Fifty Chiefs and a Rule for Balancing Power

Under the Great Law of Peace, authority at the confederacy level rests with fifty peace chiefs, called sachems or hoyaneh, whose combined council handles civil affairs that cross the boundaries of any one member nation, while each nation continues to govern its own internal affairs separately. Titles are held for life but are not simply inherited by choice: clan mothers hold the recognized right to select, and if necessary to remove, the man who holds a given chief's title, which ties the male civil leadership structurally to female clan authority rather than separating the two. Decisions at the confederacy council are worked toward by consensus among the represented nations rather than decided by simple majority vote, a deliberately slow process intended to prevent any single nation from being outvoted and coerced by the others. The Great Law's balance of shared authority and preserved local self-government has drawn particular attention because Benjamin Franklin is documented to have taken a close interest in the confederacy's structure while colonial leaders were debating how thirteen separate colonies might unite, though historians continue to debate how much direct influence the Haudenosaunee model had on the eventual United States Constitution as opposed to simply demonstrating that federated union among separate polities was achievable.