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Originally Posted by Soldier of Truth
On the radio program "Native America Calling" Hill said the Iroquois document also presented to framers of the U.S. Constitution the concept of a two-house legislature and a combined government structure of state jurisdictions and a national government.
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The British Parliament had been divided into two houses, the House of Commons and the House of Lords, since the reign of King Edward III (1312-1377).
I think it's exceedingly more likely that the framers of the Constitution drew their notions for a bicameral legislature from the English example, and from the examples of the various colonial/State legislatures, some of which were bicameral.
Do we even know if the Iroquois had a "congress" or "legislature", to say nothing of whether it was bicameral?
As far as a national government presiding over regional state governments (or perhaps vice versa, as Constitutionalists would prefer it), this too is a very common "design pattern" in governmental structure. It was used in the Holy Roman Empire, where an Imperial Diet (and Holy Roman Emperor) presided over local/regional principalities (ruled by princes) and other smaller suzeranities. This structure of the Holy Roman Empire is cited in the Federalist Papers. Many other examples of similar, multi-tiered government structures can be found in European and Middle Eastern history, both ancient and more recent.
Whether the Iroquois had such a division of responsibility in their govenrment, I don't know. But if they did, it could either have arisen through (a) prior contact between the Old and New Worlds; or (b) through the natural evolution of archetypes and "design patterns" common in all human thought, whether European, Middle East or Iroquois.
But I don't think you can seriously say that the framers of the Constitution drew inspiration for these ideas from the Iroquois. Maybe they had some contact w/ the Iroquois, and maybe those tribes did practice such policies, and maybe that re-inforced the framers thinking along these lines, but European (and Middle Eastern) history presents plenty of thinking along the same lines. Enough so to say that it's a stretch to say that the Iroquois were the direct inspiration for modern American government.