Sympathizing With the Savage

In 1759, Scottish philosopher Adam Smith wrote “The Theory of Moral Sentiments,” a treatise outlining how and to what extent one man is capable of feeling sympathy for another. His theory was particularly significant at the time because global interactions during the Colonial Era made humans from a variety of different cultures question their ability to interact with one another without provocation. Smith describes the personal affections we feel for others after forcing ourselves to relate to their sensations. He explains how we choose companions who are most likely to reciprocate our sympathies. He also contests that “we are often differently affected” by particular sensations, and that “our different habits of life” create varying possibilities for our capacity to sympathize. While Smith claims that men are capable of relating to one another through shared feelings, he also justifies their ability to disagree because each man perceives certain sensations as more important than others. In 1783, as a battle over American soil raged between European settlers and the land's native inhabitants, Benjamin Franklin channeled Smith's theory in his “Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America.” By drawing upon notions explored in Smith's theory, Franklin asserts that native American Indians are not “savages,” but rather part of a culture unfamiliar to that of European settlers.

The ability to sympathize with one another is of utmost importance, according to Smith, because “society and conversation … are the most powerful remedies for restoring the mind to its tranquility.” In his remarks, Franklin praises the Indians for their use of oratory, explaining how both public transactions and tradition are passed down through memorization, as they have no written language to utilize. He claims that they have an “abundance of leisure for improvement by conversation” and that “having frequent occasions to hold public councils, they have acquired great order and decency in conducting them.” According to their culture, it is extremely improper to interrupt someone speaking, even in common conversation. These images of peaceful communion are contrasted with Franklin's description of a chaotic session of the British House of Commons, where few men can come to agreement and politeness in conversation is hardly observed. The Indians' ability to successfully participate in “society and conversation” prove them to be much less “savage” than the Europeans who fail to utilize sympathy in their processes of communication.

Native American Indians' ability to listen when others speak is a direct result of the importance their culture places on politeness. Smith writes that we must “always endeavor to bring down our passions” to a pitch comparable to that of our company. Furthermore, he claims that “if we are at all masters of ourselves, the presence of a mere acquaintance will really compose us, still more than that of a friend; and that of an assembly of strangers still more than that of an acquaintance.” Smith advocates utilizing sympathy “especially when in their presence and acting under their observation.” Franklin identifies the Indians' extreme politeness in several instances. For example, at the Treaty of Lancaster in Pennsylvania in 1744, when the commissioners of Virginia offered the Indians of the Six Nations an opportunity to send their youth to a Williamsburg college, they waited a full day before making their reply. Franklin explains that this is an Indian rule, and that a public proposition is never to be answered before the tribe has a significant amount of time to weigh the issue, as doing otherwise would indicate the Indians' lack of appreciation, or sympathy, for the matter. Franklin, with his colonial conceptions, still finds this politeness troubling: “The politeness of these savages in conversation is indeed carried to excess, since it does not permit them to contradict or deny the truth of what is asserted in their presence. By this means they indeed avoid disputes; but then it becomes difficult to know their minds, or what impression you make upon them.” While this politeness is certainly of a peaceful nature, even Franklin admits the prospect of it causing tension between the cultures. He reminds us, however, that “if we could examine the manners of different nations with impartiality, we should find no people so rude, as to be without any rules of politeness; nor any so polite, as not to have some remains of rudeness.”

Franklin's illustration of the proposal at the Treaty of Lancaster also demonstrates the two cultures' differing sentiments regarding labor and education. The Indians' reply is thoughtful, with regard to the commissioners' good intentions: “For we know … that you highly esteem the kind of learning taught in those colleges, and that the maintenance of our young men, while with you, would be very expensive to you.” However, although they are able to sympathize with the white men's intentions, they reject their offering, stating that “different nations have different conceptions of things,” and that their “ideas of this kind of education happen to to be the same” as the Europeans'. They had experienced English education, and had determined it to make their men unsuitable for native American life. Franklin remarks that while the Indians may seem “slavish and base” to us, they regard the education with which we value ourselves to be “frivolous and useless.” Smith's theory that men are capable of varying degrees of sympathy according to the subjects which he is most personally affected by explains why colonists and Indians were likely to disagree on the importance of labor and education in their daily lives.

These varying degrees of sympathy manifest themselves in the two cultures' religions as well. Franklin writes that missionaries are often frustrated with Indians because they will listen to stories of the Gospel with patience, understanding and approbation, but fail to actually convert their own sympathies to the Christian doctrine. He writes about an Indian who attempts to relay the natives' version of Creation to a Christian missionary. The missionary becomes “disgusted with this idle tale” and lashes out at the Indian for delivering “mere fable, fiction and falsehood” in exchange for “sacred” Christian “truths.” The Indian replies that the missionary has not been properly instructed in the “rules of common civility,” and that it is ironic that the Christian should refuse listening to the Indian's revelation after he had listened intently to the missionary's. Smith claims that a spectator, or listener, in this instance, must “endeavor as much as he can, to put himself in the situation of the other, and to bring home to himself every little circumstance of distress which can possibly occur to the sufferer,” and that “he must adopt the whole case of his companion with all its minutest incidents; and strive to render as perfect as possible, that imaginary change of situation upon which his sympathy is founded.” The missionary fails to put himself in the position of the Indian, whose story highlighted his people's struggle with starvation. Despite the desperate tale, the missionary finds no way to sympathize with the Indian. Religion, one of the most affective sensations of all, prevents the Christian man from putting himself in the position of the Indian, whose conceptions of spirituality are vastly different.

Franklin recognizes the importance of Smith's theory in relations between the Europeans and the native Americans. He finds varying degrees of sympathy in men to be responsible for the inevitable clash of cultures. Smith forewarns that a lack of mutual sympathy can only result in malice:

But if you have either no fellow-feeling for the misfortunes I have met with, or none that bears any proportion to the grief which distracts me; or if you have either no indignation at the injuries I have suffered, or none that bears any proportion to the resentment which transports me, we can no longer converse upon these subjects. We become intolerable to one another. I can neither support your company, nor you mine. You are confounded at my violence and passion, and I am enraged at your cold insensibility and want of feeling.

With his remarks, Franklin attempts to create genuine sympathy for the native American “savages.” However, he seems to be keenly aware that a lack of sympathy on the part of the white man will be detrimental to the assimilation of both cultures.


Works Cited
Franklin, Benjamin. “Remarks Concerning the Savages of North-America.”
Smith, Adam. “The Theory of Moral Sentiments.” 1759.