Source: Text form prepared by Gerald Murphy (The Cleveland Free-Net—aa300). Distributed by the Cybercasting Services Division of the National Public Telecomputing Network. Rendered into HTML by Jon Roland of the Constitution Society. Available from .

Introduction: The constitution prepared by the Confederacy of the Iroquois Nations (also called the Five Nations) is estimated to have been written between 1450 and 1500; extracts are reproduced below. The Great Binding Law, as it is also known, is a written record of the rules used to govern the confederacy and represents perhaps the earliest form of nationalism and democratic government in what would become the United States. In fact, because the Great Law lays out a council-based form of government with checks and balances and also specifically protects the rights of the people, some historians feel that it directly influenced the writing of the American...