The Great Law of Peace
They teach us that ours is the first American democracy. They tell us we’re the land of the free. What they don’t say is that a highly sophisticated, fully functioning democratic government existed here for centuries before the first settler ever arrived. Our founding fathers knew about it, but most Americans have never heard of it.
It’s called the Great Law of Peace.
In 1988, the US Congress passed a resolution formally acknowledging that it influenced our government:
“. . . the confederation of the original Thirteen Colonies into one republic was influenced by the political system developed by the Iroquois Confederacy as were many of the democratic principles which were incorporated into the Constitution itself . . . . “
The Great Law of Peace is the constitution of the five nations of the Iroquois Confederacy—Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca. (A sixth nation, Tuscarora, was added later.)
And its story starts over 700 years ago…
The Peacemaker
In the 1100s, the five nations were in a perpetual state of war with each other. They were trapped in cycles of mindless bloodshed, and the people lived in a state of fear and chaos. But then a prophet arrived with a message: Unite as one family, and you will have peace.
They called this prophet the Peacemaker.
He traveled throughout the nations counselling the people to stop the violence and be like relatives instead. When all the people considered themselves related, he said, the nations would have real power. They would join together and be able to live and move about in peace.
Person by person and tribe by tribe, the Peacemaker taught by example the power of the Good Mind—the rational mind. All people, he stated, are capable of thinking rationally, and when they do, they naturally make good decisions that lead to peace and harmony. Right thinking leads to right decisions.
As the people returned to their rational minds and committed to being like relatives, the promised peace arrived. The nations united in one powerful confederacy, and the people began to call themselves the Haudenosaunee.
Based on this foundation—the principle that right thinking creates right governance, and the vision of unified people living as relatives—the Peacemaker helped them create a democratic system of government.
When the Great Law of Peace was complete, the Peacemaker gave the Haudenosaunee a new national mission:
“The law is now as young as the day when the sun is rising and lights the earth; just as it causes warmth all over the earth for all the people, we will help the people of every nation . . . This is what you will work at: everyone shall become related to one another, so that it will become a single family, consisting of every people on earth . . ..” – the Peacemaker
The people dedicated themselves to their mission so strongly that they encouraged everyone they encountered to join their peace. Their chiefs even encouraged the 13 colonies, the settlers invading their lands, to stop fighting amongst themselves and unite as one powerful and free nation, just as they had.
The Haudenosaunee still govern themselves this way today.
The Founding Fathers
Scholars debate the exact amount of influence the Great Law had on our US Constitution; some say a little, others say it’s a less evolved copy. I’m not a constitutional scholar, but after reading Paul Williams’ comprehensive account of the Great Law of Peace, one thing is clear:
The Haudenosaunee democracy is far more evolved than the one our founders created.
We know the founding fathers—notably, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson—spent time with the Haudenosaunee and attended their council meetings. We know they invited the Haudenosaunee chiefs to speak at their meetings, including the Continental Congress in 1776.
Franklin praised the structure of their government; each nation governed its own affairs while a Grand Council oversaw their mutual interests. Jefferson wrote about their high degree of personal liberty and happiness. The US Congress in their 1988 concurrent resolution wrote that Washington and Franklin were “known to have greatly admired the concepts” of the Great Law.
These men experienced the peace, freedom, and powerful unity of the original model in person. They knew it had worked for centuries. And yet, when they wrote our constitution, they left so much out. They focused on the structure and the liberty but failed to include the underlying values that held it all together.
They missed the heart of it.
Equality for women
They left American women legally invisible for generations, just as they had been in Europe. Under the original US Constitution, married women didn’t own anything—not their land, their children, or even their own bodies—and they were legally mandated to accept abuse from their husbands. When American women finally decided to stand up, they had to fight for seventy years to even receive the right to vote.
Meanwhile, Haudenosaunee women had real power. They were seen as fully equal to the men, even in the 1100s. Each had their separate responsibilities, but gender roles were balanced and that was a central feature of their government.
Long before the Peacemaker arrived, the Haudenosaunee organized themselves around a matriarchal clan system. Each clan has a woman leader, a clan mother, and the men consider the women the “Life of the Nation.”
Under the Great Law:
Women choose the chiefs. The chiefs are always male, but the clan mothers choose the chiefs. They also have the power to remove a chief who isn’t doing his duty.
Women can veto war. As the ones most directly responsible for the children, women have the right to say no to any action that might endanger them.
Women own the land. They have authority over it. Historically, they tended the fields and gathered the plants, so they made all decisions about the land—a responsibility they continue today.
Equality for nature
Instead of naming nature as a person in the US Constitution, our founders followed the European model and relegated it to legal property whose sole purpose was to be bought, sold, and used. This has led directly to the environmental degradation and species loss we’re witnessing today.
But equality under the Great Law applied to the entire Earth. The Haudenosaunee worldview is built around the understanding that humans, trees, and animals each have their own rights, duties, and responsibilities; one is not greater than another.
The Great Law mandates that every council meeting begin and end with a full reading of the Thanksgiving Address; an offering of gratitude to the natural world. It unites the chiefs in one mind and reminds them that their decisions affect the entire web of life.
It starts like this:
We are thankful to our Mother the Earth, for she gives us everything that we need for life. She supports our feet as we walk about upon her. It gives us joy that she still continues to care for us, just as she has from the beginning of time. To our Mother, we send thanksgiving, love, and respect. Now our minds are one.
We gather our minds together to send our greetings and thanks to all the beautiful animal life of the world, who walk about with us. They have many things to teach us as people. We are grateful that they continue to share their lives with us and hope that it will always be so. Let us put our minds together as one and send our thanks to the Animals. Now our minds are one.
Read more here: Invoking Gratitude the Haudenosaunee Way
Decision making for seven generations
Our founding fathers wanted freedom from the tyranny of a monarch for life, and their solution was to focus on the short-term with two, four, and six-year election cycles. The result is that our politicians are in an endless loop of focusing solely on winning the next election.
The Great Law appoints chiefs for life specifically to free them to focus on the long term—it requires them to look seven generations into the future. Their duty is to consider the impacts of their decisions on the lives of children who haven’t even been born. This turns them into stewards of the land, air, and water for the people who will live after them.
“You have to protect those future people. They don’t have anyone else to protect them.”
Chiefs as mentors of the people
While our majority-rule political system tends to reward aggressive, authoritarian personalities, the Great Law mandates the exact opposite. It states that a leader’s skin must be “seven spans thick.” He is legally required to be patient, emotionally mature, and unmoved by insults, anger, and gossip.
A chief has no authority to force his people to comply with any decision he makes. He can’t dominate anyone; he leads by example. His job is to mentor the people toward a common goal, to encourage a unified mind. If he can’t persuade them with gentle diplomacy, wisdom, and reason, he has no other option.
“Neither anger nor fury shall find lodgement in their minds and all their words and actions shall be marked with calm deliberation.” – The Peacemaker
The Good Mind
Our founders concerned themselves with a leader’s age, citizenship, and vote count but ignored their mental and emotional state. Meanwhile, the Great Law makes that a constitutional issue. The Haudenosaunee system recognizes that a person’s state of mind directly influences the quality of their decisions.
If a chief is angry, grieving, sleep-deprived, or suffering from any form of personal trauma, they will pause a meeting or ask him to step aside until he has regained his Good Mind.
While we often praise politicians for outrage, hostility, and refusing to compromise, the Haudenosaunee consider any form of anger to be a sickness. The chief’s job is to ease tensions and work toward agreement and consensus. If he’s not mentally or emotionally fit to do that, the clan mother removes him from his position.
By his example of clear, calm, deliberate thinking, the chief reminds the people that they’re called to maintain the Good Mind too.
Why It Matters
We’re told that this is the “land of the free,” but is it?
Under the Great Law, the Haudenosaunee didn’t have police, prisons, fines, or taxes—they didn’t need them. Their women never had to struggle for a voice in society, or suffer legally accepted abuse from their husbands. The people never owned slaves. And they only went to war after an opposing nation refused three offers of peace.
Even then, only if the women agreed to it.
We talk about the founding of this nation like it was a monumental time of world enlightenment, but the real enlightenment was in the Great Law. Our founding fathers witnessed a powerful confederacy of peaceful people who had been living in balance with each other and the land for centuries and created an adversarial system instead.
They admired the structure and freedom the Great Law provided, but never debated its deeper values. Did they notice the balance of power between genders, the reciprocal duty to nature, or the unwavering commitment to a unified, rational mind that allowed the Haudenosaunee’s peace to exist?
The founders of our nation revolted against a king, unified 13 fractured colonies, and created a new model of representative government. Their example ignited a global spark of freedom, showing other oppressed people that self-rule by elected leaders was possible. Those were significant achievements for their time.
But they weren’t trying to unite all the people on Earth in harmony.
They were brilliant men operating within the left-brained, patriarchal consciousness of their era. They were focused on righting the wrongs of monarchy, not creating a civilizational paradigm shift. The heart of the Great Law was beyond their frame of reference, so they used the parts that served their purposes and left the ones that didn’t.
If we want the peace, freedom, and longevity of the Great Law, political reform alone won’t get us there. Our founding fathers already tried fixing things with a new system, but that’s not the answer.
The answer is in our state of consciousness.
We need to shift the way we see the world and our role in it. Our founders couldn’t do that, but we can—we have a living example. We can see clearly what values create peace and balance.
We can remember that women are inherently equal to men. We can see nature as our relative. We can consider the seven generations. We can use wisdom instead of force. We can recognize anger as weakness, not strength.
The real enlightenment was always in the Great Law. Now it’s our time to live it.
Sources:
Kayanerenko:Wa: The Great Law of Peace, by Kayanesenh Paul Williams
Concurrent Resolution, 100th US Congress
“Haudenosaunee Guide for Educators,” National Museum of the American Indian