Hi Focs: I had a question. How are the traits of the Plains Indian
connected to Thomas Jefferson's "inalienable rights"? Today I discovered
the answer. The Algonquin tribes.
There are about 100 different tribes that fit into a cultural/lingustic
group called Algonquin, which is also the name of one particular tribe. They
lived in an widepread area, from present day Virginia north to the St.
Lawrence River and West to the Mississippi. Basically, they covered the
northwest quarter of the continental U.S. They were comparable to the
Celts. Lots of different kinds, but each with a distinctly Celtic language
and culture.
Imagine a Souix warrior playing the bagpipes. Just Kidding. The comparison
is just about groups and tribes within a larger culture. You know.
The western most tribes lived on the eastern edge of the prairie, in what is
now Minnesota. They were about the only Algonquin tribes that DIDN'T live in
the woods. The first Europeans encountered Algonquin tribes along the
Atlantic coast and eventually pushed them futher and futher west as the US
expanded. They weren't literally pushed onto the Plains with bulldozers, but
historically speaking "pushed" is as good as any word.
While the nation was growing up and finding an identity distinct from
England, the various Algonquin tribes were always nearby. They've been
effecting the American character for nearly 400 years. They were in Virginia
with Jefferson and had already influenced the Colonial Americans for
generations by the time he wrote those magic words: "Life, liberty and the
pursuit of Happiness".
The Plains Indian on horseback is just a particular kind of Algonquin, but
their culture was spread over hundreds of thousands of square miles, over
which they usually just walked. (They were most concentrated in what is now
northern New York and southern Ontario. In fact, I bet there were Alonquin
tribes around Kingston, where the Captain danced and got laid in chapter
one.) Its just that horses LOOK like freedom and so you see them in the
movies alot. It becomes part of their image because a galloping horse on the
open prairie is the very image of freedom. It expresses who they are. Its
not factual, its truer than that.
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"Man is born free, yet everywhere he is in chains"
"We hold these truths to be self-evident. That all men are created equal..."
Pirsig questions the origins of these ideas, but he doesn't claim that the
idea of freedom never occured to anyone in Europe. He's just saying that you
won't find much historical evidence of actual freedom. If everywhere he is
in chains, what reason is there to believe that he is born free? How is
freedom self-evident in European history? And its essentailly true that
there is no reason to believe in freedom if you base it on the history of
the old world.
Jesus is the most striking exception. We can see an egalitarian attitude in
his message, but that part hasn't been well translated into the Churches
that bear his name. And you already know they tortured and killed him for
the things he said. Socrates didn't have it much easier in his "democratic"
Athens. Galieo got his apology 500 years too late. And there are lots of
less famous people who died for lesser crimes. An examination of European
history simply doesn't lead one to the conclusion that all, or even most
individuals were born free or that they enjoyed equality during their lives.
The evidence might show a little glimmer of freedom here and there, but it
doesn't show that all men are born equal. That's all Pirsig is saying.
DMB
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
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