American Indians, Frenchmen, and Scots Philosophers

A m e ric a n In d ia n s, F re n c h m e n , a n d onmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCB S c o ts P h ilo so p h e rs R O G E R L. E M E R S O N This paper deals not with the well-known uses to which eighteenthcentury Scots put the travel literature on Am ericanIndians in their discussions of hum annature, language, the arts, and society, but with the contexts, problem s,attitudes, and ideas which conditioned their use of these travel accounts. Obviously the Scottish interest in Am ericaand its indigenous peoples was prom otedby their greater involvem ent with Am ericaafter the Act of Union (1707), an involve­ ment which was many-faceted and which was to be greatly diminished by American independence,1 They also benefited from an intensi­ fied French interest in America during the same years which was similarly rooted in commercial and imperial concerns. Important as these were in focusing attention upon America, they were not the sole factors creating an environment in which accounts of Indians could be assimilated with maximum effect between c. 1730 and 1770. Scottish and European intellectual developments and the Scottish preoccupation with social change and improvement were also impor­ tant. While Lowlanders had remained neither oblivious nor quite in­ different to earlier controversies provoked by the discovery of men in the New World,2 it was not until c. 1740 that men such as Hume, 211 212 / ZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA R O G E R L . E M E R S O N Kames, Ferguson, Robertson, and Monboddo resumed these discus­ sions and creatively joined in European efforts to assess the significance of American aborigines. Between 1740 and 1780 their reflections on savagery, barbarism, and the rude ages of mankind altered both history and what were to be known as the social sciences. After 1780 the place of the Indian in these works declined, although Scottish contributions to the social sciences did not. Why the Indians were particularly interesting during these years is the topic of this paper, but one which must be considered from an earlier date. Britons read the earliest accounts of the peoples of the New World but were not intellectually stimulated by these to the same degree as were the Spanish. Neither the sophisticated peoples of Central and South America nor the simpler exotics of the Caribbean and North America provoked in Britain works on natural law, the origin or nature of Indians comparable to those which appeared in sixteenthand seventeenth-century Spain.3 Nevertheless, the early travel ac­ counts with their curious mixture of observation, fantasy, fiction, and puffery did fix themes in British minds. Exotic Edens inhabited by simple peoples possessing attractive qualities raised questions about the value of Christian civilization. The noble savage, if not born in the New World, was at least re-born under warm American skies.4 With the publication of Marc Lescarbot’s H isto ire d e la N o u velle F rance (1609), which described more Doric primitives in a colder climate, the associations with North American Indians became explicity more Spartan, and Indian virtues more severe.5 It was possible to admire the order of Incan life, the beauty of wellformed southern natives, and to perceive the Algonquin and Iroquoian peoples as possessing virtues and happiness in a world without property, the arts, or the true religion. “American exoticisim ,” as Chinard told us, “was from the beginning, anti-social; this character hardly changed in the course of the eighteenth cen­ tury.” The “freedom” which the White Indians6 chose, like the asser­ tions of the superiority of native values by those who were dissatisfied with their own culture, were but two aspects of the ambivalent feel­ ings engendered by the encounter with Indian cultures. It is not sur­ prising that fear, revulsion, horror, and pity were also mingled with A m e ric a n In d ia n s, F ren ch m en , a n d S co ts P h ilo so p h ers /onmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQP 213 the praises bestowed upon Indians by priests and laym en from all the...