It was traditional at the time to organize a series of public events around such ‘savage’ diplomats and arrange private meetings with prominent European intellectuals. We don’t know whom specifically they met with, but Montesquieu was indeed in Paris at the time, and already working on such subjects. As one historian of the Osage notes, it is hard to imagine Montesquieu would not have attended. At any rate, the chapters in The Spirit of the Laws which speculate on the modes of savage government seem an almost exact reproduction of what Montesquieu would likely have heard from them, albeit
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