In the 1740s the Iroquois wearied of dealing with several often bickering
English colonies and suggested that the colonies form a union similar to the
league. In 1754 Benjamin Franklin, who had spent much time among the
Iroquois observing their deliberations, pleaded with colonial leaders to
consider his Albany Plan of Union: “It would be a strange thing if six nations
of ignorant savages should be capable of forming a scheme for such a union
and be able to execute it in such a manner as that it has subsisted ages and
appears insoluble; and yet that a like union should be impracticable for ten or a
dozen English colonies.”^53
The colonies rejected the plan. But it was a forerunner of the Articles of
Confederation and the Constitution. Both the Continental Congress and the
Constitutional Convention referred openly to Iroquois ideas and imagery. In
1775 Congress formulated a speech to the Iroquois, signed by John Hancock,
that quoted Iroquois advice from 1744. “The Six Nations are a wise people,”
Congress wrote, “let us harken to their council and teach our children to follow
it.”^54
As a symbol of the new United States, Americans chose the eagle clutching a
bundle of arrows. They knew that both the eagle and the arrows were symbols