SAT excerpt on Native American "anarchy" LONG

"More often, however, as in the case of the Iroquois people, a council of sachems, or legislators, ruled, and any person called the "head" of the tribe usually occupied a largely honorary position of respect rather than power. Chiefs mostly played ceremonial and religious roles rather than political or economic ones. Unlike th familiar words "caucus" and "powwow," whch are Indian-traditions, the word "chief" is an English word of French origin that British officials tried to force onto American Indian tribes in order that they might have someone with whom to trade and sign treaties.



In the seventeenth-century Massachusetts the British tried to make one leader, Metacom of the Wampanoag people, into King Philip, thereby imputing monarchy to the American Indean system when no such institution existed. Thus while certain English settlers learned from groups like the Iroquois people how to speak and act in group councils, others simultaneously tried to push American Indians toward a monarchial and therefore less democratic system.

By the late 1600's the Huron people of Canada had already interacted for decades with European explorers and traders and were thus ablecompare their own way of life with that of the Europeans. The Hurons particularly decried the European obsession with money. By contrast, the Hurons lived a life of liberty and equality and believed that the Europeans lost their freedom in their incessant use of "thine" and "mine." One Huron explained to the French adventurer and writer Baron La Hontan, who lived among the the Hurons for eleven years, that his people were born free and united, each as great as the other, while Europeans were all the slaves of one sole person. "I am the master of my body," he said, "...I am the first and the last of my Nation . . . subject only to the great Spirit." These words recorded by La hontan may have reflected the Frenchman's own philosophical bias, but his book rested on a solid factual base: the Huron people lived without social classes, without a government separate from their kinship system, and without private property. To describe this situation, La Hontan revived the Greek-derived word "anarchy," using it in that literal sense to mean "no ruler." La Hontan found an orderly society, but one lacking a formal government that compelled such order.

The descriptions by La Hontan and other European travelers of the so-called anarchy among the American Indians contributed to several different brands of anarchistic theory in the nineteenth century. Today, anarchism is often equated with terrorism and nihilism (denial of values), but early anarchism lacked those characteristics. Pierre Joseph Proudhorn (1809-1865), the author of modern anarchistic theory, stressed the notion of "mutualism" in a society based on cooperation without the use of coercion from any quarter."

SAT questions and answers

"thine" and "mine" are used to illustrate the importance of property in European society In the context of the passage, the statement "I am the master . . . Spirit" implies that the person being quoted believed that a class structure undermined individual freedom.