The minute you try to fight these folks on their own ground, they turn tail and run.

Hmmm…..

As weak as tea; and getting weaker.

I’m not overly impressed by that article–while Grinde and Johansen overstated their case, Levy does the same in reverse. He quibbles. Adams writes of a “king” with an ordinary council of sachems: G&J cite this as a “sachem” with an ordinary council of lesser sachems. We are asked to believe that this is a serious difference, and that G&J were using this “misquotation” to advance the (quite defensible) thesis that Adams knew of the sachemship system before Morgan’s research (599). That is really stretching a point.

Earlier, he fusses about the number 48 not being 50 (592), supposedly tripping up G&J on a matter of detail; then, confronted by a reference by Adams to 50 families [actually sachemships, as discovered later by Morgan] of the Iroquois, suggests that this is merely metaphorical, a reference, instead, to the warring city-states of ancient Greece [Were there 50 of them?](600-1). Sauce for the goose, as G&J might say. Levy makes much of the fact that the word “families” rather than “sachemships” was used, but, once again, I think this is stretching a point to make a point.

Payne’s piece in the same issue is less polemical and makes more satisfactory reading. My own feeling is that the knowledge of the Six Nations Confederacy might well have played into the “checks and balances” underpinning of the US Constitution. I see less evidence for wider claims. G&J do a fine job of countering their opponents’ arguments, but that doesn’t strengthen their own case, which, as I noted, seems overreaching, but not dismissible holus-bolus (see, for example, p.627–there’s some meat there).

I do note that most of the fiercest critics of G&J are not scholars at all, but notables like Dinesh D’Souza, Patrick Buchanan and George Will. Names ring a bell?

There’s more, but enough for now. If you’re serious, you’ll engage.

Balb:

Widdowson meant “packpedalling.” She’s carrying a lot of Eurocentric baggage, after all.

Balb at 9:39 am: “Hmm. I wonder if Anonymous is setting the stage for an honourable retreat by herself.”

That’s “BACKpedalling”, Frances. With a “B”.

Alas, I can see that you are right. When there are deliberate misinterpretations of statements (a reference made specifically about Alfred as an “irrational, undisciplined, condescended-to indigenous academic”, was pluralized into “damned ‘irrational’, ‘undisciplined’ indigenous critics”, presumably to give substance to more venting about “racism” and “aboriginal hating”), and attempts to refute misconceptions become the subject of infantile discussions about “packpedalling”, I guess it’s time to call it a day.

But we mustn’t admit that North American Indigenous peoples were more advanced in some things than those grubby, stinky Europeans who got lost and we found on our beaches with copious amounts of perfume splashed over them to cover their atrocious body odour. Oooh… no way!

The Iroquois thesis is crap – read:

Philip A. Levy, “Exemplars of Taking Liberties: The Iroquois Influence Thesis and the Problem of Evidence.” William and Mary Quarterly (1996) 53(3):587-604.

In that same issue, there Grinde et. al respond. A very good debate issue – something this blog should try to emulate, but in blog form.

This is admittedly a controversial issue, but Widdowson’s cherry-picking doesn’t make it less so. Donald Grinde and Bruce Johansen have a different point of view. They’ve appeared on panels with Tooker.

The uncontroverted fact is that the Founding Fathers were well aware of the Iroquois Confederacy and its Great Law of Peace. Here’s a link to Grinde and Johansen’s Exemplar of Liberty, quoting a number of primary sources. I’m agnostic on the issue, to be frank, but you can’t wish this all away simply to defend the thesis that native people had nothing to offer the colonizers, which appears to be Widdowson and Howard’s position.

Meanwhile, Widdowson’s backpedalling anent Howard’s disgraceful attack on Alfred is a remarkable bit of acrobatics.