some argue (see 532 for a list) that "European settlers in the Americas only came to think of themselves as 'Americans' (rather than English or French or Dutch) when they began to adopt certain elements of Native American standards and sensibilities, from the indulgent treatment of children to ideals of republican self-governance."
(as in the Haudenosaunee political confederation--referred to elsewhere as the Hodenoshoune or the Iroquois Confederation)
"When it comes to questions of personal freedom, the equality of men and women, sexual mores or popular sovereignty--or even, for that matter, theories of depth psychology--indigenous American attitudes are likely to be far closer to the reader's own than seventeenth-century European ones" (41)