Haudenosaunee Roots Of The American Experiment
Many centuries ago, the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca, formed a confederacy under the Great Law of Peace that covered much of what is now New York state and beyond. The governance structure of the resulting Haudenosaunee Confederacy, with its balance of centralization and decentralization, influenced Benjamin Franklin’s early Albany Plan proposal for a united government of states, which presaged the U.S. Constitution— even though the Declaration of Independence had meanwhile criticized King George III’s backing of “merciless Indian Savages” to conduct war against the colonists.