History · Ch 6 — Displacing Indigenous Peoples
Constitutional Rights
Constitutional Rights
The American Revolution of the 1770s was fought in the name of a “democratic spirit.” For the settlers, this spirit became the defining identity of the new United States, setting it apart from the monarchies and aristocracies of the Old World. Democracy, in their eyes, meant government by the people, through elected representatives, and it was a point of pride that their new nation rejected the hereditary rule of kings and nobles.
Equally important to the settlers was the constitutional guarantee of the individual’s “right to property.” The Constitution was written so that the state could not override this right. In their minds, the security of private property was a cornerstone of freedom — a protection against the arbitrary power of government.
But these celebrated rights were sharply limited in practice. Both democratic rights — the right to vote for representatives to Congress and for the President — and the right to property were reserved for white men alone. Women, enslaved people, and Native Americans were excluded from the very freedoms the new nation claimed to champion.
A striking commentary on this contradiction comes from Daniel Paul, a Canadian native, writing in 2000. He pointed out that Thomas Paine, the great champion of democracy during the American War for Independence and the French Revolution, “used the Indians as models of how society might be organized.” In other words, the very thinker who inspired democratic revolutions in the Atlantic world looked to Native American societies as examples of a free and well-ordered community. …
Daniel Paul on Thomas Paine and the native example. Daniel Paul, a Canadian native,
pointed out in 2000 that Thomas Paine — the champion of democracy at the time of the War for
American Independence and the French Revolution — had drawn directly on native example:
Thomas Paine 'used the Indians as models of how society might be organized', and 'the Native
Americans by their example sowed the seeds for the long-drawn-out movement towards democracy
by the people of Europe.'
— Daniel Paul, We Were Not the Savages, p. 333 (2000)
What it shows: Even as native peoples were being stripped of land and rights, one of the
democratic tradition's own founding figures had looked to native societies as a working model …
Karl Marx on the American frontier. The German philosopher Karl Marx (1818-83) described
the American frontier as:
'the last positive capitalist utopia… the limitless nature and space to which the limitless
thirst for profit adapts itself.'
— Karl Marx, 'Bastiat and Carey', Grundrisse
What it shows: Marx read the frontier not as an empty wilderness waiting to be settled but
as the ideal stage-set for capitalism itself — limitless land meeting a limitless "thirst for …