The Iroquois League

By Richard Hooker

http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/CULAMRCA/IRLEAGUE.HTM

Many Native American tribes or nations formed loose defensive confederations which
held together briefly or for a long time. The Iroquois, a confederation of first five and
then six Native American nations in the northeastern United States, however, formed
what was an anomalous confederation that would form much of the basis for the
American invention of government. This was a powerful confederation of sovereign
nations held together by a constitution that based itself on the structure of the
confederation and its decision-making apparatus rather than on the charisma or power
of individuals. This would then become the model that the framers of the Constitution
would turn to in designing a nation that was, in theory, a set of sovereign nations: the
United States.

Sometime between 1570 and 1600, Dekanawidah, a Huron living among the Seneca,
worked out a treaty of alliance with Hiawatha, an Onandaga living among the Mohawk.
This alliance would included three other nations, so that the Iroquois League at its
foundation included the Seneca, the Mohawk, the Cayuga, the Oneida, and the
Onondaga. In 1722, the League was joined by the Tuscarora. Originally occupying only
northern New York, the League would expand by alliance and conquest to control an
area from southern Canada to Kentucky north to south, and Eastern Pennsylvania to
Ohio east to west. During the American Revolution, the League split apart; the Oneida
and Tuscarora sided with the Americans, while the others allied themselves with
Britain. The United States took revenge in 1779 which resulted in the Second Treaty of
Fort Stanwix (1784) which officially disbanded the League.

The League was unique in that it was extraordinarily well-planned and defined than
any other Native American confederacy. It was based on a constitution which
thoroughly outlined the methods for choosing leaders and conducting business. Its
more salient aspects include a decision-making apparatus for making decisions among
the various nations, its stress on ceremony, ritual, and structure over individual
leadership, and its provisions for secession and inclusion of Native American nations.

Each of the nations was to send three Lords to the meeting-place among the Onandaga;
two of these Lords could speak while the third could only speak to indicate procedural
mistakes. Decisions would be made in the following way. The Mohawk and Seneca Lords
would have to unanimously agree on a course of action. They sent this decisions to the
Oneida and Cayuga Lords, who would also have to unanimously agree on this decision. If
they didn't agree on it, they would forge their own decision which would also require
unanimity. This alternative decision would be sent back to the Seneca and the Mohawk for
their approval. The process would continue until both sets of nations agreed on a single
principle. At that point, the decision would be sent to the Onandaga, who were called the
"Fire-Keepers," since the maintained, the meeting-place. If they agreed to the course of
action, it would then be taken. If they refused it, they would return their own decision to
the four nations who would then forge a new decision. Once those four nations agreed
unanimously, the decision was officially made.

It was this procedure, which required absolute unanimity, which separated the Iroquois
League from others, for no single individual could dominate the proceedings. It was the
structure of the proceeding itself that produced decisions.

Finally, the League was considered open-ended. Any nation could be thrown out of the
League, any nation could secede, and any nation could join provided they agreed to the
constitution.

It is perfectly obvious how the framers of the Constitution of the United States borrowed
from the Iroquois League. The two houses of Congress are based on the Roman model of
the Senate and the plebeian Assembly, but added to this model is the give-and-take
between the two houses in the effort to enforce common consent between the two houses
which is borrowed from the Iroquois Constitution. The veto power of the president clearly
derives from the function of the Onandaga Lords as Fire-Keepers, and the open-endedness
of the League is reproduced in the open-endedness of the Constitution: any state can join,
any state can secede, and, potentially, any state can be withdrawn from the nation.

Richard Hooker