Topic: The League of Iroquois Constitution and Government

The League of Iroquois: Constitution & Government ______________________________________________________________________________ Source 1: ​Native American Societies and the Evolution of Democracy in America​:

- While the example of America's native societies was cited in the creation of the Constitution, we also must examine the ideas behind this seminal document to understand how the examples provided by native political organizations helped shape the thinking of Europeans as they became Americans.

- Iroquois provided "the model" for the Constitution unique, ideological constructs. - The imprint of these ideas on American history can be traced well past 1775. - Most accounts of American democracy's ideological origins give nearly full credit to

European precedents, such as the Magna Carta, the Greeks, the Roman Republic, and Swiss and Dutch experiments.

- The United States' founders also drew freely on the image of the American Indian as an exemplar of the spirit of liberty they so cherished.

- American Indian polities helped shape our own is not to deny that the Iroquois system (and others) were unique unto themselves.

- "How much did the founding fathers actually know about Iroquois - political ideas and the Iroquois form of government? Were they actually - influenced by Iroquois ideas respecting proper forms of governance or - merely their image of what these ideas were?" - Internal sovereignty within the individual colonies closely resembled the Iroquoian

system and had no precedent in England. - Any colony could veto the action of the rest of the body. Frank- - lin chose the name "Grand Council" for the plan's deliberative body, the same name

generally applied to the Iroquoian central council. The number of delegates, forty-eight, was close to the Iroquoian council's fifty, and each colony had a different number of delegates, just as each Iroquoian nation sent a different number of sachems to Onondaga.

- Franklin "got his ideas from the Iroquois" for the Albany. - Thus, while the founders of the United States certainly did not copy the Iroquois'

matrilineal, clan-based system of governance any more than they copied the unwritten constitution of the British.

- In a specific reference to the Iroquois, Adams (1787, I: 315) writes that the Mohawk had "complete individual independence." Adams (ibid.: 225) also discusses the election of sachems and how Indian councils-very likely the Grand Council of the Iroquois-operated.

- Franklin "loved to cite and to practice faithfully the proverb of his friends, the American Indians.

- At this banquet, the Constitution was toasted with Iroquois imagery as "our tree of peace . . . [that shelters] us with its branches of the union."

- The Iroquois and other American Indian polities helped shape the United States' early institutions as the colonists' image of these societies provided a model for liberty to the revolutionary generation.

- Indian societies also were used as examples of polities in which public opinion created a style of consensus that often made physical force unnecessary.

- The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, our very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. I am convinced that those societies [as the Indians] . . . enjoy in their general mass an infinitely greater degree of happiness than those who live under European governments.

- The Iroquois often were compared to the Romans under their republic, as well as to the Greeks.

- While the Iroquois and other Native American societies did not provide the model for the Constitution by and of themselves, American Indian societies did provide our founders with examples of societies that were substantially freer than Europe's of that time.

- I am not about to suggest that we junk references to the Magna Carta, the Roman Republic, the Greeks, or other European precedents in our remembrance of national history, but that we include an indigenous, American aspect. If history is to be an honest record of our past, we must complete the picture. History is discovery, through the debate of many voices, not just one "expert" opinion. Out of this debate will grow a more complete, accurate, and honest record of the ideas that gave birth to the United States.

Source 2: ​The United States Constitution and the Iroquois League​: Source 5: ​A Security Regime among Democracies-Cooperation Among Iroquois Nations​:

I. Introduction/ Background Information - For over three centuries, five and later six Native American nations cooperated in an

international organization known as the Iroquois League. Prior to the formation of the League, violent conflict was both common and costly among the original five nations. But from about 1450 to 1777, the Iroquois League, located in what is now upstate New York, functioned to reduce conflict among its members, eliminating war among them.

- The original five nations, whose members spoke distinct but closely related languages, were the Cayuga, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, and Seneca. In 1600, they comprised a total population of perhaps a hundred thousand.1 The Tuscarora nation joined the Iroquois League in about 1720.

- In translation. The word "Iroquois" is not indigenous: many Iroquois people called themselves the People of the Longhouse, or Haudenosaunee (Ho-De'-No-Sau-Nee) in the Seneca language.

- Moreover, it was also called the Confederacy of the Five (or Six) Nations - The Iroquois nations organization as the Iroquois League. - They were an almost saintly group of peaceful nations - The Iroquois nations stopped fighting each other and kept the peace among themselves

through the operation of a well-functioning security regime. - As a security regime, the Iroquois League functioned well to decrease conflict among its

members. It was also later partially successful in enabling the Iroquois nations to adapt to the exogenous shocks posed by the Europeans' arrival-massive epidemic depopulation, disruption of the local economy, and the wars between the Europeans-because it formed the basis for diplomacy and collective security.

- While the history of the Iroquois League can only begin to open the door to analysis of international relations in other cultures, this small extension of the historical and cultural domain of international relations scholarship shows that international systems based on different premises (belief systems) do not necessarily conform to realist predictions about state behavior.

- The key difference between the Iroquois League and the Concert of Europe may be the different levels of institutionalization achieved in both regimes.

II. Origin of the Iroquois League

- The Cayuga, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, and Seneca nations formed between 1000 and 1400 A.D. from what anthropologists have called the "Owasco" peoples.17 It is difficult to determine exactly when the League of these five Iroquois nations was founded, and this determination is related to the purpose of the confederation.

- Suggest it was formed sometime in the fifteenth century-well before the arrival of Europeans.

- The Iroquois League formation by Native peoples traces it back to a period of intense warfare among the original five nations. Deganawidah proposed the idea of a league to stop the intertribal warfare. Hiawatha, Deganawidah spokesperson, negotiated its formation over several years.

- Dorothy Jones suggests that the League had two purposes: it was an "attempt to suppress ingroup hostility and turn it outward."

- A successful endeavor to revive an even more ancient but less formally constructed ethnic confederacy.

- In sum, it seems likely that the League of the Iroquois was formed well before the five original nations came into contact with European explorers and settlers. The negotiations for the formation of the Iroquois League probably were concluded around 1450, about eighty-five years before the Mohawks, in the League members' first direct contact with Europeans, met Cartier on the Saint Lawrence. The Seneca nation was the last of the original five nations to decide to join. It appears that other Native nations were asked to

join the League upon its formation, notably the Cherokee, Delaware, and Erie, but they declined.

III. The Great Law

- The institution of the Iroquois League was codified in the Great Law of Peace (or the Great Binding Law). This "constitution" of the League, although certainly modified over the centuries, is a comprehensive document that includes the policies, procedures, philosophy, and mechanisms of the amendment for the League.

- Purposes​: - The primary purposes of the Iroquois League were to achieve general peace and

to keep unity and order among the five nations, which frequently had fought one another before the Iroquois League formation.

- The image is one "nation" sitting together under a tree of peace - Every five years the people were to assemble and ask each other if they were still

of the same mind, that is if they were still united in the League: "If any of the Five Nations shall not pledge continuance and steadfastness to the pledge of unity then the Great Binding Law shall dissolve.

- The original members of the Iroquois League were concerned not only with peace among the five nations but also with threats from other Native nations.

- "We bind ourselves together by taking hold of each other's hands so firmly and forming circle so strong that if a tree should fall upon it, it could not shake or break it, so that our people and our grandchildren shall remain in a circle in security, peace, and happiness."

- Relations between Iroquois League members and other Native nations​: - The Iroquois League was not conceived as a union that would eliminate all

differences among the original five nations, and the Great Law clearly states that the five nations were to remain autonomous.

- Moreover, the rights of each nation, that is, their cultural as well as political autonomy, were not to be changed by their membership in the League.

- Early eighteenth-century observer Cadwallader Colden noted that "each of these Nations is an absolute Republick by itself, and every Castle in each Nation makes an independent Republick, and is governed in all publick Affairs by its own Sachems or old Men."

- Historians agree that "each of these Five Nations retained full sovereignty over its own affairs." Importantly, each member of the Iroquois League was free to make war or peace separately.

- In terms of relationships between League and non-League nations, the Great Law provides that all were welcome under the Tree of Peace if they were willing to

abide by the laws of the League. A proposition to establish the "Great Peace" between the Iroquois League and another nation would be made in councils between Iroquois and the other nation.

- According to the Great Law, the other nation should be persuaded by reason to join the League and if the other nation does not immediately agree to join, the request should be made several times.

- The law also said these new nations "must cease all warfare against other nations." In addition, newly admitted nations were not to have a right to participate equally in Iroquois League councils. In addition, individuals were free to join and leave the individual nations of the League. The Great Law also provides for expelling those nations that did not follow the law of the five nations.

- Decision making within the Iroquois League​: - Both the individual member nations of the Iroquois League and the League itself

operated as democracies. - The League of the Iroquois included a body, the Great Council, for decision

making among member nations. Each of the original five nations sent a number of sachems to the Great Council, for a total of fifty sachems. The sachems were to be above gossip and partisanship in order to keep the best interests of the nations in mind.

- The sachems were "generally poorer than the common People" because they gave their wealth away and "every unworthy Action is unavoidably attended with the Forfeiture of their Commission.

- Sachems "enjoyed great prestige but little power." - There also seems to have been a clear separation of military and political

authority: Iroquois League sachems were not allowed to take part in warfare as leaders-there were separate military chiefs. In practice, the Iroquois nations conducted war and peace negotiations, as well as made alliances, both as the collective League and as individual nations.

- The Iroquois League's Great Council met annually in the autumn (or at other times when necessary) at Onondaga, where they discussed alliance formation and peacemaking and decided on major wars. Although the nations formally were equal and autonomous, the Great Law outlined different roles for each in decision making within the Great Council.

- The decisions of the Great Council, even in times of great threat, were then to be confirmed by going back to the people of each nation.

- When the Tuscarora nation joined the Iroquois League, it was admitted as a junior member, without a formal seat at the fire of the Great Council: Tuscarora chiefs were not made sachems and the total number of sachems remained at fifty. The Tuscarora were treated as de facto equals by the other five nations and were able

to make their views known through their sponsors, the Oneida. On the other hand, apparently the Tuscarora did not always follow Great Council decisions.

IV. The Iroquois League and Kant's 'perpetual peace'

- Aaa Source 6: ​The Structure of the Iroquois League​:

- Within the League of Iroquois there were six tribes in the Confederacy. The Mohawks, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora. In each there were eight clans in each clan had a League chief, then indeed there would be forty-eight chiefs in the League council.

- Each tribe of each nation was to have as officers a Sachem, a Head Warrior, a Prophet (who took charge of the initiates - initiation was a most important activity of the society much enjoyed and looked forward to and who helped in what was called their “Inindiantion,” i.e., their initiation), a Secretary, a Treasurer, and a Librarian.

- Only the wolf and Snipe tribes were to have Head Warriors, “there being but two recognized in the the original Confederacy of the Iroquois.”

- The forty-eight sachems, eight from each nation were to serve as “Grand Counsellors of the Tekari Hogea” (New Confederacy of the Iroquois 1844).

Additional Notes: ​Iroquois League​:

- https://theiroquoisstory.weebly.com/index.html - In 1570 five Iroquois tribes -- Mohawk, Seneca, Onondaga, Oneida, and Cayuga

-- formed the Iroquois Confederacy (McCall 7). The Confederacy could also be called an oligarchy because the Iroquois became ruled by a small group of people (Doherty 12). There were 50 delegates in the Confederacy, all men, each chosen by the clan mother (Doherty 18). Delegates were named sachem, of which the Onondaga had fourteen, the Cayuga ten, the Mohawk and Oneida nine, and the Seneca eight. In addition to Sachem, who could vote during meetings on the Onondaga land, there were Pine Trees who were both male and female advisory council members (McCall 9) (Doherty 18). Pine Trees became advisors because of their heroic feet and accomplishments as warriors (Doherty 18). In 1715 the Tuscarora joined the league, and it was renamed the League of Six Nations (McCall 9). Benjamin Franklin was familiar with the League and helped frame many parts of the new United States government off of the Iroquois's ideas (Doherty 13).

- http://www.ushistory.org/us/1d.asp

- Until the 1500s, the five tribes of the Iroquois devoted much energy toward fighting and killing each other. According to oral tradition, it was about this time that they came to their senses and united into a powerful confederation.

- The five tribes designed quite an elaborate political system. This included a bicameral (two-house) legislature, much like the British Parliament and modern U.S. Congress. The representatives, or sachems, from the Seneca and Mohawk tribes, met in one house, and those of the Oneida and Cayuga met in the other. The Onondaga sachems broke ties and had the power to veto decisions made by the others. There was an unwritten constitution that described these proceedings at least as early as 1590. Such a complex political arrangement was unknown in Europe at that time.