It is not entirely surprising to see the Iroquois
Constitution having some relevance to the United States' vision. Some of the initial
framers of the American document of securing the nation were inspired by the Iroquois'
attempts. Franklin circulated Iroquois ideas to other framers as early as mid 1700s.
Delegate John Rutledge from South Carolina studied the Iroquois work intently and
advocated that its introduction be a part of the American version: "We, the people, to
form a union, to establish peace, equity, and order..." It is interesting to see the
levels of similarities between both documents. For example, Article 37 of the Iroquois
Constitution states the following:
There shall be one war chief from each
nation, and their duties shall be to carry messages for their chiefs, and to take up
arms in case of emergency. They shall not participate in the proceedings of the Council
of the League, but shall watch its progress and in case of an erroneous action by a
chief, they shall receive the complaints of the people and convey the warnings of the
women to him.
It
is interesting to see the language about "complaints of the people." This is
representative of the popular sovereignty principle that asserts that people in the
democratic nation can vote and have a voice. Additionally, one sees a bit of "checks
and balances" present in the language of "watch its progress and in case of an erroneous
action by a chief." The Iroquois might have influenced the idea of how government needs
to be limited by other branches. The framers did credit this idea to Montesquieu, but
it is conceivable that they believed in this from the Iroquois, as well. It should be
noted that the language of the Iroquois Constitution heavily empowered women, something
that the framers did not do and something that the U.S. Constitution did not do until
the early 20th Century.
No comments:
Post a Comment