Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio, Hey brain Stuff, Lauren bog Obam Here Back in seventeen forty four, colonial leaders from Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Maryland met with a delegation from what at the time was one of the great powers on the North American continent. It was a confederation of Native American nations who called themselves the hotton O'shanee, although many of us are more familiar
with their French name, the Iroquois. As recounted in James Wilson's book The Earth Shall Weep, A History of Native America, the native leader canacid Ego expressed frustration at the colonists
quarreling with one another. He advised union and better agreement, and specifically that they followed the example of the hotton O'shannee, who had established a well organized system of self government codified in the Great Law of Peace, with both the Central Council and checks and balances the protected individual freedoms. It's written that he said, we are a powerful confederate. See and by observing the same methods our wise forefathers
have taken, you will acquire fresh strength and power. Among those in attendance was Benjamin Franklin, who, in Wilson's account, took careful notes and later used some of the hotton O'shawnee's ideas about government a decade later in a proposal for a confederation of the American colonies. The Albany Plan championed by Franklin never came to fruition, but the notion of the colonies cooperating and governing themselves was a big step towards what eventually became the United States of America.
Over the years, some have argued that we ought to give the hotton O'shawnee credit for inspiring the birth of the American democracy, and have even suggested that the U. S. Constitution and the system of self government that it created
actually was based on the hotdon O'shawnee Great Law. If you poke around the Internet or social media long enough, you may even find a meme that claims that the U. S. Constitution quote owes its nation of democracy to the Iroquois tribes, including freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and separation of powers in government. The big difference, the meme notes is that, unlike the founding fathers, the Iroquois didn't disenfranchise women and
people who aren't white. The point about women is clearly true. Women are mentioned throughout the Great Law, and in the Honno Shawnee system of government, they had the power to select chiefs and veto wars. Journalist Jessica Nordell wrote in a twenty sixteen Washington Post essay that nineteenth century American feminists such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who had Hottonoshawni neighbors in upstate New York, were inspired by their notion of
gender equality. Congress even passed a resolution in acknowledging the hotdon O'shawnee contribution to American democracy and noting that quote, 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.
The resolution also noted that quote. The confederation of the original thirteen colonies into one republic was influenced by the political system developed by the Iroquois Confederacy, as were many of the democratic principles which were incorporated into the Constitution itself. Nevertheless, the consensus among historians seems to be that there's no compelling evidence that the founding fathers directly imitated the han No Shawnee Great Law when they wrote the U s Constitution.
The hon No Shawnee system had some significant differences from the political system that the former colonists created. For one, the hon No Shawnee had hereditary office holders, something that more resembled that the English system that the Americans were rebelling against. Al We spoke via email with Jack Ray Cove,
a history and political science professor at Stanford University. He said, there are lots of significant and fascinating ways in which one can trace the interactions between indigenous and settler populations, but the transmission of political ideas, including ideas about democracy,
is not one of them. The basic fact is that the colonists were direct heirs to an extremely rich body of political practices and ideas derived from English history, and especially from the great controversies of the seventeenth century Stuart era. But we also spoke with Charles C. Mann, author of the two thousand six book fourteen ninety one New Revelations
of the Americas Before Columbus. He contends that even if the Constitution wasn't actually modeled on the Great Law, the Hanno Shawannee still exerted an influence upon the development of American democracy. He said, the Great Law codified something that was pretty fundamental to han Noshaani culture, which was that people are autonomous individuals with the right to decide their own lives, and that the authority of the ruler over them was limited. And this is a really important part
of US political culture to this day. I suspect that the Constitution was not inspired by the Great Law, but that Hannoshani culture, of which the Great Law is one example, was influential to what became a US culture in the same way that say, African American teenagers and queens are influenced by Asian American teenagers of the Wu Tang clan. The colonial America's were a much more mixed place than we are often taught in school, so this influence is
to me not surprising. Today's episode was written by Patrick J. Tiger and produced by Tyler clay Or. More on this and lots of other topics, visit how stuffworks dot com. Brain Stuff is a production of our Heart Radio. Or more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the heart Radio app Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.