Mike Lee is making the rounds on his book, Written Out of History: The Forgotten Founders Who Fought Big Government. The C-Span interview (beginning at about the three minute mark) shows Mr. Lee telling the interviewer that Chief Canasatego, spokesman for the Iroquois Confederation, helped introduce federalism to the founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin in particular, who influenced the others that this was the best plan for the new nation.
Federalism, you'll recall, is the principle by which the states were given most of the power to govern, while the national government retained the power necessary to protect the states from outside forces and such other things that would require a unified authority. A good source on this would be the articles at thefederalist.com tagged federalism.
Meanwhile, Historian Ellen Holmes Pearson tells us this:
Those who support the theory that the First Peoples influenced the drafting of the founding documents point to the words of founders such as Benjamin Franklin, who in 1751 wrote to his printer colleague James Parker that “It would be a strange thing if Six Nations of ignorant savages should be capable of forming a scheme for such an union, and be able to execute it in such a manner as that it has subsisted ages and appears indissoluble; and yet that a like union should be impracticable for ten or a dozen English colonies.” Native American Studies Professor Bruce Johansen and American Studies Professor Donald Grinde, among others, argue that American colonists, in Johansen’s words, “drew freely on the image of the American Indian as an exemplar of the spirit of liberty they so cherished.” These scholars argue that the framers of American governments understood and admired Native American government structures, and they borrowed certain indigenous concepts for their own governments.
However, she says not all historians believe that the concept came from the Iroquois Confederation but that it could have come from Europe.
Other scholars are not convinced. Anthropologist Elisabeth Tooker, for example, argued that European political theory and precedent furnished the models for American Founders, while evidence for Indian influence was very thin. Although the concept of the Iroquoian Confederation may have been similar to the United States’ first efforts to unite alliance, the Iroquois constructed their government under very different principles.
The idea of several tribal governments agreeing to cooperate to protect themselves from outsiders seems like a very logical concept and not especially profound. But maybe Ben Franklin simply wanted to point to a successful application to make his point -- much like some Supreme Court Justices like to point to foreign precedent to support their positions. But what do I know? I wasn't there.
In any event, it's a good principle, and it's nice to know there are influential people who would take us back in that direction.
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