The Six Nations (the Haudenosaunee, whom the French and English called the Iroquois) held a union of self-governing nations together for centuries without a king. Their Grand Council had fifty seats fixed by its founding law. Clan mothers chose and could remove the men who held them, and nothing was decided until all three benches agreed. The colonists lived beside that union for generations, heard its speakers urge them to imitate it, and bought those speeches in small books