Hey John,
You wrote:
"...When the American founding fathers sat down to
construct a model for bringing together a bunch of contrary states into an
new nation, they did so with a large contingent of Iroquois Indian leaders.
Indian values did not seep into popular culture via the movies and novels of
the 1930s, thence to influence the 'new intellectualism'. They were
deliberately chosen by the founding fathers who saw the remarkable success
of the Iroquois Confederacy at first hand, and chose to utilise it in their
model. Much of the success of the resultant democracy can be traced back to
this Indian input...."
and
"If I am wrong about this I will accept correction, but please do me the
courtesy of doing your homework first."
That the Iroquois Confederacy had any influence on the US Constitution
is myth, and a rather recent one at that. It became popular in the early
70's when some American Indian groups lobbied in NY state to have the above
version of history added to the curriculum in NY state schools. There was a
great deal of publicity surrounding it at the time and it just sort of made
its way into academia.
However, as far as I know (and I'm currently studying Constitutional Law
at a NY law school... and I have "done my homework") there no historical
evidence to support the Indian-Influence theory at all. The Constitution,
primarily written by James Madison, comes mainly from the works of Locke and
Rousseau, sometimes even quoting from these earlier political philosophers
almost verbatim. Other parts of it were derivative of the common law in late
1700's (ex. the 2nd and 4th amendments,etc.) and much of the rest of the
text was the result of political compromises between the founding fathers
used to assure assent from all needed to ratify the document.
If there was any Indian-Influence in the Constitution, it was never
mentioned by Madison in his Journals from the convention (which are widely
published if you care to verify) or in his correspondence with Jefferson
(which is also widely published). I refer you "A People's History of the
Supreme Court" by Peter Irons... most of the book is about the Judiciary,
but the first few chapters have a thorough and well documented telling of
the evolution of the Constitution and the Union.
Rick
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