I’m going to continue with last week’s theme: how indigenous Native Americans were often written out of US historical narratives, but are now, in current scholarship, being reincorporated into that story. And let’s talk about a book that I actually have read this time: Founding Fathers: How the American Indian Helped Shape Democracy (Harvard Common Press, 1982) by Bruce E. Johansen. I’ll get to the Mormon angle after summarizing the book.
Here’s a quick summary (courtesy of ChatGPT):
In Forgotten Founders, Bruce E. Johansen argues that Native American political ideas—especially those of the Iroquois Confederacy—had a bigger influence on the development of American democracy than most history books acknowledge. He focuses on how colonial leaders such as Benjamin Franklin interacted with the Iroquois and admired aspects of their system of government, including cooperation among independent nations, representative decision-making, and limits on centralized power.
Ben Franklin is a key figure in the story. Representing Pennsylvania, he had frequent contact with Iroquois leaders, negotiating treaties (the colonists really wanted the Iroquois Confederacy to side with the colonies and the British rather than the French) and trade issues (the Iroquois frequently complained about how unfairly Yankee traders conducted their business).
Franklin and others recognized it would make a lot more sense for one agent or team of negotiators to represent the interests of all the colonies (and, of course, the British Crown) in such negotiations, rather than each colony sending a different representative/team. In fact, Iroquois leaders directly counseled the colonial representatives that they (the colonists) would be stronger and better off if they unified as a confederation, like the Iroquois had done for generations if not centuries — quite successfully.
The point was not lost on Franklin, who in written correspondence lamented the fact that the Indians, these uncivilized savages, could successfully cooperate politically, while the supposedly enlightened Euro-colonists could manage no such thing. In similar fashion, Franklin and others, including Thomas Jefferson, compared the liberty enjoyed by the Iroquois in their loosely confederated tribes with authoritarian European monarchies and the sharp class distinctions the characterized all European societies.
Carrying the story forward (and I’m mostly glossing the material in the book here) Franklin tried to put these ideas into action with his 1954 Albany Plan of Union. Here’s a bit from Google’s AI:
The Albany Plan of Union was proposed in 1754. Drafted by Benjamin Franklin at the Albany Congress, it was the first major proposal to conceive of the thirteen colonies as a collective whole united under one centralized government. … While Franklin’s idea for colonial unification gained some traction at the convention, it ultimately failed because colonial assemblies feared losing autonomy to a central power, and the British Crown feared it gave the colonies too much independence.
Ignoring for the moment the objections presented by the British Crown (we took care of that problem a generation later), the central problem that Franklin and the colonies faced was accommodating the autonomy of the individual colonies, which they understandably did not want to cede, with some form of central government and power. (And there was a related problem of ceding some power to a central government without that government become too powerful and authoritarian, thus compromising the natural liberty of citizens and subjects.) What was rejected by the colonies in 1754 became, eventually, the basis for the Articles of Confederation, the first governing document for the United States. It was formally adopted in 1781 but had been debated and drafted by the Continental Congress in 1776 and 1777. The later United States Constitution (drafted in 1787 and formally adopted in 1788) later carried forward the same ideas in a more workable format.
To sum all this up in one sentence, while the traditional Founding Fathers who debated and drafted the US Constitution in 1787 did consult ancient Greek and Roman democracies for a model and were familiar with the political writings of various European philosophers (such as Locke and Rousseau), a good measure of the guidance for a workable form of federal government came from their knowledge of and experience with the Iroquois Confederacy. There was simply no European state that furnished such an example. Here’s how we might put this to a Mormon audience: The true Founding Fathers were Lamanites. Or maybe: The first set of Founding Fathers were Lamanites.
So here’s the Mormon angle:
And for this purpose have I established the Constitution of this land, by the hands of wise men whom I raised up unto this very purpose, and redeemed the land by the shedding of blood. (D&C 101:80)
Now I know how LDS leaders read this verse and how mainstream Mormons read this verse: the “wise men” who were raised up to establish the US Constitution were the men who met in Philadelphia in 1787 and drafted the Constitution. President Oaks spelled this out in great detail in his “Defending Our Divinely Inspired Constitution” conference talk in April 2021.
There is not a hint in that talk of the role that Native American examples provided for the Albany Plan of Union, the Articles of Confederation, and the US Constitution. You can take the full two-semester sequence in Constitutional Law at law school and not hear a word about it, either. This is a shining example of how Native Americans are written out of our history. But given the Mormon obsession with “Lamanites” in the Book of Mormon and in LDS history, they (meaning LDS leaders) really ought to update their story. Give the “Lamanites” a little credit. If you take the inspiration claim seriously, then a good measure of that divine inspiration was directed to “Lamanite” leaders and peoples who entered into and successfully managed the Iroquois Confederation for centuries before the Euro-colonists even arrived on the scene.
As recounted in Forgotten Founders, early American leaders had a good deal of respect for Native American organization and society. What did early LDS leaders think of their contemporary Native Americans? (And remember, Native Americans still controlled most of the continent at this point.) It’s pretty clear there was a wide range of opinion.
On the one hand, “Lamanites” were the recipients of a variety of promises in the Book of Mormon and early Mormons conducted several proselyting missions to Native Americans. That’s the positive end of the spectrum. On the other hand, there is this description of “Lamanites” in the Book of Mormon, which still informs the LDS view of “Lamanites” as a degenerate people:
And I bear record that the people of Nephi did seek diligently to restore the Lamanites unto the true faith in God. But our labors were vain; their hatred was fixed, and they were led by their evil nature that they became wild, and ferocious, and a blood-thirsty people, full of idolatry and filthiness; feeding upon beasts of prey; dwelling in tents, and wandering about in the wilderness with a short skin girdle about their loins and their heads shaven; and their skill was in the bow, and in the cimeter, and the ax. And many of them did eat nothing save it was raw meat; and they were continually seeking to destroy us. (Enos 1:20)
Not a very flattering portrait. One can read this verse in various ways. It could be the opinion of a historical Enos about 5th century BCE Native Americans, the “Lamanites” of his day. It could be the observations and opinions of Joseph Smith and his contemporaries about the Native Americans of his day, injected into the Book of Mormon narrative in the early 19th century CE. It can also (sadly) inform current Latter-day Saints at all levels about “Lamanites” in any time period.
I’ve covered a lot of ground here. Your comments welcome below. Next up on my reading list is Thomas Murphy’s new book, Unsettling Scripture: Iroquois and the Book of Mormon (Univ. of Utah Press, June 19, 2026). It will take a few weeks for me to get through the book before I get a post up about it. It will be a long one, I think.
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Wheat & Tares 
“There was simply no European state that furnished such an example”
Not to nitpick, but the Greek poleis (city-states) as described by Herodotus and Thucydides informed the founders. But yes, the Iroquois Confederacy also informed Franklin and other founders, as acknowledged by Congress in 1988.
My experience taking American Heritage at BYU is that heavy emphasis is placed on Calvinism and the Puritans as the early influencers of the founding documents of the US. I think this is overstated. For one, the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay colony notoriously arrested heretics and drove them out. They were no paragons of pluralism. Second, Puritanism was never all that unified, not did it have lasting prowess. Many elements of it died out by the 1770s. The founders, in their many, many writings barely cited early Puritan thinkers. It’s only after independence that New Englanders created myths about the influence of their Puritan forebears on the founding of the US, largely in a bid to outbid southerners in building a narrative of who shaped America. Third, Virginia and Virginians, such as Jefferson and Madison, played a significant role in the founding documents. Neither they, nor their forebears, were Puritans.
When we read the thoughts of the American founders, they were overwhelmingly influenced by a variety of Roman and Greek thinkers who, although warning of tyranny and being against emperors, still argued in favor of state power and aggression against different ethnic groups. Demosthenes, who heavily influenced the founding fathers, was strongly against the rise of Philip II of Macedon, but was really just an Athenian supremacist who didn’t even consider the Macedonian real Greeks. Cicero, another huge influence on the American founders, praises the Roman Republic’s aggression against the Punics in Carthage. It was “just war” to him.
BYU is in love with this somewhat erroneous vision of the founders being influenced by religion. But they generally weren’t. They wanted power. To achieve power, they looked to the narrators of power. And they were willing to act aggressively when circumstances called for it. There is plenty of tyranny and aggression in the early American story. But I praise many of the ideals laid forth.
Laconically beautiful.
The book looks way interesting. Gonna have to give it a read.
Brad D
I skipped American Heritage. I find most “official” histories myopic. And apparently those views are too liberal for the maga crowd who blatantly make up stories to fit their narrative, We’ve gone from myopic to myopathic.
But when it comes to Puritans, I think we should look at the bigger picture (and a shout out to Quakers and Unitarian Universalists) The 17th century is a fascinating century especially English history. The Petition of Right 1628 and Bill of Rights 1689 had wider forces leading to their creation. The riff raff had rights.
3 books that had me going wow
1.”The world turned upside down” by Christopher Hill. So here’s to Diggers, Levelers, Seekers. To Blasphemy, masterless men, and outspoken women. I am not in the least perturbed by Charles losing his head. Cuz yeah, a Republic. But the I read of the Cromwellian genocide of Ireland, and I’m not so enamored.
2. “1676 The End of American Independence” by Stephen Saunders Webb. Why did they not teach me about Bacon’s Rebellion when I was in school. Indentured servants, the enslaved and free blacks uniting together to fight for their rights against the Big bad Governor,(yes!) and (up-oh) the Native populations. Huh?
3. “The many headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary America” by Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker. Here’s to the dispossessed, the weirdo’s and the fight for freedom.
But then I look at today’s weirdo’s– mega and QAnon. We’ve gone from the dispossessed to the possessed. Maybe there’s something to be said for rationality, rights, and a well run state.