Political Organization and Leadership

• TRIBES AFFECTED: Pantribal

SIGNIFICANCE: While Indigenous American tribes and nations employed several modes of governance, counselor democracy was widespread; traditional modes of government survive today, alongside structures created and supported by the US and Canadian governments

Across North America, Indigenous nations and tribes evolved varied methods of ordering their political affairs. European colonists arriving in eastern North America encountered variations of a confederacy model, usually operating by methods of consensus that were unfamiliar to people who had been living in hierarchical societies governed by queens, princes, and kings. The best-known of these consensual governments was the Iroquois Confederacy, which occupied a prominent position in the diplomacy of the early colonies. Although the consensus model seems to have been the one most often used across the continent, some Indigenous peoples maintained societies that were strikingly different. For example, the Northwest Coast peoples paid great attention to political hierarchy and economic status within their communities.

Eastern Confederacies

All along the Atlantic seaboard, Indigenous nations had formed confederacies by the time they encountered European immigrants, from the Seminole (Michel-Guillaume-Jean de Crèvecoeur called them “a federated republic”) to the Cherokee and Choctaw to the Iroquois and the Huron, as well as the Pennacook Federation of New England, among many others. The Illinois Confederacy, the “Three Fires” of the Chippewa, Ottawa, and Potawatomi, the Wapenaki Confederacy, the Powhatan Confederacies, and the Tripartite Miami were other examples. These systems had evolved to coordinate governance across geographic distances that seemed huge to European eyes at the time and to permit maximum freedom to nations within confederations and individuals within nations.

Iroquois Confederacy

The Iroquois system was the best known to the colonists, in large part because of the Haudenosaunee’s pivotal position in diplomacy not only between the English and French but also among other Indigenous confederacies. Called the Iroquois by the French and the Five (later Six) Nations by the English, the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois for “people of the longhouse”) controlled the only relatively level land pass between the English colonies along the coast and the French settlements in the Saint Lawrence Valley.

Cadwallader Colden, who, in the words of Robert Waite, was regarded as “the best-informed man in the New World on the affairs of the British-American colonies,” provided the first systematic study of the Six Nations in 1727 and augmented it in 1747. In his History of the Five Nations Depending on the Province of New York in America, Colden, an adopted Mohawk, compared the Iroquois to the Romans because of their skills at oratory, warfare, and diplomacy, as well as the republican nature of their government: “When Life and Liberty came in competition, indeed, I think our Indians have outdone the Romans in this particular.”

Describing the Iroquois form of government extensively, Colden wrote that it “has continued so long that the Christians know nothing of the original of it.” He also stated that “each Nation is an Absolute Republick by its self, governed in all Publick affairs of War and Peace by the Sachems of Old Men, whose Authority and Power is gained by and consists wholly in the opinions of the rest of the Nation in their Wisdom and Integrity.” In another statement, Colden noted that “they never execute their Resolutions by Compulsion or Force Upon any of their People," and that “the Five Nations have such absolute Notions of Liberty that they allow no Kind of Superiority of one over another.”

The Iroquois Confederacy was formed by the Huron prophet Deganawida (called “the Peacemaker” in oral discourse). Deganawida enlisted the aid of a speaker, Aiowantha (also called Hiawatha), to spread his vision of a united Haudenosaunee confederacy because he stuttered so badly he could hardly speak. The oral history attributes the Peacemaker’s stuttering to a double row of teeth. The confederacy originally included the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca. The sixth nation, the Tuscarora, migrated into Iroquois country in the early eighteenth century.

Peace among the formerly antagonistic nations was procured and maintained through the Haudenosaunee’s Great Law of Peace (Kaianerekowa), a complex system of checks and balances between nations and sexes. Rights, duties, and qualifications of sachems were explicitly outlined in the Iroquois Great Law. Clan mothers could remove (or impeach) a sachem who was found guilty of any of a number of abuses of office, from missing meetings to murder. A sachem guilty of murder not only lost his title but also deprived his entire family of its right to representation. The women's relatives holding the rights to the office were “buried,” and the title was transferred to a sister family.

The Great Law stipulated that sachems’ skins must be seven spans thick to withstand the criticism of their constituents. The law pointed out that sachems should take pains not to become angry when people scrutinized their conduct in governmental affairs.

European and European American shapers of thought, from Benjamin Franklin to Friedrich Engels, expressed astonishment at how the Iroquois and other Indigenous American groups maintained social cohesion and resolved interpersonal conflict without lawyers, jails, and edicts. Instead of formal instruments of authority, the Iroquois governed behavior by instilling a sense of pride and connectedness to the group through common rituals. Ostracism and shame were the punishments for transgressions until people had atoned for their actions and demonstrated that they had undergone a purification process.

Huron Confederacy

The system of the Huron people was remarkably similar to that of their neighbors, the Iroquois. According to Bruce G. Trigger’s Children of the Aataentsic: A History of the Huron People (1976), the Huron people's polity, like that of the Iroquois, was rooted in family structure. Leaders of the various clans used public opinion and consensus to shape decisions. Issues “were usually decided upon by majority vote . . . [and] discussed until a general consensus was reached.” People would not be expected to be bound by a decision to which they had not given their conscious consent.

As with the Iroquois, the clans—Porcupine, Snake, Deer, Beaver, Hawk, Turtle, Bear, and Wolf—created familial affinity across the boundaries of the four confederated Huron nations. Members of each clan could trace their ancestry to a common origin through the female line. In each village, clan members elected a civil chief and a war chief. The titles were carried through the female family line but bestowed on men, again resembling the Iroquois approach. While the titles were hereditary in that sense, they did not pass from head to head of a particular family as in most European monarchies. When the time came to choose a leader, members of each clan segment in a particular village had a choice of several candidates, among whom, according to Trigger, personal qualities counted most heavily: “intelligence, oratorical ability, reputation for generosity and, above all, performance as a warrior.”

The four Huron nations held a central council, which, according to Trigger, probably consisted of all the village chiefs, representing all the clans. The central council dealt with issues that affected all four nations, such as trade with Europeans and treaty negotiations.

Cherokee Consensus

The Cherokee, who called themselves Ani-Yunwiya (“the real people” or “the principal people”), were organized in settlements scattered in fertile bottomlands among the craggy peaks of the Great Smokey Mountains. The Cherokee people took public opinion so seriously that they usually split their villages when they became too large to permit each adult a voice in the council. In the early eighteenth century, the Cherokee Nation comprised sixty villages in five regions, with each village controlling its own affairs. Villages sent delegates to a national council only in times of national emergency. The villages averaged three hundred to four hundred persons each; at about five hundred people, a village usually split in two.

In Cherokee society, each adult was regarded as an equal in matters of politics. Leadership titles were few and informal. When Europeans sought “kings” or “chiefs” with whom to negotiate treaties, they usually did not understand that whomever they were speaking with could not compel allegiance or obedience of others.

As among the Iroquois, each Cherokee was a member of a matrilineal clan: Wolf, Deer, Bird, Blue, Red Paint, Wild Potato, or Twisters. The clans formed an intervillage kinship system which linked them in peaceful coexistence. As in many other confederacies, a clan system among the Cherokee people bound the individual villages. The clan system cemented the confederacy, giving it a strength and enduring quality that prevented a high degree of local autonomy from degenerating into anarchy.

Cree Governance

Among the Cree, a subarctic people who inhabited the southern reaches of Hudson Bay in present-day Ontario and Quebec, there was no central political organization, as among the Iroquois and Huron to the south. Even the individual bands or hunting parties had little or no organized political structure. Such a lack of structure is sometimes called “atomistic” by scholars.

Instead of a formal council, Cree bands informally selected a wise older man, usually the head of a family, as a source of advice. He exercised informal, limited influence. As with the sachems of the more organized farming and hunting peoples to the south, these informal leaders usually did not relish the exercise of power, probably because most of the people who sought their advice resented any attempt to dictate. According to John J. Honigmann, who studied the Cree social structure, “Too great evidence of power is resented and feared by those whom it affects.”

Cree life was marked only rarely by multifamily celebrations or rituals. Social life and social control were usually functions of the extended family. Outside the family, a Cree might appear ambivalent or reticent, usually out of respect for others’ autonomy. People who transgressed social norms of interpersonal behavior became targets of gossip or sorcery (a technique for social control that was used widely across the continent). Although their society was family-based, the Cree recognized no clan or other kinship system between different bands. The society, thus, did not have the interconnections between settlements offered by the clans of the Iroquois, Huron, and Cherokee people.

Western Apache

Apache society was centered on groups of two to six matrilocal extended families, a unit sometimes called a gota. Members of the gota lived together, and members of the different households cooperated in the pursuit of game and the raising of crops. A gota was usually led by a headman who assumed his status over several years by general consensus of the extended families in the gota. The headman, in some cases, inherited the title of “true chief.” He would not retain the position, however, unless he displayed leadership. If no qualified headman was raised through inheritance, a consensus would form in favor of another leader who would be informally “elected” by members of the gota. Headmen were invariably male, but women exercised influence as political advisers. Their kinship lineages maintained the Apaches’ matrilineal society.

A headman could wield considerable influence but only if the people in the extended families he led were willing to follow his advice regarding how to hunt, the techniques of agriculture, and who should work with whom. He also coordinated labor for hunting and foraging, advised parties engaged in disputes, and was sought for advice regarding who should marry whom. As a chief aged, he was charged not only with maintaining exemplary behavior but also with identifying young men who might become leaders in the future. He was expected to tutor younger men in the responsibilities of leadership. A chief was also charged with aiding the poor by coordinating distribution of donations from more affluent members of the gota. If two or more gotas engaged in conflict, their headmen were charged with resolving the dispute.

Each Apache was a member not only of a gota but also of one of sixty-two matrilineal clans which overlapped the individual settlements. Members of a clan (and, in some cases, of others identified as being close to it) helped one another in survival tasks and usually did not intermarry. Unlike the Iroquois and Huron, however, the Apache did not maintain a formal political structure beyond the local level except for the interpersonal networks of clans.

Mandan and Cheyenne

Political organization among the Mandan (who occupied present-day North and South Dakota) was restricted to the village level, with no central governance. The Mandan people's village governance system included elements of representative democracy but also recognized some degree of rank and economic status, which was often determined by a family’s ownership of sacred medicine bundles that were vital to tribal rituals. The owners of such bundles often built their lodges closest to the ceremonial center of a given village. Most Mandan villages were quite similar, with closely packed family lodges clustered around the central plaza, which was usually at least 100 feet (30.5 meters) across. Men selected from lodges which held sacred bundles comprised a council. These men selected two from their number, one of whom displayed special talents at organizing war parties. The other leading chief’s talent lay in his peaceful disposition and his ability to broker disputes, dispense wisdom, stage feasts and rituals, and greet diplomatic envoys.

The Cheyenne maintained a powerful central government that united the various Cheyenne bands as well as family-based affinities. At the head of this organization was the Council of Forty-four, on which civil chiefs served ten-year terms. The Cheyenne system closely resembled the Sioux “Seven Fires” confederacy, although the Sioux were not as tightly organized.

Six Cheyenne military societies served as police as well as organizers of war parties. These voluntary organizations were open to all men in the nation and were similar to the police societies of the Lakota. All these societies grew out of the horse culture of the Plains. As a civil function, the military societies often carried out the council’s orders. As the periods of peace dwindled with the onset of the European American invasion, the police societies evolved into war societies, which took over much of the authority of the Council of Forty-four. Cheyenne myth says that the Council of Forty-four was started by a woman, but its members were male. New chiefs were chosen by the council itself to replace those who left at the end of their terms.

Classes, Castes, and Slavery

The Nootka peoples of the Northwest Coast cultural area, who occupied the west coast of Vancouver Island in present-day British Columbia and the extreme northwest coast of Washington State, departed from the general reliance on a consensus model of government. This departure was not slight: Their system was entirely different. It was status-driven, caste-bound, and, compared to those of many Indigenous peoples, very aggressive, even among peoples who shared cultures very similar to their own. From the Chickliset in the north to the Makah in the south, the Nootka peoples took sturdy whaling canoes to sea; in times of war, which occurred with a frequency and intensity that usually surpassed most Indigenous peoples in North America, the canoes could be used for raiding and for capturing individuals to enslave from neighboring Indigenous nations.

Nootka peoples recognized three classes that seemed as imperishable as the red cedar from which they constructed their lodges: nobility, commoners, and enslaved people. The nobility comprised chiefs and their closest relatives; the eldest son was the family head. He, his family, and a few associates lived in the rear righthand corner of the house, abutted by people of lower status. These people were said to be “under the arm” of the chief. The next highest-ranking chief, usually a younger brother of the head chief, invariably occupied the rear lefthand corner of the house, with his family. He, too, had a number of people “under the arm.” The other two corners were occupied by lesser chiefs’ families. The space between the corners, along the walls, was used by commoners’ families, and a few very junior-ranking members of the nobility. They were called “tenants”; the nobility in the corners reserved the right to ownership of the house.

Commoners could move from one house to another at will, and since they often performed arduous but necessary skilled labor (such as carpentry or whaling), chiefs competed to retain the best workers. The most successful chiefs were affectionate and generous toward the common families who chose to live in their lodges. Enslaved people had no designated lodgings or rights; they were captured in raids of other peoples along the coast and were sometimes traded for other enslaved people or for goods. A noble in one village could be captured and sold into enslaved people in another. The captive’s relatives might then mount a counter-raid to free him.

The speakers and war chiefs of a village usually were reared from youth through inheritance among the children who had a small quantum of royal blood. They tended to be administrative officers who carried out the will of the chiefs. Although most war chiefs were selected by the high chiefs from their families, one of the few ways in which a Nootka commoner family could advance in the village class structure was to have its eldest son receive such an office. Once a common family had been elevated in this way, the title of war chief remained with it as a right of inheritance.

Unlike some of the more democratic Indigenous peoples elsewhere on the continent, the Nootka did not have an elaborate kinship system. The existence of clans tends to create affinity structures independent of class structures, and the Nootka defined themselves, above all, by rank. Notions of status also seemed to be the major method of controlling interpersonal conflict. Should a verbal disagreement explode into a fistfight, members of each participant’s family would urge him to cease or risk bringing shame on them. The two combatants might then relapse into a vigorous verbal battle, throwing the worst imaginable insults at each other, as relatives continued to pacify them: “Don’t think about him anymore. It’s not right to fight. You have a good name. Don’t bring it down. Don’t think about it—just let it go.” In some cases, people who engaged in fisticuffs might be upbraided before the community and abjectly humiliated at public occasions. Outside of this, the Nootka people, unlike the Cheyenne, Huron, Mandan, and Iroquois, had no formal methods of social control within their communities. The Nootka people's use of sorcery was infrequent and mild compared to that of peoples who were less class conscious.

Colonial Governance

From the beginning of contact with Europeans, Indigenous Americans faced the imposition of governmental systems by colonial authorities. During the years of subjugation, much Indigenous governance on reservations was conducted in a summary fashion by the United States military. In the later nineteenth century, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) was created to conduct reservation governance as a civilian agency. In 1934, with the passage of the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA), Indigenous reservation-based governments recognized by the Bureau of Indian Affairs were granted very limited autonomy through elective councils.

Even with limited twentieth-century self-government, Indigenous Americans in the United States still operate within a legal system that, in the 1830s, began defining Indigenous Americans as “wards of the state.” This legal characterization continued to shape BIA policy throughout the twentieth century as Indigenous Americans asserted their rights to act on their own behalf. The definition of wardship often conflicts with the rights of citizens and extended to Indigenous Americans as a whole in 1924.

Today, many traditional forms of governance survive on Indigenous lands throughout North America. They often operate with very little outside publicity on reservations that also have BIA-recognized “elective” governments, which some Indigenous Americans boycott as vestiges of colonialism.

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