No one would suspect Morgan of exaggeration or sentimentality. And if it should be objected that these were private virtues only, and no proof of true civilisation or a well-organised society among the Iroquois, the same writer tells us:[12]—
They achieved for themselves a more remarkable civil organisation, and acquired a higher degree of influence, than any other race of Indian lineage, except those of Mexico and Peru. In the drama of European colonisation they stood for nearly two centuries with an unshaken front against the devastations of war, the blighting influence of foreign intercourse, and the still more fatal encroachments of a restless and advancing border population. Under their federal system, the Iroquois flourished in independence, and were capable of self-protection long after the New England and Virginia races had surrendered their jurisdictions and fallen into the condition of dependent nations; and they now stand forth upon the canvas of Indian history, prominent alike for the wisdom of their civil institutions, their sagacity in the administration of the league, and their courage in its defence.
The words of another author also may be quoted, who tells us:[13]—
Their legislation was simple, and the penalties which gave law its sanctions well defined. Their league stood in the consent of the governed. It was a representative popular government, conceived in the wisdom of genuine statesmanship, and with the sagacity to provide against some of the dangers which beset popular institutions. It is said that the framers of our own (the American) government borrowed some of its features from the Iroquois league. Whether or not this be true, it is a matter of history that as early as 1755 a suggestion came from the Iroquois nation to the colonies that they should unite in a confederacy like their own for mutual protection.
It is the fashion to quote against these favorable statements cases of cruelty committed by the Red Indians or the New Zealanders in their wars among themselves and in their resistance to their white enemies. But let us not forget the bloody pages of our own history. We should probably say that the eighteenth century was one of the most brilliant in the history of Europe. We should probably assign to England at that time a foremost place among European countries, and we know how high a position Scotchmen took during the last century in general culture, in philosophy, in science, and statesmanship. Yet, in his “History of England in the Eighteenth Century,” Mr. Lecky describes the common people of Scotland as broken into fierce clans, ruled by wild chieftains; as thieves and cattle-lifters, kidnappers of men and children to be sold as slaves; as ferocious barbarians, besotted with the most brutal ignorance, and the grossest and gloomiest superstitions, possessed of the rudest modes of agriculture, scratching the earth with a crooked piece of wood for a plough, and for a harrow a brush attached to the tail of a horse, otherwise devoid of harness; their food, oatmeal and milk, mixed with blood drawn from the living cow; their cooking, revolting and filthy, boiling their beef in the hide, and roasting fowls in their feathers, with many like customs and demoralising habits unknown to aboriginal life among the Red Indians.
It will be clear after these few specimens, which might have been considerably increased, that we shall make no step in advance if we continue to use the word savage so vaguely as it has been hitherto used. To think is difficult, but it becomes utterly impossible if we use debased or false coin. I have been considered too inquisitive for venturing to ask anthropologists what they meant by a fetish, but I must expose myself once more to the same reproach by venturing to ask them to state plainly what they mean by a savage.
Whatever other benefits a study of the science of language may confer, there is one which cannot be valued too highly—namely, that it makes us not only look at words, but through words. If we are told that a savage means an uncivilised man, then, to say that the first man was a savage is saying either nothing or what is self-evident. Civilisation consists in the accumulated wisdom of countless generations of men, and to say that the first generation of men was uncivilised is therefore pure tautology. We are far too tolerant with respect to such tautologies. How many people, for instance, have been led to imagine that such a phrase as the survival of the fittest contains the solution of the problem of the survival of certain species and the extinction of others? To the student of language the survival of the fittest is a mere tautology, meaning the survival of the fittest to survive, which is the statement of a fact, but no solution of it.
It is easy to say that the meaning of savage has been explained and defined by almost every writer on anthropology. I know these explanations and definitions, but not one of them can be considered as answering the requirements of a scientific definition.
Some anthropologists say that savage means wild and cruel. But in that case no nation would be without its savages. Others say that savages are people who wear little or no clothing. But in that case the greatest philosophers, the gymnosophists of India, would have to be classed as savages. If it means people without a settled form of government, without laws and without a religion, then, go where you like, you will not find such a race. Again, if people who have no cities and no central government are to be called savages, then the Jews would have been savages, the Hindus, the Arabs, the ancient Germans, and other of the most important races in the history of the world. In fact, whatever characteristics are brought forward as distinctive of a savage, they can always be met by counter-instances, showing that each definition would either include races whom no one dares to call savage, or exclude races whom no one dares to call civilised. It used to be imagined that the use of letters was the principal circumstance that distinguishes a civilised people from a herd of savages incapable of knowledge or reflection. Without that artificial help, to quote the words of Gibbon, “the human memory soon dissipates or corrupts the ideas committed to her charge, and the nobler faculties of the mind, no longer supplied with models or with materials, gradually forget their powers, the judgment becomes feeble and lethargic, the imagination languid or irregular.” Such arguments might pass in the days of Gibbon, but after the new light that has been thrown on the ancient history of some of the principal nations of the world they are no longer tenable.
No one would call the ancient Brahmans savages, and yet writing was unknown to them before the third century B.C. Homer, quite apart from his blindness, was certainly unacquainted with writing for literary purposes. The ancient inhabitants of Germany, as described by Tacitus, were equally ignorant of the art of writing as a vehicle of literature; yet for all that we could not say, with Gibbon, that with them the nobler faculties of the mind had lost their powers, the judgment had become feeble, and the imagination languid.