Why is Albany the capitol of New York?
Why is the government of the United States not like the government of Great Britain?
Why did the woman’s suffrage movement start in upstate New York and the northern Rocky Mountains?
The answer is the Iroquois Nation.
Albany —
I learned in school that the Pilgrims came to America, had a catered Thanksgiving dinner received their Manifest Destiny from God and went out and colonized the empty land from sea to shining sea. Actually the Iroquois nation was older than Great Britain. It was a matriarchal. It controlled the path through the Appalachians, up the Hudson then down Lake Champlain or up the Mohawk.
A century before the Revolution, France and Britain contended along the Mohawk frontier for domination of the North American continent. The passage west between the mountains belonged to the powerful Iroquois League and as European interests maneuvered for advantage, Native America withstood encroachments through diplomacy and war. Even while adversaries negotiated for control, the valley stretching west from Albany filled steadily with settlers of diverse origins and beliefs. Not only was the stage set on the Mohawk for momentous military collisions, but also for ethnic antagonisms that would shape the future of the new Republic and the values for which it stood. (1)
An ocean going tribe of Dutch appeared in the early 1600’s and established trading posts and towns along the Hudson from Manhattan to Albany. These expert traders, who could trade a tulip bulb for a house. They established a fur trading economy that dominated the economy of the middle Atlantic colonies. The wealth from that trade created dynasties that produced the Roosevelt presidents a century later.
While New York city was always larger, Albany’s geographic location and proximity to the Iroquois central homeland made it the center of power.
While we have slipped away from the fur bearing animals which sustained and enriched us. Our northern neighbors still pay homage in story and song (see below).
Government
The Iroquois were a matriarchal society - as were their traditional southern foes, the Cherokee. Women elected leaders and controlled tribal policies.
Whether the Iroquois League was established, as legend tells us, at a single constitutional convention attended by supernatural beings, or was the result of evolution, it was given permanence by being a carefully worked out expansion of the customs of the individual tribes. Thus the Iroquois territory was thought of as a long house, with each nation occupying a room around its own fire. One door opened on the Hudson: the Mohawks were the keepers of this door. Next as the rrails weaved westward, came the Oneidas, the Onondagas, the Cyugas, and at the other door on the Genesee, the Senecas. Although the main council fire burned in the central chamber of the Onondagas, the Mohawks, who were reputed to have initiated the federation, remain the leaders of what was now called the Five Nations.
The fifty sachems on whom executive, legislative, and judicial responsibility rested operated on three levels: As members of the Onondaga Council, they governed the league; they presided over their own nations in local affairs; they were dignitaries in their personal clans, which helped cement the alliance since the clans extended beyond the boundaries of the individual nations. No Iroquois nation could be coerced by the others; all decisions of the Onondaga Council had to be unanimous. (2)
After the English took control of the Dutch areas the English, Iroquois, and the French established a precarious balance. The Confederacy established an official policy of neutrality between the Europeans. No one group had military supremacy and the Five Nations prospered by playing the other two sides against each other commercially and diplomatically.
The century long status quo was ended in 1754 when a rash, inexperienced colonial officer, George Washington, started a world war by annihilating a French scouting force in the forests of Pennsylvania. Called the French and Indian War here and the Seven Years War in the rest of the world, it resulted in the French abandoning Canada in exchange for being able to keep the much more valuable colony of Haiti.
In North America the civilian and military casualties were greater than during the American Revolution. Benjamin Franklin created the iconic “JOIN, or DIE” political cartoon for in 1754 during the Albany convention which attempted to unite the colonies and obtain Iroquois allies for the war.
The model for government by the Americans was the Iroquois not the British. Franklin wrote: “It would be a very strange thing, if six nations of ignorant savages [the Iroquois] could be capable of forming a scheme for such a union. . .and yet that a like union should be impracticable for ten or a dozen English colonies, to whom it is more necessary.”
It was natural for the American colonists to look to a nation older and more stable than the British when forming their government. The English government was premised on a monarch given power to reign from God, while the Iroquois power was derived from the people. The agreement of all of the five nations had to be obtained before a national policy could be implemented.
Women’s Suffrage
As pointed out by Kelly Macias in ‘A feminist primer: How Native American women paved the way for women's rights in the U.S.’ the women’s movement was influenced and founded in the heart of the Iroquois homeland. The area spawned the Oneida Community which rejected traditional male/female roles. Also beginning in upstate New York was the most successful American founded religion, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints or Mormons.
That a religion which practiced polygamy would be fertile ground for women’s rights is not obvious. However, Utah and other states with high LDS populations in the Rocky Mountains were the earliest ones to pass laws which ensured equal voting by sex. Also they were the first adopters of no fault divorce without the stigma common in the rest of the country. Polygamy shocked much of the nation, sparked outraged editorials and political condemnation. Mormon woman did not feel grateful for outsiders condescending concern for their well being. Being part a plural marriage in many ways gave women more status and power than being in a monogamous relationship in which they were not legally allowed to own property, end the marriage, or have a right to keep earnings.
The spectacle in Utah soon attracted the attention of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, two of the most powerful advocates for woman suffrage. Still smarting over the refusal of Congress to embrace their cause, they added Utah to the itinerary for a journey west in 1871. After several days in Salt Lake City, Stanton told the press that antagonists on the Mormon question had missed the point. Polygamy and monogamy were both oppressive systems. She argued that those who opposed the Latter-day Saints were every bitg as befuddled as the Saints themselves: “The condition of women is slavery to-day and must be so long as they are shut out of the world of work—helpless dependents on man for bread.” She was nevertheless pleased that Utah women had the vote. Eventually, she accepted polygamous wives a allies. Mormon women responded by becoming ardent members of Stanton’s movement. For forty years, the Woman’s Exponent founded in 1872 advocated for “The Rights of the Women of Zion and the Rights of the Women of all Nations”. (3)
Mormonism began with the publication of the Book of Mormon. Joseph Smith has lead to Golden Tablets hidden in upstate New York by the Angel Moroni. The book told how after the crucifixion the Holy Ghost came to this continent and established a holy society society among the Nephites. This society eventually fell into warring factions. Mormon was the last chronicler of this society who passed the book to his son Moroni before being killed in the wars.
According LDS teachings many Native Americans had been converted by Christ, and they have always placed great emphasis on spreading the faith among them.
Iroquois men married late after spending their youth as mostly celibate warriors in raids at the edge of their nation. LDS men are sent on two year missions far away to spread their faith.
Joseph Smith’s religion seems to have been influenced by the region in which it started.
The point is:
America is not and never has been a Christian/European nation in another continent. This is an American nation which has been strongly influenced by the peoples that were here and people and cultures from across the world. We do not need to be made great again, we do not need to diminish ourselves by following the bigotry of Steve Bannon or Richard Spencer. We are a good nation and will get better.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
References:
(1) Bloody Mohawk — Richard Berleth
(2) Lord of the Mohawks — James Thomas Flexner [This is a biography of William Johnson one of only two Englishman made Barons in colonial America. Also known as Warraghiyagey among the Mohawk. He is one of the most important figures in shaping America.
(3) A House Full of Females — Plural Marriage and Women’s Rights in Early Mormonism, 1835-1870 --Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. A book which tells herstory rather than history from the viewpoint of a Mormon scholar.
Canadians glorify Fur bearing mammals in song
I’m really not so sure about the Native Americans living in harmony with nature. They had an industrial scale harvesting of all the fur bearing animals for European trade.
Note: “King” was a title given by the English various Native American leaders. Actually the “King Hendrick” in above is incorrect, the actual man who visited London in 1710 was the third person from the left from the portraits made during their visits.
First sentence under GOVERNMENT heading revised for clarity.