![]() Scholars told PolitiFact that there are two broad areas of support for the notion that the Iroquois had a degree of influence on the Constitution. "On balance, the consensus appears to be that although British North Americans were certainly aware of the confederal nature of the Iroquois government, the case for causation has not been made," wrote Alison LaCroix, a law professor at the University of Chicago, in The Ideological Origins of American Federalism, published in 2010. Skeptics counter that the evidence is largely circumstantial. Some supporters of the notion of Iroquois influence say that the historical establishment is reluctant to give Native Americans credit where credit is due. The topic has proven to be a polarizing one. Senate passed a resolution saying that "the confederation of the original 13 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." Historians held conferences to sift through the evidence, and the U.S. Interest in this question crescendoed around the time of the 1987 bicentennial of the U.S. Could the Iroquois system of governance have been the inspiration for the United States’ newborn republic? The similarity between the Iroquois federal-style government and the one the American colonists settled on after they wrote the Constitution has long intrigued historians. The system of unified governance between the Mohawk, Seneca, Onondaga, Oneida, Cayuga and eventually the Tuscarora people enabled the Iroquois to become arguably the predominant Native American tribe in the northeastern United States prior to the arrival of European colonists. ![]() Some four centuries ago, the nations of the Haudenosaunee, or Iroquois, people united in a confederacy to establish peace in what is now upstate New York. But we did find agreement among historians that the meme oversells its central point. Constitution owes its notion of democracy to the Iroquois Tribes."Īs it turns out, this topic has inspired a passionate debate among historians for more than three decades. We zeroed in on the meme’s underlying premise, that "the U.S. ![]() ![]() Only difference is the Iroquois included women and non-whites." It’s accompanied by a reproduction of Junius Brutus Stearns’ 1856 painting of the founding fathers signing the United States Constitution in 1787. Constitution owes its notion of democracy to the Iroquois Tribes, including freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and separation of powers in government. The meme features the following claim: "The U.S. Shortly before Thanksgiving, a reader sent us a social media meme of the type that sends you scrambling back to your high school history textbook wondering, "Did my teacher mention this?" ![]()
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