Lewis Henry Morgan: biography of this American anthropologist

Morgan is one of the greatest representatives of anthropology in the United States in the 19th century, contributing great advances in this field.

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

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Brief 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's grandfather, fought in the Revolutionary War.

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

Lewis's father was an important personality. He invented gadgets to make the work of the land and industry easier and entered the world of Freemasonry, being one of the founders of the Aurora lodge. He even came to occupy responsible political positions, being a State Senator. He died in 1828, when Lewis Henry Morgan was only 8 years old, but he left enough resources so that both he and his brothers did not lack for anything.

Lewis attended the Cayuga Academy to receive his training and later entered the university world through Union College., from the city of Schenectady, where he took only two years to graduate. By 1840, Lewis Henry Morgan had already trained in different sciences, such as optics and mechanics, in addition to other classical subjects. It was in 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 arose in the shadows, one of which he joined in the year 1839, the Kappa Alpha Society, one of the first in the entire country, which would lay the foundations of all those that would come after.

Career in his youth and fraternity of the Iroquois

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 that the US was going through made it difficult for the business to prosper, so this experience had a short run. 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 the year 1841, Morgan, together with other former students of the Cayuga Academy, formed a new fraternity, of a literary nature, with the name of The Gordian Knot. The following year they would change their name to the Order 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, later going through the Grand Order of the Iroquois and the New Confederation of the Iroquois.

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

For this, he studied the treaties that the US had signed with the Native American peoples to keep their lands after the war of independence. Specifically, it focused on those that forced four Iroquois towns to leave their locations to migrate to Canadian territories. He was able to meet a real Iroquois, Ely Parker, who was participating in one of the trials to try to get his land back.

Lewis Henry Morgan befriended Parker and asked him to join the fraternity with him., who would be in charge of paying for his training at the Cayuga Academy. Ely Parker, then 16 years old, would become a civil engineer and serve in the army for the Civil War, rising to the rank of brigadier general and eventually working for President Ulysses S. Grant.

They discovered that Seneca's Iroquois had been tricked into signing treaties forcing them to leave their lands., thus the New Confederacy of the Iroquois. His campaign managed to reach an agreement allowing them to buy back part of their land (at a much higher price than they had received at the time). This action earned Lewis Henry Morgan being named a member of the tribe, with the name Tayadaowuhkuh, which meant closing 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 her, although he continued to publish letters about the Iroquois in American Whig magazine. Review.

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Family life and maturity

His relationship with the indigenous people helped Lewis Henry Morgan to publish the work "League of the Iroquois", which would be one of the first examples of ethnology. One of the topics that he delves into in said volume is that of kinship relations between the members of this tribe. It was the year 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 (despite the fact that 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 for sharing interests in science and literature. Even later he would be one of the creators of the University of Rochester, for men. The plan was to create Barleywood College for women as well, but it never came to fruition.

It was in 1855 that Morgan and another group of Rochester personalities created a railroad company for Bay de Noquet and Marquette., to connect areas of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Lewis Henry Morgan began to practice as a lawyer and director of this company. After practicing this profession for a while, he decided to continue his work as an anthropologist, resuming field work.

He entered one of the lists of the Republican party to fill a position in the New York assembly. He had the objective of directing the Bureau of Indian Affairs under the presidency of William H. Seward, but Abraham Lincoln was eventually chosen as the candidate (and later president) and he already had selected to their own positions, so Morgan lost his opportunity and continued his work for his account.

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

The Civil War broke out in the US. The Morgans stayed out of this conflict. His only intervention was due to the business of metals, essential for the war, which allowed Lewis Henry Morgan create an industry that quickly brought him a great deal of money, enough to live carefree for the rest of his life. life.

Defense of indigenous people and last years

Morgan he continued to fight for indigenous rights and even organized a tour of Europe to seek support for this movement. These trips allowed him to meet Charles Darwin, to 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 Ánimas River.

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

Bibliographic 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.