American Indian Culture and Research Journal

We have seen how these people look and act in their own countries; we will now take a peep at them, mixing and mingling with the polished and enlightened of the world. We have seen them in the darkness of the wilderness; we will now see how they bear the light. George Catlin, ca. 1848 Native American peoples, like Europeans, have an intellectual history worth reconstructing. This premise is vital to any understanding of relations between Europeans and others on the colonial frontier, because, as James Axtell elucidates, the ideas of both parties “have consequences when they are translated by will into action.” Given the strong resistance of many indigenous peoples to the colonial enterprise, it is important to understand their cultural philosophies and reasoning. Towards that larger goal, this paper intends to reconstruct Paxoche (Ioway) perceptions of England’s socioeconomic system, laws, and judiciary, as observed during their 1844-45 European tour.