The Origin of Enlightenment Ideas?!
In The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity we began chapter 2, “Wicked Liberty,” examining how Indigenous intellectuals systematically critiqued European society and, in doing so, introduced Europeans to radical ideas about equality and freedom:
This material was for a course on History of Humanity 2023 after finishing chapter 1, “Farewell to Humanity’s Childhood.” In the next class we finished chapter 2.
The Puzzle: How Did Europeans Believe in Natural Equality?
In a scene from the film Shakespeare in Love, Queen Elizabeth reveals herself at a theater performance. Instantly, everyone drops to their knees in automatic deference. One of my graduate school advisors quoted the historian Eric Hobsbawm to the effect that, in European society, the social order was as natural as the sun rising and setting. Hierarchy wasn’t questioned—it was simply how the world worked, no different from a landscape of rocks and trees.
This raises a crucial question: How did Europeans living in completely hierarchical societies come to believe that humans were naturally equal? Where did Rousseau and other Enlightenment thinkers get the idea that inequality needed explanation, when hierarchy seemed self-evidently natural? (For the Hobbes vs Rousseau framework this challenges, see the previous lecture.)
Graeber and Wengrow argue that Europeans didn’t invent these ideas—they learned them from Indigenous American intellectuals.
“Because It Was True”: Indigenous Sources of Enlightenment Thought
Many Enlightenment thinkers explicitly credited Native American sources for inspiring their ideas about liberty and equality. Scholars have long dismissed these claims, suggesting Europeans invented these dialogues to mask radical ideas. But Graeber and Wengrow insist, in one of their book’s shortest sentences—just four words long—“Because it was true” (37).
The intellectual exchange happened primarily in New France—at its height, one of the largest political territories in the world, encompassing the Great Lakes and Mississippi River valley. Jesuit missionaries, who prided themselves on education and rhetorical skill, engaged in extensive debates with Indigenous thinkers, particularly the Wendat.
The Jesuits were frustrated to discover that the Wendat consistently won these debates. As Graeber and Wengrow note, the Jesuits admitted Indigenous people were “smarter than the Europeans they were used to.” This wasn’t European condescension—it was grudging acknowledgment of intellectual defeat.
The Indigenous Critique: Why French Society Was Inferior
The Wendat and other Indigenous groups didn’t just resist French colonialism—they argued that French social organization was fundamentally inferior to their own. This went far beyond resentment of domination. They claimed:
- They were actually richer than the French—because they shared resources and had no one in poverty
- French coercive law revealed social dysfunction—why would you need to threaten people with punishment unless your society was already broken?
- French restrictions on freedom were unnecessary—Indigenous societies maintained order without subjugating anyone’s will
- French gender restrictions were oppressive—women should control their own bodies and property
The Jesuits found these arguments disturbing because they couldn’t easily refute them. If Indigenous societies maintained order without coercive law, allowed greater personal freedom, and ensured no one went hungry—what did that say about European “civilization”?
Freedom vs. Control: The Core Disagreement
A fundamental difference emerged around the concept of freedom itself. Europeans in the 17th-18th centuries generally saw personal liberty as dangerous—something that needed restriction through strong rulers and punitive laws. The Indigenous critique argued the opposite: that freedom was natural and desirable, and that European restrictions revealed deeper social problems.
I ran into the same value gap during my own fieldwork in rural Colombia. When I asked people how life had changed since they were growing up, they’d say “more freedom today”—and then immediately add, “not good,” because now the kids don’t obey their parents and you can’t keep anyone in line. Freedom isn’t universally read as a good; the value we place on it is itself cultural.
On justice: In French society, the guilty individual was punished. In many Indigenous societies, the perpetrator’s family or clan paid compensation to the victim’s kin. The Jesuits admitted this system maintained social order effectively—people avoided harming others because their relatives would bear consequences. But it didn’t require prisons, executioners, or the coercive apparatus Europeans considered necessary.
On mutual aid: Indigenous societies operated on the principle that you could not refuse requests for food or shelter. This wasn’t “primitive communism” in the sense of communal ownership, but rather “from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs.” Europeans found this scandalous—why should anyone be obligated to share with those who ask?
Beyond Graeber & Wengrow: Gender and Two-Spirit Peoples
The lecture pushes beyond what Graeber and Wengrow explicitly discuss. Many Indigenous societies in this region recognized Two-Spirit people—individuals whose social roles didn’t conform to binary gender categories based on biological sex. The French couldn’t comprehend this and used the derogatory term berdache (which unfortunately entered anthropological literature).
This suggests Indigenous societies had sophisticated understandings of the relationship between biology and social identity that were far more permissive of human variation than European frameworks. For critical analysis of how anthropology has approached these topics, see Third Gender Anthropology.
The Stakes: Why This Matters for Challenging Determinism
Understanding the Indigenous critique is crucial for several reasons:
- It challenges the myth that liberty and equality are purely European inventions—these ideas came from Indigenous political philosophy encountering European hierarchy
- It shows Indigenous peoples as sophisticated political thinkers—not “noble savages” living in unconscious bliss, but intellectuals who systematically critiqued European social arrangements
- It reveals why Europeans needed to invent dismissal strategies—the economic stages theory (hunter→herder→farmer→civilization) was created specifically to neutralize these critiques by positioning Indigenous societies as “earlier” rather than “different.” The next lecture on Kandiaronk examines how Turgot and Smith constructed this framework.
- It demonstrates that inequality and coercion aren’t inevitable—Indigenous societies showed that order, prosperity, and freedom could coexist without the apparatus of domination Europeans considered necessary
As Graeber and Wengrow conclude, Indigenous societies “operated to ensure that no one’s will would be subjugated to that of anyone else” (48). Access to basic necessities wasn’t charity—it was the precondition for genuine freedom. You can’t be free if survival depends on subjugating yourself to others.
The Challenge to European Thought
The Indigenous critique posed a fundamental challenge: If societies could function with greater freedom, less coercion, and more equitable resource distribution than Europe—what justified European hierarchy? What made European “civilization” superior?
Europeans had two options: engage seriously with these critiques and consider reforming their societies, or find ways to dismiss Indigenous political philosophy as irrelevant. The next class examines how Turgot and Adam Smith chose the second path, inventing the economic stages framework to neutralize the Indigenous critique by repositioning it as “primitive” thinking rather than sophisticated political philosophy.
Course Context
This lecture was part of History of Humanity 2023, examining The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow. See also The Americas hub for more on Indigenous political philosophy.
Previous class: Farewell to Humanity’s Childhood.
Next class: Kandiaronk & Economic Stages.