The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

by David Graeber

Such accounts have not fared well in the hands of modern historians. Few would go so far as to suggest that what de Salazar described never really happened, or was simply his own imagination of a scene from some ancient Greek agora or Roman senate, placed into the mouths of ‘Indians’. Yet on those rare occasions when the Crónica is considered by scholars today, it is mostly as a contribution to the literary genre of early Catholic humanism rather than as a source of historical information about indigenous forms of government – in much the same way that commentators on the writings of Lahontan never really concern themselves with what Kandiaronk might actually have argued, but dwell on the possibility that some passages might be inspired by Greek satirists like Lucian.57 There is a subtle snobbery at play here. It’s not so much that anyone denies outright that accounts of deliberative politics reflect historical reality; it’s just that no one seems to find this fact particularly interesting.