I concluded Part One of this editorial series, yesterday, with a quote from the History.com website.
The Mayflower Compact was important because it was the first document to establish self-government in the New World. It remained active until 1691 when Plymouth Colony became part of Massachusetts Bay Colony. The Mayflower Compact was an early, successful attempt at democracy and undoubtedly played a role in future colonists seeking permanent independence from British rule and shaping the nation that eventually became the United States of America.
This belief — that Europeans brought the idea of ‘democracy’ to the ‘New World’ — is quite common in American history books.
But there are other documented versions of history, such as this one mentioned on Wikipedia.org:
Among the Haudenosaunee (the “Six Nations,” comprising the Mohawk, Onondaga, Oneida, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora peoples) the Great Law of Peace is the constitution of the Iroquois Confederacy. The law was written on wampum belts, conceived by Dekanawidah, known as the Great Peacemaker, and his spokesman Hiawatha…
…Attempts to date the founding of the Iroquois Confederacy have focused on a reported solar eclipse, which some scholars identify as the one that occurred in 1451 AD, though debate exists with support for 1190 AD…
Democratic forms of governance had existed for centuries on the continent we now refer to as ‘North America’, among various indigenous nations, and various ways of recording historic events had been well developed, including wampum belts and petroglyphs. The basic structure of the Great Law of Peace, for example, was recorded on 114 wampum belts, according to one source.
Additionally, there’s credible evidence that the English-speaking creators of the United States Constitution used ideas drawn from the Haudenosaunee confederacy. As early as 1750, Benjamin Franklin wrote to a colleague expressing his (confused?) admiration for the Six Nations’ time-tested constitution:
A voluntary Union entered into by the Colonies themselves, I think, would be preferable to one impos’d by Parliament; for it would be perhaps not much more difficult to procure, and more easy to alter and improve, as Circumstances should require, and Experience direct. It would be a very strange Thing, if six Nations of ignorant Savages should be capable of forming a Scheme for such an Union, and be able to execute it in such a Manner, as that it has subsisted Ages, and appears indissoluble; and yet that a like Union should be impracticable for ten or a Dozen English Colonies, to whom it is more necessary, and must be more advantageous; and who cannot be supposed to want an equal Understanding of their Interests…
We can’t diminish the importance of the adventurous colonists who created the Plymouth Colony and who wrote up a very simple ‘constitution’ to guide political decisions in a village of 100 people. But to give the Puritans credit for ‘shaping the nation’? Perhaps some credit ought to go to the Iroquois Confederacy?
From the 100th US Congressional session, Concurrent Resolution 331, in 1988:
Whereas the original framers of the Constitution, including, most notably, George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, are known to have greatly admired the concepts of the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy; and
Whereas the confederation of the original Thirteen Colonies into one republic was influenced by the Iroquois Confederacy as were many of the democratic principles which were incorporated into the Constitution itself…
The Iroquois Great Law of Peace, like the US Constitution, divides political power between the individual nations (or, in our case, the individual states) and the federal government, which is charged with addressing certain issues of common concern.
From a translation of the Great Law of Peace, posted to IndigenousPeople.net — a small section of the Great Law of Peace describing “two houses of congress”:
All the business of the Five Nations Confederate Council shall be conducted by the two combined bodies of Confederate Chiefs. First the question shall be passed upon by the Mohawk and Seneca Chiefs, then it shall be discussed and passed by the Oneida and Cayuga Chiefs. Their decisions shall then be referred to the Onondaga Chiefs, (Fire Keepers) for final judgement. The same process shall obtain when a question is brought before the council by an individual or a War Chief.
In all cases the procedure must be as follows: when the Mohawk and Seneca Chiefs have unanimously agreed upon a question, they shall report their decision to the Cayuga and Oneida Chiefs who shall deliberate upon the question and report a unanimous decision to the Mohawk Chiefs. The Mohawk Chiefs will then report the standing of the case to the Firekeepers, who shall render a decision as they see fit in case of a disagreement by the two bodies, or confirm the decisions of the two bodies if they are identical. The Fire Keepers shall then report their decision to the Mohawk Chiefs who shall announce it to the open council…
This Law dates from a time when the Confederacy included only five nations.
We note one crucial difference between the Iroquois decision-making process and the one used in nearly all American governmental systems. The Iroquois Law demands unanimous decisions; America’s founders were willing to embrace the subtle tyranny of the democratic 51% majority.
The Puritans arrived in ‘New England’ seeking to create a society where they could practice their reformed version of Protestant Christianity without suffering the dreadful religious oppression imposed by the Church of England, itself a reformed version of Roman Catholicism. In that sense, they were seeking a form of independence.
Freedom? Liberty? Autonomy?
Maybe not. In the Puritan colonies, the Congregational church functioned essentially as a state religion. In Massachusetts, for example, no new church could be established without the permission of the colony’s existing Congregational churches and the government. Connecticut allowed only one church per town or parish, which had to be Congregational; church attendance on Sundays was mandatory for both church members and non-members, and those who failed to attend were fined.
Persons following Quaker or Baptist teachings were imprisoned or banished… or executed.
Strange how easily we can transform ourselves, through the acquisition of power, into the very thing we were running away from.
Bill Hudson began sharing his opinions in the Pagosa Daily Post in 2004 and can’t seem to break the habit. He claims that, in Pagosa Springs, opinions are like pickup trucks: everybody has one.