Our good and just Constitution of the United States of America. It is a document that all of us U.S. citizens should hold in the highest regard.
Who exactly wrote the U.S. Constitution? It wasn’t the work of just one hand. Not just one author. Instead, it was born from the work of many minds gathered in Philadelphia in the sweltering summer of 1787.
In all, fifty-five delegates showed up for what we now call the Constitutional Convention. It took them months of debate, compromise, and discussion. But finally, thirty-nine of them signed the finished document. Our excellent Constitution.
James Madison often gets crowned the “Father of the Constitution.” He took meticulous notes and shaped much of the framework.
But others left their fingerprints all over it, too. George Washington kept order as the convention’s president. Then we had good Benjamin Franklin, who chimed in often with his wisdom. That amazing Alexander Hamilton pushed for a strong central government. And don’t forget Gouverneur Morris, who polished the words themselves. He is the one who penned that unforgettable opening: “We the People…”
But many people do not know this. The U.S. Constitution was shaped and influenced, partially, by an Indian agreement.
Those framers of our Constitution, Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, and the rest, had their eyes open to what was happening in North America at the time. And one of the most striking examples of government they encountered was the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) Confederacy.
The Haudenosaunee had been running a league of six nations (Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and later the Tuscarora) under what they called the Great Law of Peace.
Imagine a system of checks and balances, shared power, representatives from each nation, and leaders held accountable by clan mothers. That’s not just impressive. It was centuries ahead of its time.
Franklin, in particular, admired this. At the Albany Congress of 1754, he pointed to the Iroquois model when urging the colonies to unite. The idea that independent groups could remain self-governing but come together under one larger framework? That’s pure federalism.
Now, to be fair, the Constitution still leans heavily on European thinkers. Enlightenment philosophy gave the framers their scaffolding. But Indigenous governance offered a living, breathing example of how such unity could actually work.
Enough so that in 1988, Congress formally acknowledged the influence of the Iroquois Confederacy on our democratic experiment.
History, it seems, is never just one story. Not to sound trite, but it truly is a fabric that is woven together from many places and many times.
And maybe that’s the bigger lesson. Wisdom doesn’t come from a single source. It’s gathered across time, across cultures, across lives. The more we’re willing to notice and listen, the stronger our own foundations become.
I wish we could all remember this and honor our founding document for how it was written. A system of checks and balances. No one person is in power, but instead, a collection of people with varying opinions.
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“The Constitution is not a mere lawyers’ document, it is a vehicle of life, and its spirit is always the spirit of the age.” — Woodrow Wilson
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“A constitution, in its broadest sense, is the embodiment of the values of a people, their history, their traditions, their sense of justice, and their hopes for the future.” — Thurgood Marshall
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“Democracy is not the law of the majority but the protection of the minority.” — Albert Camus
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“The wisdom of the people is the security of the nation.” — Thomas Jefferson
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