Review Of Rushdoony’s “American Indian.” Introduction

“The American Indian is a standing indictment against the Christianity of this nation.”

R. J. Rushdoony
The American Indian — pg. 7

One of the books I’m currently reading is a short book by Rushdoony on the American Indian. I thought I would review it chapter by chapter in order to capture some of RJR’s thinking about ethnic and Statist type issues.

It is clear in RJR’s Introduction that Rush understood that different people groups existed. For example in one place he notes the attitude of American Indians in a quote from an Old Indian summarizing the Indian attitude towards the “White man,”

“The white man wanted what we had, our land, but he didn’t want us. We wanted what the white man had — his improvements, his guns, his modern conveniences — but we didn’t want him. And so we fought, each wanting what the other had but not wanting the other and trying to eliminate him; and we lost. That’s the story.”

A couple of paragraphs later Rush notes the differences between two non-white people groups as seen through the eyes of the American Indian,

“They could not subject him (the American Indian) to slavery…. it was impossible to enslave the North American Indian. He absolutely refused. If Indians were taken captive and enslaved, they either died or they fought and escaped To this very day, the Indians have a strong prejudice against Negroes. They say, ‘The Negro became a slave. You can’t say much for people who became slaves. You either die or fight for your freedom. We fought for freedom, and we were beaten, but we were never made slaves.’

Of course we would disagree here. The Indian was eventually made a slave to the State just as the White men are now largely becoming slaves to the State. The forms of slavery have changed but we remain enslaved all the same. However, having said that, it is clear that Rush was not one who believed that real ethnic differences did not exist and RJR did not believe that those differences should not be noted. Throughout the Introduction there is constant referral to distinct people groups as people groups.

In this Introduction RJR also tells the story of how the White pagan Federal Government destroyed the Indian. In doing so, Rushdoony teases out the dangers of cradle to womb care as provided by a centralized State,

“… the Government didn’t try to teach Indians anything. For many years, the system was simply this; put the Indians on a reservation; tell them that if they leave, the army will go after them; and while they are on the reservation, tell them to report to the government office every Saturday or every other Sunday for a ration of goods, clothing, and necessities of life. Of course that meant that the Indians didn’t have to work. He had his living handed to him. After a few years of government handouts, the Indian Character was completely destroyed.”

A few pages later Rushdoony quotes a conversation with an American Indian foretelling that much the same thing is happening to the White man,

“Look at those people of mine. They’re no good. They’re like me, just no account. All they’re fit for is a reservation where someone puts a fence around them and takes care of them. That’s it. They’re not fit for anything else. But,” he went on, “I’ve been across this country two or three times now in the last few years, and I’ve learned something: the white man isn’t much better. He has reservation fever now. He wants someone to put a fence around the whole North American continent and take care of him. He wants governments to give him a handout. and to look after him just like Uncle Sam looks after us. And he’s going to get it. If some outfit doesn’t come in and do it for him, some foreign country, and turn the whole of the United States into a reservation, he’ll do it to himself. You wait and see. ‘Cause he’s got reservation fever.”

In these last two quotes we see that sin returns all men, regardless of their heritage, to conditions of slavery. It makes no difference if men are Black, Red, or White, men outside of Christ will beg for their chains to be placed upon them and will call “slavery,” “freedom.” However, men will, according to their lineage and heritage express their slavery differently. Slavery is slavery but not all slavery is identical and different people groups will express their bondage differently. Rushdoony captures this idea when he writes,

“… the Indian problem is basically one of faith and character.”

With this every right-minded Christian would agree. The problems of any and all people groups, as those respective people groups stand sundered from Christ, are problems of faith (the dismal things they believe) and character (who they are as that dismal faith integrates with and animates their people group dispositions.

According to Rushdoony the reason that the White man can’t help the Indian is that the White man has been such a hypocrite. According to Rush the Indian see’s the White men’s Christianity as just another White man hand-me-down. Rushdoony, notes that the American Indian sees the inconsistency and contradiction of so many of the White Churches in terms of affirming certain truths but then denying the necessity to live those truths out. One such example that Rush gives is the inclination of quiet Presbyterian Churches to not reach out to the American Indian and welcome them when they come to visit their churches in the city.

“At almost any Church they (American Indian) go to, they will be outsiders. That’s just the plain fact. And they know it; they’ve tried it. They are strangers in any Church they go to. Even if they are met with a glad hand by a handful of people in the church it means nothing to them. The Indians know that they (themselves) are weak in certain character traits espoused in these churches, but they also expect to see some of the practical application of those traits that have, in fact, characterized Indian life.”

Clearly the lesson here is to be reminded that the Gospel is for people from every tribe, tongue and Nation. God has designed to call all the Nations and we should do nothing to put non-biblical obstacles up between men from different people groups coming to Worship Christ.

In the Introduction RJR introduces the old character of the American Indian as being a rugged individualist and how that character was destroyed by pagan American visions of Socialism. RJR tells about the “Ghost Dance” and how this mystical practice was supposed to be connected to the rejuvenation of the American Indians and the destruction of the White people who oppressed them. A mental note might be made here to the end that when people groups are being enslaved and destroyed and are in a position of no longer being able to fight back they will turn to religions of irrational mystical encounters in order to do for them what they can no longer do themselves. The religion of the irrational and the mystical can sometime be traced back to being the last ditch means of attempting freedom by the vanquished and enslaved. RJR notes that once the Ghost Dance failed in what it promised the American Indian turned to the escape of peyote. Irrational activism (Ghost Dance) gave way to irrational passivism (peyote).

Elsewhere in the Introduction RJR communicates the three stages of Government policy pursued in terms of the American Indian once they were defeated. The first attempt in 1887 to the New Deal was to Americanize the American Indian. The second attempt from the New Deal to Eisenhower was to Indianize the American Indian. Rushdoony notes that this was an attempt turn the American Indian into primitive communists. The third attempt beginning with Eisenhower was to rehabilitate the American Indian and to break up the Reservation system. RJR insists this failed because of Government involvement.

“Government cannot create character, although it had destroyed it. It can no more create character in the Indian by acts of administration than it can create character in the American people by acts of Congress.”

In RJR’s Introduction there comes singing through his long war against the pagan state. Likewise, in the Introduction it is clear that RJR sees that distinctions between people groups are real. Further, it should be noted that in the Introduction, RJR, like all Biblical Christians, sees that the Church has a responsibility to disciple the Nations. There is no place in Biblical Christianity for any people group to block the way to the Cross
of any other People group.

May the Lord Christ grant us grace not to so befoul the Christian faith that we make it anathema to the distinct Nations He has ordained. May the Lord Christ reveal to us our own inclination, as a People group, to become slaves to the Pagan State.