The Great Law of Peace

"Thanksgiving Dealies" by Martin Cathrae is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

There is more to the history of Thanksgiving, and all history, than the obvious.

Thanksgiving is one of the best of our public holidays, a time for gathering together with those who mean the most to us (and I hope you enjoyed it to the fullest). But the Thanksgiving we know today has, as with most of our holidays, evolved over time. And as it has evolved, so has its meaning.

The origin story is a familiar one: In 1621, members of the Wampanoag tribe of Indigenous Americans joined the Plymouth colonists in a feast of celebration after a successful harvest. As the story goes, the colonists had been struggling to provide food for themselves before the local tribes taught them how to plant corn, catch freshwater fish and draw maple sap from the trees.

Before that, the Pilgrims had truly been struggling to survive. From the time of their arrival at Plymouth Rock in 1620 to the first Thanksgiving, they had lost half their number, most of them dying during a brutal winter spent on board the Mayflower. The colony was teetering on the edge of obliteration not even a year into its existence.

The local Indigenous tribes -- including the Abenaki and Pawtuxet -- rescued them. Without learning the means of survival in the New World, the Pilgrims surely would not have made it through another winter. Once they had the means to produce their own food, the situation improved to the point where they could truly establish a permanent European foothold in the Americas.

And here is where the tale starts to get complicated.

For many modern historians, at least those of a particular political or philosophical bent, the arrival of Europeans on the North American continent was a disaster in and of itself, at least for the Indigenous peoples who were already here. Rather than bringing progress and modernity, they say, the Pilgrims were the vanguard of an invasion which brought disease, conquest and genocide to American shores, disrupting the peaceful lives Native Americans had enjoyed for centuries.

There's no denying much of that is all too true. Previously unencountered diseases alone were responsible for the deaths of an untold number (although surely in the millions) of whatever Indigenous tribespeople came into contact with European settlers, adventurers, conquistadors and others throughout the Americas, and over centuries.

Wars and massacres added carnage into the mix. It was unquestionably a bloody time in a bloody age, and as time went on and the weapons of war got ever more deadly and efficient it got even bloodier. Native Americans throughout the Western Hemisphere, at a profound disadvantage from the beginning, never really stood a fighting chance against the muskets and cannons they suddenly faced. The toll was horrific.

But wrapped within the story of European encroachment is another myth: The idea the Indigenous tribes of the Americas were primitive, peaceful people whose tranquil lives were upended by the colonists. In this telling -- which itself reflects a degree of condescension the less self-aware may themselves miss -- the almost childlike innocence of the Native Americans was corrupted by the Europeans even as Indigenous culture and society was physically destroyed.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. For one thing, Native American culture was, and is, both highly refined and highly diverse. While they may have lacked the industrial and technological prowess the Enlightenment had produced in Europe, in cultural terms they were no primitives. Indigenous religions and social structures, including their traditions, were just as complex and complete as any found across the sea.

For another, tribes often warred with each other long before the arrival of the Europeans and continued to fight with each other long after. As with all of human history, all over the world, conflicts over resources, interpersonal squabbles, territorial disputes and all manner of potential flashpoints frequently erupted into violence. And all over the world, they still do.

But the most compelling story of all, at least for us here today, has to do with Native American political structures. They too were highly refined and far from simplistic. In fact, without their influence we might not have the same country we know now. Which makes Indigenous political heritage maybe the one thing we should be more thankful for than anything else.

To be clear, the Constitution is wholly the work of the Framers alone. And there is no denying the fact the Founders, as did the rest of the white European diaspora in the Western Hemisphere, viewed the Native American peoples as uncivilized -- savages, really (a term which even the humanist Benjamin Franklin used to describe them). Whatever romantic notions may have become part of our national story over the last few centuries, the Colonists themselves harbored none of them.

Yet, despite their prejudices, the Framers found elements of Indigenous political life worth emulating, even as their primary sources were, understandably enough, rooted in their own cultural heritage; Greek thought, Roman law, the various strands of Enlightenment philosophy all had their fundamental role as the Founders created their new country.

What all those ingredients lacked was a definitive answer to the question of balancing power between a central government and its constituent parts (colonies then, which we now call states). After all, Europe itself was once a place of tribes, and only over many centuries had evolved through various stages into realms, then princely states, then kingly states until finally, at least in the case of Britain, into constitutional monarchies.

But none of the European states had finished the progression into the democracies we know today. The model of modern governance was incomplete. And there was no template for federalism (the closest anyone came were the Swiss, and it didn't work very well).

The Framers found what they were looking for in the Iroquois Confederacy. Founded in 1142 by the Great Peacemaker, along with the legendary Hiawatha, it's actually the oldest democracy on Earth. It was created to unify five separate warring Indigenous nations -- known colloquially, and easily enough, as the Five Nations -- into a single polity. (A sixth nation was added in 1722, so it's now, again easily enough, the Six Nations).

The full story of how the Iroquois Confederacy came about and its place in the founding of the United States is worth a few minutes of your time: How the Iroquois Great Law of Peace Shaped U.S. Democracy | Native America (pbs.org)

What history proves, time and again, is things aren't as simple as they appear, even if they seem obvious in hindsight. For all the bloodshed, all the years of conquest and plunder throughout the Americas, all the many broken treaties and broken promises, the relationship between what is now Our Republic -- and the Europeans who created it (and their descendants) -- and Native Americans has many more than just one facet.

The fact one of those facets marks a contribution few recognize is to our own shame. There also can be little doubt there aren't many people alive today who understand the significance and origin of the 13 arrows clutched in the claw of the bald eagle at the center of the Great Seal. But they should.

No doubt many would likewise be surprised to learn the idea came from a speech by a chieftain of the Onondaga tribe in 1744 urging the American Colonies to unite (a speech which was printed in full by Franklin himself). One would think the last thing someone in his position would want to see is an enemy bent on his destruction, were that the case, getting even stronger. But here again, there's more to the story than is obvious at first glance.

But such is the way in human affairs. Nothing is frozen in time, just permanently fixed as time moves on. And after they are fixed, if we don't open our eyes wide enough to see there is always a history inside the history of every event, they can all too easily make the transition from history itself to legend, and then to myth. In this way, old prejudices can be perpetuated, and old bigotries hardened while new opportunities are missed.

One of those opportunities, if we choose to take it, can lead to us lightening the burden the Indigenous peoples continue to suffer. No one can turn back a clock. No one can right all the wrongs. But to take a step in the right direction we need only to look just a little more clearly at the fullness of the story, and acknowledge it's not entirely one thing or another, nor a tale where all the characters are either absolutely innocent or inalterably guilty.

We are all borne along by the same current. Keeping that in mind can improve our understanding as we seek safer shores and, hopefully, some common ground.

In a way, that's the true lesson of the Great Law of Peace. To make things better, the Great Peacemaker convinced the various nations to first lay aside their grievances of the moment and their bitterness of the past to envision a brighter future. It wouldn't, and couldn't, be a perfect future. Just a preferable one.

Which is all we can really ask. Whenever we find it, however we find it, even though we cannot ever truly know what comes next, we should give thanks. There are few gifts greater than peace itself.

Kevin J. Rogers is the executive director of the Modern Whig Institute. He can be reached at director@modernwhig.org. When not engaged with the Institute he publishes independently to Commentatio on Substack.

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The Modern Whig Institute is a 501(c)(3) civic research and education foundation dedicated to the fundamental American principles of representative government, ordered liberty, capitalism, due process and the rule of law.