Indian Givers: How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World

“Protected in their well-lit cases and set against dark backgrounds and with few placards to distract the eye from the gold itself, the artifacts seem to float in space. The pieces also seem suspended in time, for no apparent history or chronology is attached to the objects. The museum presents them for the maximum aesthetic appreciation of the art aficionado and the gawkers at beauty or wealth.”

In the world of archaeology and anthropology, provenance, or the chronological documentation of an artifact’s history, is of paramount importance. These Indian artifacts have no provenance or context to situate them, likely because they were stolen. Weatherford also emphasizes that they were chosen for display due to their aesthetic beauty or monetary value, not their cultural significance.

“Precious metals from America superseded land as the basis for wealth, power, and prestige. For the first time there was enough of some commodity other than land to provide a greater and more consistent standard by which wealth might be measured. This easily transported and easily used means of wealth prepared the way for the new merchant and capitalist class that would soon dominate the whole world.”

The sheer quantity of precious metals provided by the Americas provided small denomination coinage and, in turn, a more involved and competitive market in Europe. This new system allowed people to generate (and hoard) wealth more effectively, even outside the aristocratic class.

“A black velvet painting depicted a naked Eskimo woman reclining seductively on a bed of white fox fur.”

While Weatherford generally avoids addressing the sexual violence suffered by native women, he hints at the subject here by describing a lurid painting in a tourist trap in Thunder Bay, Ontario.

“Without European technology and organization, the industrial revolution would never have started in America; without American precious metals and methods of processing, the industrial revolution would never have spread to Europe.”

This passage reveals the symbiotic relationship between the Old World and the New. Europe did not simply enact its will on the Americas; the discoveries there transformed the lives of continental Europeans almost as dramatically as it did those of the Indians.

“It taxes the mind to imagine how magnificent this valley must have been before the conquest. Green terraced fields continued for miles, punctuated by filled warehouses; now, parched parcels of land, crumbling terraces, and destroyed bridges are all that remain to be seen.”

Weatherford contends that the Indians were careful custodians of the land. This stands in stark contrast to the Europeans, who often destroyed it in search of resources (as they did in Potosí).

“These were all societies waiting for their chance to act on the cultural and political stage of world, but first they needed a consistent supply of nutritious and cheap food to sustain them.”

New foodstuffs from the Americas—especially potatoes—provided Europeans with a more calorie-rich, easy-to-grow, and affordable diet. The resultant population boom dramatically strengthened their numbers; Weatherford argues that many of their subsequent accomplishments sprang from this improvement.

“Had the Irish followed the Indian technique of planting many different types of potatoes rather than just a few, the effect of the blight probably would have been considerably lessened.”

While the Europeans appropriated many Indian technologies, they often did not implement them correctly. The Indians understood the necessity of genetic diversity in farming, but the Europeans did not, resulting in the Great Famine of the mid-19th century.

“Without the treasure of diversity created by the trial-and-error methods of early Indian farmers, modern science would have lacked the resources with which to start. The limited agricultural background of the Old World would have been far too meager and would have required centuries more of research before science reached its present level.”

This is an ongoing theme: European science often stood on the shoulders of Indian progress. In other cases, years or even decades passed with people dying of preventable diseases (like scurvy) until the Europeans independently developed a remedy—one that the Indians had long ago discovered.

“The village and the orchards of cacao, oranges, bananas, and plantains all flowed into one another without any barriers between the orchards, the working areas, and the residences. All of it seemed to be one organic entity.”

Weatherford emphasizes the harmony Indians maintained between their agricultural practices and their natural surroundings. The Indians affected the environment with their activities as well, but he argues they did so to a much less damaging extent than the Europeans.

“Despite all the technological innovations of the American Indians and their history as the world’s greatest farmers, today few of them benefit from this largess.”

This is a primary theme of Weatherford’s work: The Indians have enjoyed few to none of the benefits of their innovations.

“The Indians used in this manner today often become tied into a complicated network of economic forces that keep them very poor and working to produce food for urban elites and for foreigners.”

Weatherford ties the plight of the Indians to the larger network of capitalism. He argues that the system keeps poor people, Indians included, in the equivalent of wage slavery.

“The event unfolds as a collective activity of all participants, not as one mandated and controlled from the top. Each participant responds to the collective mentality and mood of the whole group but not to a single, directing voice.”

This powwow represents in microcosm the Indian style of governance: rule by egalitarian effort and assembly.

“One of the Hurons explained to Lahontan, ‘We are born free and united brothers, each as much a great lord as the other, while you are all the slaves of one sole man. I am the master of my body, I dispose of myself, I do what I wish, I am the first and the last of my Nation […] subject only to the great Spirit.’”

This quote exemplifies the kind of “Indian” rhetoric the Europeans found so inspiring in the 18th and 19th centuries. It may have come from the ethnographer Lahontan himself rather than an Indian; the Europeans took the Indian concept of liberty and made it their own.

“Egalitarian democracy and liberty as we know them today owe little to Europe. They are not Greco-Roman derivatives somehow revived by the French in the eighteenth century. They entered modern western thought as American Indian notions translated into European language and culture.”

Here Weatherford “debunks” the influence of the Greeks and Romans on modern Western concepts of democracy and liberty. He argues that these societies have been a particular source of adulation for Europeans and Americans, at the expense of the Indians.

“The lesson in this august setting presents itself forcefully on every visitor. The United States government derives from European precedents, and the Americans gave civilization to the Indians. Nothing in the Capitol hints that contemporary Americans owe the slightest debt to the Indians for teaching us about democratic institutions.”

The Capitol, arguably the most important US government building, ignores the contributions of the Indians and actively portrays them as enemies to be conquered. The Founding Fathers, however, borrowed heavily from Indian systems of governance in composing the US Constitution.

“Their revitalization movement emphasized cultural purity and adherence to a way of life but had nothing to do with blood lines, race, or genes.”

Weatherford contends that unlike the Europeans, the Indians, particularly the Creek Red Sticks rebellion described here, did not judge based on race but along cultural lines. The Red Sticks movement allowed any agreeing white or black person into its ranks; this greatly concerned the Europeans, who had long feared a joint Indian-slave revolt.

“Today these Indian revolts rarely receive attention as political movements. Instead they are dismissed under the general term of “uprisings,” as though the Indian were much too primitive to have a high degree of social consciousness or any notion of political ideology.”

The Indians tended to describe their ideologies in religious or ecological terms, which was foreign to the Europeans, who preferred political language. Consequently, the Indian revolts were not taken seriously, despite their formative impact on 20th-century liberation movements.

“The new medicine made extensive European settlement of America possible. For example, the 1671 records of Governor Berkley of Virginia show that before the introduction of quinine into Virginia one colonist of every five died within the first year from malaria. After the incorporation of quinine, no one died from malaria.”

Like the extensive road system developed by the Indians, which the Europeans then used to conquer them, many Indian inventions were leveraged by their conquerors to assist in colonization.

“Quinine and ipecac happen to come from plants that grew only in America, but the cure of scurvy illustrates the general superiority of Indian medical knowledge and pharmacology. The Old World abounded in plants which could easily have cured this disease, but western science ignored them until the Indians demonstrated their utility.”

Weatherford argues that many lives were lost due to willful European ignorance of remedies the Indians had already discovered. He suggests that this may extend into our own time, as we still do not consult native healers for their wisdom.

“Even the medicine of quinine quickly became too precious to the Europeans for them to allow the Indians to use it.”

Though quinine and other medicines were innovated by the Indians, Europeans saw themselves as gatekeepers of these and other natural resources, and restricted Indians’ access to them.

“The Quechua Indians lack an equivalent of the European phrase ‘thank you,’ since their culture teaches that sharing is a requirement of life and that gratitude can only be shown in deeds and not in words.”

This is another example of the fundamental disconnect between Indian and European cultures. The Indians largely lacked concepts of personal property and hoarding of resources, prioritizing instead the care of the community.

“This created a wholly new disease, alcoholism, which has spread steadily over the past few centuries. This rise closely parallels the development of industrialism; alcohol provided a psychic break from the monotonous and long work associated with industrial production.”

Weatherford likes to show how many of modern world’s ills are interconnected, with several stemming from the development of the capitalist system. Here alcoholism is enabled by the demands of the industrial lifestyle.

“From here the Indians traded the manufactured goods all along the eastern coast in what may have been the last productive enterprise practiced by humans along this stretch of the Potomac.”

Weatherford describes the area around Washington, DC, and thus indicts the US government. He is largely apolitical; this cynical passage is a notable exception.