Canassatego & The Origins of the United States
I want to share a little bit about Canassetego, a citizen and representative of Onondaga Nation of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy. Here he is during the Treaty of Lancaster negotiations, in the 1740s, offering some advice to the colonists:
“When you mentioned the affair of the land yesterday, you went back to old times, and told us you had been in possession of the province of Maryland for above one hundred years; but what is one hundred years in comparison to the length of time since our claim began? Since we came out of the ground?
For we must tell you that long before one hundred years our ancestors came out of this very ground and their children have remained here ever since…you came out of the ground in a country that lies beyond the seas; there you may have a just claim, but here you must allow us to be your elder brethren and the lands to belong to us before you knew anything of them.”
Its a fun bit of advice, right? Basically, he said (if I may severely paraphrase), ‘go back home, immigrant…our claim to these lands is older than yours and we know better.’ A colonist, either a human named Richard Peters or Witham Marshe, had this to say about Canassatego, the man, during that meeting:
“The first of these sachems was a tall, well-made man; had a very full chest, and brawny limbs. He had a manly countenance, mixed with a good-natured smile. He was about 60 years of age; very active, strong, and had a surprising liveliness in his speech, which I observed in the discourse betwixt him, Mr. Weiser, and some of the sachems.”
Canassatego also offered more advice. However, this time, he advised that the colonies do what the Haudenosaunee did, centuries earlier:
“Our wise forefathers established Union and Amity between the Five Nations. This has made us formidable; this has given us great Weight and Authority with our neighboring Nations. We are a powerful Confederacy; and by your observing the same methods, our wide forefathers have taken, you will acquire such Strength and power. Therefore, whatever befalls you, never fall out with one another.”
This last speech from Canassatego, advice to the colonies on joining together, was repeated during a treaty negotiation 30 years later in 1775, at German Flats, New York. Representatives from the Continental Congress had repeated Canassatego’s advice back to the then representatives of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. The colonists / separatists wanted to say to the Confederacy that their British colonies had, indeed, taken Canassatego’s advice.
This is all part of the Iroquois Influence Thesis, which says that American Democracy is a syncretic creation of the founding fathers. The thesis goes that the founders were intentional in studying elements from both Native democracies found in the confederacies of eastern North America, and from European versions of democracy that had existed in the past. These founders gathered all this information up and used it to create the new United States of America.
Some historians object to this thesis, but, the Founding Fathers largely say otherwise. The founders, in their writings at the time, discussed Native democracy and what it might mean for the colonists from Europe. In the many, many meetings of the Continental Congress, representatives from the Haudenosaunee and other Native Confederacies and governments came to speak, to instruct, about Indigenous forms of democracy. The colonists also researched as much of European history as they could find on all matters relating to democracy. The founder generation was on a fact-gathering mission, and it was not wasted on them that entire countries bordering their colonies had democratic institutions. Here is Benjamin Franklin, writing in 1751, less than a decade after the Treaty of Lancaster, and a quarter century before the American Revolution:
“It would be a very strange Thing, if six Nations of Ignorant Savages should be capable of forming a Scheme for such an Union, and be able to execute it in such a Manner, as that it has subsisted Ages, and appears indissoluble; and yet that a like Union should be impracticable for ten or a Dozen English Colonies, to whom it is more necessary, and must be more advantageous; and who cannot be supposed to want an equal Understanding of their Interests.”
Despite the phrasing of ‘ignorant savages’ (which likely has slightly different connotations then as opposed to now) you can see that Ben Franklin had respect for Haudenosaunee democratic governance. Franklin had served as a representative of the Pennsylvania colony in treaty negotiations with several Native Nations, including the Nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. He saw up close how their governments functioned. And, among the founding fathers, Franklin was the first to envision what a unification of the British colonies could look like.
However, Canassatego was there first — he had suggested in 1744 exactly what Benjamin Franklin would later suggest in the run up to the American Revolution. Proponents of the Iroquois Influence Thesis connect the dots on Franklin’s sources of influence, going back to his time as a representative of the Pennsylvania colony.
Canassatego died in 1750. He was very likely assassinated, caught up in the political crossfire between the colonies of New France, the rival colonies of Great Britain, the countries of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, and other Native Nations. He was supposedly 66 years old.
