American Indian Culture and Research Journal

Exemplar of Liberty: Native America and the Evolution of Democracy, by Donald A. Grinde and Bruce E. Johansen, is a thoroughly researched book that expands on the suggestive papers presented by Grinde and Johansen at the April 1992 Organization of American Historians meeting in Chicago. In a discussion of both the papers and the book, I will concentrate on the book, because it offers broader arguments. Let me begin by giving an opinion about the existing controversy, about who said what and what should be said about American Indians legacy of freedom and liberty for all Americans. While we cannot prove that good old John Locke had a copy of the Iroquois constitution at his elbow when he wrote the second essay on civil government, some of us who study ethnohistory might take the position that his ideas are exceedingly familiar. One recalls the historic fact that Sir Isaac Newton and Baron Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibnitz discovered calculus at about the same time but independently of each other; therefore, it is not impossible that Hiawatha and Deganaweda on one side and John Locke on the other discovered and commented on representative institutions of government, and that all three made substantial contributions to our democratic institutions of government. It is true, I believe, that the Iroquois executive, the great war chief, had a role similar to that of the American president in spite of the fact that the Indians and the early Americans had different lifestyles. It is also true, I am convinced, that North American Indian tribes respected the individual (possibly excepting the Tlingit, who had a form of slavery, and certain other tribes that mistreated women) and loved freedom. Further, I have found that there were checks and balances and elements of a parliamentary form of government among many Indians, particularly the confederated tribes of the East Coast.