Savagism and Civilization: A Study of the Indian and the American Mind

III: Character and Circumstance: The Idea of Savagism

Ill Character and Circumstance: The Idea of Savagism MERICAN double-mindedness about the Indian issued rapidly into a theory of his life—an idea of savagism, as it was called. As all ideas should be, this one was for its time true. That is to say, it consisted of a set of interrelated propositions which held together and made logical sense of all that was known and felt about the Indian, and it made for understanding, belief, and action. As data about the Indian accumulated, the idea was first filled out, then modified, and finally broken through. By the time the idea could no longer contain the data—it was then the 1850's—psychological as well as physical Removal had been effected, and the Indian had become a creature of philanthropic agencies, scientific ethnology, and dime novels. Savagism no longer seemed to exist. At least, it no longer seemed seriously to threaten civilized existence. We can distinguish two periods in the development of the idea of savagism: a period through, say, the first decade of the century —when reports from the Lewis and Clark expedition were coming in, in which little of empirical fact was known, in which scattered details involving a disappearing hunting society were given formal expression and found to be embodied in an actual person out of the actual American past; and a period through, say, 1851—the date of the publication of Morgan's League of the Iroquois, in which Americans began systematically to investigate their Indians, in which they fitted new facts to an old theory, until, as I have said, the theory itself would no longer contain the facts. 76 A CHARACTER AND CIRCUMSTANCE 77 The two periods are to be distinguished only generally, as are all periods in the development of modes of belief. We can observe only trends, points of cumulation, intensities, since, as we must remind ourselves, the relation between a belief and the situation in which it develops is constant and dynamic, each reinforcing the other. Thus the separation of the materials in this study, cutting across chronological lines as it does, is made so that we can see analytically, in the large, the relationship between situation and belief. The American double-minded attitude toward the Indian, reduced to precise and formal terms and supported sometimes by investigation, more often by meditation, became the American idea of savagism. After that, the Indian became sui generis the American savage. 1 For Americans after the Revolution, study of the Indian and his nature was a pressing and personal need. The Indian was disappearing from America; once he had been the American. It was, in fact, an American duty to clear up European misconceptions of the Indian and to give him his savage due. Let the American writer, declared a Professor at the University of Pennsylvania in 1787, mark with attention the footsteps of civilization throughout the continent —let him learn the languages of the natives, compare them with those of the nations of the old world, and his labours will be amply rewarded.—It is thus only he can redeem the history of the origin of a people, some of whom have, probably, once made a distinguished figure on the theatre of the world, and who, at present, tinctured as they are with the vices of the Europeans, do not detract from the character of mankind.1 1 Benjamin Smith Barton, Observations on Some Parts of Natural History , Part I [no more published] (London, 1787), pp. iv-v. Cf. Barton's " Observations and Conjectures . . . ," American Philosophical Society Transactions, IV [o. s.] (1799), 214-15; and his A Discourse on Someof the Principal Desiderata in Natural History (Philadelphia, 1807), pp. 16, 18-19. See also Jeremy Belknap, A Discourse Intended to Commemorate the Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus (Boston, 1792), p. 36; Jonathan Heart, "A Letter . . . to Benjamin Smith Barton,"American 78 SAVAGISM AND CIVILIZATION European writers on America, it was apparent, generally had failed to treat the Indian fairly, having either vilified his character or overpraised it. It became a kind of intellectual flourish for Americans writing on the Indian to refute Europeans at all possible points. The usual targets were the Scots, Robertson, Dunbar, and Lord Kames, and the Frenchmen, Lafitau, Raynal, and particularly De Pauw, with his picture of beardless Indian males with milk in their breasts. What was objected to was that they all, out...