Other texts concerning democracy Native americans
Rights of the People of the Five Nations
93. Whenever a specially important matter or a great emergency is presented before the Confederate Council and the nature of the matter affects the entire body of the Five Nations, threatening their utter ruin, then the Lords of the Confederacy must submit the matter to the decision of their people and the decision of the people shall affect the decision of the Confederate Council. This decision shall be a confirmation of the voice of the people.
94. The men of every clan of the Five Nations shall have a Council Fire ever burning in readiness for a council of the clan. When it seems necessary for a council to be held to discuss the welfare of the clans, then the men may gather about the fire. This council shall have the same rights as the council of the women.
95. The women of every clan of the Five Nations shall have a Council Fire ever burning in readiness for a council of the clan. When in their opinion it seems necessary for the interest of the people they shall hold a council and their decisions and recommendations shall be introduced before the Council of the Lords by the War Chief for its consideration.
96. All the Clan council fires of a nation or of the Five Nations may unite into one general council fire, or delegates from all the council fires may be appointeed to unite in a general council for discussing the interests of the people. The people shall have the right to make appointments and to delegate their power to others of their number. When their council shall have come to a conclusion on any matter, their decision shall be reported to the Council of the Nation or to the Confederate Council (as the case may require) by the War Chief or the War Chiefs.
97. Before the real people united their nations, each nation had its council fires. Before the Great Peace their councils were held. The five Council Fires shall continue to burn as before and they are not quenched. The Lords of each nation in future shall settle their nation's affairs at this council fire governed always by the laws and rules of the council of the Confederacy and by the Great Peace.
98. If either a nephew or a niece see an irregularity in the performance of the functions of the Great Peace and its laws, in the Confederate Council or in the conferring of Lordship titles in an improper way, through their War Chief they may demand that such actions become subject to correction and that the matter conform to the ways prescribed by the laws of the Great Peace.
(From http://www.law.ou.edu/hist/iroquois.html)
Another imitation of the Haudenosaunee came in the simple practice of allowing only one person to speak at a time in political meetings. Europeans were accustomed to shouting down any speaker who displeased them; in some cases they might even stone him or inflict worse damage. The Haudenosaunee permitted no interruptions or shouting. They even imposed a short period of silence at the end of each oration in case the speaker had forgotten some point or wished to elaborate or change something he had said.
(From http://www.yesmagazine.org/21American/weatherford.htm)
Through oral tradition and wampum, the Haudenosaunee date the origins of the Great Law of Peace to be between 1000 and 1400 AD. However, Anglo-American scholars set the date to be, based on written accounts, at about 1450 AD.
(From http://tuscaroras.com/graydeer/influenc/page2.htm)
Mann and Fields are the first scholars to combine documentary history with oral accounts and precise solar data in an attempt to date the origin of the Iroquois League. Depending on how democracy is defined, their date of 1142 A.D. would rank the Iroquois Confederacy with the government of Iceland and the Swiss cantons as the oldest continuously functioning democracy on earth. All three precedents have been cited as forerunners of the United States system of representative democracy. The Haudenosaunee Confederacy functions today in Upstate New York; it even issues passports.
(From http://www.ratical.com/many_worlds/6Nations/DatingIC.html)
The Cherokees took public opinion so seriously that they usually split their villages when they became too large to permit each adult a voice in council. In the early eighteenth century, the Cherokee nation comprised sixty villages in five regions, with each village controlling its own affairs. Villages sent delegates to a national council only in times of national emergency. The villages averaged 300 to 400 persons each; At about 500 people, a village usually split in two. It may have been this political organization that Thomas Jefferson had in mind when he penned the following comment regarding a proposal to make the states several times larger than the original colonies:
This is reversing the natural order of things. A tractable people may be governed in large bodies but, in proportion as they depart from this character, the extent of their government must be less. We see into what small divisions the Indians are obliged to reduce their societies. [39]
In Cherokee society, each adult was regarded as an equal in matters of politics. Leadership titles were few and informal, so when Europeans sought "kings," or "chiefs" with whom to negotiate treaties, they usually did not understand that whomever they were speaking with could not compel allegiance or obedience of others. The Cherokees made a conscious effort to keep government to a minimum, in the belief that personal freedom would be enhanced. [40]
(From http://www.cascadia.ctc.edu/Faculty/jmiller/POL101/readings/perceptions_native_democracy.doc)
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