Someone on another BBS recently showed me this page, which claims to be the written constitution of the Iroquois pre-dating European influence, and remarkably resembling our own. Did the Iroquois have a written language before European influence?
The Iroquois League had a very, very loose-nit “nation” in what is now the Northeast US, but they had no formal constitution as far as I know. I don’t know if they had a written language or not.
If you go to that page, it answers your question. Unless you want to read more into this sentence than seems to be there.**
dqa wrote:
Yes, I read that, but where does it say that the constitution was founded at the same time? Because it’s not plausible that a legal document such as this was passed down through an oral tradition. So what could the provenance be of this document?
Why not?
From what I’m getting from the site, this particular document was written down by an archeologist in 1915.
delphica wrote:
Because what passes on in oral traditions are stories, poems and songs. This is none of these, and would therefore be hard to memorize. Nor is it structured like something which would be passed on orally – it has the numbered points and section headers that are used to make written documents more readable, and lacks repetition and no evidence has survived the translation of any poetics such as oral cultures use to make lore memorable so that it survives transmission.
But if 1915 is the earliest that this is recorded, then it’s provenance is suspect. We could just as easily take it as having been modeled after the U.S. Constitution, since we know for sure that the U.S. Constitution came from before 1915. The site refers vaguely to other corroboration, but I’m not reassured.
The drafters of the constituion were influenced by the Iroqouis system, and not the other way 'round. Ben Franklin, as “indian Commisionaer” was well aquainted w/ Iroquois law and if you read Rousseau, he comments also on the Iroqouis federalist system – I believe its in “Discourse on the Origins of Inequality” though I could be wrong.
There are several interesting books, such as “Forgotten Founders” that outline the connections if you’d like to read more.
In 1744 Canassatego, an Onondaga representing the Iroquois Nation spoke to the Lancaster treaty council and advised the states to form a Federation with the following quote:
“Our wise forefathers established Union and Amity between the Five Nations. This has made us formidable; this has given us great Weight and Authority with our neighboring Nations. We are a powerful Confederacy; and by your observing the same methods, our wise forefathers have taken, you will acquire such Strength and power.”
This speech was published by Benjamin Franklin in the 1750s or so – does that help?
I don’t know anything about the Iroqouis constitution --heck, I can’t even spell it – but I do know that Johnny Angel is off the mark in his comments about what can and cannot be passed on through oral tradition.
The early medieval Icelanders had an extensive set of laws, none of which were originally written down. One person was assigned to be the “Lawspeaker” with the responsibility for memorizing the entire corpus of the law, and reciting it each year. The same was true in various other early Germanic societies.
The Icelanders also passed down sagas orally, which were more epic histories and geneologies than the mere “stories, poems and songs” that Johnny Angel suggests are the limit of oral transmission. The Icelanders became experts at transmitting complex information orally.
(And mind you, there’s nothing terribly hard about this. If memorization is the best tool available, you become good at it. Think about how much a typical Shakespearean actor memorizes during a career.)
None of which proves that the 1915 document in question is an accurate depiction of the practices of the Iroqouis in the 18th century. But is it possible for a complex legal document to be handed down through oral transmission? The answer is a definite “yes.”
rmariamp wrote:
I grepped the document you mention for key words, but I suspect this is not the one you’re thinking of.
Brittanica describes the Iroquois Confederacy this way:
It’s definitely a confederation that preceded the Articles of the Confederation, but it’s not much like the federal constitution that America eventually adopted. And, the establishment of the Iroquois Confederacy comes a little late to rule out western influence, and certainly later than claimed in the web site mentioned above.
It is, however, the earliest example of a confederacy that I can think of. But I don’t think they’re claiming the Iroquois invented confederacy.
We have the book you mentioned in our library, so I’ll chew on it a bit, but I don’t think it’s a good sign that the only other book I can find by this publisher is a Creationist text.
Wumpus wrote:
Could you show me some of the language used in these laws?
“Stories, songs and poems” is precisely what sagas are. The Illiad goes to great lengths to list the names of the ships that sailed to Troy, and establish the parentage of many characters.
Presumably by the same means everyone else did – stories, songs and poems. Do you have an example of pre-literate Icelandic legal writing that was not written using the mnemonic devices of poetry?
Indeed, by creating stories, songs and poetry.
Shakespeare’s plays are stories, quite often told in the form of poetry. You’ll notice that speeches in Shakespeare tend to be regular in meter, and sometimes rhyme.
Again, it has not been established that your counter example, Icelandic law, was passed on without the use of stories, songs or poetry. It has also not been established how complex it was, and whether it would resemble what we would recognize as the language of law today.
I’m afraid I’m still not clear on Johnny Angel’s position that while stories and poems can be part of an oral tradition, legal matters cannot. Some people believe that the Old Testament was developed as an oral tradition before it was written down, and that certainly deals with a great many laws (as well as stories and poems).
Upon reading this thread again, I’m also not certain what point you’re disputing – that the US founding fathers based our constitution on the Iroquois law, that the archeologist accurately recorded the information contained in the oral tradition, or that the Iroquois had a uniform system of laws in the first place.
I have more things to offer regarding each of those points, but its probably worthwhile to wait for clarification. I’m sorry if it appears that I’m being dense on purpose, but it seems like there are a lot of conversational balls in the air at this point in the thread.
delphica wrote:
The Old Testament as a document is highly concerned with the written word, and the written word is taken as law. The Ten Commandments are written, the Covenent is written. All throughout the Old Testament, it is asked, “Is it not written?” I doubt this preoccupation with the written word as law predates writing.
There are several questions that arise, the first of which is whether this document can legitimately be claimed as the actual constitution of the Iroquois Confederation. Secondly, can a case be made for Iroquois influence on the development of the American constitution, independent of any influence European thought would have had on the Iroquois (unless you suppose the Iroquois would talk about politics, but didn’t listen). Furthermore, can the accounts of Iroquois political philosophy be divorced from any spin that someone like Ben Franklin might have given it, motivated by the propaganda value of what Rousseau called “noble savages,” in order to bolster his own views by claiming that they were derived from a people who were closer to what Enlightenment political theorists assumed would be the natural state of man, and therefore theoretically closer to instantiating the kind of political theory the founding fathers were looking for?
er, Johnny Angel, I was not aware that the Harvard Common Press was such a disreputable organization in your eyes but I assure you they are a perfectly legitamate publisher, check their website and you’ll find a variety of general interest titles:
http://www.harvardcommonpress.com/
Anyway, New Amsterdam was founded by the Dutch West India company in the 1600s. (Henry Hudson laid eyes on it in 1609). Most of the Iroquois nations were indigenous to New York State. Cartier went up the St. Lawrence to Quebec & Montreal in 1535. I’m not saying that there was no European contact at all. I’m just saying that it would have been extermely limited in 1570.
rmariamp wrote:
I’ve got the book in my hand, and it says the publisher is Gambit: Ipswitch, MA. Do you have a copy of Forgotten Fathers by Bruce Johansen published by Harvard Common Press? Because I can’t find a reference to the book on their website. Furthermore, they are by no means an academic press, if this website is what they are to be judged by. The academic press is more than willing to publish radical works, but they do have standards, so if a work that proposes to establish a controversial point about history can’t get publication in an academic press, that’s prima facia evidence that there’s a problem.
You’ve got a dilemma here, because the main source, at least in Johansen’s version, seems to be the writing of Europeans. The less contact they actually had with the Iroquois, the less credibility their claims about the Iroquois have, because how would they know? But the more contact they had, the more chance that the influence would go the other way, too.
Could we be having a bit of a terminology problem?
“Constitution” (with little “c”) is kind of a technical term that refers to the makeup or structure of any given government. It just so happens that the document that establishes the US federal govt is called the “Constitution.”
So, I also doubt that the original Iroquois constitution had paragraph numbers and sections. Those could very well have been added later like Bible verses. Mr. 1915 may have simply taken a large confusingly organised oral document of the I. constitution, teased out the inherent structure and created a document organised in an easy to follow format.
This is a WAG, btw.
Additional sources, and an observation.
Felix Cohen, in his Handbook of Federal Indian Law refers us to the following:
p. 229, FN2 …The League of Iroquois is one federal system that served as a model in the development of the United States’ constitutional framework. See, e.g., Cohen, Indian Rights and the Federal Courts, 24 Minn. L. Rev. 145, 183 (1940); Russell, The Influence of Indian Confederations on the Union of the American Colonies, 22 J. Am. Hist. 53 (1928).
p. 230, FN10 A few tribes, including the Iroquois and the Cherokee did develop formal court systems without direct influence from the European nations. J. Noon, Law and Government of the Grand River Iroquois, (New York: The Viking Fund, Inc., 1949)…
Cohen also concludes that “[t]ribes, therefore, had their own traditional, though mostly informal and unwritten, governmental and legal systems.” He follows that statement up with this note:
p. 230, FN14 The lack of formalism in Indian tribal societies does not seem to have limited the effectiveness of traditional forms of government… Historian Rennard Strickland has expressed similar sentiments with respect to Cherokee society:
*Englishmen… concluded in a supreme gesture of ethnocentricism, that Cherokees had no system of law.
In truth, the Cherokee conception of law was simply different from the more traditional Western idea of law. To the Cherokees law was the earthly representation of a divine spririt order. They did not think of law as a set of civil or secular rules limiting or requiring actions on their part. Public consensus and harmony rather than confrontation and dispute, as essential elements of the Cherokee world view, were reflected in ancient concepts of law. [my emphasis]
Flowery as that last bit sounds, I think it’s pretty important. The law–and governing principles–didn’t have to be written down because it was universally understood, but it was also fluid and susceptable to change over time. That may be one of the most important concepts which made its way into the US Constitution, the concept of elasticity. Whether or not that concept came directly from the governing concepts of the Iroquois I cannot answer, but it seems to have a certain similarity.
More importantly, the basic concepts seem to be what’s important. I’m not a big fan of the American educational system, but I bet if you put twenty people in the same room they would probably be able to hash out the basic concepts of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights pretty accurately. Tribal law seems to have worked on that very principle.
In the early 1700s, Cadwallader Colden wrote A History of the Five Indian Nations which mostly deals with the treaties between the Iroquois and the French and English colonists, but also mentions that the Iroquois have a single set of specific laws that are found in all the groups that make up the Confederacy. He does not mention a specific document, but we can see that the Iroquois did have a uniform and organized law that applied to everyone in a fairly large geographic area (present day New York State).
The Iroquios call this law “Ne Gayaneshagowa,” and this is what the document linked to in the OP claims to be. The first written transciptions of the Ne Gayaneshagowa show up in the late 1800s, and what is notable is that the accounts written by various researchers, taken from interviews with different tribal councilpersons at different times and places, record this law in practically identical language. This is taken as an indication that no one particular researcher nor councilperson was lying or mistaken. I don’t have an online source for this, but you might pick up * The Ambiguous Iroquois Empire* by Francis Jennings if you are interested.
A case can be made, but it is largely circumstantial. There is no documentation of any U.S. founding father having said or written anything along the lines of “The Iroquois Ne Gayaneshagowa seems so clever, I think I’ll use it as a base for the U.S. Constitution.” We do know that people such as Benjamin Franklin and John Adams were familiar with the Iroquois Confederacy and that it stands to reason that they would know about their legal system. Representatives from the Iroquois Confederacy attended the Continental Congress as observers. Scholars have come up with vastly different answers to the question of how much influence there actually was. Was it a deliberate reference, or had the general concept of a confederacy merely taken root in the minds of the framers of the U.S. Constitution? This issue is still unresolved.
Yes, surely, Benjamin Franklin’s view of the Iroquois, however positive, was certainly caught up in his own particular world view and his own political opinions. Since the Iroquois did not have a written language at the time of the creation of the Ne Gayaneshagowa, this issue is rather at the mercy of whether or not one believes that oral tradition can be considered reliable. As Wumpus pointed out, oral traditions can be both accurate and complex. It seems unfair to say that we (not you and I personally, but our society) only became interested in recording your history in the late 1800s, but since you don’t have a written language, we’re not going to accept anything you have to say about your own history prior to the point that we started writing it down.