The Iroquois Confederacy: A History from Beginning to Present

The American Revolution not only changed the continent of North America, but the ideas it represented would go on to change the world. The notion of a state where individual liberty was guaranteed to all citizens and where hereditary positions of power did not exist would directly lead to the French Revolution and to other movements around the world that sought to bring fundamental political and societal changes. What is often forgotten is that the radical US Constitution borrowed concepts and ideas from a much older democracy that had existed in North America long before European settlers first arrived.

The Iroquois Confederacy was a political union of five (later six) Native American nations that controlled much of the Northeastern part of North America from the time of its foundation until the eighteenth century. The people of this confederacy—the Haudenosaunee (“people of the longhouse”)—lived within what some historians claim was the first participatory democracy in human history. These people fought successful wars against other tribes in the region, and in the eighteenth century, they found themselves caught up first in conflicts between colonial powers, including the Netherlands, France, and Britain, and then in an uprising against British rule by settlers in North America.

This is the story of the Iroquois Confederacy before and after the arrival of European settlers and of their unique culture and political organization.

© 2026 Hourly History (Lydbog): 9780466163075

Udgivelsesdato

Lydbog: 5. september 2026