The Iroquois Confederacy

The Iroquois Confederacy

Many Americans, when recounting our colonization of the Americas, tend to be overzealous in describing the ways in which we dealt with the many native inhabitants. We describe our dealings with the “savages”, depicting these people as uncultivated and simple when compared to ourselves. However, what we fail to recognize is the fact that those who inhabited the land that we had so quickly called our own had been developing for decades. Native American society was complex and heavily cultural, and had already developed some of the thoughts that many Americans struggled with late into the 20th century. Looking at one sole manifestation of the development of the Native American society, the Iroquois Confederation hosted one of the most complex examples of democratic society since Rome, except the fact that women were thought of as more than property.

Within the Iroquois confederation, or the 6 Nations of the Iriquois, all of the primary necessities were enacted. First of all, the confederacy was a grouping of tribes that had come together in order to maintain protection against the other warring tribes. They were maintained as protection against other stronger tribes.  There was a groups of leaders of each tribe that formed the “League of Clan Leaders”, which was interestingly enough a voting group where each clan was represented by a number of chiefs proportionate to their village’s population. Moreover, while this may have seemed to overpower certain tribes in meetings, this bias was ruled out due to the fact that decisions were reached through popular consensus rather than majority vote. Doesn’t this ring a bell? Probably because the House of Representatives of the United States, while not proven, may have been modelled off of this very manifestation of democratic governing.

Moving on to the cabinet/senate (in American Terms), these two entities were combined under those who were granted sachemship and became Pine Tree Chiefs, who were able to contribute to the discussion. These were also part of the League of Clan Leaders, but were chosen into their roles by the Grand Chief, who was, in fact, a woman. Within debates over important policies within the confederation, if popular consensus was not reached, the then Chieftain would have to debate over what the appropriate solution was. They even had a “Bill of Rights” where any decision made by those belonging to the confederacy’s government could not encroach on any of the holding of the tribes within the League.

This complex and functioning group of people have so often been referred to as “savages” or as uncivilized that it is important to understand the complexity of their society. They developed a society that was extremely successful in its undertakings of peace and prosperity, up until the Puritans arrived. And most importantly, it is important to understand that this Confederacy may have been the basis on which many ideas of the Constitution have been founded, especially when tracing where the Enlightenment thinkers who influenced the creation first “discovered” their ideas.