America colonisation ‘cooled Earth's climate’

[ok doser]

Do you know of some good books on the history of the Iroquois confederacy? Wikipedia says it was founded by someone named "The Peacemaker" in the 12th century. There's been great debate as to how much influence did the structure of Iroquois confederacy have on the Framers of the US Constitution? Ben Franklin spoke and wrote about the Iroquois confederacy a fair amount.

no, no good books that i know of - at least not any that are not written for schoolchildren - the problem with doing a serious historical study of the native americans, especially the northeast woodland tribes/nations is the lack of a written record - modern historians are loathe to rely on oral tradition

i've seen some of the claims about the influence of the confederacy on the writers of the constitution, but i don't find it persuasive - my feeling is that they (the writers of the constitution) were much more heavily influenced by the thinking of the french philosophers of the day

 

[The Berean]

no, no good books that i know of - at least not any that are not written for schoolchildren - the problem with doing a serious historical study of the native americans, especially the northeast woodland tribes/nations is the lack of a written record - modern historians are loathe to rely on oral tradition

I would think that the modern historians would at least document the oral tradition and go from there? :idunno:

i've seen some of the claims about the influence of the confederacy on the writers of the constitution, but i don't find it persuasive - my feeling is that they (the writers of the constitution) were much more heavily influenced by the thinking of the french philosophers of the day

I think we need to be clear here. I don't think people claim that the Iroquois Confederacy was THE major influence on the Framers or that Framers directly copied or imitated the Iroquois system of government. That would be a straw-man argument and silly of course. There is a large gap between influence and directly copying. It's possible that the Iroquois influence was limited to Ben Franklin only? From what I have read Ben Franklin had dealings with the Iroquios in the 1740's and 1750's.

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

https://history.howstuffworks.com/h...is-great-law-peace-source-us-constitution.htm


I believe it's more likely than not the any passing similarities between the Iroquois from of government and the American colonies and the early United States was simply a coincidence. The Iroquois and the England/colonies developed democratic styles of government independent of each other.

 

[ok doser]

I would think that the modern historians would at least document the oral tradition and go from there? :idunno:

they do, but there's not very much further you can go from that poor of a foundation - that's why most references are limited to annotations in texts whose main topic lies elsewhere - primarily areas in which there is a written record, which necessarily limits it to post-contact periods

and usually governmental records, which are usually military records

I think we need to be clear here. I don't think people claim that the Iroquois Confederacy was THE major influence on the Framers or that Framers directly copied or imitated the Iroquois system of government.

it's a popular belief and a source of pride among the akwesasne (mohawk) that i know and have spoken to , which is, admittedly, a small sampling - there's a res just down the road that straddles the border - no walls there :chuckle: , and it accounts for the fact that there's a ton of border patrol presence up here - that and the fact that right now with the ice on, the whole st lawrence is an open border you could walk across if you wanted to risk it

That would be a straw-man argument and silly of course. There is a large gap between influence and directly copying. It's possible that the Iroquois influence was limited to Ben Franklin only? From what I have read Ben Franklin had dealings with the Iroquios in the 1740's and 1750's.

and we know of Franklin's experiences because his are some of the very few private letters (and he was prolific) that have survived

you may want to give this a read - i found informative and enjoyable: https://www.amazon.com/Loyal-Son-War-Franklins-House/dp/0345544218