A Preliminary Look at Haudenosaunee Impacts on the US Political System

Since I am studying to become a lawyer, and since the Constitution’s development and influences are an area of interest to me, I was excited to read and write the chapter called, Perceptions Of America's Native Democracies. The chapter begins by talking about a work written by a colonial American named Cadwallader Colden. Colden’s book, History of the Five Nations Depending on the Province of New York in America, was written more than thirty years before the Revolution, and discussed several aspects of the Iroquois governmental and social structure. For some reason, the author makes in my view an errant appeal to authority by mentioning that Marx and Engels believed that the Iroquois system influenced the development of the American Union. I think the views of those people are irrelevant, not only because I don’t view them as legitimate intellectuals, but also because they were not involved at all with the founding and are insignificant from the standpoint of American history until the beginning of the 20th Century.



What is very interesting, however, is what the men who were actually involved in the implementation of the various schemes of Union had to say about the Iroquois, as well as what was said by their contemporaries. Though they don’t come out and explicitly admit that the Iroquois influenced our founding, eminent men of that era discussed the ideologies and features of the native constitution which were in common with what they would give posterity. For example, alluding to the prominence of the idea of liberty in Haudenosaunee political political thought, Colden, “They never execute their Resolutions by Compulsion or Force Upon any of their People. The Five Nations have such absolute Notions of Liberty that they allow no Kind of Superiority of one over another, and banish all Servitude from their Territories.” Another prominent man, James Wilson, who belonged the nationalist wing of the Federalist Party and would later be one of the first Supreme Court justices, wrote of commerce in America that, “The trade of Pennsylvania has been more considerable with the Indians than that of the neighbouring colonies.” This is significant because trade enables the transmission of ideas. Bruce E. Johansen, in his book, Debating Democracy: Native American Legacy of Freedom, asserts that John Adams referred to "fifty families of the Iroquois" as a model for the Americans to follow in establishing their new government. John Rutledge, another delegate to the Constitutional Convention, is reputed to have started a speech at that assembly by quoting an Iriquois orator who had once begun a speech with the words, “We, the people, to form a union, to establish peace, equity and order” before talking about the union of nations.




My favorite example of a possible influence is a piece of shared symbolism between the two cultures to represent the same institutions within their respective societies. The Iroquois were an alliance of Six Nations, which, in the words of Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration used to describe the colonies, were each “sovereign and independent”. The symbol of their confederacy was a series of interconnected boxes, with the name that they used being, “the Great Covenant Chain’. Benjamin Franklin, who we know was exposed to the notion of an indigenous union by the Iroquois chief named Tadadaho, created an early emblem which was to be used to represent the states. The emblem showed a chain, with the links of each representing a state, similar to the Iriquois symbol. Each emblem is shown below.



















I’m very excited about learning more about this subject matter. I want to learn more about the contributions of native peoples to the system of liberal representative government, and I think this resource is a great place to start.