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EricH's avatar

Mr Bell - an expert in the field of early modern France - attests to the fact that the young French soldier with the elaborately aristocratic name of Louis-Armand de Lom d’Arce, Baron Lahontan" did factually travel "extensively in North America and learned Native American languages." He further stipulates that the native intellect Kandiaronk "almost certainly met" the Frenchman who would go on to write of his adventures in North America in Dialogues with a Savage.

And yet, Mr Bell pronounces that the book produced is fiction more on the order of Jonathan Swift (whom he first thinks of as Daniel Defoe) in the land of Lilliput. Why? Doesn't Lahontan's book sound more like a reflective travelogue writer like, Paul Theroux, Jan Morris, Bruce Chatwin, VS Naipaul. He was there; he "almost certainly" met with Kandiaronk.

Further, Mr Bell backs up this genre twisting by relying on the Canadian scholar John Steckley, whom Mr Bell himself quotes on the book: “Although some turns of phrase sound Native, and may have been lifted from Kandiaronk's speeches…" Somehow Mr Bell finds Mr Steckley to be in his corner in taking the Dialogues to be fiction because Lahontan presented the material like a Frenchman of his time - complete with the literary features of his time.

Oddly self-contradictory.

Lastly, Mr Bell, feeling buoyed by Mr Steckly, has no patience for a female scholar of native Senecan descent… who simply intensifies Mr Steckley's plain point that Lahontan quotes Kandiaronk. Of Barbara Alice Mann, he says, "she argues that in fact a 'beguiled Lahontan' took elaborate notes as he conversed with Kandiaronk." He even quotes at length her reasons for making such a claim, from Lahonton himself! "“When I was in the village of this [Native] American, I took on the agreeable task of carefully noting all his arguments..."

But Mr Bell wont have it. He thinks Lahontan - of whom, he stipulates, toured 17th century North America and almost certainly met Kandiaron - is making it up. Because other 17th century writers made their stuff up.

And here is where Mr Bell throws on his covering patchwork blanket and claims that Lahontan is really making up a Gulliver who is making it all up.

No wonder Ms Mann says that scholars like Mr Bell express “flat dismissal” of the Dialogues with a subtext of racism and a “western sneer.”

Mr Bell is hoisted on his own petard by his own text!

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TH Spring's avatar

"...perilously close to scholarly malpractice."? How much more peril will it take to call it what it is -- leftist propaganda? The notion that native Americans are actually responsible for American democracy is an old chestnut of the folk left. I've been hearing it from your average street hippie for 40 years. It's part of their mythology. So, it's not surprising leftist "academics" would take it up to bolster their cult brand. The bigger problem is, their cult is taking over academia. Kudos to Bell and others for taking them on. But the task of rousting them from the arena of Reason will be long and hard. Let's start by denying them the esteemed title of "scholar." The clowns who wrote this book, along with Kendi, Hannah-Jones, et al, are political provocateurs. Nothing more.

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