Europeans?
The pejorative reference makes sense when you want to justify the slaughter by degrading the opponent as not worthy of the same rules as the rest of “our kind”
“Did 18th century Europeans typically slaughter women & children when they fought other Europeans?”
“Egorger nos fils et nos compagnes” (from La Marseillaise) suggests that they did, or at least were labeled as doing so.
Generally speaking, military action in 18th Century Europe was about defeating enemy armies and occupying land. Since one of the points of occupying territory was to make it an exploitable part of your own country (or maybe trade it for some other valuable territory later on during the peace negotiations), slaughtering the inhabitants would have been counterproductive. There were legal doctrines and policies which tried to protect civilians from arbitrary looting and attacks, though of course there were violations of this, most especially by irregular forces.
In North America, things were a bit different: there were plenty of back-and-forth massacres of civilians (iincluding women and children), including those during Pontiac’s War in the 1760s.
Thanks. European war had evolved a set of rules and conventions that parties played by more or less.
The problem in America was that the opponents had no history of engagement to evolve any such rules and hence both parties engaged in grossly inhuman behavior.
Andrew, have you considered taking down this comment since you know Judea sometimes reads the blog?
+1.
+\infty, the callousness of the phrasing here is disturbing. Perhaps the author might consider re-writing it to make the intellectual point without the imagery.
> Better to be aware of such racism rather than to hide it, right?
Absolutely. We need to know where we came from. I also think that it’s important to be able to consider someone’s public actions separately from their personal characteristics. We shouldn’t write off someone’s public achievements because they have personal beliefs which we find offensive. (That stated, I think it’s reasonable to reassess whether someone’s public actions were what we interpreted them to be if we learn something new about the person which seems inconsistent with our understanding of their public behavior.) Conversely, we should hesitate to label people as heroes.
Is it right to judge historical quotations or people by the standards of our current times?
Perhaps, we need to do nothing. No asterisks, no deletions.
Rahul:
I agree that it should be possible to be aware of Jefferson’s racism without judging him. At the same time, I’d have difficulty reading that quote aloud without wanting to contextualize it in some way. It’s not about me feeling superior to Thomas Jefferson; it’s about understanding how such a statement, which in retrospect is so ridiculous, could’ve seemed to make sense at the time.
Should we even call it “racism” though? “Racism” as a word is decidedly pejorative. But back in those days could we even have expected Jefferson to know better?
If Jefferson was “racist”, which of his peers should we point to as not-racist? It is like being guilty of an offence due to a retrospective law.
Rahul:
I see your point. “Merciless Indian savages” sure sounds racist to me, but perhaps it makes sense to consider the phrase as racist without necessarily characterizing the person who uses the phrase as racist.
Even the phrase itself is not racist when read in the historical context.
e.g. “Atoms are absolutely indivisible parts of matter” would be a phrase amazingly enlightened for 1820 but abjectly ignorant today.
I’d like to know more about the historical context, in particular relevant to the immediate context of the quote in question — “[The King of England] … has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers,”. This brings up the possibility that Jefferson might have been engaging in nasty name-calling (which also happens even on this blog!) because the King was against what he stood for, and the King was bringing in the Native tribes as his allies.
In particular, how close were the alliances between the British and the Native tribes then? My understanding is that by the War of 1812, the alliance was very strong (e.g., the battle of Queenston Heights — the Canadian perspective, as expressed at http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/battle-of-queenston-heights/, might provide a good counterpoint for those brought up solely with the American perspective.) Was the alliance also strong at the time of the Declaration of Independence?
“Was the alliance also strong at the time of the Declaration of Independence?”
There was no “THE alliance.” Different tribes allied with British and American sides in the Revolution, just as different tribes allied with French and Anglo-Colonial sides in the four “French & Indian” wars.
And military action between Europeans and Native Americans often had a genocidal component on both sides. I’m sure that the Native Americans had equally harsh things to say about European savagery during the American Revolution.
Well let’s parse the offending phrase, “merciless Indian savages”.
“Savage” was a common term for referring to native peoples in the 17th to 19th centuries. While it was almost certainly used perjoratively by many, I’ve read numerous accounts where it’s just used as a synonym for “Indian” or “Native”, including cases where the overall gist of the passage is complimentary or neutral to the native peoples or person being discussed. The term doesn’t necessarily imply racism, whatever “racism” might have meant at the time, if anything. Its use seems to have been wrt to people living in a relatively primitive state, compared to European standards.
“Merciless” is self explanatory and many tribes were indeed merciless in warfare with each other, as is well documented. The British, in choosing to ally themselves strongly with the Iroquois, made themselves no friends when the Iroqouis’ day was up in the late 1700s–the Hurons, Eries, Delawares, Ottawas, Miamis, Illinois, Shawnees and others harboring great hatred toward them for their wars of annihilation and empire beginning from about 1650 on. The colonies were collectively the British enemy to these tribes, right up to the Declaration.
We also don’t know whether it was really Jefferson who wanted that passage in there in the first place. He wrote it but that doesn’t mean he came up with the whole thing.
That’s a quite astonishing claim by you. Those words in the declaration of independence have not just been an isolated outbreak of bigotry, they stand in line of a path which led to the genocide of many Native American peoples. Racism and also genocides which were justified by those racist views, should not be “judged” or not even be called what they are? Even modern day racism is rooted in a tradition and history of racism, it’s actually important to call out those racist traditions and the respect for the descendants of Native Americans should be imperative enough here.
It has always been possible to be against exploitation, discrimination and other forms of oppression. There have always been people and organizations fighting against it. Especially highly educated and well connected people like the authors of the declaration of independence could have known about that. Those politics have never been any good or excusable. Of course historical context should be considered but it doesn’t change the fact of dehumanization. That’s especially relevant as we still profit from racist exploitation in the past.
On this 4th of July, after seeing the sick way Alper just assumes he has the right to define which thoughts and words are acceptable and how he casually instructs everyone else to adhere to his dictates to the minutest detail, it got me wondering, just how far has Academia sunk?
So, out of curiosity, how many takers are there in this crowd for some old school freedom? Specifically, adherence to the following principles:
(1) An open and permissive marketplace of ideas is essential for a free nation and a free people.
(2) Every thought, idea, opinion, or word is acceptable in this marketplace with the sole exception of those designed to intimate or threaten others in the market place of ideas.
(3) Intimidation of any kind, either through violence or just threatening the material livelihood of participants is a threat to the well functioning of a marketplace of ideas, and as such should be resisted by everyone regardless of their personal feelings.
(4) Trying to win debates by making certain words or thoughts forbidden from the outset is a kind of intimidation designed to limit the well functioning of the marketplace of ideas.
(5) Freedom and Truth are infinity more important than whether anyone is “offended” and has hurt feelings.
(6) It’s better in the long run for the health of the nation, if people are allowed to express their true thoughts as they honest hold them in the marketplace of ideas and not keep them hidden.
As strong illiberal strains take hold of the two major parties, I’m really curious to know how many of you wet noodles can be counted on if push comes to shove.
All good points. But how about “Eschew gratuitous name-calling”?
Merciless internet commenters.
Merciless statisticians against psychology.
Oh, come on you wet-noodles. Behave.
Wet-noodles! Oh, how pejorative! (Well, a Sunday school teacher’s pejorative.)
@Shravan
When I read the title of this post, I was sure it meant you & me.
Yeah, me too. When I saw it, I thought, wow, Andrew’s bringing the fight to us and has finally taken out the big guns.
How old an old-school are we talking, because I’m not sure the historical record supports the endorsement of that kind of thing by the founders.
That passage also figures prominently in a NYT op-ed today.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/04/opinion/did-a-fear-of-slave-revolts-drive-american-independence.html?ref=opinion&_r=0
(The op-ed seems to me to overstate its case, but I am not an expert on this era.)
As to the question: NO, we have to leave it in. Our forefathers were not perfect; we should not oversanctify them.
This was an interesting op-ed; if @zbicyclist hadn’t mentioned it I was going to do so.
Thanks.
This is a mistaken interpretation of the history of the Declaration. After the battles of 1775, the British literally pursued a policy of encouraging certain Indian tribes to raid back-country settlements which supported the Revolution. Jefferson himself has personally written of Native Americans in great regard on many occasions: “I believe the Indian then to be in body and mind equal to the whiteman,” praise of the oratory of Logan, his writings on the reports of Lewis and Clark, and many others attest to the fact that Jefferson was, certainly for his era, progressive on the relative status of Indians and Europeans.
Think you (and Martha) are right to worry about getting a better sense of the history and culture to properly interpret this comment.
> “the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare”
Some of this I am aware with certain Canadian First Nations because a First Nations author was trying to justify their traditional rule of warfare (to torture taken prisoners to death) on the basis that the (at least other First Nations) prisoner would be outraged if they were not tortured to death ( http://www.cbc.ca/books/canadareads/2014/03/wab-and-stephen-debate-torture-in-the-orenda.html ). They did not seem to be convincing to others on the panel but it was their perspective.
Intentions aren’t everything. Racist phrases especially in such a central document have repercussions far beyond the context of e.g. a specific war. Being in war against someone doesn’t really justify dehumanizing them, anyway.
“Being in war against someone doesn’t really justify dehumanizing them, anyway”
Agreed — but, regrettably, dehumanizing “the enemy” seems to be a very common human propensity.
OK, war does not morally and logically justify dehumanization of a people, but when has a hard-fought war not led to such dehumanization? We certainly saw it in this country with Germans in WWI, for example, and the Germans of WWI did not particularly deserve it compared to other combatants throughout history, nor were their racial differences particularly apparent to anyone prior to that war.
If you had said “War does not justify dehumanization” to an educated person from 1700’s I wonder how he’d have reacted.
I wonder if “dehumanization” was even a word or a concept then.
Exactly my point. We are judging people & decisions in a time long past using phrases & yardsticks of today. Most of these concepts were entirely alien back then.
Part of my indignation about that “merciless Indian savages” sentence is that I was totally ignorant of its presence despite it being there from 1776. But what do you do–a football team can be renamed, laws can be overturned, a constitution can be amended but a “sacred” document presents an entirely different problem. Bowdlerize it? Andrew is apparently as conflicted as I am:
“I dunno. It doesn’t seem right to erase the above passage. Better to be aware of such racism rather than to hide it, right?”
Should we use it as a teaching moment? And, who is qualified to do the teaching? From the comments in this blog, most of us are in need of being students.
Paul: I do think this would be a worthwhile case study for such questions http://www.cbc.ca/books/canadareads/2014/03/wab-and-stephen-debate-torture-in-the-orenda.html
( Or just by coincidence this regarding the host https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jian_Ghomeshi#Dismissal_from_the_CBC )
The Declaration of Independence is somewhat different from other “sacred” documents such as the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament and Shakespeare’s plays. They have various apocryphal pieces which have been amended and appended through the years such that the written record is disputable. However, The Declaration of Independence occurred well after the invention of the printing press; presumably, the document quoted is the only version so the offensive phrase is integral to the Jeffersonian mix. Again, what should we do? And who is the “we”?
Why is “we do nothing” not an acceptable answer?
> Again, what should we do? [about] the offensive phrase
Try to fully understand what it was about. Or not.
But can we fully understand? I doubt it; accepting that we do not and maybe cannot understand may be better than believing we understand when we don’t.
Trying to understand is a very different thing than believing you have come to understand ;-)
But to give up on trying to understand is like surrendering even before the battle began…
Stop treating the Declaration as a sacred document. Or at least, do not treat it as if it has particular meaning for the present. Think about it as a national symbol, like a flag. After all, even ignoring “Indian savages”, it contains a mostly petty list of complaints against king George.
After all, even ignoring “Indian savages”, it contains a mostly petty list of complaints against king George.
True. In Jefferson’s original draft, one of these is the slave trade, which is somehow all the King’s fault.[*] (This was retained in modified version presented to Congress by the Committee of Five, but deleted from the version produced by the whole Congress.)
[*] It’s a weird mixture of forthright condemnation of the whole practice (“He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it’s most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery”; “this execrable commerce”; “this assemblage of horrors”) and complete avoidance of the possibility that anyone in the colonies was the least bit complicit…
Are there any records of what the Indians had to say about the other side? Maybe oral traditions etc.?
I wonder if they thought of the European invaders in similar terms.
The general pattern was that the more distant a white American was in location and time from large numbers of Indians, the more he admired them. Over time, the Romantic view of Native Americans became predominant in white America as the threat posed by Indians evaporated.
This pattern was not unique to white-Indian interactions. It had previously been observed in attitudes of the English and English-speaking Lowland Scots toward the Highland Scots. See the third volume of Thomas Babington Macaulay’s 1855 “History of England” for a brilliant portrait of changing English views of his barbaric Highland ancestors:
“The change in the feeling with which the Lowlanders regarded the highland scenery was closely connected with a change not less remarkable in the feeling with which they regarded the Highland race. It is not strange that the Wild Scotch, as they were sometimes called, should, in the seventeenth century, have been considered by the Saxons as mere savages. But it is surely strange that, considered as savages, they should not have been objects of interest and curiosity. The English were then abundantly inquisitive about the manners of rude nations separated from our island by great continents and oceans. Numerous books were printed describing the laws, the superstitions, the cabins, the repasts, the dresses, the marriages, the funerals of Laplanders and Hottentots, Mohawks and Malays. The plays and poems of that age are full of allusions to the usages of the black men of Africa and of the red men of America. The only barbarian about whom there was no wish to have any information was the Highlander. …
“Had such an observer studied the character of the Highlanders, he would doubtless have found in it closely intermingled the good and the bad qualities of an uncivilised nation. … He would have heard men relate boastfully how they or their fathers had wreaked on hereditary enemies in a neighbouring valley such vengeance as would have made old soldiers of the Thirty Years’ War shudder. He would have found that robbery was held to be a calling, not merely innocent, but honourable. He would have seen, wherever he turned, that dislike of steady industry, and that disposition to throw on the weaker sex the heaviest part of manual labour, which are characteristic of savages.”
http://isteve.blogspot.com/2012/07/diversity-before-diversity-thomas.html