Immersion in the records of the time had surprised me. I had not realized
how tightly Franklin's experience with the Iroquois had been woven into
his development of revolutionary theory and his advocacy of federal
union. To understand how all this had come to be, I had to remove myself
as much as possible from the assumptions of the twentieth century, to
try to visualize America as Franklin knew it.
I would need to describe the Iroquois he knew, not celluloid caricatures
concocted from bogus history, but well-organized polities governed by
a system that one contemporary of Franklin's, Cadwallader Colden, wrote
had "outdone the Romans." Colden was writing of a social and political
system so old that the immigrant Europeans knew nothing of its origins
-- a federal union of five (and later six) Indian nations that had put
into practice concepts of popular participation and natural rights that
the European savants had thus far only theorized. The Iroquoian system,
expressed through its constitution, "The Great Law of Peace," rested
on assumptions foreign to the monarchies of Europe: it regarded leaders
as servants of the people, rather than their masters, and made provisions
for the leaders' impeachment for errant behavior. The Iroquois' law
and custom upheld freedom of expression in political and religious matters,
and it forbade the unauthorized entry of homes. It provided for political
participation by women and the relatively equitable distribution of
wealth. These distinctly democratic tendencies sound familiar in light
of subsequent American political history -- yet few people today (other
than American Indians and students of their heritage) know that a republic
existed on our soil before anyone here had ever heard of John Locke,
or Cato, the Magna Charta, Rousseau, Franklin, or Jefferson.
To describe the Iroquoian system would not be enough, however. I would
have to show how the unique geopolitical context of the mid-eighteenth
century brought together Iroquois and Colonial leaders -- the dean of
whom was Franklin -- in an atmosphere favoring the communication of
political and social ideas: how, in essence, the American frontier became
a laboratory for democracy precisely at a time when Colonial leaders
were searching for alternatives to what they regarded as European tyranny
and class stratification.
….This book has two major purposes. First, it seeks to weave a
few new threads into the tapestry of American revolutionary history,
to begin the telling of a larger story that has lain largely forgotten,
scattered around dusty archives, for more than two centuries. By arguing
that American Indians (principally the Iroquois) played a major role
in shaping the ideas of Franklin (and thus, the American Revolution)
I do not mean to demean or denigrate European influences. I mean not
to subtract from the existing record, but to add an indigenous aspect,
to show how America has been a creation of all its peoples.
In the telling, this story also seeks to demolish what remains of stereotypical
assumptions that American Indians were somehow too simpleminded to engage
in effective social and political organization.
No one may doubt any longer that there has been more to history, much
more, than the simple opposition of "savagery" and "civilization." History's
popular writers have served us with many kinds of savages, noble and
vicious, "good Indians" and "bad Indians," nearly always as beings too
preoccupied with the essentials of the hunt to engage in philosophy
and statecraft.
This was simply not the case. Franklin and his fellow founders knew
differently. They learned from American Indians, by assimilating into
their vision of the future, aspects of American Indian wisdom and beauty.
Our task is to relearn history as they experienced it, in all its richness
and complexity, and thereby to arrive at a more complete understanding
of what we were, what we are, and what we may become.
- Bruce E. Johansen
Seattle, Washington
July 1981
