SONS OF LIBERTY

Vol.1                                                                     Issue 3

           Rally Mohawks, and bring your axes

          And tell King George we’ll pay no taxes

It would be a very strange thing if Six Nations of Ignorant Savages should be capable of forming a Scheme for such a Union and be able to execute it in such a manner, as that it has subsisted Ages, and appears indissoluble, and yet a like Union should be impracticable for ten or a dozen English colonies.       Benjamin Franklin (1751)         

      

On a cold December night in 1773, the Dartmouth, the Eleanor and the Beaver, three   cargo ships under the flag of his majesty King George III of England lay at anchor in Boston Harbor.  In the cargo holds of these ships were 342 crates filled with tea owned by the East India Company. Though protected by warships, a band of men disguised as Mohawk Indians pulled their boats along side the cargo ships, seized the tea and dumped it into the harbor. Some historians believe the disguises symbolically remind us of a forgotten influence in the establishment of our Republic.

Known as the “Keepers of the Eastern Door”, Mohawks were the easternmost tribe of the Iroquois Confederacy.  Five Nations -Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas and Senecas - formed the Confederacy.  First discovered by French explorers in 1609, the Five Nations had already extended their conquests from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, and were the terror of the other tribes east and west. By 1615, they were trading partners with the Dutch and over the ensuing decades, they were allied with and conquered by the French and the English alike.

The Five Nations were once warring tribes.  Long before Columbus set foot in the New World, they raided each others villages shedding blood for control of territory. 

Oral traditions of the Iroquois tell of the founding of the Confederacy.  Upon the encouragement of  two mystical shaman named Dekanwida and Hiawatha, the warring tribes began to consider all men as brothers. They eventually convinced the five tribes to make peace and join together in an alliance of friendship. Deganawida is credited with the development of an advanced political system that featured both democracy and women’s suffrage.

In 1744 the Iroquois leader Canassatego spoke at the Indian-British assembly in Philadelphia. There he chided the British about the difficulty in the management of thirteen independent colonies. He offered a model.  “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 wise forefathers have taken you will acquire much strength and power; therefore, whatever befalls you, do not fall out with one another.”   While few colonists were ready to listen, the concept caught the attention of Benjamin Franklin and lingered in his memory.

While serving as an Indian Commissioner, Franklin became more deeply involved with the Iroquois and more familiar with their political system. From the Iroquois he was exposed to concepts such as federalism, natural rights, property rights and the importance of individual rights in an organized society.  He learned their traditions, their belief systems and their fables.

In 1754, Franklin gained recognition as an advocate for colonial unity when he proposed the Albany Plan of Union. Modeled after the Iroquois Confederacy, the plan proposed a confederation of North America English Colonies. Following its passage by the Albany congress, the plan died in the Colonial legislatures. It was also rejected by the Parliament. To the British, the plan was too democratic. Twenty years later, the plan for colonial unity first voiced by Benjamin Franklin in Albany became the basis of the Articles of Confederation.

Although the Articles of Confederation proved inadequate for a growing new nation, it was used to unite  thirteen very diverse colonies of people descended from Europeans into one political entity in America. It proved a basis from which the Constitution was developed. It introduced the notion of federalism, a concept that was in part already observed by native peoples with whom the new Americans shared their everyday lives. Delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 were reminded by an anonymous author of "Thoughts on the Present Situation of Public Affairs" of an Iroquois fable::

A father, on his deathbed, called together his thirteen sons, and desired a bundle of rods to be brought, which when, according to his orders, they attempted to break, they could not effect. The bundle was then loosened, and the rods, when taken singly were broken with the greatest of ease. The moral of this fable is too well known, to need recitation: nor is it necessary to say much concerning the inferences deducible from it, respecting ourselves. This shall suffice: United, we rise superior to the malice of all our enemies; but if divided, distraction, anarchy, and confusion, shall be our undoubted portion.

Historians may ascribe the genius of the American Republic to the political philosophies of Locke and the practical genius of Jefferson and Madison. Still quietly in the background of the American Experience is the story of the Five Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy. 

Never again listen to the story of the Boston Tea Party without envisioning the Sons of Liberty donning the dress of a Mohawk Indian. It is a symbol of a distant historical memory.

The early patriots, who founded the old Sons of Liberty in colonial times, never knew what real American liberty was. . . Their first vision of real freedom was caught from the wild savages, who . . . selected their own Sachems and forms of religious worship; and who made their own laws . . . while white men . . . were continually . . . hampered by unreasonable laws and regulations, imposed by a distant king. . . They began to chafe under their thralldom, which finally resulted in the "Boston Tea Party," the Declaration of Independence, and the War of the Revolution…The children of the forest . . . furnished the first inspiration of true liberty . . . ..”

                                                                Atticus