Welcome And Listener Questions

SPEAKER_02 0:07

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 at wallboulders.com, with whatever question you got. The Wahboulder 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 those to radio at WahBolders.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, Wahboulders.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 I certainly have I know nothing about. So this first one, I'm definitely looking forward uh to learning from you guys. And I know you've written the American story and you've gone back, not just to Founding Father's history, but way back before that, and uh 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

The Town Destroyer Claim

SPEAKER_02 1:14

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, Konotokarias, which means apparently town destroyer, because of Washington giving the order of taking out 40. Here I go again, Haudenosaunee 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 and 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, uh huh. I'm gonna 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?

Marxist Framing And Missing Context

SPEAKER_00 2:17

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, etc. So that's the tone of it behind this. Another blemish on the founding fathers and the founding of America.

SPEAKER_01 2:33

Well, and I would say, you know, broader picture, not knowing all the details, knowing some details uh about this of Washington being accused of genocide. It's in many ways similar to like when Columbus gets accused of genocide. Uh they're like, you know, he came and killed all the natives, and you go, wait a second, uh 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 on all the natives. There were some tribes he got along incredibly well with. The Taino tribe, he actually spoke highly of them. I I think actually even adopted, uh I'm I'm probably totally butchering this. So don't anybody listening, don't document and be like, well, Tim said it must be. No, uh, there's probably I I need to go back and even actually reread the research we did initially, but it seems like um on some level he adopted uh one of these tribe members, something like that. Uh I I'm a little murky in the details. But 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 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 the prevailing context, when you know that George Washington is overall an honorable person, it's not that an honorable person couldn't do something dishonorable at a time, but when 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 uh went on the war path and 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.

SPEAKER_00 6:07

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.

Iroquois Politics And Tribal Alliances

SPEAKER_00 6:17

Um, they're talking about the air corps Confederacy and Washington, the aircorps confederacy. And just to show you some of the complication that goes on with this about Washington attacking Indians, etc., the aircorps 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 Air Court Confederacy because that's where the nonsense, but nonetheless, they love the Iroquois Confederacy. They failed to point out that the Air Croix 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 leading 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 this story right there.

SPEAKER_01 7:15

Which, by the way, Dad, for those listening, this is another good point in this context that if you look up Jim Elliott and the Praying Indians. Jim Elliott is that missionary. You mean John Elliott. Oh, I do mean John Elliott. All right. Yes, uh, not yeah, not into the spear or point of the spear, whatever it's called. No, no, not that one. John, I knew it was an Elliott. It was a J. Elliott. John Elliott is exactly what's talking about. The Elliott Bible. Uh, anyway, there were natives that converted to Christianity under the ministry of John Elliott, and uh, 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 as you look back historically, and and by the way, I'm using John Elliott because this is a super easy example that you can look up, and and hopefully you won't have a hard time finding the information. Uh, you know, if you're using some kind of AI bot, uh 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 dad, even the one you're talking about with the Iroquois Confederacy, that for the history of America, Native tribes fought other native tribes. Like that, that was the normal, that was the 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 percent 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 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 the white soldiers or the European soldiers, they have to be the bad guys not recognizing there can be nuance. There, 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 uh in this Marxist paradigm that all the natives were oppressed. It it it contradicts the reality of history and what happened, but this is the way it's portrayed. So, to your point, this is 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, but this is what people did. People groups fight other people groups for the history of the world. That's quite normal in human and world history, but again, it's it's a misrepresentation, this academic portrayal of what actually happened.

Where The Nickname Actually Came From

SPEAKER_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, the the town destroyer, uh, was given to him by the Seneca Half-Chap. 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 the town destroyer because, and 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, um, was part of a group that went out and and and yes, it was Colonel John Washington. That's his great-grandfather. So Colonel John Washington, the great grandfather.

SPEAKER_01 11:24

I'm glad because you tripped me up. I heard Colonel John, I was like, his name is George Dad. I don't know who you've been studying recently. It's George Washington. But okay, then so grandpa is John. Okay, it tripped me up for a second, but I'm with you now.

SPEAKER_00 11:38

Actually, the great-grandpa was John. So he he goes out in the 1670s with uh with forces and eliminates those tribes that were killing all the others, including the other tribes, not just the the colonists, but the tribes. And so at that time, they gave him the name Town Destroyer, meaning he was a 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. Uh, and again, the movie Young Washington, if you haven't seen it, it's a really good movie to see, and it really sets a tone on this. But on the way he 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 a 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

Atrocities, Sullivan, And Washington’s Order

SPEAKER_00 12:43

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 to 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 four of the Iroquois tribes. And by the way, just to be real clear about this, that it it 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, uh, that's part of the Iroquois Confederacy. The Oneida and the Tushkarora were two of the tribes in the Iroquois Confederacy that went with Washington. And the Oneida were probably, uh 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 him intelligence throughout the war. The Tuscarora did the same thing. They're united with the Oneida because of the Aircore Confederacy. The Stockbridge Indians had an entire regiment of Stockbridge Indians that fought throughout the war. They were at Lexington and Concord. So you have the Stockbridge Indians fighting with the colonists against the British Lexington Concord, the Catawba Indians out of South Carolina, the Delaware Indians out of Pennsylvania, the the Passamaquaddy, uh, I mean, there's the Penob Squat. 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 the Iroquois, they did a bunch of slaughters. For example, what's called the Oransky, uh, after the Battle of Oransky, the Seneca Warriors, which is part of the Iroquois Confederacy, took the surviving Patriots that survived the battle and clubbed them to death after the battle was over. They just simply executed them. Uh, if you go to the Wyoming Valley Massacre in July of 1788, uh again, the Iroquois Confederacy tribes, uh, along with British loyalists, they attacked a Quaker settlement, and Quakers are pacifists who don't fight. They attacked a Quaker settlement, killed 220, killed and scalped 227 civilians, and these are noncombatants. Uh, they took 30 to 40 prisoners live and tortured them to death to see what tortures they could inflict before they died. Uh, you have the German flats raid in September 1778. Uh again, the Iroquois allied with the British attacked and destroyed barns and houses and mills, civilian settings. The Cherry Valley Massacre later in 1778, again, the Iroquois tribes with the British, uh, 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, okay, 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's where Washington drew the line. So when you look at that question, that's 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, and 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. Uh, and that's what that that battle of 1779, or that campaign of 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 uh 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. Uh Washington restrained that behavior. So there's a lot of good things to say about Washington and those battles.

SPEAKER_02 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 kind of 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 you know, even known for any of that kind of stuff. That was brand new information uh for sure.

Break And Resources From WallBuilders

SPEAKER_02 17:27

Let's take a quick break. We'll be right back. We've got more questions from the audience. You're listening to the Wall Builder show, Foundations of Freedom Thursday.

SPEAKER_01 17:37

Hey guys, this is Tim Barton from Wall Builders. I want to let you know about a new resource that should be a tool in your toolbox. This is the reprint of Thomas Jefferson's original draft of the Declaration of Independence. Now, there's lots of reasons it would be cool to own a reprint like this, but one of the things that I want to highlight is not only is this a reprint that is in Thomas Jefferson's own hand in cursive, it shows some of its edits along the way, which is really fun, but it also shows what Thomas Jefferson thought was the most significant grievance in the original draft. It's the longest grievance, it's the last grievance. It was a grievance against the slave trade, arguing actually also against slavery, and arguing for the humanity of all that were in slaves. Thomas Jefferson thought that was the most important. Now, it didn't make it in the final draft, and we will explain why in the resource packet you get when you order one of these copies. But friends, this is something that you want in your collection. Go to wallbooters.com and look for Thomas Jefferson's original draft of the Declaration of Independence.

SPEAKER_02 18:36

Hey friends, Rick Green for the WallBulder Show. Encouraging you to share the program with friends and family and listen to it on the podcasts that are out there. There's so many options out there for you to listen to in the car or from home or while you're working out. You've got Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, Castbox. I mean, there's so many options, and we just want to make sure you know we've worked hard to get it out there and make it available for you on all those different apps. Everybody's got their favorite app, so choose your particular app. And if it's not on there yet, email us, radio at wallboulders.com and let us know about your favorite podcast app. And we'll make sure WallBuller's radio is listed there. But you can listen and most importantly, share it with your friends and family. That's how the program grows. That's how we get more truth in the hands of as many people as possible. And then, of course, wallboulders.show, super easy place uh to find all of those podcast apps and to just download right there from that website as well as be able to share it with your friends and family. So check it out today, wallboarders.show, or just go directly to your favorite podcast app, listen to the Wallboulder Show, and share it with as many people as you possibly can. Welcome back to the Wall Builder Show. Thanks for staying with us on this foundations of Freedom Thirsty. Next question.

Why The Constitution Does Not Cite Bible

SPEAKER_02 19:43

We don't usually allow people from California to ask questions, but I'm kidding. I'm kidding. It's a Texas thing. Come on, Rick. His name is Rick, actually, so that's why I had to throw something in there. Uh someone named Rick from Monterey, California said, Dear wall builders, 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 in our Constitution in some way. All right, 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 wall builders knows that was a softball question.

SPEAKER_00 20:27

Well, I part of it I'm I'm gonna do as part of the

Federalism And The Power Of States

SPEAKER_00 20:30

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 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, uh be a citizen. Uh but the state said, well, that that's fine, but here's what we're going to have from our state go to the 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, 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 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 I'll just take the Pennsylvania Constitution. Uh 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 the wicked, and I acknowledge. 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.

SPEAKER_01 22:18

Hey, Dad, along those lines, one of the additional connecting points, as you're saying, the state constitutions give a lot of clarity of 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.

Declaration Versus Constitution Purpose

SPEAKER_01 22:31

Do you know what other wording didn't make it in the Constitution? That that we owe these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they're endowed by their credit with certain inanimable rights, and among these are life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. Well, why didn't that make it in 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 were 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 uh 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 had to 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 in their state constitution. When you go forward and you get to the constitution, when the constitution is actually ratified, of the states that ratified the constitution, it was either six or seven states that still had a profession of faith in God and Jesus in uh kind of Christian ideology Protestant confessions uh 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 and your state says, Hey, we're congregationalist, you have the right to do that as a state. If your state said, Well, we're Presbyterian or we're Baptist or we're Anglican, you have 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 that might sway something in a way that would prevent people from being able to coalesce and join under the union. So that 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, Congregationalist, whatever else, but also worth noting is what's also

Bible Influence And 1960s Court Shift

SPEAKER_01 24:35

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 denominations, or in in their constitutions, they're actually right in 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 wrote that in the Constitution.

SPEAKER_00 25:37

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 was to 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 and 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's this is the result of judicial activism in the 1960s.

Final Takeaways And Next Show

SPEAKER_02 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 Wall Builder Show.