LOST & FOUND #9 …

Excellent Reading:

Indian Givers: How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World - Jack Weatherford.

LOST & FOUND
#9 Iroquois as American Founding Fathers

Our Capital building in Washington DC has respect for Europe.

We use:

• A Roman dome
• Roman columns
• Roman-like busts of famous political thinkers
• American politicians in Greek tunics and Roman togas
• Greek busts of Vice-presidents
• Engravings from European documents like the Magna Carta
• Stories of the progress of European civilization
• Pictorials of Democracy coming from Athens and Rome to America
  

The American Indians are not credited. In fact, they are depicted in the painted band under the great dome as a dangerous obstacle that was overcome along with wild animals, the Appalachians, the Mississippi, and the western dessert.

The Iroquois - in particular - Hiawatha and Deganwidah started a League of Nations somewhere between 1000 and 1450 AD. At first it had 5 nations: the Mohawk, Onondaga, Seneca, Oneida, and Cayuga. Later the Tuscaroras were added. Largely because of the years of careful study and respect that Ben Franklin paid to the Indians, the ideas from the league of Indian nations became a major model for the way we framed The United States of America. Both Franklin and Thomas Jefferson used many ideas from the Iroquois to write the Articles of Confederation and then the Constitution.

People think European ideas of democracy inspired America. Actually they were precisely what people fled from, when they came to America. Although the Greeks wrote and spoke highly of democracy, much of the Europeans from Greece to Italy to France to England had systems of government that oppressed their people to the point of internal wars. The Iroquois on the other hand had a form of government that encouraged true democratic representation and compromise among nations and tribes. They sought to learn from each other, where Europeans sought to dominate one another.

Comparisons of Iroquois to Europeans