Quotes from Forgotten Founders
by Bruce Johansen
Their whole civil policy was averse to the concentration of power in the hands of any single individual, but inclined to the opposite principle of division among a number of equals.
- p 9
Here, then, we find the right of popular nomination, the right of recall and of woman sufferage flourishing in the old America of the Red Man and centuries before it became the clamor of the new America of the white invader.
- p 10
The Five Nations have such absolute Notions of Liberty that they allow no kind of Superiority of one over another, and banish all Servitude from their Territories.
- p 33
It would be a very strange thing if Six Nations of Ignorant Savages should be capable of forming a Scheme for such an Union and be able to execute it in such a manner, as that it has subsisted Ages, and appears indissoluble, and yet a like Union should be impracticable for ten or a dozen English colonies.
- p 56
The care and Labour of providing for Artificial and Fashionable Wants, the sight of so many rich wallowing in Superfluous plenty, whereby so many are kept poor and distressed for Want, the Insolence of Office ... and restraints of Custom, all contrive to disgust them [Indians] with what we call civil Society.
- p 77
I am convinced that those societies (as the Indians) which live without government enjoy in their general mass an infinetly greater degree of happiness than those who live under European governments.
- p 98
[note: page numbers from the Harvard Common Press edition first published in 1982]
Notes From Windward - Index - Vol. 71
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