There were many native nations that practiced democratic methods of government, not just in the region that became the U.S. in the late 18th c. but throughout the Americas. At the time the Spanish began invading the Caribbean & then Mexico & establishing colonial rule, there were peoples/nations that had long been democracies, such as the Tlascallan (Tlaxcallan) nation of central south Mexico, a major native nation that had successfully resisted becoming a tributary state subject to the Aztec/Mexica state. The Tlaxcallan state became well known to Cortes before the Sp. conquest of Tenochtitlan/Mexico (1521), & in fact it fought with Cortes in the seige of Tenochtitlan/Mexico, not because the Tlaxcallans liked the conquistadors but because they sought to overthrow Aztec dominance over other native states & the threat this posed to the Tlascallan state. The Tlascallans are well-known for having overwhelmed the Aztecs in self-defense when the Aztecs mounted a major invasion before the Sp.arrival, a battle that so overwhelmed the Aztecs that they thereafter refrained from further attempts to seize Tlascalla as a tributary state. ( Accounts of this are found widely in literature on the period, but there's an article in Latin Am. Antiquity, Vol. 21, Number 3, Sept. 2010, which analyses the structure of the Tlascallan state via new findings as well as past literature on the state, from Aztec accounts & later Sp. accounts as well as archaeological literature.) The point is, not only were there many native states with democratic structures, there were many reports by the Sp. from the 16th c. on, reports about various native states incl. the Tlascallan that were sent back to Spain & which became widely studied by scholars. Later, with the British (& other Eur. states) invading & colonizing native peoples to the north, this pattern of Eur. reporting re native societies & political structures further influenced Eur. rulers & scholars. The influence of these reports are often underestimated, but it is widely accepted in academic circles that the news of these forms of government contributed heavily to Eur. ideas & theories re: the possibilities of democratic structures, which certainly changed the thinking of leaders & scholars in Europe, with of course such thinking filtering down to larger populations of Europe. These were ways of thinking & governing that were new in Europe, & although many reports sent from the Americas were distorted and/or poorly understood, the influence of ideas re freedom were massive. After all, here were states that had prospered under various forms of democratic rule, states in which there were no strict upper & lower classes, in which all residents had a voice. And in many native states, women had equal voice & power. (Of the known native peoples prior to Eur. dominance, some 75 per cent were not patriarchal, with abt the same number recognizing more than two genders & most of these societies recognizing such "other" genders as "natural" & "equal". In the early colonial period after the U.S. founding, the Am. leaders & diplomats were forced to deal with many still-independent native states which had women & often "third sex" representatives who were traditionally chosen as diplomatic representatives in dealing with other states. (This was a problem with the earlier British & others as well, but by 1776 the colonials had more power & soon began demanding native nations to send men as their representatives, & not just men but men as defined by the Eur/Am view of two opposite sexes as the only recognized sexes. The Eur. & Euro-Am. were after all deeply patriarchal & very different from any known native people (pre-Col.), all known native peoples having in common the general view that sex/gender was socially constructed, not inborn & determined by biology. That basic view of sex/gender of known pre-Col. peoples is very radically different from the view brought from Europe. Among non-patriarchal democratic nations that dealt with the U.S., such as the Cherokee nation & generally the "Iroquoian" peoples, the U.S early began demanding that only males be sent to deal with any diplomatic matters, & such demands were extended to trade as well. Any Am. of the upper classes and/or ruling class (elected presidents, etc) would have been very aware of these differences in the late 18th into early 19th c, as the U S. government was still extending its power over still-independent native nations in ways meant to force these nations into following Euro-Am. social structures. However heavily influenced by native cultures in adopting some political structures, much of this influence was indirect, having stemmed from thought & literature of the Europeans whose knowledge of native societies was not first hand but was rather from earlier Eur. accounts sent back to Europe, forming the basis for much intellectual thought re democracy. BTW, the US presidents began the policy of genocide against native peoples with George Washington, who clearly wrote of how it was necessary to destroy all native societies/peoples in the lands acquired by the US. A clear policy of genocide was planned by each following president, including those who are usually viewed as more benevolent (Lincoln, etc), aims which were written by each president in clear language. In fact, a massive plan for genocide was written into law by Pres. Eisenhower during his two terms of office, extensive plans which were aimed at total destruction of all native peoples within the US, a plan that included natives on reservations as well as natives who lived in cities & in small communities across the US. Eisenhower's plan included the system of public education (centralized & mandatory) as a means of destroying any residual native cultures that still existed, a plan meant to destroy any last remnants of native culture & force (via "education") children to adopt the "mainstream white" culture as their own. (Eisenhower's programs were primarily a form of cultural genocide, which has historically been used more heavily following the more direct form of physical genocide, but cultural genocide is legally defined as no less a crime than the more direct form. There is a very widespread conception of genocide which causes much public confusion, the idea that genocide includes any act of mass death inflicted on a state or people. However, genocide isn't at all defined by the numbers of death involved. Genocide is the plan to exterminate a specific people/culture, not necessarily by death, & the number of people who die as a direct result is irrelevant---it is still genocide regardless of the number. Genocide as practiced by the US followed the standard pattern of first, physical attacks, though combined with the intentional destruction of the cultures. The more direct assault was mostly carried out before the 20th c, mainly via forced removal & (usually illegal) seizure of native nations throughout the eastern half of the US in the decades just before the Civil War, then at war's end the campaign was waged mainly to the west. By 1900, over 90 per cent of the natives within the continental US were dead. Yes, many died of disease but the death by disease was mainly the result of the conditions these people were forced to live in, not the result merely of natural diseases running their course. Being forced from ones homeland, force-marched to foreign regions, being stripped of their own ways of living &of governing themselves, with the resulting severe poverty but also the loss of their own languages & ways, forced to adopt the Christian western culture. Susceptibility to such contagious diseases as killed so many natives here & elsewhere, that is the real cause. The US unfortunately did not adopt a form of government more like those of various native nations, nations which practiced true democracy with equal voices of all, which included all people regardless of income or sex. But then, that egalitarian a form could not be adopted if the nation was to also be based on the form of capitalism it adopted. Native nations practicing inclusive democracy generally were not based on a class structure with the extremes of rich & poor, as with most such societies it was not considered ethical to have excess wealth in the hands of a minority while others did without basic needs. (Nor were these native states similar to modern Marxist or Maoist states.) Rather, native capitalism consisted of what we would call small businesses, with widespread trade between the nations spanning the continent. So did the native democracies influence the Founding Fathers? It's only unfortunate that the influence wasn't more extensive.
You're not talking about other countries we're talking about America How about you stay on topic there is no other native tribe in America that established what became the US government today That goes to my people the Mohawk in our Iroquois Confederacy filled with other native tribes as our Iroquois Confederacy was the first democracy of native American government in North America We're not talking about South American all these other places you talking about Stay on topic there would be no US government today if it wasn't for my people the Mohawk and the Iroquois Confederacy
It was never a theory, any man of history already knows it to be so. It’s just the typical bigoted ignorance and lack of acknowledgement as per usual that makes it controversial. We did the native peoples of America about as dirty as one could possibly do so. It’s just like and about as equally ridiculous as Japan’s lack of acknowledgement of their atrocities and unit 731 during WW2 and there lack of teaching it to there youth nowadays.
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There were many native nations that practiced democratic methods of government, not just in the region that became the U.S. in the late 18th c. but throughout the Americas. At the time the Spanish began invading the Caribbean & then Mexico & establishing colonial rule, there were peoples/nations that had long been democracies, such as the Tlascallan (Tlaxcallan) nation of central south Mexico, a major native nation that had successfully resisted becoming a tributary state subject to the Aztec/Mexica state. The Tlaxcallan state became well known to Cortes before the Sp. conquest of Tenochtitlan/Mexico (1521), & in fact it fought with Cortes in the seige of Tenochtitlan/Mexico, not because the Tlaxcallans liked the conquistadors but because they sought to overthrow Aztec dominance over other native states & the threat this posed to the Tlascallan state. The Tlascallans are well-known for having overwhelmed the Aztecs in self-defense when the Aztecs mounted a major invasion before the Sp.arrival, a battle that so overwhelmed the Aztecs that they thereafter refrained from further attempts to seize Tlascalla as a tributary state. ( Accounts of this are found widely in literature on the period, but there's an article in Latin Am. Antiquity, Vol. 21, Number 3, Sept. 2010, which analyses the structure of the Tlascallan state via new findings as well as past literature on the state, from Aztec accounts & later Sp. accounts as well as archaeological literature.)
The point is, not only were there many native states with democratic structures, there were many reports by the Sp. from the 16th c. on, reports about various native states incl. the Tlascallan that were sent back to Spain & which became widely studied by scholars. Later, with the British (& other Eur. states) invading & colonizing native peoples to the north, this pattern of Eur. reporting re native societies & political structures further influenced Eur. rulers & scholars. The influence of these reports are often underestimated, but it is widely accepted in academic circles that the news of these forms of government contributed heavily to Eur. ideas & theories re: the possibilities of democratic structures, which certainly changed the thinking of leaders & scholars in Europe, with of course such thinking filtering down to larger populations of Europe.
These were ways of thinking & governing that were new in Europe, & although many reports sent from the Americas were distorted and/or poorly understood, the influence of ideas re freedom were massive. After all, here were states that had prospered under various forms of democratic rule, states in which there were no strict upper & lower classes, in which all residents had a voice. And in many native states, women had equal voice & power. (Of the known native peoples prior to Eur. dominance, some 75 per cent were not patriarchal, with abt the same number recognizing more than two genders & most of these societies recognizing such "other" genders as "natural" & "equal".
In the early colonial period after the U.S. founding, the Am. leaders & diplomats were forced to deal with many still-independent native states which had women & often "third sex" representatives who were traditionally chosen as diplomatic representatives in dealing with other states. (This was a problem with the earlier British & others as well, but by 1776 the colonials had more power & soon began demanding native nations to send men as their representatives, & not just men but men as defined by the Eur/Am view of two opposite sexes as the only recognized sexes. The Eur. & Euro-Am. were after all deeply patriarchal & very different from any known native people (pre-Col.), all known native peoples having in common the general view that sex/gender was socially constructed, not inborn & determined by biology. That basic view of sex/gender of known pre-Col. peoples is very radically different from the view brought from Europe.
Among non-patriarchal democratic nations that dealt with the U.S., such as the Cherokee nation & generally the "Iroquoian" peoples, the U.S early began demanding that only males be sent to deal with any diplomatic matters, & such demands were extended to trade as well. Any Am. of the upper classes and/or ruling class (elected presidents, etc) would have been very aware of these differences in the late 18th into early 19th c, as the U S. government was still extending its power over still-independent native nations in ways meant to force these nations into following Euro-Am. social structures.
However heavily influenced by native cultures in adopting some political structures, much of this influence was indirect, having stemmed from thought & literature of the Europeans whose knowledge of native societies was not first hand but was rather from earlier Eur. accounts sent back to Europe, forming the basis for much intellectual thought re democracy.
BTW, the US presidents began the policy of genocide against native peoples with George Washington, who clearly wrote of how it was necessary to destroy all native societies/peoples in the lands acquired by the US. A clear policy of genocide was planned by each following president, including those who are usually viewed as more benevolent (Lincoln, etc), aims which were written by each president in clear language. In fact, a massive plan for genocide was written into law by Pres. Eisenhower during his two terms of office, extensive plans which were aimed at total destruction of all native peoples within the US, a plan that included natives on reservations as well as natives who lived in cities & in small communities across the US. Eisenhower's plan included the system of public education (centralized & mandatory) as a means of destroying any residual native cultures that still existed, a plan meant to destroy any last remnants of native culture & force (via "education") children to adopt the "mainstream white" culture as their own. (Eisenhower's programs were primarily a form of cultural genocide, which has historically been used more heavily following the more direct form of physical genocide, but cultural genocide is legally defined as no less a crime than the more direct form. There is a very widespread conception of genocide which causes much public confusion, the idea that genocide includes any act of mass death inflicted on a state or people. However, genocide isn't at all defined by the numbers of death involved. Genocide is the plan to exterminate a specific people/culture, not necessarily by death, & the number of people who die as a direct result is irrelevant---it is still genocide regardless of the number. Genocide as practiced by the US followed the standard pattern of first, physical attacks, though combined with the intentional destruction of the cultures. The more direct assault was mostly carried out before the 20th c, mainly via forced removal & (usually illegal) seizure of native nations throughout the eastern half of the US in the decades just before the Civil War, then at war's end the campaign was waged mainly to the west. By 1900, over 90 per cent of the natives within the continental US were dead. Yes, many died of disease but the death by disease was mainly the result of the conditions these people were forced to live in, not the result merely of natural diseases running their course. Being forced from ones homeland, force-marched to foreign regions, being stripped of their own ways of living &of governing themselves, with the resulting severe poverty but also the loss of their own languages & ways, forced to adopt the Christian western culture. Susceptibility to such contagious diseases as killed so many natives here & elsewhere, that is the real cause.
The US unfortunately did not adopt a form of government more like those of various native nations, nations which practiced true democracy with equal voices of all, which included all people regardless of income or sex. But then, that egalitarian a form could not be adopted if the nation was to also be based on the form of capitalism it adopted. Native nations practicing inclusive democracy generally were not based on a class structure with the extremes of rich & poor, as with most such societies it was not considered ethical to have excess wealth in the hands of a minority while others did without basic needs. (Nor were these native states similar to modern Marxist or Maoist states.) Rather, native capitalism consisted of what we would call small businesses, with widespread trade between the nations spanning the continent.
So did the native democracies influence the Founding Fathers? It's only unfortunate that the influence wasn't more extensive.
Thank you for taking the time to type this. I did not know those things about Lincoln or Eisenhower, I’m still reading lol
You're not talking about other countries we're talking about America How about you stay on topic there is no other native tribe in America that established what became the US government today That goes to my people the Mohawk in our Iroquois Confederacy filled with other native tribes as our Iroquois Confederacy was the first democracy of native American government in North America We're not talking about South American all these other places you talking about Stay on topic there would be no US government today if it wasn't for my people the Mohawk and the Iroquois Confederacy
It was never a theory, any man of history already knows it to be so. It’s just the typical bigoted ignorance and lack of acknowledgement as per usual that makes it controversial. We did the native peoples of America about as dirty as one could possibly do so. It’s just like and about as equally ridiculous as Japan’s lack of acknowledgement of their atrocities and unit 731 during WW2 and there lack of teaching it to there youth nowadays.