Franklin and Concerning the Savages of North America

Reading Benjamin Franklin’s Remarks Concerning the Savages makes the Native Americans not only appear to have an ideal society, but also makes them look like what many of the settlers were seeking when they left England. Franklin’s thoughts are so profound and well-written that I wonder how anyone reading could not have been in complete agreement with him. He seems to appeal to many aspects of society that the English would have prided in a way that shows that the Native Americans both matched and even exceeded them.
First, he explains that Indians were concerned with the wisdom, as the Indian men would grow old and eventually become sages of society. These sages were an essential part of their tribes, as the younger people would go to them for understanding. The British not only prided themselves on their wisdom, but deemed themselves superior to others based on their concern with attaining and preserving old wisdom. Also language was and is one of the most important features of English culture, which Franklin prudently points out is the greatest attainment of the Native American oral tradition.
The Native American, often perceived as beastly heathens, was not a police society; punishment was not one of the terror-causing aspects of the culture. One of the issues in England at the time was the injustice, and violent public punishment and government sponsored torture.
He explains that the Native Americans believe that the English waste their time on educational pursuits, which mainly function to make them feel superior to others. While the English spend hours making themselves feel pretentiously educated, the Indians focused on being active and not learning that would instruct them toward artificial desires. Franklin draws up an example of a trade proposal to the Indians of the Six Nations, in which six of their young men would be funded and allowed to go to an American college. He accounts the Native American’s polite rejection of the offer, including their reasoning (past examples where Native Americans who were students came back unable to function properly within the tribe) and a very clever final proposal, which was to take six of their white boy and make men of them.
Franklin points out the clever memory of the women, who mentally record during public counsels the events and information of the meetings. He tells that the women have remembered everything as well as the written documents the Americans possess, for the last 100 years. Another aspect of these counsels which he mentions is the ritual aspect, showing the Native American value of tradition, also important to the English. Despite the emphasis on tradition, the councils, Franklin points out, are different from British councils, which allow interruptions and are full of confusion.
The politeness of the Native Americans is something that I never have really considered in the past. While I always imagined these tribes to be considerate of people within the community, I would have never used the term “polite” which, I confess, I would have attributed to more western societies, of those deemed at the time to be more “civilized”. But the Native Americans appear to have rules for most of their actions, which functioned mainly to show respect to others. I have to say I have gained quite an admiration for these lost cultures, where I only had respect before. I imagine that this work would not have been taken incredibly seriously to the English, who were too conservative and unlikely to respond to Franklin’s truthful degradation of them. But I think the American Revolutionaries and those rebellious against the Brits would have liked it.