Indigenous American criticism was (initially) about freedom, not equality
Americans like Kandiaronk initially criticized the Europeans for all being equally unfree. Europeans all seemed like slaves to the Americans.
Indigenous Americans believed that Europeans made themselves into slaves because they allowed some people to become homeless and hungry.
Later, after he visited Europe, Kandiaronk also criticized Europeans systems of property and material inequality. But his initial criticism, centering freedom, which the left has since neglected, might have been more potent and worth returning to.
Americans thought Europeans were bad listeners, greedy, competitive, and cruel
The Mi'kmaq and Wendat were very different societies.
- Mi'kmaq were egalitarian hunter gatherers.
- Wendat had formal offices and war-prisoner-slaves.
Despite their differences, they criticized Europeans for the same reasons.
- Europeans were unskilled at conversation and debate.
- Europeans had more stuff, but less comfort and time.
- They refused to share excess food with the hungry.
- And European settlements were full of beggars, who they were cruel to.
American freedom depended on mutual aid
Iroquois, and other Americans of the Great Lakes, guaranteed each other autonomy. They provided enough material security that no one was subordinated to another.
This doesn't mean they were egalitarian.
For example, the Wendat had significant material inequality. Men hoarded jewelry and “wampum.” This wealth was hoarded in order to be given away at big events (like criminal trials, since they didn't have prisons).
Crucially, however, that material wealth couldn’t be converted into power over other people. Food couldn’t be hoarded or denied.
This American freedom was a positive freedom in the sense that your freedom increases my freedom. In other words, the Wendat understood that everyone has to be free for anyone to be free.
Everyone agreed the Americans were more free
The Jesuits agreed that the Americans were more free. They just thought that freedom was bad.
Jesuits worried that Americans were too free to become Christians. They saw the Americans' “wicked liberty” as the main impediment to their conversion. Americans were unwilling, they said, to submit to the “yoke of the law of God.”
Europeans were also scandalized that American women had full control over their own bodies.
Americans didn't have jails
Europeans were surprised that Americans lacked jails and criminal punishment.
For the Iroquois and Wendat there was no individual punishment. Even murderers weren’t punished. Instead, the murderer's family had to pay compensation. Some European observers admitted that this was a more effective method of deterring crimes. But they opposed liberty on principle.
In his dialog with Kandiaronk (Wendat), Lahontan (French) suggests that criminal punishment and the threat of damnation is necessary, else murder and robbery would make society miserable.
Kandiaronk replies:
Could you be any more miserable?
What kind of human must be forced to do good?
Kandiaronk saw that punishment isn't made necessary by human nature, but by a peculiar European form of social organization that encourages selfishness.
European freedom depended on possession
Europeans were free to dispose of their property, including land and people, as they saw fit.
More: Slavery preserves violence by embedding it in social reproduction
This was the freedom to be greedy and destructive.
More: Abusus, the right to destroy
This was a negative freedom, in the sense that it was 0-sum with the freedom of others.