Native American Influences on U.S. Government

Standard 1.5:  Native American Influences on U.S. Government

Analyze the evidence for arguments that the principles of the system of government of the United States were influenced by the governments of Native Peoples. (Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for History and Social Studies) [8.T1.5]

As native populations migrated and settled across the vast expanse of North America over time, they developed distinct and increasingly complex societies by adapting to and transforming their diverse environments. [AP U.S. History Key Concept 1.1]

The American Revolution’s democratic and republican ideals inspired new experiments with different forms of government. [AP U.S. History Key Concept 3.2]

FOCUS QUESTION: Did any Native American Group Influence the Men who Drafted the United States Governing Documents? (TeachingHistory.org., 2018) 

First American peoples and their histories remain largely invisible in many school curriculums. The National Congress of American Indians has reported that 87% of state history standards do not mention Native American history after 1900 while 27 states have no reference to a single Native American in their K-12 curriculum (Becoming Visible:  A Landscape Analysis of State Efforts to Provide Native American Education for All, September 2019).

First Americans lived in North America for 50,000 years before initial encounters with European explorers and colonists. These indigenous peoples adapted cultures and lifestyles to the geographic and environmental conditions where they lived. You can read a brief Overview of the First Americans from Digital History.

The achievements of First American peoples are impressive, but not well-known. Just east of present-day St. Louis, Missouri, the pre-contact First American city of Cahokia had a population of more than 10,000, with at least 20,000 to 30,000 more in outlying towns and farming settlements that spread for fifty miles in every direction. Its Grand Plaza was the size of 35 football fields, the largest public space ever created north of Mexico. At its center was a packed clay pyramid that reached 100 feet high. Cahokia is now the largest archaeological site in the United States. Back to the City of the Sun: An Augmented Reality Project offers more ways to learn about the Cahokia Mounds.

Etzanoa was located in modern-day Kansas, south of Wichita, near the Oklahoma border (learn more: Archaeologists Explore a Rural Field in Kansas, and a Lost City Emerges). There is more information on these native settlements on the resourcesforhistoryteachers wiki page Cahokia and Etzanoa, Pre-Contact Native American Cities.

Population figures for how many First Americans lived in North America in 1492 vary widely. Teaching Tolerance puts the figure at 500 tribes totaling about 22 million people. Shortly after the arrival of Europeans, disease and violence took the lives of an enormous number of indigenous people. Twenty million, 95% of the indigenous population, died - many from the smallpox infection to which natives had no immunity. Today, Native Americans number just over 2 million or 1% of the U. S. population. Nearly 4 out of 5 (78%) live off-reservations and 72% live in cities or suburbs (The Guardian, September 4, 2017).

The relationship between Native peoples and European settlers was complex, contentious, and sometimes collaborative (Calloway, 2018). Tribes and settlers fought over access to land and resources, but also created military alliances and conducted trade. The website Raid on Deerfield: The Many Stories of 1704 shows the multiple dimensions of native/settler contacts.

Today, Native Americans still live with a legacy of inadequate resources and services and continuing social and economic discrimination. In its "Broken Promises" report, the U.S.Commission of Civil Rights (2018) recounted the history as follows:

How did native peoples influence the writers of the U.S. Constitution, and in so doing, shape the governmental institutions of the new republic? In exploring this question, the modules for this topic examine Native influences on government against a broader background of native/settler relations and conflicts.

For background:

• How Native American Women Inspired the Women's Rights Movement from the National Park Service. The Six Nation Haudenosaunee Confederacy had, and still have today, a family/governmental structure based on female authority.
• Native American Governments in Today's Curriculum, an older article that offers an overview of governmental structures of the League of the Iroquois, the Muscogee Nation, the Lakota Nation, and the Pueblo peoples.

1.INVESTIGATE: The Iroquois Confederacy and the Great Law of Peace

The Iroquois Confederacy refers to a group of indigenous tribes living in northeastern North America that had a participatory democracy government with executive, legislative, and judicial branches. The Great Law of Peace was the constitution of the Iroquois Confederacy. Here is the text of The Constitution of the Iroquois Confederacy and its 117 articles. 

The framework of government in the Iroquois Confederacy is said to have inspired Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and other founders as they wrote the Constitution. The founders adopted the Iroquois nation's symbol, the bald eagle, as the new nation's national symbol.  

Some historians credit the Iroquois chief Canasatego with influencing Benjamin Franklin’s thinking about government (Franklin included references to the Iroquois Confederacy in his writing). Canasatego shared how the Great Law of Peace, the Iroquois Confederacy’s unwritten constitution, included rules of democratic self-government including the rights and responsibilities of each member tribe, and in so doing, stressed the importance of a unified, representative government. Other historians are unsure of these connections, citing the lack of definitive historical evidence. Iroquois and the Founding Fathers from TeachingHistory.org presents both sides of this historical debate.

You can learn more at Iroquois Democracy & the U.S. Constitution, a website with learning plans from Portland State University.

In 1988, the United States Senate passed a resolution acknowledging the contributions of the Iroquois Confederacy (Text of Senate Resolution on the Contributions of the Iroquois Confederacy). However, none of the constitutions of the 13 colonies included First Americans’ rights and Native Americans did not gain citizenship until 1924.

In addition to influencing the founders, feminist scholar Sally Roesch Wagner (2001) contended that the social and political organization of indigenous societies impacted the thinking of early women suffragists including Lucy Stone, Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. In Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) society, women were included in tribal leadership, could hold political office, controlled property, had spiritual authority within the community, and children belonged to the mother's clan. The women's rights advocates who wrote the Declaration of Sentiments were inspired by native women to argue for a more co-equal status for women in American society. You can access an overview of this idea from The Impact of Haudenosaunee Culture on the Early Suffragettes.

Native American Civil Rights

Importantly, many history and civics classes in K-12 schools fail to mention the efforts of indigenous Americans to achieve equal rights under the Constitution. They were the last racial group to gain the right to vote. Native American Activism: 1960s to Present from the Zinn Education Project focuses on events including the 1969 Alcatraz Island occupation, the 1970 occupation of Mount Rushmore, and the 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee. These are just a few of many events that happened in the 20th century to show their impact on civil rights legislation as well as the impact protest has on governmental change. There is more historical information at our wiki page for the Native American Civil Rights Movement.

2.UNCOVER: The Peskeompskut-Wissatinnewag Massacre or Battle of Great Falls

Peskeompskut is the name for the waterfalls on the Connecticut River between the communities of Turners Falls and Gill, Massachusetts. The Peskeompskut Massacre or the Great Falls Fight was a pivotal event in King Philip's War that unfolded when a colonial militia led a pre-dawn surprise attack of an Indian fishing village on the shores of the river on May 16, 1676. An interactive photograph and summary of the scene entitled Assault on Peskeompskut is available from the Memorial Hall Museum, Deerfield, Massachusetts. 

Different writers have described the event differently, as a massacre or a battle. Regardless of how it is described, it is clear that hundreds of English soldiers and native people were involved and that many women and children were killed in the raid on the village. In 2018, the town of Montague, Massachusetts received a grant from the National Park Service to survey the battlefield and apply for recognition in the National Register of Historic Places. But what really happened on that day?

Online Resources for the Peskeompskut-Wissatinnewag Massacre 

• Our Beloved Kin: Remapping a New History of King Philip’s War website by Lisa Brooks
• Explore resourcesforhistoryteachers wiki page for English Settlers and Native Peoples
• Native Land Map, an interactive exploration of native peoples in the Americas

3.ENGAGE: Who Should Decide to Restore Native American Names for Geographic Places? 

Native American names for geographic places are everywhere in this country. 27 states have Native American origins for their names: Alaska from the Aleut word "Alyeska," Massachusetts from the Algonquian language meaning "at or about the great hill," and North and South Dakota from the Sioux word for "friend" to name just three (The United States of Indigenous Names, Indian Country Today, September 2018, para. 9).

The names of towns, streets, rivers, mountains, lakes, and natural landmarks in every state have indigenous origins. Wikipedia maintains an ongoing listing of Place Names of Native American Origin in the U.S.

Whose Land Do You Live On? Use this Native Land Digital Map to find out the ancestral land that your school stands on.

For Massachusetts, you can access Native American Names in the Greater Boston Area by members of a class at Northeastern University; this resource includes a Google Map of Native American place name locations in and around the city. Names of places also can change. In 1997, the residents of "Gay Head" on Martha Vineyard Island voted to change the name of the town to "Aquinnah" (meaning "under the hill" to the Wampanoag people).

Not all names convey positive images and meanings. The U.S. Interior Department reported in 2022 that there are 660 place names that use "squaw," a racist slur term directed at Native American women. Other place names have wording that Native people find offensive or degrading, similar to the use of offensive terms of imagery by school mascots or professional sports teams. You can learn more at Indigenous Erasure in Plain Sight: Place Names in New England (2017).

Given the long history of exploitation and oppression of Native peoples, there are ongoing local, state, and national efforts to restore Native American names to places as a way to present truthful history and show respect for all peoples and cultures. In 2015, President Barack Obama issued an executive order to change the name of Alaska's Mount McKinley (named for the nation's 25th President William McKinley) to Denali -- the mountain's name in the indigenous Athabasian language. Native tribes and political leaders in the state supported the change while officials in Ohio (President McKinley's home state) as well as then presidential candidate Donald Trump opposed it.

The controversy over the Mount McKinley to Denali change demonstrates the complex political, historical, and social dynamics surrounding the naming and potential renaming of places.

Who should decide what geographic place names stay as they are and what names need to be changed: Local people? Elected politicians? Governmental agencies? Native tribal groups? Other groups?

Online Resources for Teaching First American/Native American History

• Indigenous People in Massachusetts: A Library Guide, Robbins Library, Arlington, Massachusetts
• Lord Jeffrey Amherst and the Smallpox Blankets, resourcesforhistoryteachers wiki
• Svalbard Seed Bank and Global Food Histories, resourcesforhistoryteachers wiki
• Montana State Constitution Article X and Indian Education For All, Montana Office of Public Instruction
  • Montana's 1972 constitutional amendment requires teachers to integrate information about Native American cultures and history in all subjects and grades.
• Many Maine Schools 'Do Little' to follow a 20-Year-old Law Requiring Wabanaki Studies. New England News Collaborative (October 10, 2022).
• American Indian Perspectives on Thanksgiving, National Museum of the American Indian
• The Other Side of Plymouth Rock: River Stories 2020, Nolumbeka Project
• American Indians in Children's Literature, Blog by Debbie Reese of Nambé Pueblo
• Maps:
  
  • Tribal Nations Map - Pre-contact homelands of hundreds of tribal nations in Canada and the lower 48 states of the United States
  • Native Reservations Today Map

Conclusion for Standard 5 

Standard 5’s INVESTIGATE examined how the governmental practices of Native Americans (in particular, The Iroquois Confederacy) may have influenced the thinking of the founders of the United States system of government. UNCOVER presented the different historical accounts of what is known as the Peskeompskut-Wissatinnewag Massacre or the Battle of Great Falls. ENGAGE used the case of Jeffrey Amherst and the Smallpox Blankets to ask how people today might assess the naming of places.