“Nothing can be farther than absolute monarchy,” Nairne observed at the start of the first extant letter. The Native societies he had visited so far possessed only “the shadow of an Aristocracy”: “One can hardly perceive that they have a king at all.” Since the community punished violations only by disapproval, the “Chief” and his “councellers” “never venture to sent out any order but what they’re sure will be obeyed.”23
Leadership in such a setting offered few rewards. Village chiefs (their “micos”) received little preferential treatment, perhaps an elevated seat in the town house, community preparation of his cornfield, and the first deer and bear taken when the town hunted together. They were “honest men,” Nairne decided, seeking to set “a good Example” rather than burdening people “to maintain a needless grandure.” But even this modest position seemed dangerous to the Ochesees and Tallapoosas he first visited. Observing a leader receiving a Carolina commission shake with fear, he learned that local Indians believed that “men of power and authority” were liable to supernatural attack.24
Government was stronger among the Chickasaws, the next major nation he visited, but there too the power of the village leader had “dwindled away to nothing.” Nairne described that shift in terms recalling English history. Tellingly referring to a “king” rather than his previous term “chief,” he suggested that “the king[‘]s own mismangment [had] brought his Authhority to be Disregarded” because, like the deposed James II in England, he had acted contrary to the “constitutions of their Government.” Nairne makes this comparison even clearer by using English political language. He termed the Indians’ view “that the Duties of king and people are reciprocal” “whiggish.”25
Besides this constrained leadership, Nairne also discovered an extraordinary lack of social hierarchy. Villagers worked and played together “without any marks of Destinction,” wearing the same clothing, eating the same food, and living in the same houses. Such equality, Nairne judges, was virtually unimaginable to European theorists. Even the most “republican” writer “could never contrive” such a system. Only the radical John Lilburne, the leader of the mid-seventeenth-century Civil War’s Leveller movement, would have felt comfortable there. “If this be not Compleat levelling” he declares, “I don[‘]t know what is.”26
As Nairne knew, European political theory scorned societies without strong government or clear hierarchies. He believed that he had found something different. Rather than being hopelessly disordered, Native peoples built other sorts of connections. Friendship became a formal institution, created and confirmed by a ritual that, like a wedding, included presents between families, an “entertainment,” and some characteristics of kinship. Time-constrained travelers could perform a more limited “Freind dance” that included exchanging weapons and clothing. These bonds, Nairne was surprised to find, could even be created between men and women.27
Nairne’s interest in the connections that held together Native societies also led him to make the first extended European investigation of the clan system. These ties, he wrote, had “pu[zz]led” him at first. Despite being separated by different languages and “constant quarells,” Indians recognized kinship ties with people throughout the entire southeast, even in nations they otherwise considered enemies. These clans, Nairne noted, were not simply anthropological curiosities. Carolinian traders took Indian “mistresses” in the villages where they worked, not only to connect themselves with her family and the local community, but to make “relations in each Village, from Charles Town to the Missisipi.”28
The clan system also shed light on contemporary European political discussions. The smaller Indian societies he visited, he argued, tested the argument that parental power was the foundation of monarchical authority. John Locke’s Two Treatises on Government, published less than two decades before, had challenged this belief using logic, theory, and biblical example. Nairne’s discussion rested instead on Indian prohibitions against marrying inside one’s own clan. As a result, Nairne noted, even the smallest new society could not operate for long without bringing in members outside the authority of a single father. As another late seventeenth-century political theorist, Algernon Sidney, had argued of all legitimate governments, Indian polities required the “consent of a willing people.” Nairne’s speculation about the origin of this prohibition, however, extends his discussion further. He suggests it also meant to encourage respectful social ties, “a politick contrivance” not only to “keep peace” but “to encrease Freindship”—in short, an example of the politics of politeness.29
Nairne displays these ideals even more clearly in a comparison among tribes he visited. The Chickasaw, he noted, looked and carried themselves better than the less-wealthy eastern nations of the Tallapoosas and Ochesses, much as British “men of Quality” differ from “peasants.” Yet Nairne did not consider the Chickasaws superior. Although outwardly more impressive, they were also so “arrogant” they could not “be[a]r the least affront.” Carolinians, he recommended, would need to make allowance for the “roughness of [the Chickasaws’] temper” until they could be made more “pliable.” Fortunately, their eastern neighbors were more “mannerly and Complaesant,” more “quiet and good Natured.”30
Although Nairne admired Native societies, he was not uncritical. He noted that they lacked “religion, law or useful Arts.” Their government was “mean” and inadequate, especially because it lacked a mechanism for punishing crimes. The last seemed so significant that Nairne paid a subordinate leader to visit nearby villages and encourage them to impose “punishments.” Still, he argued, Indian governments were “much better than none at all.”31
In praising limited governments and social cohesion, Nairne was partly playing to his audience. His first letter was addressed to Thomas Smith, speaker of Carolina’s Commons House. Smith was a central leader of the Dissenters’ Party, a group that had allied itself with British Whigs (including Nairne’s jail-cell correspondent Sunderland) to oppose Governor Johnson’s authoritarian actions.32 Nairne’s account of “Whiggish” Indians may also have sought to build sympathy for Native Americans. But Nairne’s letters did not simply seek to curry favor from his colleagues—or to encourage them to support his Indian policies. Nairne did more than theorize about restrained power, sympathetic interaction, and good nature. As agent, he attempted to make them a reality.
In 1705, Nairne called on English leaders to sponsor a missionary among the Indians surrounding South Carolina. Such a person, he wrote, could gain their “fidelity & friendship,” allowing Carolinians to learn more about attitudes and events in Indian country. Indians themselves would gain greater “Ease and Satisfaction” by having “a good man live among them … who would be a Protector to represent their Grievances to.” Nairne recognized that this would be a challenging assignment. Besides being willing to take up the “hardship & Troubles” of living among the Indians, the missionary could not be allowed to profit from his position. He would instead need to be “disinterested from all the wrangles of Trade.”33
Two years later, Nairne took up the task himself. Although the new post of Indian agent did not include religious responsibilities, it sought to fulfill the goals he had sketched out earlier. Although he too was barred from the Indian trade, Nairne threw himself into the role of “Protector,” displaying the missionary zeal he had expected from an English priest. The new agent worked so hard to restrain the attempts of European traders to take advantage of Indians that some came to see him as a traitor to his nation.
The position of agent that Nairne shaped first in the legislature and then in the field gave him legal oversight over the Carolinian middlemen who operated in Indian villages. These traders exchanged European goods for deerskins and slaves in transactions that formed the largest single