American Indian Culture and Research Journal

Surely we are not stating anything either easy or difficult to prove when we suggest that the first European settlers along the Eastern seaboard must have been powerfully affected by the example of Indian peoples and that in these Europeans and certainly in their immediate descendants the apparently free life they saw must have contributed to the development of the individualism that made American democracy inevitable. But the question of just how Indian societies in general and the Iroquois in particular affected the development of American political institutions ought to be a matter of historical evidence. If there are documents that will settle the matter it ought to be possible to find them. Unfortunately, in his “Notes from the ‘Culture Wars:’ More Annotations on the Debate Regarding the Iroquois and the Origins of Democracy,” published in the American Indian Culture and Research Journal, volume 23, number 1, Professor Bruce Johansen has made the mistake that is usual in discussions of Iroquois influence by confusing two propositions: (1) that the Iroquois, generally speaking, contributed to the development of American democracy, and (2) that the political structure of the Iroquois League and, by implication, the structure and parliamentary procedures of its council specifically served as a model for the structure of government defined by the Constitution of the