from the Introduction:

We believe that American history will not be complete until its indigenous aspects have been recognized and incorporated into the teaching of history. We have assembled here a mosaic of fact and opinion which, taken together, indicates that the objective of the contemporary debate should be to define the role Native American precedents deserve in the broader ambit of American history. . . . Our thesis holds that the character of American democracy evolved importantly (although, of course, not soley), from the examples provided by American Indian confederacies which ringed the land borders of the British colonies. These examples provided a reality, as well as exercise for the imagination -- and it is imagination, above all, that foments revolutions. In this book, we attempt to provide a picture of how these native confederacies operated, and how important architects of American institutions, ideals and other character traits perceived them. We operate as much as we are able from the historical record per se, relaying as much of original accounts as possible. . . .

We attempt to trace both events and ideas: life, liberty, happiness; government by reason and consent rather than coercion, religious toleration (and ultimately religious acceptance) instead of a state church; checks and balances, federalism; relative equality of property, equal rights before the law and the thorny problem of creating a government that can rule equitably across a broad geographic expanse. Native America had a substantial role in shaping all these ideas, as well as the events that turned colonies into a nation of states. In a way that may be difficult to understand from the vantage point of the late twentieth century, Native Americans were present at the conception of the United States. We owe part of our national soul to those who came before us on this soil.

As is the case with many histories, this book proceeds along a time line. Except for a few earlier premonitions, our historical study begins around 1600 with "Vox Americana," which summarizes early English and French traders', missionaries' and settlers' accounts of native political organization and attitudes toward liberty. "Perceptions of America's Native Democracies" continues this theme with brief descriptions of how Native American nations that bordered the British colonies ordered their affairs. "Natural Man in an Unnatural Land" examines the image of American Indian peoples in European popular culture in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; "Ennobling `Savages'" considers the degree to which the same image was reflected in the works of major French and British philosophers of the time. "Errand in the Wilderness" takes the story back across the Atlantic for a detailed study of Roger Williams's use of native precedents for political freedom and religious toleration. "The White Roots Reach Out" concentrates on the idea of federalism as seen through the eyes of Benjamin Franklin and mid-eighteenth century leaders of the Iroquois such as Canassatego and Hendrick (Tiyanoga), centering on the Albany Congress of 1754.

The revolutionary era begins with "Mohawks, Axes, and Taxes," an account of ways in which the image of the Indian was reflected in propaganda and popular art between 1763 and 1776. "A New Chapter" compares the images of native America as utilized by Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine. The timeline resumes once again in "An American Synthesis," which organizes events (between roughly 1775 and 1786) around the founding of the Sons of Saint Tammany, a patriotic organization succeeding the Sons of Liberty, which combined European and Native American ideas and motifs. "Kindling a New Grand Council Fire" continues the study into the constitutional period. "The Persistence of an Idea" traces references to native ideas in governance (particularly those of the Iroquois) through the nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century and thus concludes our analysis.