Rick Green [00:00:07] Welcome to the Intersection of Faith and Culture for our Thursday program. It's called Foundations of Freedom Thursday and it's where we talk about the Foundations of Freedom and you get to ask the questions. So send those emails in to us radio@wallbuilders.com with whatever question you've got. The WallBuilders Show is always about taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective and we love it when you pick interesting topics for us. So send us those to radio@wallbuilders.com and then of course if you want to go listen to some previous Thursday programs for Foundations of Freedom, they're available at our website, wallbuilders.show, where you can also find Good News Friday programs and the interviews that we have on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Rick Green here with David and Tim Barton. And guys, we got a boatload of questions and some interesting ones, some things I certainly have, I know nothing about. So this first one, I'm definitely looking forward to learning from you guys. And I know you have written The American Story and you've gone back, not just to Founding Fathers history, but way back before that to the things that that really were planted in this country long before the founding in 1776. Anyway, I know we're gonna get some interesting responses here. So first question is from Michelle. She said I have a question about the Seneca tribe leader giving George Washington the name of, I'm gonna do my best here guys, Conotocarious which means, apparently, "town destroyer" because of Washington giving the order of taking out 40, here I go again, Haughton O'Sawney villages during the Revolutionary War. My Marxist 40-year-old son insists that Washington was a mass murderer. It is hard to find information on this unless it's from a leftist organization like PBS, which I don't trust. Mount Vernon website states that this nickname was given to Washington's great grandfather, but my son insists that it also applied to Washington because of his murderous acts in the Revolutionary War. I did a search on your website and was unable to find anything on this. Can you clarify? Thank you, Michelle. Well, Michelle, aha, I'm going to be really quiet for however long this takes because I have never even heard of that nickname or those villages. David, Tim, anything sound familiar there? 

David Barton [00:02:17] Well, they're referring to something that a lot of progressives like to bring up, and that's how unjust the American colonists were and the American leaders, George Washington, were to Indian tribes, et cetera. So that's the tone of it behind this, another blemish on the Founding Fathers and founding of America. 

Tim Barton [00:02:33] Well, and I would say, you know, broader picture, not knowing all the details, knowing some details about this of Washington being accused of genocide. It's in many ways similar to like when Columbus gets accused of genocide, they're like, you know, he came and killed all the natives. And you go, wait a second, tell me about the Taino tribe, right? Let's dig a little deeper on this. And what you discover is no, Columbus did not do mass genocide and all the Natives. There were some tribes he got along incredibly well with. The Taíno Tribe He actually spoke highly of them. I think actually even adopted, I'm probably totally butchering this. So don't anybody listening, don't document and be like, well, Tim said it must be. No, there's probably, I need to go back and even actually reread the research we did initially, but it seems like on some level he adopted one of these tribe members, something like that, a little murky in the details. So the bottom line is. People look at some of the tribes Columbus went to war with and they're like, see he committed genocide. And what I would point out is Columbus actually didn't start really any of these wars. Columbus responded after he'd been attacked. And certainly, if you look at like the Caribas tribe, yes, Columbus went on the war path after they had attacked, killed and eaten some of his men. He responded. And I say that adding the context that when people look back historically, they don't know the whole story. It's not that Columbus didn't do bad things. That's not what I'm arguing at all. I am pointing out that you're being incredibly dishonest if you don't tell the whole story and you pretend like Columbus was this racist, genocidal maniac, which is the way he's often portrayed today. That's not true. That's a similar portrayal that's being applied to most of the white individuals from early America, these monstrous, genocidal, racist, maniacs, and frankly, it's a gross misrepresentation of who they were, even though some truth might be there that, yeah, there was no doubt George Washington in his time in the military definitely fought against some natives. Now he actually fought with natives on times too. He definitely wiped out some villages, but He was not this racist, genocidal maniac. And so, to me, like already the prevailing context, when you know that George Washington is overall a honorable person, it's not that an honorable person couldn't do something dishonorable at a time, but when you are framing that as representative of the entirety of his character, it's a gross misrepresentation. But also, when you recognize that we live in an era that the prevailing ideology is a Marxist ideology of the oppressed and the oppressors. And when you automatically put the native peoples into the oppressed category and you put white people into the oppressor category, and that's the way that we are framing the teaching of history. That is why they arrive at these conclusions that Washington is this genocidal maniac who went on the war path and killed all these natives and destroyed their villages. So I would already say like the context even before we've gotten into the details of the story, the context is important to recognize this is coming from the Marxist ideology that the natives are the oppressed, Washington is the oppressor, therefore the natives are the victims who did nothing wrong, and Washington is the victimizer who only did wrong. That's obviously incorrect historically, but that is the portrayal that this professor or academia in general will often paint of Washington and the Founding Fathers. 

David Barton [00:06:07] Yeah, Tim, you've set the boundaries on this thing really, really well. That is a complete proper tone. And so here's some of the details that fit within the boundary of what you just laid out. They're talking about the Iroquois Confederacy in Washington, the Iroquois Confederacy, and just to show you some of the complication that goes on with this about Washington attacking Indians, etc. The Iroquois Confederacy is one that so many people point to. Progressives love to point to them. Hey, this is where the Founding Fathers got their idea for the U.S. Constitution. They copied the Iroquois Confederacy because that's where the nonsense. But nonetheless, they love the Iroquois Confederacy. They failed to point out that the Iroquois Confederacy was made up of six separate tribes. When the American Revolution started, four of the tribes went with the British. Two of the Tribes went with the Americans. So now the Iroquois Confederacy is even fighting itself. Some of the allies in that Confederacy of those six tribes are now turned against each other. So are you going to say that the tribes, the American leaning tribes that fought the British leaning tribes who were committing atrocities because they went after their former brethren, their former allies? I mean, that's already part of the complication of the story right there. 

Tim Barton [00:07:15] By the way, Dad, for those listening, this is another good point in this context that if you look up Jim Elliot and the Praying Indians. 

David Barton [00:07:22] Jim Elliot is the missionary. You mean John Elliot. 

Tim Barton [00:07:26] I did mean John Elliott. All right. Yes. I not yeah, not End of the Spear or Point of the Spear, whatever it's called. No, no, not that one. John. I knew was an Elliot It was a J Elliott. John Elliott is exactly who I was talking about the Elliott Bible anyway, there were natives that converted to Christianity under the ministry of John Elliot and they fought wars against other natives not because they were going to pick fights now in the name of Christianity. No, other natives were attacking them because of their changed beliefs. Uh, they, they were no longer identifying them as part of their tribe anymore. And, and so this is something that is, as you look back historically, and, and by the way, I'm using John Elliot, cause this is a super easy example that you can look up and, and hopefully you won't have a hard time finding the information, you know, if you're using some kind of AI bot, whether it be Grok or chat GPT, whatever else. That if you have some search engine, hopefully it doesn't give you all the, the woke take of this. But if you look, you will discover not just in this encounter or that, even Dad, the one you're talking about with the Iroquois Confederacy, for the history of America, native tribes fought other native tribes. That was the normal. That was a common... Long before Columbus even sets foot on any of the land that would maybe be considered North America when he discovers any of that or those islands, before he even sails west across the ocean. It's estimated by historians that between 20 to 40 percent of other native tribes were slaves to native tribes. So 20 to 40% of slave population in North America were native slaves because they had been captured in war. This is not an unusual thing. But again, when the ideology is under Marxism, that all natives are oppressed people, therefore the only option for the bad guys have to be the other individuals involved in this, which in this case would be some of the white soldiers or the European soldiers, they have to be the bad guy's, not recognizing there can be nuance. There actually could be some natives that were fighting on one side, some fighting on the other. That seems very odd in the context of the Marxist paradigm because the natives are the oppressed ones. How could they fight on both sides? And Dad, to your point, this is why it's so skewed when people want to make it so simplistic in this Marxist paradigm that all the natives were oppressed, it contradicts the reality of history and what happened, but this is the way it's portrayed. So to your points, this not just a unique time when you have the Iroquois fighting the Iroquois in this Confederacy or the kind of the dissolution of the Confederacy at this point, this is something that is absolutely historically common. In the native tribes, by the way, not just native tribes. This is what people did. People groups fought other people groups for the history of the world. That's quite normal in human and world history. But again, it's a misrepresentationists academic portrayal of what actually happened. 

David Barton [00:10:14] What happens here is the Iroquois is already divided between the British and the Americans. They're taking side, they're split on themselves. Now, the account starts when George Washington, he writes about this himself, his meeting where he received this name, that the Town Destroyer was given to him by the Seneca half chief. And Seneca was one of the larger of the six tribes in the Iroquois Confederacy. And this happened during the movie, anybody that's seen the movie Young Washington, this is part of what happens there. So young Washington, he's 21 years old. He's now been sent by Governor Dinwiddie of Virginia out to try to negotiate and see what's happening with the French and the Indians and whatnot. And he goes on a peace mission. And on the way, this Seneca chief meets with him. Seneca Chief knows him as the grandson of and Washington's great grandfather had been called the Town Destroyer, because at Tim, as you pointed out, a bunch of the tribes back then were attacking other tribes, they were attacking everybody that's not of their tribe, including colonists. And so Washington, Colonel John Washington, was part of a group that went out and, and yes, it was Colonel John Washington, and it's his great grandfather. So Colonel John Washington the great grandfather 

Tim Barton [00:11:24] I'm glad because you tripped me up. I heard Colonel John, and I was like, his name is George, Dad. I don't know who you've been studying recently. It's George Washington. But okay, so Grandpa is John. Okay, you tripped me up for a second, but I'm with you now. 

David Barton [00:11:38] Actually, the great grandpa was John. So he goes out in the 1670s with forces and eliminates those tribes that were killing all the others, including the other tribes, not just the colonists, but the tribes. And so at that time, they gave him the name Town Destroyer, meaning he was great warrior, he was a great fighter. So Washington is on his way out to the Pittsburgh area where the French and Indian Wars is going to happen with him. And again, the movie Young Washington, if you haven't seen it, it's a really good movie to see, and it really sets the tone of this. But on the way you met with this Seneca chief and the Seneca chief called him Town Destroyer and gave him the same name that his great grandfather had. And that was considered the title of a war leader saying, hey, you are a formidable warrior, because remember, for the Indians, it's the virtue to be a great warrior and a great killer of enemies. So that's not a slur. That is that is a war title. They're recognizing him as a great warrior. That's part of their culture, part of what they did. So as this thing goes on and we get into the American Revolution now, I'm jumping ahead 20 years. So that's where Washington gets the name. Now, let's jump into the American Revolution, the Iroquois, six tribes have split. Four have gone to the British, two have gone with the Americans. And now the British and the Americans are fighting each other, which means that the Americans and two of the Iroquois tribes are fighting the British and for the Iroquois Tribes. And by the way, just to be real clear about this, that Washington wasn't hated by the Indians nor did he hate the Indians. It is remarkable how many native tribes sided with Washington and fought side by side with him in the war against other tribes. The Oneida tribe, that's part of the Iroquois Confederacy. The Oneada and the Tuscarora were two of the tribes in the Iroquois Confederacy that went with Washington. And the Oneada were probably, Washington said they were the strongest Indian allies we had. Now, I think the Stockbridge Indians are maybe the second strongest, or right up there with the Oneida, but they were the scouts, they provided troops, they gave them intelligence throughout the war. The Tuscarora did the same thing. They're united with the Oneida because the Iroquois Confederacy. The Stockbridge Indians had an entire regiment of Stockbridge Indians have fought throughout the world. They were at Lexington and Concord. So you have the Stockbridge Indians fighting with the colonists against the British at Lexington and Concord, the Catawba Indians out of South Carolina, the Delaware Indians out of Pennsylvania, the Paso Maquade. I mean, there's the Penobscot. There's so many Indian tribes that sided with Washington and fought. So already this notion that Washington hates the Indians and he's slaughtering the Indians. What do you do with all those Indian allied tribes that fought during the war? So what happens, the British and their allies, including the Iroquois, the four tribes of Iroquois, they did a bunch of slaughters. For example, what's called the Arensky, after the Battle of Arensky, the Seneca warriors, which is part of the Iriquois Confederacy, took the surviving patriots to survive the battle and clubbed them to death after the battle was over. They just simply executed them. If you go to the Wyoming Valley Massacre in July of 1788, again, the Iroquois Confederacy tribes. Along with British loyalists, they attacked a Quaker settlement. Quakers are pacifists who don't fight. They attacked a Quaker settlement, killed 220, killed and scalped 227 civilians. And these are non-combatants. They took 30 to 40 prisoners live and tortured them to death to see what tortures they can inflict before they died. You have the German Flats raid in September 1778. Again, the Iroquois allied with the British attack and destroyed barns and houses and mills, civilian settings. The Cherry Valley massacre later in 1778, again, the Iroquois tribes with the British, they scalped 32 civilians. Most of them were women and children. They took 80 captives and they executed 16 soldiers. So this is what is going on and Washington issues an order to General Sullivan in 1779, he says, OK, you destroy those villages of those tribes that are taking out all these civilians. You wipe them out. And that's exactly what Sullivan did. He took those forces out of the war. He did not attack Indian villages per se. He attacked enemy villages who were slaughtering civilians. And that is where Washington drew the line. So when you look at that question, that's the background to it. That's what's happened. There's no question there was a slaughter that went on of those Indian villages, in the same way those Indian villages slaughtered all the colonists and others, they went into those tribes and essentially neutralized them for the rest of the war. And that's what that that battle 1779 or that campaign in 1779 with General Sullivan at the direction of George Washington. It happened after all those unprovoked slaughters of civilians. That's what got Washington involved. So there's a whole lot more to the story than what that professor gave. He's looking to make Washington look bad. And Tim, as you set up so well at the beginning, this is that Marxist narrative of one side is innocent, the other side is guilty. You have to have the two fighting each other to create the tension and friction they want. And that's just not the story of George Washington. That's why he was so highly respected by so many tribes who fought with him and under his leadership, who did not commit the atrocities the British tribes did. Washington restrained that behavior. So, there's a lot of good things to say about Washington in those battles. 

Rick Green [00:17:06] Man, so much, a wealth of information there, guys, but I gotta be honest, the thing that stands out most to me is, wait, there's a Colonel John Washington? I mean, I'm kinda like you, Tim, it's like, wait, didn't you mean to say John? I just had no idea that he had ancestors that were also even in the military, or even known for any of that kind of stuff. That's brand-new information, for sure. Well, let's take a quick break. We'll be right back. We've got more questions from the audience. You're listening to the WallBuilders Show, Foundations of Freedom Thursday. 

Rick Green [00:19:39] Welcome back to the WallBuilders Show. Thanks for staying with us on this Foundations of Freedom Thursday. Next question, we don't usually allow people from California to ask questions, but I'm kidding. I'm kidding. It's a Texas thing. His name is Rick actually so that's why I had to throw something in there. Someone named Rick from Monterey, California said Dear WallBuilders if there was such a great influence by Christian Founding Fathers, why didn't they recognize the Bible in founding documents, especially the Constitution? It sure would have made our life easier to have recognized the Bible and our Constitution in some way. Alright guys, so it doesn't say the Bible or the Holy Bible. Those words aren't in the Constitution, but would you say that there's some biblical influence on the Constitution or any evidence of that? Was that not a setup question? Anybody that knows us on WallBuilders knows that was a softball question. 

David Barton [00:20:27] Well, part of it I'm gonna do as part of the federalism thing because the Constitution is a governing document for the union of the United States, but it's not the governing document per se for each of the states back then. They all had state constitutions and it was the state constitutions that determined who you would send to Congress. The federal Constitution says, hey, you can send X number of people to Congress and this is their requirements, be 25 years old, et cetera, be a citizen. But the state said, well, that's fine, but here's what we're going to have from our state go to the federal Congress. And so this is where it becomes important to go back and look at the state constitutions and the relationship they had with the federal government and see what the state constitution stipulated within those state constitutions for people that they sent to represent them at the federal government. Because if you can send the right kind of, I mean, we know this today. If all the 50 states would send the right kind of people to the federal government, we wouldn't be having any of the problems we're having right now. That all comes from the people that we have sent to the federal government out of the states. So their end was, hey, we're gonna fix this or try to fix this as a state end. We're gonna tell you exactly who we want going. And that's why if you look at the Constitutions, I'll just take the Pennsylvania Constitution. Their first constitution says for their members, each member, before he takes his seat, shall make and subscribe the following declaration, quote, I do believe in one God, the Creator and Governor of the universe, the rewarder of the good, the punisher of wicked, and I acknowledge the scriptures, the Old and New Testament, to be given by divine inspiration. Now, if that's who Pennsylvania is going to place into government, I don't really have to worry about the content that's in the Constitution, because we have just solidified it by saying the people that are going there are gonna, this is what they believe, otherwise they wouldn't be going to Congress. 

Tim Barton [00:22:20] Hey Dad, along those lines, one of the additional connecting points as you're saying the state constitutions give a lot of clarity what they were thinking at the time and why didn't that wording make it into the Constitution? Well, let me let me throw out some other ideas. Do you know what other wording didn't make it in the Constitution? That that we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they're endowed by a certain inalienable rights and among these are life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. Why didn't that make it and the Constitution because that's not the point of what the Constitution was. The Declaration was the vision and mission statement. The Constitution was the way the federal government was going to operate. But by the way, not the way that state governments are going to operate because states were in charge of how their state governments would operate, which is why in the states, they actually had explicit parameters regarding who could hold office, including that in most of these states, you had to be a Protestant to hold office. You had to have a profession of faith. You'd have a belief in God, Jesus, the Bible, etc. That's literally in their state constitutions. When we separate from Great Britain, I think it was 11 of the 13 states that actually have some profession of faith and their state constitution. When, when you go forward and you get to the constitution, when the constitution is actually ratified of the states that ratify the constitution. It was either six or seven states that still had a profession of faith in God and Jesus in a kind of Christian ideology, Protestant confessions to hold office. And again, that that's not in the federal constitution. And part of the reason why is even at the time of the constitution, there were state established religions, but they didn't want there to be a federal religion. They wanted there to be autonomy and independence in the states that if you live in a state and your state says, hey, we're congregationalist, you have the right to do that as a state. If your state said, well, we are Presbyterian or we're Baptist or we are Anglican, you had the right to do, that as a state and the Constitution did not void that. But what they were very specific on is we are not going to put anything in here that might sway something in a way that would prevent people from being able to coalesce and join under the Union. So they're not removing religious content, they're just not advocating that this is what specifically the federal government is going to endorse, whether it be Baptists, Presbyterians, Anglicans, Catholics, Congregationalists, whatever else, but also worth noting is what's also well-documented where do the Founding Fathers come up with the ideas that that go in the Constitution? Who were the influences on the Founding Fathers as they're doing this and we've talked about this a lot. The primary influence on the Founding Fathers the thing most quoted in their political writings was the Bible and it wasn't even close. So this idea that the Founding Fathers, who were the most influenced by their Bible, who some of them helped establish state denominations or promoted state denominates or in their constitutions, they're actually writing conditions of holding office. You have to be a profession of Christianity, a Protestant to hold office. The idea that those guys wanted an entirely secular government, it's not logical, except when you understand the separation of federalism and jurisdictions and what the limited role the federal government was supposed to play, then it offers clarity of why they were so religious on the state level and didn't enforce that on the federal level, because they understood how federalism actually works because they're the ones that with that in the Constitution. 

David Barton [00:25:36] You know one of the early legal writers and historians looking back on this early on just years after the Constitution said the Framers did not place Christianity beneath nor over their political institutions. It was rather the atmosphere which they breathed who administered it. It must be the source of their inspiration who sought to make them available for human advantage. These institutions and laws were to be the instruments of Christian men for the good of the whole human family. That's the way they did it and I'll point out that it was not until 1961 that a radical Supreme Court said, oh, the Founding Fathers had it wrong with all this religion and government stuff. That's Unconstitutional. It was in 1961 when they struck down Founding Father language back in the state constitutions. What gave them the authority to tell the Founding Fathers they were Unconstitutional? That's how crazy this is. It's a, it's, it, this is the result of judicial activism in the 1960s. 

Rick Green [00:26:29] Well, only two questions today, but they were great questions. We'll get to more next Thursday. Be sure and check out the website WallBuilders.show to hear more of our programming to share it with your friends and family. And don't miss tomorrow it's Good News Friday. Looking forward to all that good news. You've been listening to the WallBuilders Show.