The Cove Meadows, where Rumbler meets his father, is a real archaeological site called L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland.
From Norse records, we know that about A.D. 1000, Leif Eriksson set sail from Iceland in a broad-beamed open boat with one square sail, called a knarr. He landed on Baffin Island, which he called Hulluland, or “rocky land,” then sailed for the southern coast of Labrador, and finally landed at a place he named Vinland, for the abundance of wild vines that grew there.
The L’Anse aux Meadows site is the only confirmed Norse settlement in North America, and is probably the place where Leif Eriksson and the other Norse explorers stayed for the winter of A.D. 1000.
There were other expeditions to Vinland in the years of 1003—1015. Leif’s brother, Thorvald, led one of those expeditions. He was killed in Vinland. After that, Thorfinn Karlsefni led another expedition, which included one hundred and sixty colonists. Karlsefni and his colonists were terrified by the aboriginal peoples, whom they called Skraelings, and killed several. The Indians fought back. Karlsefni and his colonists left after about a year, and never returned.
Vinland practically disappears from the records after that. The only thing we can say for certain is that the aboriginal peoples won the first round.
The second round would not begin for another five centuries. It would have dramatic consequences, not just for the native peoples of North America, but for the world.
People today tend to speak in terms of the dispossession and “Americanization” of the Indian, but the reverse is equally, if not more powerfully, true. We have all been “Indianized.”
We would argue, in fact, that without Indian contact there would have been no fall of the Berlin Wall, no collapse of communism. There would be no United Nations, no striving for democracy or human rights.
The average citizen in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Europe survived under monarchies often indifferent to the needs of the common person, and sometimes willing to kill thousands in the pursuit of “proper” religious, economic, and political beliefs, as evidenced by the Crusades, the Inquisition, the suppression of the “wild” tribes of Ireland and Scotland, among many other examples. By contrast, the American Indian notion of democracy was astounding.
Thomas Jefferson, when fashioning the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States wrote, “There is an error into which most of the speculators on government have fallen, and which the well-known state of society of our Indians ought, before now, to have corrected. In their [Europe’s] hypothesis of the origin of government, they suppose it to have commenced in the patriarchial or monarchial form … . [Indian] leaders influence by their character alone; they follow, or not, as they please, him whose character for wisdom or war they have the highest opinion … every man, with them, is perfectly free to follow his own inclinations. But if, in doing this, he violates the rights of another, if the case be slight, he is punished by the disesteem of society, or
as we say, public opinion; if serious, he is tomahawked as a serious enemy.”
From the first moment that reports reached Europe describing the lifeways of the aboriginal peoples, Europeans were intoxicated.
In fact, it became a real problem for European governments. To battle this fascination with the “Noble Savage,” the European elite proposed the “theory of degeneration.” According to which, the American climate debased all life on the continent, animals, plants, the aboriginal peoples, and, of course, any European who set foot there.
This only seemed to inflame the interests of the common people, and gifted writers like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson made sure that interest did not wane. They genuinely believed that the Iroquoian form of government was superior to that of the monarchy, and encouraged all colonists to listen carefully to what the Iroquois had to say.
This began a chain reaction that has yet to end.
In 1744, the leader of the Iroquois League, Canassatego, met with American colonists at Lancaster, Pennsylvania. After hearing about their difficulties with the Crown, he told them that if they were wise, they would quickly establish a union like that of the Iroquois, so that they could defend themselves.
In Boston, in 1774, colonists dressed as Iroquois warriors dumped tea into the harbor to protest British taxation and the confiscation of gunpowder, which they equated with their right of self-protection. In 1775, battles broke out in Concord and Lexington. On August 25 of that year, approximately two hundred and fifty years after their first encounter, the colonists met with leaders of the Iroquois League in Philadelphia. The colonial commissioners told the Iroquois: “Our business with you,
besides rekindling the ancient council-fire, and renewing the covenant … is to inform you of the advice that was given about thirty years ago … when Canassatego spoke to us … Brothers, our forefathers rejoiced to hear Canassatego speak these words. They sank deep into our hearts … . We thank the great God that we are all united; that we have a strong confederacy, composed of twelve provinces …”
The first “united states,” then, came about at least partly as a result of sage Iroquois advice.
In 1775, James Adair wrote a book called History of the American Indians, in which he described the Iroquoian system of government: “Their whole constitution breathes nothing but liberty … there is equality of condition, manners and privileges …”
On the eve of the American Revolution, in 1776, a popular account of “Americans” widely circulated in England read: “The darling passion of the American is liberty, and that in its fullest extent; nor is it the original natives only to whom this passion is confined; our colonists sent thither seem to have imbibed the same principles.”
That would prove one of the greatest understatements in the history of the world.
In fact, it is out of that rich aboriginal democratic tradition that the political ideals of what would become known as the Free World emerged.
The government espoused by the League of the Iroquois was everything that European monarchies were not. The Iroquois refused to put power in the hands of any single individual, lest that power be abused. The league sought to maximize individual freedoms, and to minimize governmental interference in people’s lives. The Iroquois taught that a system of government should preserve individual rights, while at the same time striving to insure
the public welfare; it should reward initiative, champion tolerance, and establish inalienable human rights. Good government, they believed, provided for referendum and recall, assured for the common good by a one-person-one-vote system of election. They accepted as fact the equality of men and women, respected the diversity of peoples, their religious, economic, and political ideals, their dreams.
None of these principles were part of the European way of life. But no European who heard them could deny their power.
This is not to say that European civilization had no impact on the form American government would take. It had a profound influence. But it was the contrasting of these two governmental traditions that prompted transplanted Europeans to evolve a system of government which promoted democracy and freedom for all peoples.
In the final analysis, then, the democratic nations of the world owe the aboriginal peoples of North America a debt of gratitude for one very important thing:
Their existence.