What have the Indians contributed to modern-day American society?

What have the Indians contributed to modern-day American society

The Native Americans were the first inhabitants of the New World , and although their culture and traditional way of life were to a great degree wiped out by the subsequent intrusion of Europeans , modern society built by their conquerors retains significant traces of their influence . This influence surfaces everywhere : in culture , art literature , movies , and even in the political realm . In discussing this impact , one need not only restrict the debate to the past events Modern-day American Indians continue to live alongside and

represent a vibrant ethnical community able to make new contributions to the development of the American society

There is a widespread view in historical science that Indians helped shape the laws of this nation . The tribe law was in many ways more democratic than the legislation that was in action in Europe at the same time . The Indian tribe unions often relied on the principle of confederacy , contrary to conquests that were almost the universal form of unification in Europe . Arthur Quinn , professor of rhetoric at the University of California in his work New World : An Epic of Colonial America From the Founding of Jamestown to the Fall of Quebec argues that the Iroquois Confederacy helped shape the United States (Fadden The Iroquois Confederacy still remains the oldest of the functioning participative democracies on the globe . The Indian political establishment that was truly based on the consent of the governed has been highly inspirational for many American political leaders ever since (Fadden . Although with such a vast time span that has occurred ever since , it is not clear whether this perception is accurate and whether this union has not been romanticized , this is not the focus of this . What is important is that many of the founding fathers such as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson had genuine admiration for the Indian political system that influenced their writings and actions

The idea that the Iroquis made an impact on the formation of the United States of America is by no means indisputable . In fact , many researchers claim that the idea of a democratic state with division of power into three branches is derived from writings of famous European scholars and European political thought . Yet others points out that the advanced democratic practices of the Iroquois , for example , fitted very well with the abstract principles of democracy already forming in the minds of the European settlers (Fadden . The Iroquis laws were in some aspects even superior to those of the founding fathers since they gave greater rights to women , being far more advanced on the issues of gender equality that the US society had yet to reach

But the contributions of the Indians are not limited to politics . They most naturally left a trace in the language , accounting for the coinage of new words , including wigwam , squaw , tomahawk , and others . The study of Indian languages was a special challenge faced by American linguistics , which forced its own `founding fathers...