Haudenosaunee Great Law of Peace Develops

1465

The five nations of the Haudenosaunee, the Mohawk, Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, and Oneida, were consolidating their remarkable confederation under the Great Law of Peace, an elaborate oral constitution. The law established a grand council of fifty sachems, consensus-based governance, provisions for adopting outsiders, and principles of individual liberty that would later influence Enlightenment political thought and, some scholars have argued, the framers of the American Constitution itself.