Founding of the Iroquois Confederacy and the Great Law of Peace
- Date
- c. 1450 (scholarly estimate; oral tradition as early as 1142)
- Category
- Politics & governance
- Region
- Northeastern North America (present-day New York and Ontario)
- Era
- Post-Classical / Medieval
- Significance
The Haudenosaunee, or Iroquois Confederacy, was founded when five northeastern woodland nations—the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca—united under a constitution known as the Great Law of Peace (Kaianere'kó:wa or Gayanashagowa).
According to tradition, the prophet Deganawida, the Great Peacemaker, conceived the law and, with his spokesman Hiawatha, persuaded the warring nations to end cycles of blood feud and bury their weapons beneath a symbolic Tree of Peace at Onondaga. The constitution, encoded on wampum belts and transmitted orally, established a federal council of fifty hereditary chiefs, separation of powers, consensus decision-making, and a prominent role for clan mothers in selecting and removing leaders. The founding date is disputed: most academic historians place it between roughly 1450 and 1600, while oral-tradition dating tied to a recorded solar eclipse places it as early as 1142. The Tuscarora joined as a sixth nation in 1722, and the Confederacy's model of participatory, federated governance is argued by some scholars to have influenced ideas in the United States Constitution.
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Empires active in c. 1450 (scholarly estimate; oral tradition as early as 1142)
- Malacca Sultanate1400 CE – 1511 CE
- Aztec Empire1428 CE – 1521 CE
- Inca Empire1438 CE – 1533 CE
- Ming Dynasty1368 CE – 1644 CE
- Kanem-Bornu Empire700 CE – 1900 CE
- Ottoman Empire1299 CE – 1922 CE
Related politics & governance events
- Inca imperial expansion under Pachacuti1438 CE
- Sonni Ali seizes Timbuktu and forges the Songhai Empire1468 CE
- Formation of the Aztec Triple Alliance1428 CE
- Treaty of Tordesillas divides the non-European world7 June 1494
- Kublai Khan founds the Yuan dynasty and conquers Song China1271 CE (conquest completed 1279)
- Rise of Timur (Tamerlane) and his Central Asian empirec. 1370 CE (empire to 1405)
Further reading
The wider story
Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs
Award-winning history told from Nahua sources.
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