Most of us first learned of Thanksgivng through in an elementary or middle school textbook where we saw pictures of merry Pilgrims and indigenous Americans sharing a feast and giving thanks for the food and each other. I too learned history this way. I was shocked and disappointed when I learned in high school about the concurrent decimation and denigration of the First Americans, that still continues even today. The introduction of smallpox that left only a small fraction of the original population, the attempts at slavery,  the systematic fraud and lies of treaties and land agreements that were never (and are still not) respected plus to add insult to injury the later forced migration off their ancestral lands. This is of course a sour spot in American life and that we often hide from view. The unfortunate part about our refusal to talk about the bad aspects of our history with Native Americans is that we also do not talk about the good history either (aside from Thanksgiving).  So today I would like to pay a thanksgiving to the First Americans and their incredibly rich heritage and continued contributions to American society.


 
   Consider the Haudenosaunee tribe. They are often credited as being the first democracy anywhere in the world- period. Ruled under the Great Law of Peace, the Haudenosaunee system of government included an intricate system of checks and balances. This organization consisted of several autonomous governments that came together as a united force and where women played an equal role if not greater role with men in both public and private life.  Of course the Haudenosaunee are not the only example of enlightened gender politics in Native American society- the Zuni and many tibes have also accepted and integrated their transgender and intersex populations through a third, alternative gender role called the "two-spirit".

 The Haudenosaunee controlled a territory larger than any European monarch. Their lands stretched from the Hudson River to all the way to Lake Erie and crossed both US and Canadian borders. Many of us have heard of the Continental Congress and the "Articles of Confederation" that were drafted and  later went on to shape the American Constitution and democracy. What most of us have not heard however is that those same Articles of Confederation were actually drafted based on the example of the Haudenosaunee.  Although the exact extent of the Haudenosaunee influence on the American Constitution is still debated, according to many accounts the Haudenosaunee  were actually invited to the 1775 Continential Congress. These sources say that Haundenosaunee leaders consulted with John Jay, Samuel Adams, George Washington, Patrick Henry and others as they debated how they wanted to organize and govern this new nation.  Although there is debate about the details of the Haundenosaunee influence there is little doubt that they had influenced US democracy: 

• John Adams, in writings defending the Constitution, discussed the “fifty families of the Iroquois” as a model for the American states to follow.

• Thomas Jefferson, who felt that people were better off with fewer laws, wrote to John Rutledge during the Constitutional Convention: “The only condition on earth to be compared with ours is that of the Indians, where they still have less law than we.”


• Haudenosaunee leaders were invited to Philadelphia in May 1776 – just weeks before the Declaration of Independence was adopted – to observe the Continental Congress in action. John Hancock, president of the Congress, welcomed the Haudenosaunee delegation as “brothers,” and on June 11, 1776, the Haudenosaunee responded by giving Hancock the name “Karanduawn,” or “The Great Tree.”

• Thomas Paine, author of the pro-revolution pamphlet Common Sense, served as secretary to a Haudenosaunee treaty conference at Eaton, Penn., in early 1777. While there, he apparently heard a Haudenosaunee prophecy about two fighting beasts whose struggles would shake the very foundations of the Confederacy. In the end, the prophecy said, the smaller beast (America) would win and take up the ideas of the Haudenosaunee. The Continental Congress later published a pamphlet describing a similar prophecy, and it also was published in France in 1777, before the French threw their public support behind the colonists.

 
However it was not just the Haudenosaunee political sense that amazed the European settlers. The gender politics of the Haudenosaunee based on equality and respect were viewed as quite radical by the Europeans. For example, European anthropolgists had trouble understanding how women could be given so free and respected in society. At first glace at Iroqouis gender roles it seems to be more or less traditional, women raise children and perform the agricultural work while men hunt, go to war and negotiate politics.

However it is not that simple, women are the ones through which ancestry and property rights are inherited so men move in with their wives and daughters inherit property. All people related to a central matron lived in a longhouse which was not only symbolic of the family network organized around the mother but also symbolic of the united six tribes of the "Great Peace".  Women were so loved and respected among the Haudenosaunee that when European women were captured in war or ran away they often refused to move back to the colonial society.

Wow.

That was my reaction when I first learned about this during an anthropology course this semester. I began to think to my self:

Now wait.. if the American consitution was heavily influenced by the Haudenosaunee system of governance - what does that mean about the men who were really our founding fathers? And then also considering how no political decision in the Haudenosaunee government was made without the consultation and input of women did we also have founding mothers as well?

Again, Wow. What a neat way to look back at our history and what an amazing and awesome heritage we have that we owe not just to our European American forefathers but also our forefathers and mothers that were the First Americans. Now that is something I feel we can all truly give thanks for.


Further Reading: 

1) Don't believe me about all of this?  Check out this scholarly article about it in the peer-reviewed journal Ethnohistory, it was published in 1970, Volume 17 issues 3/4, pages 151-167.

2) The UPenn Gazette Article: Franklin and the Iroquois Foundations of the Constitution

3) Also check out this article from the National Organization of Women (NOW) on how Haudenosaunee women also influenced 19th century Feminists (without whom we would not have suffrage and many of the other rights that we now take for granted)