4. Iroquois government was based on the Great Law of Peace
The Great Law of Peace, which established the relationships and roles of the five (later six) tribes of the Iroquois Confederation, was not originally written. Initially, it was based on oral tradition. Later, it was recorded using symbols in wampum belts. Each of the original five tribes spoke somewhat similar languages, and used their own traditions and symbols in the recordings of their histories. As an inevitable result, several different versions of the Iroquois “constitution” exist. Within the distinct tribes, different versions of its history exist. The Onondaga, for example, has several different versions. The Oneida include one, based on oral tradition within one family, which relates to the Oneida Shenandoah consulting with Benjamin Franklin during the writing of the United States Constitution. No corroborating evidence is known to exist, but the publication of the story in 1997 generated renewed debate over Iroquois contributions to American democracy.
In 1885, Seth Newhouse, a half Mohawk and half Onondaga with the Iroquois name Dayodekane, presented a manuscript version of the Great Law of Peace to the Grand River Council. The Council was the governing body for the Six Nations of the Grand River reservation in Ontario. The council did not endorse Newhouse’s version of the law. The different versions of the Great Law of Peace, in English translations, include articles not present in others, or in differing wordings. The existence of varying records of the Great Law among the participatory tribes suggests it was regarded differently by each of those tribes, and interpreted differently as well. And it is evident that the Great Law changed over time, both in its repetitive recitations in oral traditions, and in its interpretation of the wampum belts into different native languages, and then to English.