13. Daganoweda's Plan.  We have already mentioned that the Iroquoian nations located in the region southward of Lake Ontario were, during the fourteenth century, engaged in a long series of wars among themselves over the control of the region they had occupied.

        In accordance with the regular habit of the eastern tribes in war time, peace conferences were convened every time a war broke out, resulting in a constant and rapid alternation of peace and war. A peace conference convened and made peace, then dissolved when its work was done; then new causes of difference arise, starting another war, to be ended in Its turn by another peace conference, and so on endlessly.

        An Onondaga by the name of Daganoweda, living near where is at present located the city of Syracuse, had noticed this everlasting alternation of peace and war, and thought something ought to be done about it. His habits of dreaming and meditating, and doing nothing had resulted in his being looked down on as a dreamer, if not slightly insane; but still he persisted with his dreaming. As he meditated over the fact that the frequent peace conferences could stop wars, but that the wars returned when the peace conferences went home, he thought that those five neighboring and related nations, which should by rights be brothers instead of enemies, could possibly be kept at peace if only the peace conference could be made a permanent organization.

        This Idea is a simple one after it has been in practice four hundred years; but only a visionary like Daganoweda could have originated a plan which, at the time, seemed so impossible and bizarre. And this Idea was a step in advance such as would be difficult to parallel in the entire world's history of social and civil organization. Daganoweda's plan―the permanent peace conference governing the relations of several independent units―has since come to be known as Federation, and its importance can hardly be exaggerated. It was distinctly American in origin, and America has always remained its home, attempts at imitating it elsewhere having almost invariably been unsuccessful.

        But the originator of this remarkable plan was without any means of having it carried out. In the first place, with his reputation as an idle dreamer, he could hardly expect a good hearing from the Onondagas; in the second place, Daganoweda was himself a stutterer, and without any persuasive ability, so that he could not expect to get any hearing for his ideas, even apart from his general reputation.

        But Daganoweda had a friend named Hayowentha (now more generally known as Hiawatha), who became interested in Daganoweda's idea, and who was resolved to find some way of getting the plan adopted. The two friends first discussed the details of such a plan, so that a complete and practicable plan of union could be presented to the Iroquois nations. The development of the plan was mainly Hiawatha's, and he based his idea of the federative plan on what he thought was its most persuasive feature, that such a union could make the Iroquois the most powerful people in the land. Hiawatha's Idea was thus the formation of a greater and stronger Iroquois nation, where the dreamer Daganoweda had been thinking of a way to prevent future wars. Hiawatha was thinking of war, and Daganoweda of peace; Hiawatha's was a super-national, and Deganoweda's an international, idea.

        As the plan was finally worked out, it was the joint creation of both men, but depending on Hiawatha, the only orator of the two, for any chance it might have of adoption. As the plan was thus formed, the common council that was to result from Daganoweda's proposed permanent peace conference was not merely to preserve peace between the five nations, and to govern and arbitrate between those nations and their members, but also to make common cause against the enemies of any of the five nations, to treat with outside nations as a unit, and to supervise defeated nations to prevent their arming again for war. And, where Daganoweda would have liked his federation to be open to any nation that wanted the benefits of permanent peace, it became transformed in Hiawatha's hands into a union open only to nations of Iroquois language and race.

        Both planners were working together, though, on the main principle of federation, and to prevent internecine warfare among the Iroquois nations. Thus the plan was worked out in detail, after long discussions between the two men, as a combination of the two tendencies. The hardest part of the task, that of carrying it into execution, was yet to come.

        As the Onondagas doubted even Hiawatha's complete sanity on account of his association with Daganoweda, it proved useless to try to persuade them. So Hiawatha worked out a plan to campaign for the federation idea in some other Iroquois nation―it being understood that he himself would have to do all the actual campaigning, and take Daganoweda along to act as a "coach." Of course, it appeared even more difficult to get attention from perfect strangers than from their own people, especially as, in another nation, they might be regarded as enemies or plotters. But they took the chance, and left secretly one night for the Oneida country, disguised as couriers to facilitate their admission among the Oneidas as well as to give more weight to their words.

        The tribal council of the Oneidas proved more willing to listen to the new idea than the Onondagas had been, and they thought the proposition was a very good one. They were willing to have the idea presented the next time a peace conference was called, and would introduce the two proponents of the idea, so that they, could present their own plan in person.

        This opportunity came a few years later, when, after one of the usual wars among the five nations, a peace conference was called an usual, and all the sachems of all five nations were assembled on the shore of Lake Onondaga. There the Oneida sachems introduced the two Onondagas, Hiawatha and Daganoweda, who had a peace plan which they hoped would make a lasting peace between the five Iroquois nations. Hiawatha presented the plan as he and Daganoweda worked it out. The Onondagas were quite surprised to see the two men they had despised coming back so prominently, but even their objections were apparently met when they found that the Onondagas were to be given first place in the new federal council.

        14. Formation of the Federation.  Thus was formed a true federation of nations, far the first time in the history of the world. The federal council was simply a joint meeting of the sachems of all the tribes, that is to say, the five tribal councils meeting in joint session. Unanimous agreement was required before any action could be taken, although single nations might adopt a measure that had the approval of all their sachems, even if it failed to pass the entire federal body.

        The delegates to the federal council were the various sachems of genses in the various nations, chosen in the old traditional way; that is, the sachemship passed from uncle to nephew, the women of the constituent gens going through the form each time of electing a new sachem, with the option of some choice among the nephews. Only men were eligible as sachems, but only women could vote in the election. Each sachem had to adopt a certain official name that went with his seat in the federal council, which replaced his former name, and which his successor adopted after him as part of the office. The two foremost sachemships were named Hiawatha and Daganoweda (reserved for the federation's founders―the despised names becoming the highest honors of all), and, in their memory, those vacancies in the federal council were never filled after the founders' deaths, but two empty places are still left at the council meetings in their honor; there are sixty federal sachemships, in the Iroquois constitution, but only 58 are actually filled.

        The federation was not merely to take charge of the relations between the five Nations, but also to attend to relations between the Five Nations and outside peoples, and see that the Five Nations acted in concert in that connection. For arbitration between members of different nations of the Five, Hiawatha's plan called for a special court, to sit in an isolated village to be used only by people having court business, the judge to be a girl. This particular form of Federal Supreme Court was abandoned about fifty years later, when the judge eloped with a young defendant; after which, special arbitration committees were provided.

        As the Iroquois were particularly proud of the difference between their houses and those of their Algonquin neighbors, it was this feature that determined the federation's name. The lroquois, instead of living is small tepees like their neighbors to the westward, or in single-family wooden houses like their Penacook neighbors to the east, lived in "long-houses," the prototype of the log cabins which the white peoples used in the southern mountains where an isolated section of the Iroquoian stock had gone. These long-houses were "apartment houses," long log cabins divided into numerous apartments by crosswise partitions, and the residents of apartments in the middle had to pass through all intervening apartments to get in or out. But, in spite of this noticeable lack of privacy, and the resulting crowded quarters, the Iroquois considered their mode of housing superior to the Algonquins' private wigwams, and distinguished themselves as the People of the Long House. Thus the federation formed an this occasion by the five Iroquois nations was the League of the Hodenosaunee, the federation of the people of the Long House, and it was represented on wampum writings by a design of a long-house.

        There was no attempt at occupying or ruling the defeated nations, as would have been done in other parts of the world where property or slavery were recognized. Instead, it was merely attempted to render the defeated nations harmless as future enemies by forcing them to disarm; and the Hodenosaunee exercised just enough supervision over the former enemy to prevent those nations from arming or making war. Defeated nations were similarly not allowed to negotiate treaties: but the Five Nations undertook both defense and diplomatic relations for the nations whom they thus rendered helpless. But those nations were otherwise allowed to continue governing themselves. A strong analogy to the Territories of the United States suggests itself.

        Thus the Iroquois soon gathered a fair-sized empire around themselves. The subjected nations formed a ring of buffers for the Iroquois, who could thus unite to repel all possible invaders long before they could come near the Iroquois territory proper. It is true that the disarmed nations around the outskirts of the Iroquois empire proved tempting bait for the attacks of enemies, but an invasion of the unarmed border resulted usually in a defeat by the superior forces of the federation, and frequently a new addition to the Iroquois empire. This use of an unarmed border is probably unique in the world's history, but it seems to have been the prototype of the later unarmed border which has succeeded in preserving peace between the 'United States and Canada for over a century, and which incorporated part of the Iroquois border.

        Thus the League of the Hodenosaunee became, shortly after its formation, the master of territory extending from the Connecticut River on the east to the Cuyahoga River on the west. The population of this empire is estimated at about 400,000―more persons than were under any single national rule anywhere in America north of Mexico, for almost two hundred years after that. Thus the Iroquois, by this apparently visionary scheme of the dreamer Daganoweda, became the most powerful nationality in North America, and, as we shall see, were later strong enough to shift the balance of world power.

        To nations outside the spread of the Iroquois empire, however, the rapid spread of that empire became alarming. In many cases they were forced to seek some plan of protecting themselves as late as the last moment, when danger had already gone too far. The only successful procedure was the adoption of the enemy's tactics, and federate as the Iroquois did, meeting the menace with another federation, another nation of nations.

        Thus the red nations gradually began forming federations in all directions around the Iroquois empire. The Lenape federation on the seacoast to the southeast, the Pottawatomie federation still farther south, the Ottawa and Illini federations to the westward, the Penacook federation beyond the Connecticut River, and the Wabanake federation still farther east, were all cases of how this process worked. Each such federation became in its turn a center around which more counter-federations had to be built, and it is very probable that, had the transatlantic invasion been delayed for two or three hundred years―had it taken place, for instance, in the twentieth instead of the seventeenth century―the entire continent of North America might have been covered with federations of red nations, and those federations in turn might have been able themselves to federate into a super-federation, by way of a peace pact similar to that between the Iroquois nations so that, in such a case, the invasion from Europe would have met with a formidable, gigantic nation of red men, which would have made it difficult for any colonization to take root in North America. The old Mound-Builders' empire had recently been destroyed when the Iroquois federation was begun; what originated in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was the germination a new national power, erected on a federative basis.

        But, as it was, federation among the red nations was not allowed to reach its full development, on account of the invasion from Europe pouring in during the interregnum between the destruction of an empire and the formation of a large federative super-nation of independent nations. Either much before or much after the seventeenth century, such an invasion could not have been successful; which may explain why the invasion did take place at that particular time. But the white invaders of North America were themselves not exempt from the necessity of counter-federating in the same way as the red nations in the northeastern part of the continent were forced to do. Thus the white invasion of that section of North America was a series of attempts to federate finally resulting in the formation of a great federated nation such as no other part of the world could possibly produce.

        16. Federation as a New Departure.  The institution of federation of independent nations, uniting nations under a central control without the separate individual nations giving up any measure of their independence, was something never before known, as far as any historical records or traditions indicate. Of course, it had frequently happened that nations had become united by conquest; or a nation might set up administrative subdivisions; but, in either case, there was no independence of the units. Sometimes the leadership of one nation over a group of neighboring but weaker nations might simulate federation to some extent, as has been the case with Germany and Russia; but, in such cases, the domination of the leading nation is the underlying motif of the entire unity, and is rather an incomplete conquest than an actual federation. There have also been alliances between nations; but these differ from a federation in having no federal authority which is as supreme in its field as the separate nations are in theirs. But none of these things are true federation. Federation―a group of nations retaining their national independence, but submitting themselves for certain specific purposes to a central organization representing all of them was never before tried. It was definitely a plan first put into operation by the Iroquois, and which has become a standard form of governmental organization in North America; though (with the exception of Australia, whose federative features were definitely copied from America) it was never either completely adopted or understood outside America.