Iroquois Confederacy: America's First Democracy (Native American History Collection)

America's democracy didn't begin in Philadelphia. It began centuries earlier, in the forests of New York.When Benjamin Franklin urged colonial delegates to unite as the Haudenosaunee had done, he was acknowledging a truth most Americans never learned: the longest-lived constitutional democracy in North America was built by the Iroquois Six Nations — not the Founding Fathers.Long before 1787, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy governed through representative democracy, checks and balances, and federal principles that would influence the U.S. Constitution. Their system gave women real political power when European women had none, and kept peace among formerly warring nations for over five centuries.Iroquois Confederacy: America's First Democracy tells the complete story:How the Peacemaker and Hiawatha created America's first functioning democracy between 1450 and 1550Why clan mothers could select — and remove — chiefs in a system more egalitarian than anything Europe had conceivedWhat Franklin, Jefferson, and other Founders learned from Haudenosaunee diplomatsHow the American Revolution shattered the Confederacy, and how General Sullivan's 1779 campaign destroyed forty villagesHow the Haudenosaunee have maintained their sovereignty, languages, and governance into the twenty-first centuryThis is not a romanticized tale. It is honest history — of brilliant political thought, and of centuries of dispossession and survival. The Great Law of Peace was established before Columbus sailed. Its lessons remain relevant today. Read more