An ethnographic and historical study of how five Iroquoian tribes united under a constitutional confederacy designed to maintain peace and justice through collective authority and kinship-based governance. The account outlines matrilineal descent, the deliberate separation of civil institutions from military influence, and the founders’ aim to admit other peoples as confederates rather than subjects. It situates the confederacy within a landscape of neighboring polities, contrasts tribal regimentation with territorial state formation, and explains the league’s constitutional principles and social units using historical tradition and comparative analysis.