Indians Influence Founding Fathers

Native American Influence on the Constitution The event or issue discussed in this document is the influence of Native Americans on the U.S. Constitution. There is a fairly lengthy history of research that contends that Native Americans actually played a considerable role in the founding of the U.S. Constitution. Moreover, there is also evidence that supports that certain members of the founding fathers were directly impacted by Native Americans.

In fact, there are specific Native American tribes and political representations of these tribes that are alleged to have contributed to the U.S. Constitution. A good amount of this evidence is considered in "Our Founding Mothers and Fathers, The Iroquois." There is certainly evidence that supports the idea that there was a Native American influence on the formation of the U.S. Constitution. That evidence is predicated on the effect of the Iroquois tribe on the founding fathers.

Specifically, the Iroquois had a political council known as the Iroquois Confederacy that interacted with various members of the founding fathers. This evidence suggests that "It is surely one of the most closely guarded secrets of American history that the Iroquois Confederacy had a major role in helping such people as Benjamin Franklin, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson as they attempted to confederate a new government under democratic principles" (Mander 30). The strength of this evidence lies in its specificity.

It denotes the specific members of the founding fathers who were influenced by the Iroquois in regards to the development of democratic notions during the period in which the Constitution was formed. There are additional points of this evidence which indicate that the influence of the aforementioned confederacy was particularly potent during the time in which the founding fathers composed the Albany Plan (Mander 31). This piece of the evidence helps to identify a pertinent time frame in which the Native American influence on the founding fathers was particularly significant.

In the essay that is examined for this document, there is actually fairly little evidence to discredit the influence of the Native Americans on the formation of the U.S. Constitution. The author mentions numerous times that there are disbelievers regarding the influence of Native Americans on the founding fathers in pursuit of their forming the Constitution. But there is scarce substantiation for this disavowal.

The author mentions that many "Westerners continue to assume that flow of influence was simply from the more "advanced" Western societies to the Indians of the America" (Mander 32). The diction in this passage is integral for applying it to this paper; the operative word is "assume." Westerners are simply assuming that the West influenced the Native Americans and not vice-versa. This notion is simply an assumption which hardly qualifies as concrete evidence.

Therefore, there is a paucity of cogent evidence for refuting the notion that Native Americans affected the formation of the constitution. After analyzing both sides of the argument that is the centerpiece of this document, this author believes that Native Americans did affect the drafting of the Constitution and some of the various principles that were involved with it. It largely appears as though the.