Civilizations Under Siege:
The European Conquest of the Americas

Edward J. Dodson

[From the book by the author, The Discovery of First Principles,
Volume One, published by iUniverse]

Investigation will reveal the fact that settlement has not only flowed around physical obstacles,following the lines of least resistance, but that the location of the Indian tribes has been influential in determining the lines and character of the advance. The student of aboriginal conditions learns also that the buffalo trail became the Indian trail, that these lines were followed by the white hunter and trader, that the trails widened into roads, the roads into turnpikes, and these in turn were transformed into railroads.[Frederick Jackson Turner]

NOT QUITE ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT

A substantial body of physical evidence uncovered during this century has confirmed the migration of Eurasian tribal groups westward across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas. Archaeologists and other scientists working together during the last few decades have discovered inscriptions of ancient origin throughout the northern and southern hemispheres, written in what some experts believe are "European and Mediterranean languages in alphabets that date from 2,500 years ago." Such findings are viewed by some scientists as evidence of the presence and permanent settlement by "Celts, Basques, Libyans, and even Egyptians" in the Western hemisphere. Other evidence pointed to in support of this conclusion includes, for example, a strong resemblance in physical appearance of members of the Algonquian-speaking tribes of North America to that of southern European and Mediterranean peoples. Tales of migration across the ocean in their distant past was also integral to the oral history of the Algonquians.

Findings throughout the coastal areas of the Americas continue to add to the body of evidence; the scientific community, however, remains somewhat divided and skeptical. One archaeologist who has remained unconvinced is Brian Fagan:

A small group of archaeologists is devoting their careers to the search [for the origins ... of the first Americans]. Many are cautious scholars. Others are gripped by profound convictions that cause them to espouse extravagant viewpoints in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. A gathering of scholars studying the first Americans is never dull, for controversy invariably erupts, sometimes veiled in carefully studied politeness and firm dogma, sometimes dissolving into academic shouting matches. Very often the arguments are more remarkable for their vehemence than their scientific substance.

What is now beyond question is that people of northern European origin established settlements and explored the coastal areas of North America. Norsemen, or Vikings, reached and colonized Iceland, then pushed westward to found new settlements on the coastal regions of Greenland. From these bases, Viking explorers in the eleventh century crossed the Davis Strait to the North American continent, traveled south and eventually founded a small community at the northern tip of Newfoundland. The remains of this settlement were uncovered in the early 1960s by Norwegian archaeologist and historian Helge Instad. Although the Viking explorers were few in number and had little permanent impact on the history of the Americas or the tribal societies with whom they came in contact, one cannot help but admire their incredible sense of adventure and fearless pursuit of the unknown. Moreover, their journeys did result in one very probable legacy -- the creation of a mixed race called the Mandans, who for hundreds of years thereafter occupied the northern plains west of the Great Lakes.

Viking expeditions made their way along the eastern coast of North America and also explored the northern waterways of Canada, reaching the western shore of Hudson Bay and continuing inland and southward to Lake Winnipeg. Under circumstances lost to the recorded annals of history, some of these Vikings were apparently captured and adopted into the Mandan tribe. European explorers of the seventeenth century described the Mandans as a race unique in the Americas, the people said to have mixed hair colorings and many being fair skinned and blue eyed. The culture and history of the Mandans was later introduced to European-Americans in great detail by the Pennsylvania-born artist George Catlin, who devoted his life to acquiring an understanding of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Catlin lived among the Mandan for a time during the 1830s, when the tribe was already in decline. Attacks by other tribes, particularly the Sioux, had reduced their numbers considerably. Eventually they would suffer virtual extinction as a result of contracting European diseases against which they had no built-up immunities or resistance. Catlin described them with great affection and left a puzzling account for modern scientists:

The Mandans are not a warlike people. They seldom, if ever, carry war into their enemies' country, but when invaded, show their valor and courage to be equal to that of any people on earth. Being a small tribe, and unable to contend on the wide prairies with the Sioux and other roaming tribes, who are ten times more numerous, they have very judiciously located themselves in a permanent village, which is strongly fortified. By this means they have advanced further in the arts of manufacture; have supplied their lodges more abundantly with the comforts, and even luxuries, of life than any Indian nation I know of.

Interestingly, the case of the Mandans illustrates an important principle; namely, that the historical development of groups proceeds along very similar paths, although strongly influenced by the natural environment and the presence of other groups. We see in the Americas the same pattern of conflict between those tribes who are settled in long-term communities and those who continue to live off of game animals and are dominated by warrior- hunter subgroups. An additional dimension to this drama is added by the strategic decision by the Mandan to fortify themselves in one location in order to better resist the onslaught of numerically superior tribes.

In addition to his observations on how the Mandan were organized as a societal group, Catlin goes on to describe their very European-like appearance:

A stranger in the Mandan village is first struck with the different shades of complexion, and various colors of hair, which he sees in a crowd about him and is at once disposed to exclaim that "these are not Indians." There are a great many of these people whose complexions appear light. Among the women, particularly, there are many whose skins are almost white; with hazel, gray, and blue eyes.

Why this diversity of complexion I cannot tell, nor can they themselves account for it. Their traditions, so far as I have yet learned them, afford us no information of their having had any knowledge of white men before the visit of Lewis and Clark made to their village ...

Evidence supporting the probable Viking origins of the distinctive Mandan appearance and cultural advances over other indigenous tribes was unearthed at the end of the nineteenth century. A large stone engraved with Norse writing was discovered in western Minnesota in 1898 that described the fate of a small party of Vikings who ventured into the area in 1362 and were attacked by indigenous warriors. Some members of this Viking group are thought to have been captured and integrated into the Mandan tribe. The details of this story may never be known, but the explanation provided is certainly within the realm of plausibility.

At minimum, the intermittent travels by Eurasian groups to the Americas reinforces the idea of history as a continuum, with groups subdividing, migrating and re-subdividing when conditions warranted. This process brought the largest numbers of migrants to the Americas some 20-30,000 years ago by way of the land bridge then present between the Americas and Asia. By 15,000 B.C. various groups had penetrated deep into both the northern and southern hemispheres. Their small numbers and the large land area available to support a nomadic existence forestalled a settled existence and development of a hierarchical socio-political structure until almost 1,000 B.C. Amazingly, as late as the sixteenth century, when the Aztecs of Mexico and the Incas of Peru were overwhelmed by Spanish conquistadors (assisted by indigenous enemies of these powerful empires), neither group apparently had any knowledge of the other's existence. Distance, a mountainous terrain and dense forests certainly contributed to the isolation of these empire-builders of the southern hemisphere.

Hunter-gatherer groups had discovered the grassy uplands of the Peruvian region as early as 15,000 B.C. Although mountainous, they also found abundant sources of water and a wide variety of game animals. The Pacific coast of Peru, on the other hand, receives little rainfall; inland, there is desert. As a consequence, those who settled this part of Peru did so to harvest the sea rather than the soil, and permanent settlements appeared only around 2,500 B.C.

Civilization was advancing in the Americas on the Eurasian model but at a considerably slower pace. Whether or not one accepts the evidence of Atlantic migrations by the Vikings and earlier Eurasian groups, what is certain is that the dynamics of an increasing population and changing environment stimulated the indigenous tribes of the Americas establishment of hierarchical socio-political structures in the same way this occurred in more distant times for their Eurasian ancestors.

Certain technological discoveries by tribes in the Americas remained to be discovered hundreds or even thousands of years into the future, had they not been introduced by the invading Europeans of the sixteenth century. This was the case even down to the domestication of animals as sources of labor and food. With the exception of the dog, which was domesticated by tribes in the northwestern part of the northern hemisphere around 8,400 B.C., only the Peruvian tribes relied on domesticated work animals; these included the guinea pig (6,000 B.C.) and the llama (3,500 B.C.). Interestingly, the evidence strongly suggests that the knowledge gained by these early Peruvian settlers spread outward to other, less advanced groups. The Aztec, who came to dominate what is now Mexico, apparently acquired at least some of their agricultural practices from the Peruvians. Time and the experience of periodic natural disasters resulted in a re-isolation of these two great civilizations.

LIFE BEFORE EUROPEANS ARRIVED

Prehistoric hunters became increasingly proficient after the development of sharpened stone weapons. A similar result occurred when the domestication of wild plants was facilitated by tools created for harvesting of food crops and grinding of grains into flour. However, not until around 5000 B.C. were maize and beans domesticated by the tribes of the Tehuacan Valley (Mexico), providing them with a balanced supply of proteins, carbohydrates and amino acids. Surplus crops eventually enabled groups in the southern hemisphere to settle for several years in one location, until their slash and burn form of agriculture depleted the soil of fertility.

As in Eurasia, the earliest settled communities were populated by clans of related families. Leadership generally rested with the eldest productive members of the clan. Administration of the clan's territorial holdings was normally directed by the elders on the basis of communal ownership. Hierarchical structure on the Eurasian model first appeared around 1500 B.C. in the southern hemisphere. As described by historians Swanson, Bray and Farrington, the changes parallel those of earlier Eurasian experiences:

Some tribal communities developed into chiefdoms, characterized by the beginnings of class distinction and by an increasing separation between the rulers and the common people. Certain clans or families gained the power and status at the expense of others, leading eventually to the emergence of a hereditary elite. ...

In Mesoamerica and the central Andes the more advanced chiefdoms were gradually transformed into states. States have populations measured in tens or even hundreds of thousands, with strong centralized government, specialized professions (administrators, priests, craftsmen, traders, lawyers and bureaucrats), and a hierarchy of social classes. The governing class gets more than its fair share of the produce of the community, may control the distribution of goods or land, and has few links with the common people. Class distinctions may be deliberately fostered by government policy through the granting of special insignia or privileges.

The three great examples of these American civilizations were the Aztec of Mexico, the Mayan in Guatemala and the Inca of Peru. The rise of the Aztec civilization in the high Valley of Mexico began somewhat later than that of the Incas in Peru, however. The Aztec decision to settle where they did centered on the existence of several large lakes, formed during a prehistoric era of greater rainfall. Their numbers increased over time, as did their impact on the fragile environment in which they lived, as described here by historian Jonathan Leonard:

...perhaps as much as 2,000 years ago ... the population on the shore of these lakes evidently grew to the extent that the farmers began to feel pinched for land, so they encroached on the lakes. Starting in the shallowest places, they drove stakes into the soft bottom and connected them with wickerwork to form small enclosures. Then they scooped up mud and dumped it into the enclosures until they created a scrap of new land rising a foot or so above the water. These always-moist floating gardens proved enormously productive and could be planted to crops several times a year. As the population of the Valley of Mexico continued to increase, more and more of them were built. The islands coalesced into blocks of land separated by canals; trees were planted on them so their maze of roots would stabilize the mushy soil, and silt scooped out of the canals was spread on their surfaces to preserve their fertility.

In their peak period, before the Spanish conquest, the floating gardens were the economic base of the Aztec empire. The gleaming white capital, Tenochtitlan, was itself built mostly on floating gardens, and food for its estimated 300,000 inhabitants was brought in from other floating garden areas by canoes that plied the canals.

Necessity had stimulated discovery under societal conditions that apparently fostered experimentation. Thus, Aztec socio-political arrangements were for a relatively long period cooperatively-based; at the same time, their settled existence eventually resulted in the same hierarchical socio-political structure that shaped the destiny of similarly developed civilizations in Eurasia. Yet, the Aztec understanding of the natural environment, the discovery of practical knowledge and conversion of that knowledge into technologies and the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake proceeded at a pace consistent with the internal and external pressures of their civilization. Given sufficient time, this would have led them along a path of technological advance closely resembling that of their European conquerors. The evidence to support this conclusion comes from the tendency of very divergent groups to find very similar solutions to organizational challenges they face over time.

Traditions, rituals, and social mores do differ by degree; however, our species-specific powers of self-contemplation serve us in a universal fashion and have done so independent of time and place. What differentiates societies from one another is the stage of development, the extent of knowledge accumulation (i.e., of discoveries), the pressures from the external environment and the presence of competing groups.

Defying what would seem most logical, the appearance of settled and more highly structured groups in the northern hemisphere of the Americas appeared in much more recent times than in the southern hemisphere and in regions one might not anticipate would have been viewed as hospitable for large-scale human habitation. These tribal groups (primarily the Hopi and Zuni tribes), settling in the southwestern regions of what is now part of the United States, constructed adobe-walled towns and engaged in a highly developed form of agriculture. Their socio-political structure was also highly advanced and included a formal court system within which disputes and the interpretation of law was adjudicated.

Tribes living east of the Rocky Mountains continued at this time to live primarily as hunters, although few were nomadic as that term is normally used. They constructed villages and engaged in horticulture but periodically moved when game and soils became depleted. The Algonquin and other tribes occupying the northeastern part of the Americas were semi-sedentary and depended more extensively on agriculture, while to their immediate south (from Lake Champlain to the Genesee River and from the Adirondack Mountains to central Pennsylvania) five independent tribes had long before the arrival of European challenges united to form a powerful confederation, the Iroquois League, to govern this large territory and protect one another from attack by non-member tribes.

By Eurasian standards of the sixteenth century, these American tribal societies were far behind in the several crucial areas that would matter most -- population size, systems of agriculture and manufacturing capable of producing large surpluses, the development of weaponry and the technology of warfare. Initial numerical superiority thwarted European incursions but this advantage quickly disappeared as the sixteenth century progressed. Samuel Morison and Henry Commager describe the tribal societies in the Americas as largely independent of one another, not yet reaching the stage in their development were alliances and fixed settlement stimulated the building of walled cities or fortifications:

Outside Peru, Mexico, Central America, and the Iroquois country, the Indians were completely decentralized; each tribe controlled but a small territory, lived in a state of permanent hostility with its near neighbors, and knew nothing of what went on elsewhere.

The case is certainly overstated, insofar as hostility is concerned. Warfare was frequent, yet most tribes were headed by civil chiefs whose leadership roles dominated until the actual occurrence of war. In most cases, wars between tribes represented long running feuds traced to some distant (or recent) atrocity rather than a desire by one tribe to gain control of the territory of another. Even the Iroquois League was a defensive alliance that, although secured a large territory, was not utilized for territorial expansion. Empire-building remained limited to the southern hemisphere.

The protection of territory held by tribes for many generations and, hence, considered by the individual tribe as its traditional hunting and fishing grounds was, however, a dominant factor in the periodic conflicts that arose. For this reason, even the more peacefully inclined tribes selected warriors as sub-chiefs to lead war parties against their enemies. In other tribes, particularly those who lived in close proximity to one another and which were larger in population, displayed organizational traits similar to their Eurasian counterparts. At the time of the European migration to the Americas, however, the tribes of North America remained primarily communitarian and without the capacity (or desire) to produce a large surplus of wealth. The arrival of Europeans, who introduced both the horse and more efficient weapons, escalated the destructiveness of warfare and pulled the tribal societies rapidly toward a more warrior-dominated socio-political structure. Unfortunately for these tribes, their relatively low populations and primitive systems of wealth production left them ill-prepared to resist the storm rising over the Atlantic Ocean. One of the early exponents of modernization theory, Adam Smith, concluded that in the end the life of the indigenous peoples of the American southern hemisphere (who survived the disease and warfare brought by Europeans) was actually enhanced and their long-term survival assured:

In spite of the cruel destruction of the natives which followed the conquest, these two great empires [Aztec and Inca] are, probably, more populous now than they ever were before: and the people are surely very different; for we must acknowledge, I apprehend, that the Spanish creoles are in many respects superior to the ancient Indians.

Smith did not ignore the issue of whether universal principles existed for all members of the human species. However, his analysis was plagued by inconsistency in the application of principle to existing socio-political arrangements and institutions. Out of context, the above passage served the interest of those who would self- righteously suggest that because less technologically advanced societies were inherently inferior, those in the more advanced societies were morally obligated to lead their inferiors out of a primitive state. "In judging [the] capacity [of the indigenous people] the Spaniards never doubted that their own standards were the logical ones to apply," writes Lewis Hanke. This attitude resulted, conversely to Smith's view, in the decimation of the quality of life for these indigenous people:

Not one of the colonists considered the Indians capable of living in freedom. ...[More than one Spaniard observed] Indian prodigality and considered that, inasmuch as Indians showed no greediness or desire for wealth (these being the principle motives ... impelling men to labor and acquire possessions), they would inevitably lack the necessities of life if not supervised by Spaniards. ...[One Spanish colonist in the Americas] conceded that the Indians must have had ability of a sort because they had raised crops, built houses, and made clothes before the Spaniards arrived, [and that the] Indian chieftains, likewise, appeared to him to have a good method of keeping together and protecting the people under their administration, but in all other matters neither Indians nor chieftains manifested sufficient ability to live like Spaniards.

To live like Europeans was not in the nature of the indigenous people of the Americas, yet a small number of leaders (recognizing their great disadvantage in numbers and ability to carry on sustained warfare) attempted to secure a degree of protection from European encroachment by seeking peaceful relations and adopting European methods of agriculture, manners of dress and culture. In the end, these efforts failed to preserve tribal independence. Individuals intermarried with Europeans and were absorbed into the majority society. The tribal, communitarian way of life slowly gave way until the few surviving groups were relegated to the status of wards of the State and required to live on lands the Europeans deemed worthless for themselves.

Between the time the Europeans first arrived in the late fifteenth century and the decade of distress that resulted in the rebellion of English colonists in the North America against British rule, the conquest of the hemisphere's indigenous people was accompanied by a sincere, if ineffective, debate over the morality questions raised. European transnationalists provided a framework for this debate, as did the classics of Greek and Roman antiquity. The number of true scholars living in the Americas was certainly small, even as late as on the eve of rebellion against Britain. Yet, there was a widespread and pervasive sentiment on the part of colonists that their life and socio-political arrangements were distinctly superior to those of the Old World and were in great external danger. "They had hated and feared the trends of their own time, and in their writing had contrasted the present with a better past, which they endowed with qualities absent from their own, corrupt era", writes Bernard Bailyn. The age to which the colonists looked as exemplifying a condition of full liberty was that of pre-Norman, Anglo-Saxon England. They did not, however, look at themselves as conquerors and usurpers where the indigenous Americans were concerned. A particularly critical assessment of the European-Americans who came to the frontier appears in Richard Drinnon's introduction to the memoirs of John Dunn Hunter, who had been captured near the end of the eighteenth century by the Osage tribe and raised to adulthood by these people. Hunter's memoirs spoke in tender and favorable terms of the life led by the Osage and other indigenous tribes, evoking great interest among European and some American intellectuals but resentment from those who felt the sting of Hunter's words. In a society supposedly built on principle, with the express purpose of protecting life and liberty, the treatment of Africans and indigenous North Americans did not stand up to close examination:

Europeans in the New World had good reason ... for not looking directly at the natives and the wilderness they were destroying. To have looked openly risked revealing that savages ... were like niggers: they existed only in the heads of whites. To have seen the natives risked discovering that these "ravening wolves" were merely that part of themselves Wasps found abhorrent, necessary to deny, and therefore necessary to project... Open-eyed scrutiny threatened to disclose that the headlong pursuit of God, Progress, the American Empire, and their own "higher nature" had hurled Wasps along a course of warring against what was natural in themselves and their environment.

After visiting Thomas Jefferson at Monticello in 1824, Hunter attempted to negotiate with the Mexican government for an Indian homeland in Texas that would become a buffer state between Mexico and the United States. In this quest, Hunter made an enemy of Stephen Austin, who first threatened Hunter and then had him murdered. Richard Drinnon's assessment of the actions of those in Andrew Jackson's administration, as harsh as they were toward Hunter and the indigenous tribes, merely confirmed that "American Indian policy had always been genocidal in intent and performance." William Penn on the other hand, who provided a detailed description of the tribes indigenous to the area he acquired by grant from the English monarch, admonished his fellow Europeans:

Do not abuse them, but let them have justice, and you win them. The worst is, that they are the worse for the Christians, who have propaged their vices, and yielded them tradition for ill and not for good things.

Benjamin Franklin displayed a strong interest in treating the Delaware and other tribes justly when he challenged the legitimacy of a land swindle executed by Thomas Penn, referred to as the "walking-purchase," because the amount of land acquired was based on the distance walked over a day and a half; Penn had, however, employed several swift athletes to cover a much larger distance than the Delaware had conceptually agreed to. Working in conjunction with Sir William Johnson, agent of the English crown and adopted chief of the Mohawk tribe, Franklin orchestrated the resale of this tract to the Iroquois - - who were the actual owners of the land and not the Delaware. This concern did not, however, prevent Franklin from becoming involved in a land company organized to promote settlement in western Pennsylvania and beyond, knowing full well that this territory was inhabited by countless indigenous tribes.

There is no reliable record of Jefferson's meeting with John Hunter; however, his respect for their civilization did not prevent him from writing to William Henry Harrison, "In war they will kill some of us; we will destroy all of them." Under somewhat less troublesome circumstances, his correspondence affirmed his conviction in the equality of the indigenous North Americans:

[T]he proofs of genius given by the Indians of North America place them on a level with whites in the same uncultivated state. ...I have seen some thousands myself, and conversed much with them, and have found in them a masculine, sound understanding. I have had much information from men who have lived among them, and whose veracity and good sense were so far known to me, as to establish a reliance on their information. They have all agreed in bearing witness in favor of the genius of this people.

Only a very small minority recognized or were troubled by the irony involved in the European- American annihilation of the indigenous tribes and forcible removal of these people from their homelands. After settlements were established in Boston, Philadelphia, New York, Williamsburg and other coastal and tidewater areas, the second and third generation of European-Americans (and their contemporary arrivals from Europe) thought of the interior of North America as virgin frontier, unsettled and available for anyone able to clear the land and hold it. If, today, we are troubled by the absence of morality associated with this migration, characterized by considerable violence, we should at least consider the following perspective, provided by Theodore Roosevelt not very long after the last of the indigenous tribes surrendered their independence, their territory and much of their dignity:

The Southwest was conquered only after years of hard fighting with the original owners. The way in which this was done bears much less resemblance to the sudden filling up of Australia and California by the practically unopposed overflow from a teeming and civilized mother country, than it does to the original English lone quest of Britain itself.

The warlike borderers who thronged across the Alleghanies, the restless and reckless hunters, the hard, dogged, frontier farmers, by dint of grim tenacity overcame and displaced Indians, French, and Spaniards alike, exactly as, fourteen hundred years before, Saxon and Angle hadovercome and displaced the Cymric and Gaelic Celts. They were led by no one commander; they acted under orders from neither king nor congress; they were not carrying out the plans of any far-sighted leader. In obedience to the instincts working half blindly within their breasts, spurred ever onward by the fierce desires of their eager hearts, they made in the wilderness homes for their children, and by so doing wrought out the destinies of a continental nation.

The people who came to the Americas from Europe were, as Roosevelt suggests, motivated not so much by the promise of empire as by the promise of a freehold and minimal government encroachment on their freedom. Accompanying this mass migration of people from Europe to the North American coast and then into the vast interior a small number of transnational intellectuals recognized the incongruity of conquering a less advanced people in the interest of individual liberty.

Opportunists and the agents of the State might continue to act out man's inhumanity to man in vulgar fashion; what appeared and then increased, however, was the number of voices in the wilderness, crying out against injustice. And yet, there was a recognition on the part of leaders among the Europeans as well as the indigenous tribes that justice demanded a sharing of the earth's bounty. Meeting with the lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania, George Thomas, in 1742, the Iroquois chief Canassateego drove to the heart of the problem between those who controlled the land and the newcomers:

We know our lands are now become more valuable. The white people think we do not know their value; but we are sensible that the land is everlasting, and the few goods we receive for it are soon worn out and gone.

The response by Thomas, measured and thoughtful, provides the basis on which the Europeans legitimately had an equal claim, an equal birthright, to the land:

It is very true that lands are of late becoming more valuable; but what raises their value? Is it not entirely owing to the industry and labor used by the white people in their cultivation and improvement? Had not they come among you, these lands would have been of no use to you, any further than to maintain you. And is there not, now you have sold so much, enough left for all the purposes of living? What you say of the goods, that they are soon worn out, is applicable to everything; but you know very well that they cost a great deal of money; and the value of land is no more than it is worth in money.

To the extent that Thomas meant exchange value as represented by coinage or other form of money, he espoused the demand theory of value. Although the indigenous tribes bartered and relied upon certain commodity standards for money, territory was acquired not by purchase or exchange but held by force of arms. With the creation of grants, charters and titleholdings, the Europeans had merely advanced the art of sanctioned criminal license to a more cultivated level. The indigenous people were, however, only the first victims of the privilege carried forward into the socio-political arrangements and institutions of the new confederation become union of sovereign states. After war between these states reduced the states to subordinate positions within a continental empire, the consequences of privilege became clear, at least to some. Among the vanguard of those warning of worsening conditions was Henry George:

Even if universal history did not teach the lesson, it is in the United States already becoming very evident that political equality can continue to exist only upon a basis of social equality; that where the disparity in the distribution of wealth increases, political democracy only makes easier the concentration of power, and must inevitably lead to tyranny and anarchy. And it is already evident that there is nothing in political democracy, nothing in popular education, nothing in any of our American institutions, to prevent the most enormous disparity in the distribution of wealth. ...We already have citizens whose wealth can be estimated only in hundreds of millions, and before the end of the century, if present tendencies continue, we are likely to have fortunes estimated in thousands of millions -- such monstrous fortunes as the world has never seen since the growth of similar fortunes ate out the heart of Rome.

What, after all, had brought millions of Europeans to the Americas was the quest for land and a better life. Conditions in Europe were such that "[t]he general productivity of agriculture was still too low [as late as the sixteenth century] that no country could totally guarantee a basic level of subsistence for the whole of its population every year out of its own resources." Peasants in every country suffered from heavy taxation and land rents as well as from a denial of political liberty. Along the coastal tidewaters of North America, the descendants of earlier immigrants had by the early eighteenth century accumulated considerable personal wealth; newer arrivals sought to repeat the process by moving to the frontier. Sounding very much like Henry George, Jackson Turner Main found that the North American promise of equality of opportunity was amazingly short-lived:

When the frontier stage had ended, and society became stable, the chance to rise diminished. All the land worth owning was now occupied, and land prices rose, so that the sons of pioneers and the newcomers could not so easily improve their positions. Mobility therefore diminished as the community grew older.

Under these pressures, the civilization of pre-European America had little chance of maintaining a sovereign existence. Their numbers were, in the end, not even large enough for them to become an important minority among the minorities who eventually came forward to challenge the dominant European-American population. As we know from the experience of the last four hundred years, the pace of change in the direction of adherence to a doctrine of human rights has been agonizingly slow. An argument can be made that an equal or even larger portion of the world's population today suffers from oppression and economic deprivation than in the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries. Even in the world's social democracies (a group of societies recently enlarged, one might argue, to include some of the eastern European societies the various republics comprising the Soviet Union) power and privilege continue to be concentrated, as is the control over land and natural resources. In some societies this control remains largely private; in others, privilege manifests itself in the hands of bureaucrats and the State. In North America during the period of frontier expansion, control of the land was taken away from the indigenous tribes by people in constant motion along a 1,500 mile front that moved westward from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River, then converged on the remaining tribes from all sides.