[T]hey’re honorable people, and I’m proud to have them as part of my team.

…

The right to represent interests of groups of Americans is a constitutional right. There are people that represent firemen, civil servants, retirees, and those people are legitimate representatives of a variety of interests in America.x⁵⁰

But the lobbyists holding top spots in McCain’s campaign do not represent firemen, civil servants and retirees. Rather, they represent big corporations and foreign governments. Of McCain’s many lobbyists, here are three prime examples:

• McCain’s top national security adviser, Randy Scheunemann, has lobbied for such corporations as Lockheed Martin and BP, and has pulled in $2 million from corporations that have given significant money to McCain. Scheunemann was a board member of PNAC, the neocon think tank that came up with the policy of knocking off disfavored regimes by military invasion.x⁵¹x⁵² In 1998 he helped write the law that declared regime change in Iraq as U.S. policy and sent $98 million from the U.S. treasury to con man Ahmed Chalabi’s group, which posed as the Iraqi government in exile.x⁵³ And in 2002 he helped with the marketing campaign for President Bush’s invasion of Iraq. Another policy Scheunemann pushed is expanding NATO into former Soviet states, such as the country of Georgia, which has paid $800,000 to Scheunemann’s two-man lobbying company.x⁵⁴ For over a year, Scheunemann was getting paid for advice by McCain’s campaign, while his firm was getting paid by Georgia. McCain has championed Georgia’s issues, sponsoring a resolution to get Georgia into NATO, and totally taking Georgia’s side against Russia in the warfare between the two that started two weeks ago in Georgia’s breakaway province of South Ossetia.x⁵⁵ After Russia invaded Georgia, McCain said he spoke with Georgia’s president Saakashvili and told him “the thoughts and the prayers and support of the American people are with that brave little nation” and “that I know I speak for every American when I say to him, ‘Today we are all Georgians.’“x⁵⁶ But McCain left out the fact that Georgia started the warfare by attacking South Ossetia, where most persons have Russian citizenship, and killing many hundreds, including some Russian peacekeeping soldiers.x⁵⁷

• McCain’s top campaign strategist, Charlie Black, is also a top Republican lobbyist, who has worked for such corporate clients as Lockheed Martin, GE, AT&T, Blackwater and Rupert Murdoch, and such foreign dictators as Marcos of the Phillipines, Siad Barre of Somalia and Mobutu of Zaire.x⁵⁸x⁵³ He has pulled in $30 million from corporations that have given significant money to McCain.x⁵¹ Black was Ahmed Chalabi’s main escort through the corridors of Washington, as the con man dished out lies to support the coming Iraq invasion. Black was also a big mover in getting AT&T and Verizon off the hook for helping Bush’s illegal warrantless wiretapping of American citizens.

• “I respect no one more in America on issue[s] of economics than I do Phil Gramm,” said McCain.x⁵⁹ Gramm is McCain’s top economic adviser, but he had to lie low for a while after blaming U.S. economic woes on a “mental recession” and calling America “a nation of whiners”.x⁶⁰ As a Senator, Gramm pushed through the “Enron loophole” exempting computer energy market trading from oversight, and enabling Enron’s market manipulation and accounting crimes.x⁶¹ As Congress was wrapping up business in December 2000, Gramm slipped into the budget another act removing oversight, effectively creating the “shadow banking system” that has led to the current mortgage crisis.x⁶² “Foreclosure Phil” now lobbies the U.S. Government for UBS, a big Swiss bank for the wealthy, where he pulls down a seven-figure salary.x⁵³

The sorry record of his top advisers shows that a McCain presidency would strive to continue the Bush years of disastrous foreign and economic policy — and government that serves those big corporations and foreign politicos that shell out to the sleaziest cronies on K Street.

Sources

⁵⁰ ‘McCain says his lobbyists are ‘honorable,’ but they don’t work for ‘legitimate’ causes he picks’ by Michael Roston, The Raw Story, February 22, 2008

⁵¹ McCain’s Lobbyists

• Randy Scheunemann got paid $2,150,000 from corporate clients that gave $135,000 to McCain.

• Charlie Black got paid $30,811,500 from corporate clients that gave $1,519,043 to McCain.

⁵² McCain’s Lobbyists – Randy Scheunemann

⁵³ ‘Heartless Phil and ‘honorable lobbyists’ would run McCain’s White House’ – The Hightower Lowdown, August 2008

⁵⁴ ‘While Aide Advised McCain, His Firm Lobbied for Georgia’ By Matthew Mosk and Jeffrey H. Birnbaum, The Washington Post, August 13, 2008, Page A03

For months while McCain’s presidential campaign was gearing up, Scheunemann held dual roles, advising the candidate on foreign policy while working as Georgia’s lobbyist. Between Jan. 1, 2007, and May 15, 2008, the campaign paid Scheunemann nearly $70,000 to provide foreign policy advice. During the same period, the government of Georgia paid his firm $290,000 in lobbying fees.

Since 2004, Orion has collected $800,000 from the government of Georgia.

⁵⁵ ‘Was the War in Georgia a Neocon Election Ploy?’ By Robert Scheer, Truthdig, August 13, 2008

In 2005, while registered as a paid lobbyist for Georgia, Scheunemann worked with McCain to draft a congressional resolution pushing for Georgia’s membership in NATO. A year later, while still on the Georgian payroll, Scheunemann accompanied McCain on a trip to that country, where they met with Saakashvili and supported his bellicose views toward Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

⁵⁶ ‘McCain: ‘We are all Georgians’‘ by Adam Aigner-Treworgy, NBC, August 12, 2008

⁵⁷ ‘South Ossettia leader says 1,400 killed in conflict’ – Reuters, 8 August 2008

⁵⁸ ‘McCain’s Lobbyists In Trouble For Foreign Lobbying’ – Progressive Media USA, May 11, 2008

⁵⁹ ‘Phil Gramm on Campaign Trail in SC for McCain’ by Bennett Roth, Texas on the Potomac, January 18, 2008

⁶⁰ ‘A Nation of Whiners’ The Washington Post, July 11, 2008, Page A03

“You’ve heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession,” he said, noting that growth has held up at about 1 percent despite all the publicity over losing jobs to India, China, illegal immigration, housing and credit problems and record oil prices. “We may have a recession; we haven’t had one yet.”

“We have sort of become a nation of whiners,” he said. “You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline” despite a major export boom that is the primary reason that growth continues in the economy, he said.

⁶¹ ‘McCain Defends ‘Enron Loophole’ By Jason Leopold, May 19, 2008’

Clearing the way for that California price gouging, Gramm, as a powerful Texas senator in 2000, slipped an Enron-backed provision into the Commodities Futures Modernization Act that exempted from regulation energy trading on electronic platforms.

Then, over the next year, Enron – with Gramm’s wife Wendy serving on its board of directors – worked to create false electricity shortages in California, bilking consumers out of an estimated $40 billion.

⁶² ‘Could McCain Have Come Up with a More Ill-Suited Economic Advisor Than Phil Gramm?’ By Patricia Kilday Hart, Texas Observer, June 18, 2008.’

While his distracted peers probably finalized their Christmas gift lists, Gramm created what Wall Street analysts now refer to as the “shadow banking system,” an industry that operates outside any government oversight, but, as witnessed by the Bear Stearns debacle, requiring rescue by taxpayers to avert a national economic catastrophe.

By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at G.N.N. & TheParagraph.com

Leadership wants to bury it, but this is one resolution that will be coming back from the dead. … We’ll come back and many of us will be reading this [on the House floor], and we’ll come back with 60 articles, not 35.x³⁶

So, many of Bush’s crimes are now on an official, historical record. And each Congressman has the chance to sign-on and show that one stood for the Constitution and the Republic.

Kucinich introduces articles of impeachment – CSPAN

Sources

³⁰ Links to each article of impeachment with full text and video of Kucinich reading it – kucinich.us

‘ARTICLES OF IMPEACHMENT FOR PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH’ – introduced by Rep. Kucinich, 2008-06-09, PDF file with full text

³¹ ‘Kucinich presents Bush impeachment articles’ by David Edwards and Mike Sheehan, The Raw Story, Monday June 9, 2008

³² ‘Mainstream media yawns as Kucinich offers impeachment’ by Muriel Kane, The Raw Story, Tuesday June 10, 2008

³³ ‘Kucinich’s Articles of Impeachment: A Three-Part Guide’ By Elizabeth de la Vega, The Public Record, June 14, 2008

‘Articles of Impeachment for President George W. Bush – U.S. and International Violations Alleged’ – a table by Elizabeth de la Vega, The Public Record

‘Articles of Impeachment for President George W. Bush’ – a table by Elizabeth de la Vega, The Public Record

³⁴ ‘House votes to send impeachment resolution to Judiciary Committee’ By Nick Juliano, The Raw Story, 11 June 2008

³⁵ ‘Tricky Republicans Give Cheney Impeachment New Life’ The Paragraph, November 11th, 2007

³⁶ ‘Kucinich Vows to Keep Up Impeachment Fight’ – Capitol Briefing by Ben Pershing, The Washington Post, June 11, 2008

Seven former Sequoia workers, with a combined 161 years with the company, appeared on the news show to tell the story.

Sequoia Workers on Dan Rather Reports

Sequoia management switched from their reliable card stock suppliers …

x[Pressman Trainer] Greg Smith: The paper changed. They decided that they wanted to go with a certain brand. And I think that everybody’s opinion was this 2000 election was going to be our demise. Because of the poor quality of what we put out the door.

Dan Rather: For decades Sequoia had ordered its punch card ballot paper from James River or International Paper; the only mills that had traditionally offered voting punch card stock. In 2000, the company switched to a new mill, Boise Cascade, which had virtually no experience making tab card stock.

recycled rejected paper rolls and tried to hide the fact with xeroxed labels …

“… But the workers say the problems they were having with the paper went beyond a mere change in suppliers. They say they were suddenly seeing paper rolls that weren’t clearly even Boise Cascade paper, because these rolls had Xeroxed Boise shipping labels, rather than genuine ones. …”

x[Pressman] E. Washington: One of the pressman … Bob Krause … had a thing if the paper was real bad, that he would write little nasty letters on the side of the roll. Well, we got one of those rolls back, with the same letter that he had written on it. So, then, that’s when it went through our mind that some of that paper was getting rewound and sent back.

Dan Rather: [The roll] presumably leaves the plant or goes somewhere and then it comes back with one of these Xerox Boise labels on it?

E. Washington: Yeah.

Dan Rather: Did you know about this as well?

Greg Smith: Well, I had the same suspicions as everybody else did as far as the paper. Felt that it, it was rejected and it was taken out of the plant and stored somewhere and then relabeled and brought back.

Dan Rather: Well let’s just go down the line — is there any doubt in your mind that the company was aware that the ballots for the 2000 general election … were being made with inferior paper?

Various: No doubt. They were told every day. Yeah. They were told everyday.

and seemingly fraudulent shipping documents.

Dan Rather: Sequoia management insists that all of the paper used to make punch cards ordered for the presidential election of 2000 came from a single shipment of some half a million pounds of Boise paper delivered directly to the Exeter plant.

We asked Sequoia to provide a complete set of shipping documents that would prove its version of events. They didn’t provide all the shipping documents, and what they did give us only raised more questions …

… spell it out for me. What’s missing?

x[Controller] Suzy Keller: The signed documentation that the paper was actually received. There has to be a signature on there, and there is no signature. Did the paper arrive or not? I can’t substantiate that, there is no signature on those packing lists.

Dan Rather: We also asked Tom Ayers the former head of shipping and receiving to review the documents Sequoia produced. Ayers was skeptical of them. He said that he had never stamped invoices as received, the company so far as he knows, didn’t even have such a stamp, all Ayers had ever done he says was sign and date the receiving invoices. … We also turned to … Walter Rantanen … perhaps the country’s leading forensic paper analyst. He works with top government agencies including the secret service and the F.B.I. …

… Rantanen analyzed the fibers in the Florida ballots. He discovered none of the cards had the composition of Boise Cascade tab stock, which contains softwood from the Northwest. He also sent Boise Cascade a Florida ballot sample. Boise confirmed the paper wasn’t theirs.

Management overrode workers’ quality control tries …

x[Pressman] Cy Turner: We took great pride in the quality of ballots we put out; there was no leeway. … A pressman running a press could reject a roll [of paper], kick it back to raw stock, say this roll was no good.

xGreg Smith: We had quite a bit of input, but towards the end, we had no input whatsoever. … After 1999, it was all over. It was like we were all put on the shelf.”

x[Quality Control Inspector] Linda Evans: … there was card bins I wouldn’t sign off. I refused to sign em. They’d sit there overnight and they would say, “you gonna sign em?” and I’d go “no”. Come in the following morning, all the bins had been signed off and moved to the front. … Which means someone else signed em off and said let em go.

ordered the chads of ballots for Palm Beach County to be misaligned …

E. Washington: We were told to run those cards short because they would grow by the time they got to Florida in the humidity.

Dan Rather: Running short didn’t mean the cards were actually shorter. It simply means lowering, on the face of the ballot, the position of the chads. So the orders were for the ballots going to Palm Beach, don’t make them meet the normal specifications?

E. Washington: Right.

…

Dan Rather: Were you surprised by it?

E. Washington: Oh yeah, I questioned it, and I even had the plant manager sign it. Because I was having arguments with quality control about the size. And so I said, ‘The only way I am going to run it is if Brian (the plant manager) comes out here and signs it.’ He came out, he signed the ‘okay’ card to run ‘em.

…

Dan Rather: Had this happened to you before?

E. Washington: No.

Dan Rather: Was there any other area, somebody say “Well these ballots are going to Louisiana Or Texas Or Arizona?”

E. Washington: Never.

…

Dan Rather: … Linda Evans recalls the chad testing of ballots manufactured for the 2000 election.

Linda Evans: Chads were falling out. Chads were hanging up. We’ve got a machine that we call a gang punch, which in a sense punches out all the holes at the same time. … They weren’t punching out. They were hanging up all over the place. They were aware of that. Oh, management was aware of it. We told ‘em.

…

Dan Rather: We asked Evans if she could demonstrate for us the chad testing that had led to her concerns. This became possible when last, Fall Palm Beach County released over 200,000 unvoted ballots left over from the 2000 election. We had a gang punch identical to the one used by Linda Evans at the factory, made by an engineer familiar with Sequoia’s test instruments. Rantanen met with Linda Evans at her home in Exeter and they tested ballots together.

(they test a ballot)

Walter Rantanen: Oh, oh. It’s got something.

Linda Evans: Its got a whole bunch of somethings.

Gang punched ballot – Dan Rather Reports

Dan Rather: While older Sequoia ballots, made earlier, for another county, punched perfectly, The Palm Beach ballots made for the 2000 election showed a troubling pattern: many cards showed clusters of hanging chads, primarily in the column that contained the presidential candidates.

and after the election tried to destroy all evidence.

Dan Rather: When you got to the plant in the days after the election, what was the scene there?

E. Washington: It was chaotic. They were moving stuff, hiding stuff.

Dan Rather: They were hiding stuff?

E. Washington: Yeah, because the news people wanted to come in and talk to people and they wanted to tour the plant.

E. Washington: We were told to get rid of everything, anything that had Florida on it had to disappear.

Dan Rather: And did it disappear?

E. Washington: Yup. Nothing with any kind of Boise Cascade labels was supposed to be left around.

Dan Rather: And that word came from whom?

E. Washington: Brian Lehrman. … The plant manager.

Dan Rather: We repeatedly invited Sequoia to have Brian Lehrman on camera to answer some of the workers allegations. Sequoia declined.

The workers gave their thoughts on the affair:

Greg Smith: My own personal opinion was the touch screen voting system wasn’t getting off the ground like that they, like they would hope. And because they weren’t having any problems with paper ballots. So, I feel like they, deliberately did all this to have problems with the paper ballots so the electronically voting systems would get off the ground, and which it did in a big way.

…

Cy Turner: You hope for the best in people and you hope it was just some bad circumstances that came together all in one place. But it should matter to people and they should check it out, and investigate it more thoroughly, because if something else was going on, and these people profited by intentionally screwing up our elections, they ought to pay. They ought to pay hard.

…

x[Shipping and Receiving Foreman] Tom Ayers: I don’t think any company should profit from something like this, I mean, it is almost to the point where it would be illegal. You are putting out a product that you know isn’t going to work to make a profit.

…

Suzy Keller: For years elections took so much pride, they all took pride in the quality of card we put out, and this card that went into Florida created a lot of problems. A lot of problems. Substandard paper? Are we trying to force something here? Are we trying to change the elections community? I thought those things. I can’t substantiate those things but that’s what I thought.

…

x[Manager] Giles Jensen: It was something that that really influenced the direction of this, this nation. Intentionally or unintentionally. Let’s leave it that way. But, it’s a sad state of affairs that it takes seven years for somebody to actually ask the question to the people that might have the answer.

Sources

¹⁰ ‘Dan Rather Reports: The Trouble with Touch Screens (and more) – transcript

HDNet video – Sequoia punch card story starts around 38:20

¹¹ ‘Election 2000: Our final tally’ – Unknown News – Palm Beach County “certified” results: Bush 152,951 – Gore 269,732

‘The Florida Overvote: Tragic Mistake, or Katharine Harris with Tweezers?’ – Sharman Braff – Palm Beach County Overvote 19,100 (4.2% of ballots cast)

‘Newer machines had more under-votes’ By Marc Caputo, Palm Beach Post – Tuesday, November 28, 2000 – Palm Beach County Undervote: 10,311 (2.3% of ballots cast)

¹² Google News archive search – A search for the words “Florida”, “Sequoia” and “Rather” from the Dan Rather Reports air date of 8/14/2007 to two months later, returned just one mainstream news reference to the bad ballots story — a letter to the editor of the Mobile Press-Register.

But many blogs covered the story – among them Wired and Brad Blog, which also did further reporting.

I name the tree the Tree of the Great Long Leaves. Under the shade of this Tree of the Great Peace we spread the soft white feathery down of the globe thistle as seats for you, Adodarhoh, and your cousin Lords.

… there beneath the shade of the spreading branches … shall you sit and watch the Council Fire of the Confederacy of the Five Nations, and all the affairs of the Five Nations shall be transacted at this place before you … by the Confederate Lords of the Five Nations.

Roots have spread out from the Tree of the Great Peace, one to the north, one to the east, one to the south and one to the west. The name of these roots is The Great White Roots and their nature is Peace and Strength.

If any man or any nation outside the Five Nations shall obey the laws of the Great Peace …, they may trace the Roots to the Tree and … they shall be welcomed to take shelter beneath the Tree of the Long Leaves.

We place at the top of the Tree of the Long Leaves an Eagle who is able to see afar. If he sees in the distance any evil approaching or any danger threatening he will at once warn the people of the Confederacy.

The people of the five nations — the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca — handed the Great Law of Peace down through the generations by reading it aloud from wampum belts. They made the wampum belts with strings of beads formed from lake shells. The beads formed symbols and relations that conveyed meaning to the reader, and lit his memory so that he could tell the law fully and rightly. Knowledge of the Great Law of Peace lasted into the 20th century, when in 1915, Arthur C. Parker, Archaeologist of the State Museum in New York, wrote much of it down into the document we use here.

The Five Nations wampum belt

The Iroquois were one of several tribal confederacies that lived up and down the eastern seaboard.x² The Founders and Framers of the United States knew their neighbors’ form of government — self-ruled nations united under a common law, where the authority to govern came from the people. And the Founders and Framers soon adopted that form — federal democracy. At the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia, they gave a delegation of 21 Iroquois a floor of Independence Hall to stay in, and seats at the discussions about American independence and government.x³ And the Onondaga leader gave John Hancock, the president of the congress, an Indian name — Great Tree. As the old tribal democracy lived its last days, the world’s first modern liberal democracy was born. Here are some features of the Iroquois Confederacy’s constitution that you might like to compare — for the better or worse — with those of your own national government:

The Confederate Council

Government officials take an oath to uphold the constitution:

When a candidate Lord (council member – QH) is to be installed he shall furnish four strings of [wampum] … Such will constitute the evidence of his pledge to the Confederate Lords that he will live according to the constitution of the Great Peace and exercise justice in all affairs. (Great Law of Peace article 28)

Two houses of the Confederate Council decide issues, and a third group ratifies — all unanimously:

… when the Mohawk and Seneca Lords have unanimously agreed upon a question, they shall report their decision to the Cayuga and Oneida Lords who shall deliberate upon the question and report a unanimous decision to … The Firekeepers (Onondaga Lords – QH), who shall render a decision as they see fit in case of a disagreement by the two bodies, or confirm the decisions of the two bodies if they are identical. (10)

… the Firekeepers may veto a decision, but the veto can be overriden:

If through any misunderstanding or obstinacy on the part of the Fire Keepers, they render a decision at variance with that of the Two Sides, the Two Sides shall reconsider the matter and if their decisions are jointly the same as before they shall report to the Fire Keepers who are then compelled to confirm their joint decision. (11)

The groups are further divided into smaller councils, which hand decisions up. While two sides discuss an issue, a judge watches to ensure that a decision follows the law:

The Council of the Mohawk shall be divided into three parties … The third party is to listen only to the discussion of the first and second parties and if an error is made or the proceeding is irregular they are to call attention to it, and when the case is right and properly decided by the two parties they shall confirm the decision of the two parties … (5)

Elections

Each nation of the Iroquois Confederacy is composed of the same clans, which are composed of families, which follow the female blood line:

The lineal descent of the people of the Five Nations shall run in the female line. Women shall be considered the progenitors of the Nation. They shall own the land and the soil. Men and women shall follow the status of the mother. (44)

The women of certain families hold the titles to choose members of the Confederate Council, who serve for life:

When a Lordship title becomes vacant through death or other cause (impeachment – QH), the Royaneh (title-holding – QH) women of the clan in which the title is hereditary shall hold a council and shall choose one from among their sons to fill the office made vacant. … (54)

… and the men, sister clans and council confirm the choice:

If the choice is unanimous the name is referred to the men relatives of the clan. If they should disapprove [they] shall … select a candidate from among their own number. If then the men and women are unable to decide [between] the two …, then … the Confederate Lords in the Clan … shall decide … If the men and the women agree to a candidate his name shall be referred to the sister clans for confirmation. If the sister clans confirm the choice, they shall refer their action to their Confederate Lords who shall ratify the choice and present it to their cousin Lords, and if the cousin Lords confirm the name then the candidate shall be installed … (54)

A Lord must put the people’s welfare, and that of future generations, ahead of his own:

“We now do crown you with the sacred emblem of the deer’s antlers, the emblem of your Lordship. You shall now become a mentor of the people of the Five Nations. The thickness of your skin shall be seven spans — which is to say that you shall be proof against anger, offensive actions and criticism. Your heart shall be filled with peace and good will and your mind filled with a yearning for the welfare of the people of the Confederacy. … In all of your deliberations in the Confederate Council, in your efforts at law making, in all your official acts, self interest shall be cast into oblivion. Look and listen for the welfare of the whole people and have always in view not only the present but also … those whose faces are yet beneath the surface of the ground — the unborn of the future Nation.” (28)

Petitioning the Government

For each nation there is a War Chief (elected in the same way as a Lord), whose duty is to bring the people’s issues to that nation’s Lords:

There shall be one War Chief for each Nation and their duties shall be to carry messages for their Lords and to take up the arms of war in case of emergency. … in case of an erroneous action by a Lord they shall receive the complaints of the people and convey the warnings of the women to him. The people who wish to convey messages to the Lords in the Confederate Council shall do so through the War Chief of their Nation. It shall ever be his duty to lay the cases, questions and propositions of the people before the Confederate Council. (37)

Any man can become a Pine Tree Chief — an advisor to the Confederate Council:

Should any man of the Nation assist with special ability or show great interest in the affairs of the Nation, if he proves himself wise, honest and worthy of confidence, the Confederate Lords may elect him … and he may sit in the Confederate Council. He shall be proclaimed a ‘Pine Tree sprung up for the Nation’ …

… and title-holding women may also attend the Confederate Council:

The Royaneh women … shall, should it be necessary, correct and admonish the holders of their titles [when those women] attend the Council … (52)

On a matter of great consequence, the Confederate Council must hear and follow the voice of the people:

Whenever a … matter affects the entire body of the Five Nations, threatening their utter ruin, then the Lords of the Confederacy must submit the matter to the decision of their people [which] shall affect the decision of the Confederate Council. This decision shall be a confirmation of the voice of the people. (93)

Within each nation clan councils decide issues to be brought to the Confederate Council:

The women of every clan of the Five Nations shall have a Council Fire ever burning in readiness for a council of the clan. When in their opinion it seems necessary for the interest of the people they shall hold a council and their decisions and recommendations shall be introduced before the Council of the Lords by the War Chief for its consideration. (95)

~ ~ ~

The men of every clan of the Five Nations shall have a Council Fire ever burning … This council shall have the same rights as the council of the women. (94)

Clan councils may unite into a national council or a five-nation council.

All the Clan council fires of a nation or of the Five Nations may unite into one general council fire, or delegates from all the council fires may be appointed to unite in a general council for discussing the interests of the people. (96)

The people have the right to a voice at council:

The people shall have the right to make appointments and to delegate their power to others of their number. When their council shall have come to a conclusion on any matter, their decision shall be reported to the Council of the Nation or to the Confederate Council (as the case may require) by the War Chief or the War Chiefs. (96.)

Rights of the People

Each person has the right to make contracts:

Any of the people of the Five Nations may use wampum as the record of a pledge, contract or an agreement entered into and the same shall be binding as soon as shell strings shall have been exchanged by both parties. (23)

… and the right to privacy:

A certain sign shall be known to all the people of the Five Nations which shall denote that the owner or occupant of a house is absent. A stick or pole in a slanting or leaning position shall be the sign. Every person not entitled to enter the house by right of living within it upon seeing such a sign shall not approach the house either by day or by night but shall keep as far away as his business will permit. (107)

The Great Law of Peace ensures religious freedom to each nation:

The rites and festivals of each nation shall remain undisturbed and shall continue as before because they were given by the people of old times as useful and necessary for the good of men. (99)

A More Perfect Union

The Great Law of Peace calls for periodic renewal of the union, and it has never been dissolved:

Every five years the Five Nations Confederate Lords and the people shall assemble together and shall ask one another if their minds are still in the same spirit of unity for the Great Binding Law and if any of the Five Nations shall not pledge continuance and steadfastness to the pledge of unity then the Great Binding Law shall dissolve. (55)

The Great Law of Peace discourages aristocracy by mixing the clans:

People of the Five Nations members of a certain clan shall recognize every other member of that clan, irrespective of the Nation, as relatives. Men and women, therefore, members of the same clan are forbidden to marry. (43)

… and allows adoption between families and nations:

Should any member of the Five Nations, a family or person belonging to a foreign nation submit a proposal for adoption into a clan …, he or they shall furnish a string of shells … as a pledge to the clan into which he or they wish to be adopted. The Lords of the nation shall then consider the proposal and submit a decision. (68)

Any member of the Five Nations who through esteem or other feeling wishes to adopt an individual, a family or number of families may offer adoption to him or them and if accepted the matter shall be brought to the attention of the Lords [who] must confirm adoption. (69)

… “Now you of our nation, be informed that such a person … [has buried] their birth nation’s name … in the depths of the earth. Henceforth let no one of our nation ever mention the original name or nation of their birth. …” (70)

It allows for emigration:

When any person or family belonging to the Five Nations desires to abandon their birth nation and the territory of the Five Nations, … the Confederate Council of the Five Nations shall take cognizance of it. (71)

… and immigration (which the Tuscarora did around 1715 to become the sixth nation):

When any alien nation or individual is admitted into the Five Nations the admission shall be understood only to be a temporary one. Should the person or nation create loss, do wrong or cause suffering of any kind to endanger the peace of the Confederacy, the Confederate Lords shall order one of their war chiefs to reprimand him or them and if a similar offence is again committed the offending party or parties shall be expelled from the territory of the Five United Nations. (74)

When a member of an alien nation comes to the territory of the Five Nations and seeks refuge and permanent residence, the Lords of the Nation to which he comes shall extend hospitality and make him a member of the nation. Then shall he be accorded equal rights and privileges in all matters except [he shall not be chosen for Council]. (75)

The Great Law of Peace restricts lobbying:

No individual or foreign nation interested in a case, question or proposition shall have any voice in the Confederate Council except to answer a question put to him or them by the speaker for the Lords. (15)

…

… It shall be a serious wrong for anyone to lead a Lord into trivial affairs, for the people must ever hold their Lords high in estimation out of respect to their honorable positions. (27)

… and allows for change with amendments:

If the conditions which shall arise at any future time call for an addition to or change of this law, the case shall be carefully considered and if a new beam seems necessary or beneficial, the proposed change shall be voted upon and if adopted it shall be called, “Added to the Rafters”. (16)

… and lists nine national holidays:

The recognized festivals of Thanksgiving shall be the Midwinter Thanksgiving, the Maple … Thanksgiving, the Raspberry Thanksgiving, the Strawberry Thanksgiving, the Cornplanting Thanksgiving, the Corn Hoeing Thanksgiving, the Little Festival of Green Corn, the Great Festival of Ripe Corn and the complete Thanksgiving for the Harvest.

Peace & War

The Iroquois Confederacy was founded on peace:

I, Dekanawida, and the Union Lords, now uproot the tallest pine tree and into the cavity thereby made we cast all weapons of war. Into the depths of the earth, down into the deep underearth currents of water flowing to unknown regions we cast all the weapons of strife. We bury them from sight and we plant again the tree. (65)

The Great Law of Peace notes that all men are created equal and are entitled to their land:

The soil of the earth from one end of the land to the other is the property of the people who inhabit it.

…

The Great Creator has made us of the one blood and of the same soil he made us and as only different tongues constitute different nations he established different hunting grounds and territories and made boundary lines between them. (73)

The power to declare war rests with the Confederate Council:

When the Confederate Council of the Five Nations has for its object the establishment of the Great Peace among the people of an outside nation and that nation refuses to accept the Great Peace, then by such refusal they bring a declaration of war upon themselves … Then shall the Five Nations seek to establish the Great Peace by a conquest of the rebellious nation. (80)

… but talks must first occur:

When the proposition to establish the Great Peace is made to a foreign nation it shall be done in mutual council. The foreign nation is to be persuaded by reason and urged to come into the Great Peace. If the Five Nations fail to obtain the consent of the nation at the first council a second council shall be held and upon a second failure a third council shall be held and this third council shall end the peaceful methods of persuasion. At the third council the War Chief of the Five nations shall address the Chief of the foreign nation and request him three times to accept the Great Peace. If refusal steadfastly follows the War Chief shall let the bunch of white lake shells drop from his outstretched hand to the ground and shall bound quickly forward and club the offending chief to death. War shall thereby be declared and the War Chief shall have his warriors at his back to meet any emergency. War must continue until the contest is won by the Five Nations. (88)

… and any nation at any time can accept the Great Peace and live peacefully with the Iroquois Confederacy:

Whenever a foreign nation is conquered or has by their own will accepted the Great Peace their own system of internal government may continue, but they must cease all warfare against other nations.

One of the Confederate Council seats also carries the role of commander-in-chief:

Skanawatih shall be vested with a double office, duty and with double authority. One-half of his being shall hold the Lordship title and the other half shall hold the title of War Chief. In the event of war he shall notify the five War Chiefs of the Confederacy and command them to prepare for war and have their men ready at the appointed time and place for engagement with the enemy of the Great Peace. (79)

Impeachment

A citizen may ask for correction of an official’s errant behavior:

If either a nephew or a niece see an irregularity in the performance of the functions of the Great Peace and its laws, in the Confederate Council or in the conferring of Lordship titles in an improper way, through their War Chief they may demand that such actions become subject to correction and that the matter conform to the ways prescribed by the laws of the Great Peace. (98)

… after which the case goes to the general council of women, then to the men:

This string of wampum vests the people with the right to correct their erring Lords. In case a part or all the Lords pursue a course not vouched for by the people and heed not the third warning of their women relatives, then the matter shall be taken to the General Council of the women of the Five Nations. If the Lords notified and warned three times fail to heed, then the case falls into the hands of the men of the Five Nations.

… who purge the official, one way or the other:

Should it happen that the Lords refuse to heed the third warning, then two courses are open: either the men may decide in their council to depose the Lord or Lords or to club them to death with war clubs.

…

Should the men in their council adopt the second course, the War Chief shall order his men to enter the council, to take positions beside the Lords, sitting between them wherever possible. [Then] the War Chief holding in his outstretched hand a bunch of black wampum strings shall say to the erring Lords: “So now, Lords of the Five United Nations, harken to these last words from your men. … Since you are determined to resist and to withhold justice from your people there is only one course for us to adopt.” At this point the War Chief shall let drop the bunch of black wampum and the men shall spring to their feet and club the erring Lords to death. Any erring Lord may submit before the War Chief lets fall the black wampum. Then his execution is withheld. (59)

The Onondaga leader gave John Hancock, the president of the Second Continental Congress, an Indian name — Great Tree. Illustration by John Kahionhes Fadden.

Sources

¹ ‘The Constitution of the Iroquois Confederacy’ as written by Arthur C. Parker, with introduction by Gerald Murphy

² ‘Exemplar of Liberty: Native America and the Evolution of Democracy’ By Donald A. Grinde, Jr., Rupert Costo Professor of American Indian History, University of California at Riverside, and Bruce E. Johansen, Associate Professor of Communication University of Nebraska at Omaha; Chapter 2

All along the Seaboard, Indian nations had formed confederacies by the time they encountered European immigrants, from the Seminoles in what is now Florida (Crevecouer called them “a federated republic”), to the Cherokees and Choctaws in the Carolinas, to the Iroquois and their allies, the Hurons in the Saint Lawrence Valley, and the Penacook federation of New England, among many others. Wallace found that “Ethnic confederacies were common among all the Indian tribes of the Northeast.

³ ibid, Chapter 8

In the midst of this debate on government and independence, twenty-one Iroquois Indians came to meet with the Continental Congress in May of 1776. At the Albany Conference of 1775, the Iroquois had expressed concern about the nature of the executive in the Continental Congress. For over a month, the Iroquois would observe the operations of the Continental Congress and its president, John Hancock, as they lodged on the second floor of the Pennsylvania State House (later called Independence Hall), just above the chambers of the Continental Congress. On May 27, 1776, Richard Henry Lee reported that the American army had a parade of two to three thousand men to impress the Iroquois with the strength of the United States. “4 tribes of the Six Nations” viewed the parade, and Lee hoped “to secure the friendship of these people.” Newspaper accounts stated that Generals Washington, Gates and Mifflin, “the Members of Congress . . . and . . . the Indians . . . on business with the Congress” reviewed the troops.

On June 11, 1776 while the question of independence was being debated, the visiting Iroquois chiefs were formally invited into the meeting hall of the Continental Congress. There a speech was delivered, in which they were addressed as “Brothers” and told of the delegates’ wish that the “friendship” between them would “continue as long as the sun shall shine” and the “waters run.” The speech also expressed the hope that the new Americans and the Iroquois act “as one people, and have but one heart.” After this speech, an Onondaga chief requested permission to give Hancock an Indian name. The Congress graciously consented, and so the president was renamed “Karanduawn, or the Great Tree.” With the Iroquois chiefs inside the halls of Congress on the eve of American Independence, the impact of Iroquois ideas on the founders is unmistakable. History is indebted to Charles Thomson, an adopted Delaware, whose knowledge of and respect for American Indians is reflected in the attention that he gave to this ceremony in the records of the Continental Congress.

On Saturday the 8th the ore boat Charles S. Price shoved off at Ashtabula, Ohio, into Lake Erie with a load of coal and without its first assistant engineer. Milton Smith had chosen to skip the last voyage of the 1913 season — and any early November gale that might arise — and had taken the train home to his wife and children in Port Huron, Michigan. After midnight on Sunday morning, as the Price steamed up the St. Clair River and past Smith’s house into Lake Huron, a gale was blowing in from the northwest. That afternoon sailors on the downbound (south-going) H.A. Hawgood saw the Price fighting its way upbound as it passed. The Hawgood had been heading into the storm north of Saginaw Bay, when it turned around to seek safety at the St. Clair River and let the gale blow itself out. But, instead of blowing out, the gale became the White Hurricane. By dark the snow “got so thick we couldn’t see the smokestack”, reported the Hawgood‘s captain. “The seas went right over the pilothouse.” Later, the Hawgood ran up on a beach at the southern end of the lake, and its crew survived. Likely the Price also turned and headed back toward the foot of Lake Huron, where it would have had to turn again to avoid running aground. On that final turn, the Price may have gotten caught sideways in a deep trough between the waves, and rolled. Its upturned hull floated for several days, and the papers speculated on the identity of “the mystery ship”, until a diver went down to read its name. On Tuesday the 11th, after the storm had quieted, seven bodies of sailors from the Price washed ashore in Ontario near Port Franks. On Thursday, a week and a day after leaving the Price, Milton Smith boarded the train in Sarnia, and headed for the makeshift morgue to identify the bodies of his shipmates.

Another ore boat upbound on Lake Huron that Sunday, when the White Hurricane raged, was the George C. Crawford. The boat fought the waves to north of Point Aux Barques with winds “blowing great guns”, according to Captain Walter C Iler. Waves rushed over the deck and boilerhouse through a broken skylight into the engine room, smashed the ship’s galley and drenched the crew’s sleeping rooms. So, like the captains of the Hawgood and the Price, Captain Iler decided to turn his boat around to seek calmer waters. While heading back down, Iler could make out the passing upbound ore boat Argus through the snow and waves. He later recalled what he saw just after the boat passed by. “The Argus seemed to crumple like an eggshell,” he said. “Then, she was gone.” Bearing that horrible image, the crew of the Crawford had to tend their boat as it ran fast with the wind and the mountainous waves towards the foot of Lake Huron. “It snowed for a solid twenty-six hours,” Iler later recalled. “We hadn’t seen a thing, but were guided by the sounding machine. It gave us excellent service.” Not being able to see to find the St. Clair River, Iler decided to turn around before running out of lake and ripping into the shoals. But the boat got stuck in a trough and could not climb out, so the captain ordered the anchors thrown. The anchors grabbed and the ship came around, but soon the anchor chains snapped, and once again the storm pushed the Crawford towards the shore. Around 2 A.M. Monday a lull in the wind allowed the boat to turn, and it once again battled upbound on its original course towards the Soo Locks. On Tuesday the battered boat reached the St. Marys River that leads to the Soo. In the calm, the crew wielded steam hoses to melt the thick ice off the deck, and found something stunning. Hundreds of rivets were missing, and cracks ran across several of the inch-thick steel deck plates. The crew might have pictured then how their own boat could have crumpled like the Argus. Records show that the Crawford did not finish its last voyage of 1913, but turned back to Toledo for repair. And in the spring of 1914 it set out again.

The Detroit News, November 13, 1913

the upturned bow of the 504 ft (154 m) Charles S. Price

Source: ‘White Hurricane: A Great Lakes November Gale and America’s Deadliest Maritime Disaster’ by David G. Brown, 2002, International Marine / McGraw-Hill

After the press of westward settlement, and the U.S. Army, drove out the Indians, the government fashioned a road through the Great Black Swamp to the land of milk and honey beyond. “A bank of muck and mud twenty feet wide and about three feet high was build mostly by Ox Power,” wrote a dweller, C. H. Opperman, of the Maumee and Western Reserve Road (now US 20)x⁵⁷. “Nearly all … who took the swamp route regretted their unwise decision, for many of them had ox teams to draw their high-wheeled covered wagons. Often the Oxen would sink to their bellys and the wheels to the hubbs and in many cases made only a mile or two of progress in a day.” So 31 inns rose to stand along the 31 miles of road and aid the slow moving pioneers⁵⁸. Some men would claim a mud hole and charge money to pull wagons out of it. One traveling pioneer spent his life savings of $100 on getting pulled out of mud holes. So he stopped and staked out his own mud hole, and made his money back before he carried on.

After settlers claimed the land around the Great Black Swamp, later settlers turned their sights inside it. “No night was too dark or precinct too sacred for [the mosquitoes] to get in their work,” wrote J. R. Tracy of living on the 80 acres his father bought on a sand ridge in the heart of the Great Black Swamp (where Bowling Green now stands)x⁵⁹. “Many a meal was eaten with a smudge under the table and many a would be sleeper owed what rest he secured to the smoke that overspread his bed and compelled his bloodthirsty assailants to retire.” The mosquitoes also brought malaria to swamp dwellers. Tracy described his bout with it: “If there is anything in this world that will stay by a fellow when it has found him it is the ague. My! How it will snuggle up to him, and hug him, and squeeze him, and shake him, and freeze him, and then bake him and fry him, until it would seem every drop of moisture is out of him …” After receding, the fever would sometimes return with double strength in a day or two: “And so the round went on, week by week, month by month, sometimes year by year (Brother Isaac was held two years, didn’t go to school or do a day’s work in that time).” Another swamp settler, Robert Fenton, also lived the hardship of malaria, as well as slow travel, dangerous animals, and the lack of a local mill to grind the grain⁶⁰. But he looked back on it like this: “We were happy, since we all were on about a common level and the exigencies of the situation made us alert, active and energetic. We had to be up and doing and we rather seemed to enjoy it.”

In 1840 the Great Black Swamp stood at its last years of full glory. From then on more settlers came in and cut down trees, and some dug ditches to drain water off their land – often on to their neighbor’s⁶¹. After a big outbreak of the waterborne disease cholera, the Ohio government in 1859 gave counties the power to seize land for more effective ditching. When farmers found that surface ditching left their land still too soggy, some tried underground drains of loose stone, or of pairs of planks nailed into a “V” and laid open end down. These underground drains did not work nearly as well as clay tile, but it was too costly to bring clay tile in. Then in the 1860’s, after someone discovered the bed of clay under the topsoil, many drainage tile factories arose. The factories’ kilns were fed by the swamp’s clay and fired by the swamp’s trees. And by 1900 the kilns’ product had drained and dried the Great Black Swamp. In its place lay fine farmland, with crops growing on a 10,000 year-old compost heap.

The Great Black Swamp (Maumee Valley Historical Society)

The Everglades (USGS)
The Everglades historic boundary is marked here by the yellow line. It includes the area of sheet water flow from Lake Okeechobee to the sea, and excludes some adjacent wetlands.

Black Swamp Conservation and Restoration Area
A 110 acre tract in Wood County, Ohio

Sources

⁵⁰ ‘Lost Ohio’ by Randy McNutt, 2006, Kent State University Press, P.114

⁵¹ ‘Wetlands – Did you know?’ – Ohio EPA

The Great Black Swamp was Ohio’s largest wetland. The swamp was once 120 miles long and about 40 miles wide. In 1859, the “ditch law” was passed to allow the installation of pipes to drain the swamp for agriculture and development. Today, only five percent remains in scattered areas throughout northwestern Ohio.

⁵² ‘Background of the Entire Everglades/Florida Bay Ecosystem’ – South Florida Water Management District

The present Everglades has been subdivided by the construction of canals, levees, roads and other facilities and has resulted in the loss of connections between the central Everglades and adjacent transitional wetlands. …

… the historical Everglades that once extended over an area approximately 40 miles wide by 100 miles long, from the south shore of Lake Okeechobee to the mangrove estuaries of Florida Bay.

⁵³ ‘The Great Black Swamp’ by Jim Mollenkopf

For thousands of years much of northwest Ohio lay covered by a vast, luxuriant swamp. According to early observers parts of it were watery meadows, veritable seas of living, moving green that would undulate beautifully in a summer breeze. Other parts of it were majestic and untouched forests, cathedralesque stands of oak, sycamore and hickory trees that soared skyward and blocked out the sun. Still other parts of it were thick, impenetrable brush and wild growth. Its thousands of square miles spread over all or parts of 12 counties stretching east to west from Sandusky, Ohio to near Fort Wayne, Indiana and north to south from the Maumee River valley to near Findlay, Ohio.

⁵⁴ ‘THE HISTORY OF LAKE ERIE’ by Michael C. Hansen

Fertile clays deposited on the lake bottom during high-water stages and the wetland areas that remained when lake levels dropped form one of the richest agricultural regions of the state. The beaches which formed along the shorelines of these higher lake stages are preserved as ridges elevated above the nearly flat former lake beds. …

…

The sandy beach deposits rising above the nearly flat lake plains, especially in the region called the Black Swamp, in northwestern Ohio, captured the attention of Native Americans and European explorers and settlers because the ridges provided dry passage through the swamps formed on the former lake beds.

⁵⁵ ‘Frontier Fauna – Ohio’s Wild Heritage’ – OHIO STATE PARKS MAGAZINE, FALL/WINTER 2005/2006

As Ohio’s frontier days came to a close, the impenetrable woods of the Great Black Swamp of northwest Ohio became a last refuge for elk, wolves and lynx. …

⁵⁶ ‘The Great Black Swamp II’ by Jim Mollenkopf, © 2000 Lake of the Cat Publishing, Toledo, Ohio, P.37

… For the Indian, “the Maumee River was a delightful homne and a secure retreat,” one unknown early writer recorded. “Its banks were studded with their villages, its rich bottomlands covered with their corn, while their light canoes glided over a beautiful current which was at once a convenient highway and an exhaustless reservoir of food. Forest, stream and prarie produced, spontaneously, and in superabundance, game fish, fruits, nuts, – all things necessary to supply their simple wants.”

⁵⁷ Ibid, P.114

⁵⁸ ‘The Great Black Swamp’ by Jim Mollenkopf, © 1999 Lake of the Cat Publishing, Toledo, Ohio, P.41

⁵⁹ ‘The Great Black Swamp II’ by Jim Mollenkopf, © 2000 Lake of the Cat Publishing, Toledo, Ohio, pp.49-52

⁶⁰ ‘The Great Black Swamp’ by Jim Mollenkopf, © 1999 Lake of the Cat Publishing, Toledo, Ohio, pp.24-25

⁶¹ ‘The Great Black Swamp II’ by Jim Mollenkopf, © 2000 Lake of the Cat Publishing, Toledo, Ohio, pp.59-62