Great Lakes Region, North America. Gradual emergence of the League of Five Iroquois Nations. Corn was cultivated in Ontario as early as 1100 AD, in what would become the Attiwandaronk territory. In the centuries immediately following, the three sisters (corn, beans, and squash) would assume an increasingly important role in the subsistence of Iroquois communities, although hunting, fishing, and foraging would not disappear. Then, in the Late Owasco Period (1230–1375), people began to move away from their old seasonal settlements along the waterways to settle in palisade-enclosed towns occupied year-round. Many of these towns had 2,000 inhabitants. There is also evidence and testimony of violent episodes of torture, ceremonial sacrifice, and cannibalism. Note the Iroquois’ propensity for sustained political debate, their particular emphasis on individual freedoms (the freedom to stray, to disobey, to experiment with new social forms), and their skepticism toward revealed religion—all traits shared by other Native North American communities, which would influence the European Enlightenment. In other words, not only did the indigenous North Americans manage to circumvent the agricultural trap that led to the rise of a centralized state, but in doing so they also developed a political sensibility that would have a significant influence on the thinkers of the European Enlightenment. And these ideas remain with us today, often without us realizing their true origins. Consider, however, that among the first European scholars to come into contact with these Native North American principles—the Jesuits, for example—the philosophical position was that they were simply opposed to the very principle of human freedom. These were the European ideas of the time.
