CHAPTER 28
Lewis Henry Morgan was born in a farmhouse on the shores of Lake Cayuga in Aurora, New York in 1818. He graduated in 1840 from Union College in Schenectady, New York. In 1844 he moved to Rochester and became a well-known attorney, politician, and a successful businessman, making a small fortune dealing with land rights as an attorney, working with the railroad and the mining industry.
“He became a member of the Gordian Knot, a young men’s literary and social club which later became the Grand Order of the Iroquois…[Morgan who was a good organizer, took the lead in writing their constitution] with several chapters of their order organized in Western New York. During this time, he became a prominent student of Henry Rowe Schoolcraft (1793-1864). [Rowe, Morgan’s] schoolmaster was a major pioneer of American Ethnology and author of the (1857) book 'The American Indians.’
W. H. Holmes, in his biographical memoir of Lewis Henry Morgan points out that it was, “through his membership in the secret society known as the Gordian Knot, [that] he came to be friends with a man named Ely Parker, a member of the Seneca Indian Tribe. It was through Mr. Parker that Morgan became fascinated with the evolution of society on which his greatest scientific works would be based.”220
“In the year 1856, writes Morgan, having attended the Albany meeting of the [American] Association for the Advancement of Science, my interest in Ethnology was quickened to such a degree that I resolved to resume the study as soon as the state of my business would permit.”221
“In the summer of 1858 Morgan set out for Marquette in Michigan’s upper peninsula, where he had business interests. He was, among other things an attorney for and director of the Bay de Noquet and Marquette Railroad Company.” “On the train from Suspension Bridge,” “Morgan wrote in his journal” he met a “delegation of 28 Sioux, on their return from Washington where they had been for the last three months on business with the government. The most of them were fine looking Indians, with deeply marked and intelligent faces…” Morgan talked to them and tried to obtain information on their kinship system and social organization. But the language barrier was considerable, even with an interpreter, and as Morgan records, “they seemed unwilling to give much information…” “However, Morgan felt, on the basis of their conversations, that the Sioux reckoned descent “in some manner as the Iroquois did,” although “none of their statements could be taken as true” at that time.”222
“Morgan had predicted, on the basis of reason and evidence, that the classificatory system of relationships would be found in Asia in much the same way that thirteen years earlier, astronomers and mathematicians predicted that the planet Neptune would be found in a certain sector of the heavens.”223
Two approaches are often used in scientific inquiry, with one being a data driven analysis and the other is theory driven. In the theory driven analysis, researchers set out to find evidence to substantiate their theory. In a data based analysis, the researchers look to follow the evidence and data wherever it may lead. Both methods are valid when properly applied and work to reinforce each other when the theory is correct. There is however, a temptation in the theory driven methods for one to hold too-tightly to their theories, screening through the evidence for any supporting morsels, while all other finding are being disregarded. Morgan’s research was based heavily on his theories and ethnological reflections that through his kinship research one might find convincing proof of the Asiatic origins of the American Indians. “On the morning of May 17, 1859, in Rochester, New York, an energetic attorney in his early forties bade his wife and children goodbye and set out for Kansas and Nebraska territories up the Missouri to the Rocky Mountains. The purpose of the trip was to ascertain how Indians of various tribes designated their relatives…Now it occurred to Morgan, rather early in his ethnological reflections, that in the distribution of kinship systems one might find decisive proof of the Asiatic origins of the American Indians.”224
By this time Morgan’s theory was well worked out in his mind: if the classificatory system of relationship—so different from that of western Europe [theories of migration] were generally possessed by American Indian tribes, and, further, if it could be traced to, and found in, Asia, the Asiatic origins of the American Indian could be definitely established. His reasoning ran something like this: If two peoples living in noncontiguous areas speak languages related to each other, then one may reasonably conclude that the peoples, too, are genetically and historically related.225
Morgan, “lived and worked in a state of great mental excitement,” according to his friend, the Reverend J.H. McIlvaine. “The answer he received to his questionnaires, as they came in, sometimes nearly over-powered him. I well remember one occasion when he came into my study, saying, I shall find it, I shall find it among the Tamil people and Dravidian tribes of Southern India.’ At this time I had no expectation of any such result; and I said to him, ‘My friend, you have enough to do in working out your discovery in connection with the tribes of the American continent—let the old world go.’ He replied, ‘I cannot do it—I cannot do it-I must go on, for I am sure I shall find it all there.’ Some months afterward, he came in again, his face all aglow with excitement, the Tamil (Indians of India) schedule in his hands, the answers to his questions just what he had predicted, and throwing it on my table, he exclaimed, ‘There! What did I tell you?’’…“Morgan describes the occasion of the discovery of the Tamil system as follows: My astonishment was greater than I can well express to learn that the Tamil system and the American Indian system were substantially identical.” 226
Morgan’s interest in kinship comparative science aided him in making his conclusions that the Tamil and Telugu Indians of India were related to the American Indian cultures. Their family life and similar kin relationships provided Morgan with what he considered to be “decisive proof of the Asiatic origin of the American Indian race.”227 Joshua Hall McIlvaine, (1815-97) pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Rochester and a Princeton University professor affirmed Morgan’s interest in making kinship comparisons in an effort to make a tie to the Indians of India and the American Indians. But, as known today, there is no genetic connection that ties the American Indians to the Tamil or Telugu Indian populations of India.228
It was McIlvaine whom Morgan would go on to dedicate his book, Ancient Society, and it was McIlvaine who would give a special tribute at Morgan’s funeral entitled, “The Life and Works of Lewis H. Morgan”.229 It references Morgan’s interest in the works of well-known anthropologists of England and Europe and of his travels, as he “sailed to (England and) Europe with his wife and son on July 25, 1870. On returning home to New York on August 13, 1871, after almost a yearlong trip which would help to inspire him to finish and publish his book Ancient Society, which theorizes that man evolved from Savagery through Barbarism to Civilization…Morgan’s book (Ancient Society) was so well received among American scholars that it was described as the "foundation of all future work in American historical science.”230
Morgan’s work was not just academic in nature but was foundational in changing society’s conception of the whole of humanity, providing the sciences with insights into historical man. Morgan was elected to membership in the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1856 and eventually became active in their affairs.
Before his death, Lewis Henry Morgan donated some of his correspondence to the University of Rochester. If it were not for this forethought, many letters from such notable people as Charles Darwin, which provide insight into his life, would be lost. Through his work on the evolution of society, Morgan became acquainted with other prominent scientists of the period, including Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer. While in London in 1871, just after the publication of his Systems of Consanguinity, Morgan realized what a large impression his work had made in England. Morgan wrote in his journal that he would like to meet some of the famous men such as Charles Darwin, John McLennan, Thomas Huxley, and Sir John Lubbock.231
While studying in England, Morgan “wrote a letter to Darwin and Darwin agreed to a luncheon. Throughout lunch, the two talked mainly about Morgan's work on the evolution of the beaver, with which Darwin was much impressed. In his own work on natural selection and evolution, Darwin was reluctant to extend his theory to the evolution of man.” When he saw that "many naturalists fully accepted the doctrine of the evolution of species, it seemed to [him] advisable to work up such notes as [he] possessed and to publish a special treatise on the origins of man.”232
Lewis Henry Morgan became best known for his work in the field of anthropology and ethnology with “his best known and most influential work” [being Ancient Society.] That was due “chiefly to the fact that it was recognized as a fundamental and significant work by Karl Marx” as it became a classic in socialist literature. Morgan’s works also helped to define the relationship of the state to property and the obligations and limits given to property owners by the state.233
“He was elected president of the [American] Association [for the Advancement of science] in 1879, and thus presided at the annual meeting in Boston in 1880. [Also] in 1875 he was elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences. These are the two highest honors that American science can bestow upon any American anthropologist.”234
Morgan became renowned for his works and associations with anthropological theorists, for he “knew all of the leading anthropologists of his day—Horatio Hale, Major J. W. Powell, first director of the Bureau of American Ethnology. F. W. Putnam, curator of the Peabody Museum, Harvard University; Otis T. Mason of the U.S. National Museum…And he (also) corresponded with a number of scholars and scientists in Europe; Charles Darwin, Herbert Spencer, Sir Henry Maine, J. J. Bachofen.”235
William Fenton, editor- illustrator of the 1996 reprinting of Morgan’s 1851 book League of the Iroquois, stated:
…in [the] oft-quoted words of Major J. Wesley Powell, Morgan gave “its first scientific account of Indian tribes.” With notables like Wilbert Eames, calling it “the best book ever written on the Indians of Central New York” …“the pundits of Rochester which became simply “the club”-- all were to follow the intellectual bent of Morgan’s ethnological studies, maturing in his joining the American Association for the Advancement of Science at its 1856 meeting in Albany (N.Y.), where he “resolved to resume (his studies of ethnology) as soon as the state of my business would permit,” and culminating in election to the National Academy of Sciences, in 1875.236
Morgan’s religious upbringing had a formative effect on his ethnological beliefs. While growing up in and around Rochester, New York- “The spiritual fires of revivalism swept the religions of the mid-1820’s, with the greatest of the revivals in 1830 in the pulpits of Rochester…(the cradle of Mormonism) where Lewis Henry Morgan lived was a hot bed of religious activity. Evangelist Charles Grandison Finney said, ‘Extreme outcomes of enthusiastic religion in western New York feed into the formation of ethnological conceptions for Morgan.”237
Leslie A. White, professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan and the author of Science of Culture, gave some insight into “Morgan’s attitude toward religion and science” by stating, “If you were for Theology, you were against Science, and Morgan was definitely for Science.” Morgan surmised that since religion and the sciences spoke of the same thing; that would make science and Theology in conflict with each other. Thus, Morgan’s assessment was that “the monolith of Religion must be abandoned”238
In the book Lewis Henry Morgan, the Indian Journals 1859-62, Morgan expressed his concerns regarding the influence of religion in society, being highly critical of the Roman Catholic Church, as expressed in extracts of his European Travel Journal.239
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220 See: W.H. Holmes, Biographical Memoir of Lewis Henry Morgan, 1818-1881 (Washington D.C.: Judd & Detweiler, 1908,) 221-222. Sue Prince, The American Mind, Univ. of Rochester Special Collections, 2000
221 White, Lewis Henry Morgan, Indian Journals 1859-62, 5
222 See: White, 5, 14, 17.
223 Ibid.
224 White., Lewis Henry Morgan, The Indian Journals 1, 6.
225 Ibid. 7
226 Ibid, 1-7
227 Ibid. 6
228 Ibid. 8
229 Joshua Hall McIlvaine, The Life and Works of Lewis H, Morgan: found in Rochester Historical Society, Publication in Fund Series, II (1923): 50-51.
230 See: Carl Resek, Lewis Henry Morgan, American Scholar: (University of Chicago Press, 1960) 142—Ref. Sue Prince, The American Mind, Univ. of Rochester Special Collections, 2000
231 Ibid.,
232 Carl Resek, Lewis Henry Morgan, American Scholar: University of Chicago Press, 1960, 142,—Sue Prince, The American Mind, Univ. of Rochester Special Collections, 2000 Nora Barlow ed. The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, 1809-1882 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1958), 131; Sue Prince, The American Mind, Univ. of Rochester Special Collections
233 See: White, 10.
234 Ibid. 12
235 Ibid.
236 Morgan, Lewis Henry/ William Fenton, League of the Iroquois, Introduction V, VI
237 See: Trautmann, Lewis Henry Morgan and the Invention of Kinship, 64-73. Charles Grandison Finney, Evangelists, 2. Leslie A.White: Morgan’s Attitude toward religion and science 58,59, 219, 226)
238 See: Leslie A. White; Morgan’s Attitude toward religion and science: 58, 59, 219, 226; Book; Trautmann; Lewis Henry Morgan and the Invention of Kinship, 64-73
239 Leslie A. White, Morgan’s Journals, 222, (Rochester, Historical Society Publications, XVI 1937:298,347-49)