Lewis Henry Morgan: biography of this American anthropologist

This was the life of Lewis H. Morgan, anthropologist who fought for the rights of Amerindians.

Morgan is one of the greatest representatives of anthropology in the United States in the nineteenth century, bringing great advances in this field.

We will review the life of this author through a biography of Lewis Henry MorganWe will review the life of this author through a biography of Lewis Henry Morgan, making a journey through his biography in order to know the most representative events, and at the same time we will discover what were his main contributions, without which anthropology today would not be a science as complete as it is.

Short biography of Lewis Henry Morgan

Lewis Henry Morgan was born in 1818 in Aurora, New York state, in the United States.. He came from a family of pioneers from Wales. In fact, the Morgan lineage was one of the families that played an important role in the creation of the colonies that would later become the United States. Thomas Morgan, Lewis' grandfather, fought in the War of Independence.

Lewis Henry Morgan's father, Jedediah Morgan, had a first marriage to Amanda Stanton, from which five children were born. After being widowed, he had a second marriage, this time with Harriet Steele, who would be the mother of Lewis and seven other siblings. Curiously, at birth he was named only Lewis Morgan, and it was in his adult life when he introduced the middle name, Lewis H. Morgan, to later indicate that this letter was the initial of Henry.

Lewis' father was an important personality. He invented devices to make the work of the land and industry easier and he entered the world of Freemasonry, being one of the founders of the Aurora lodge. He even reached political positions of responsibility, being a state senator. He died in 1828, when Lewis Henry Morgan was only 8 years old, but he left enough resources so that he and his siblings lacked for nothing.

Lewis attended Cayuga Academy for his education and later entered the university world through Union College in Schenectady, Schenecton.in Schenectady, where he took only two years to graduate. By 1840, Lewis Henry Morgan had already been trained in different sciences, such as optics and mechanics, in addition to other classical subjects. It was at this institution where he was able to study the works of Georges Cuvier, a French naturalist, who would be one of his first references.

During his time at the university he was subjected to the strict regime imposed by the president of Union College, Eliphalet Nott, who with an iron fist and always under Christian precepts imposed severe rules that all students had to comply with. Even so, different fraternities emerged in the shadows, one of which joined in 1839, the Kappa Alpha Society, one of the first in the whole country, which would lay the foundations of all those that would come later.

His early career and Iroquois fraternity.

After graduating, Lewis Henry Morgan moved to the city of Rochester, where he began working for a law firm, along with his partner George F. Danforth, who would eventually become a judge. However, the economic situation in the United States made it difficult for the business to prosper, so this experience was short-lived. At the same time, Morgan took the opportunity to publish essays in a literary magazine called The Knickerbocker.. Instead of using his name, he used a pseudonym: Aquarius.

In 1841, Morgan, together with other former students of the Cayuga Academy, formed a new fraternity, of literary character, with the name of The Gordian Knot. The following year they changed their name to the Order of the Iroquois, a name that came from a confederation of the Iroquois.a name that came from a North American Indian confederation. It would not be the last time that they would modify the nomenclature of the fraternity, passing later by Grand Order of the Iroquois and New Confederation of the Iroquois.

They focused on this indigenous group in the interest of recovering their culture and language. They even attributed Iroquois names to each other. Their good relations with members of Freemasonry allowed them to be given space in one of the temples to meet. The interest in this culture was growing, which led Lewis Henry Morgan to investigate more and more in depth.

To do so, he studied the treaties that the United States had signed with the Native American peoples to keep their lands after the War of Independence. In particular, he focused on the treaties that forced four Iroquois peoples to leave their sites and migrate to Canadian territories. He was able to meet a real Iroquois, Ely Parker, who was participating in one of the trials in an attempt to regain his land.

Lewis Henry Morgan befriended Parker and asked him to accompany him to join the fraternity.which would pay for his education at Cayuga Academy. Ely Parker, then 16, would become a civil engineer and serve in the Army during the Civil War, rising to the rank of brigadier general and eventually working for President Ulysses S. Grant.

They discovered that the Seneca Iroquois had been tricked into signing treaties that forced them to abandon their lands, so the New Confederacy was forced to abandon them.They discovered that the Seneca Iroquois had been tricked into signing treaties forcing them off their land. His campaign succeeded in reaching an agreement allowing them to buy back some of their land (at a much higher price than they had received at the time). This action earned Lewis Henry Morgan membership in the tribe, with the name Tayadaowuhkuh, meaning to close the wound.

After these events, the fraternity began a period of internal disputes that distanced Morgan from the association, causing him to lose interest in it, although he continued to publish letters about the Iroquois in the American Whig Review.

Family life and maturity

His relationship with the indigenous people served Lewis Henry Morgan to publish the work "League of the Iroquois".which was to be one of the first examples of ethnology. One of the topics in which he delves into in that volume is that of kinship relations among the members of this tribe. The year was 1851. At that time, Lewis married Mary Elizabeth Steele, who was also a cousin.

With her he would have a son, Lemuel, who was born with a mental disability. The society attributed this ailment to the fact that Lewis and his wife were first cousins. Even they came to assume this explanation (even though there was no evidence for it). However, it did not weaken his marriage, which continued until his death.

In 1852, a group of intellectuals, including Lewis Henry Morgan, founded The Pundit Club, or The Club, an association to share interests in science and literature. He would later become one of the creators of the University of Rochester, for men. The plan was to also create Barleywood University, for women, but it never materialized.

It was in 1855 that Morgan and another group of Rochester personalities created a railroad company for the Bay de Noquet and Marquetteto connect areas of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Lewis Henry Morgan became an attorney and director of this company. After some time in this profession he decided to continue his work as an anthropologist, taking up fieldwork again.

He entered one of the Republican party lists for a seat in the New York assembly. He was intended to head the Bureau of Indian Affairs under the presidency of William H. Seward, but Abraham Lincoln was eventually elected as a candidate (and later president) and he had already selected his own appointees, so Morgan missed his chance and continued his work on his own.

Lewis Henry Morgan continued to work on the study of kinship systems. To this end, he visited four different tribes he visited four different tribes, located in Yellowstone, the Missouri River, Kansas, and Nebraska. His studies enabled him to compile a total of 51 different forms of kinship. During these years, two of his daughters died from scarlet fever, which was devastating for both Lewis and his wife.

The Civil War broke out in the United States. The Morgans stayed out of this conflict. Their only intervention was due to the metals business, essential for the war, which allowed Lewis Henry Morgan to create an industry that quickly brought him a large amount of money, enough to live without worries for the rest of his life.

Defense of the Indians and final years

Morgan continued to fight for the rights of the Indians and even organized a tour of Europe to seek support for this movement.. These trips allowed him to meet Charles Darwin, Lubbock and other illustrious figures of the time. In one of his last expeditions through the United States he discovered some ancient Aztec ruins on the banks of the Animas River.

Finally, in the year 1881 he died, after a lifetime dedicated to the recognition and defense of the Native Americans.

Bibliographical references:

• Eggan, F. (1965). Lewis H. Morgan and the Future of the American Indian. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. JSTOR.
• Moses, D.N. (2009). The promise of progress: The life and work of Lewis Henry Morgan. University of Missouri Press.