Concerning The Savages
Rose Hamill
ENG 241, Kirk
Tues & Thurs - 6:30-10:10
Benjamin Franklin, as with most things, takes a singularly unique look and perspective
on the Native Americans contemporary to his time. Widespread mentality of the
indigenous peoples was that they were one step above infants: misguided, misbegotten
and undereducated, whose only true path to redemption was the westerners’ own God-
fearing presences among them. It makes his essay, Remarks Concerning the Savages of
North America, a piece written with astonishing self-awareness and clarity, one rarely
seen throughout any period in history, least of all the middle of the Great Awakening.
But his essay goes far beyond merely defending the Native Americans – which he
does do, to great lengths. In pointing out the fact that they are not savages, merely a
product of a unique culture and customs, he in turn points out many of the failings and
shortcomings of the Western society thrust upon them. He recounts this throughout the
essay, primarily by way of ironic juxtaposition and secondhand storytelling via tales he
heard from the Native Americans, themselves.
Franklin writes, on the subject of public gatherings within tribes, that, “[to]
interrupt another, even in common conversation, is reckoned highly indecent. How
different this is from the conduct of a polite British House of Commons, where scarce a
day passes without some confusion, that makes the speaker hoarse in calling to order;
and how different from the mode of conversation in many polite companies of Europe,
where, if you do not deliver your sentence with great rapidity, you are cut off in the
middle of it by the impatient loquacity of those you converse with, and never suffered to
finish it!” (Franklin, 469-70). He explains, with perfect respect for the culture from
which it derives, a method of communication, then immediately juxtaposes it with the
notoriously loud, rowdy and chaotic House of Commons, a governing body in Great
Britain. He even goes so far as to imply that not only would us Westerners do well to
learn this custom, but implies that it is far superior to our current method of shouting at
one another in major lawmaking bodies as well as simple conversation.
Even the briefest of images portrayed in his essay gives credence to similar
thoughts. Franklin recounts an acquaintance of his, a man by the name of Conrad
Weiser, who spoke the Mohawk languages with great fluency, going in to meet with a
local tribe. The elder with whom he meets recounts a story which deduces what he
claims is the “true purpose” of Sunday gatherings. The elder recounts: “If a white man,
in traveling through our country, enters one of our cabins, we all treat him as I treat you;
we dry him if he is wet, we warm him if he is cold, we give him meat and drink, that he
may allay his thirst and hunger; and we spread soft furs for him to rest and sleep on; we
demand nothing in return. But, if I go into a white man’s house at Albany, and ask for
victuals and drink, they say, ‘Where is your money?’ and if I have none, they say, ‘Get
out, you Indian dog.’” (Franklin, 472). In recanting this story, he holds up a mirror to a
rather embarassing flaw on the face of the freshly settled Americans: their own bigotry
and hypocrisy. For who would not show the same common decency and courtesy that
would be so readily shown to them? Treating those as you wish to be treated is a fairly
simple gesture which seems to purvey all cultures, and it is one that they cannot meet,
but one that the “savages” can.
Most poignant of all, to the modern reader, at least, is of another set of
circumstances that Franklin recounts in which a minister is sent out to speak with the
Susquehanah Indians. They assemble, and the minister explains what is essentially the
larger part of Biblical lore: the stories of Adam and Eve, the crucifixion of Christ and
similar stories. He is thanked heartily, and in return a chief shares with him a story of
their own folklore, of how a spirit gave to their people the gift of plant food, so they
would not have to subsist on merely animal flesh. The minister calls the story “fable,
fiction and falsehood”, much to the chief’s offense. He says: “My brother, it seems your
friends have not done you justice in your education; they have not well instructed you in
the rules of common civility. You saw that we, who understand and practice those rules,
believed all your stories; why do you refuse to believe ours?” (Franklin, 470). In the age
of widespread Agnosticism and Atheism, this rings particularly poignant: both stories
have about the same probability, scientifically, of being true – why should one be hailed
as fact and the other as fiction? And more to the point, why must the Westerner be so
rude as to insult what must be a cherished story of their people? Through this quote,
Franklin implies, oh, if only the savage Westerner had the same polite customs as the
indigenous peoples; perhaps he would not act so gauche and rude! A delightfully
succinct one-hundred-and-eighty degree turn from contemporary mentality is made from
a simple passage.
To wit, Benjamin Franklin does, in this essay, imply far more that the Native
Americans have an acceptable and admirable culture of their own to be respected. In
showing this, he also proves that the Western society we held up as the “ideal” was, in
fact, flawed in many ways, and could stand to learn a few things from the noble savages,
the Indians. It makes for a singularly entertaining and unique essay for the modern
reader, and, one fears, a message lost on the true savages of the time.
