Franklin and the Iroquois Foundations of the Constitution

[ABX]

In 1744, envoys from Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia met in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, with delegates, or sachems, of the Six Nations of the Iroquois Indians. During the discussions, the Iroquois leader Canassatego advocated the federal union of the American colonies, exhorting the colonists:
Our wise forefathers established a union and amity between the [original] Five Nations. This has made us formidable. This has given us great weight and authority with our neighboring Nations. We are a powerful Confederacy and by your observing the same methods our wise forefathers have taken you will acquire much strength and power; therefore, whatever befalls you, do not fall out with one another.
When an Indian interpreter and old friend of Benjamin Franklin’s brought him the official transcript of the proceedings, Franklin immediately published the account....

....The Iroquois Confederacy had been a functioning democracy for centuries by Franklin’s day. Sometime between 1000 and 1450, the Cayuga, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, and Seneca Nations came together to become the Iroquois Confederacy, and in the early 18th century they were joined by the Tuscaroras. Referred to as the Six Nations by the English, and the Iroquois by the French, the Confederacy called themselves the Haudenosaunee, or “People Building a Long House.”
Under the Iroquois Constitution, known as the Great Binding Law or Great Law of Peace, each nation elected delegates, or sachems, who dealt with internal
affairs. The Confederacy’s Grand Council met to discuss matters of common concern,  such as war, peace, and treaty-making. Though the Council could not interfere with the internal affairs of each tribe, unity for mutual defense was a central concept. The oral tradition of the Great Law uses the imagery of a bundle of five arrows  tied together to symbolize the complete union of the nations and the unbroken strength that such unity imparts.....


http://www.upenn.edu/gazette/0107/gaz09.html

[ABX]

Not too many are aware that much of our Constitution was copied from the Iroquois, including the branches of government and the forms of a Representative Democracy.

[To-Whose-Benefit?]

Damn shame, not that they took what they could find as seemed best to them, but that better had been tried 1,000 years earlier and the records lost.

They are still being recovered, hit and miss, by archaeologists.

Non-Territorial Jurisdiction

Viking Age Iceland, Privatization Run Amok or Libertarian Paradise?
http://wulfanson.blogspot.com/2016/04/viking-age-iceland-privatization-run.html

Free Market Governance.

If you didn't like the services your Chieftain charged you a nominal fee to provide, you could contract with another Chieftain on the other side of the island to do a better job for you, without having to move there.

Imagine how much better service we'd get today from government if we could simply tell government at every level, each and everyone of us on an individual basis, we can and will do something about you.

You're Fired.