Trade competition led to ongoing conflict between the Iroquois and Algonquians. In hopes of ending intertribal conflict, the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas established the Iroquois League (later known as the Iroquois Confederacy), or the Great League of Peace between 1100 and 1400 CE. During this time period, the Iroquoians met for about a year to devise a solution to this cyclic pattern of violence and retribution between tribes.
The Iroquois League devised a system in which each member group could maintain a level of autonomy over local affairs, but the League would unite over trade policies and diplomacy issues. The Iroquois League put forth republican principles, and a dual system of federalism, or balancing local and national powers, for the first time in North America. Therefore, many historians argue that the Iroquois League was the first American democracy, established at least four hundred years earlier than the US Constitution of 1787.
The later Iroquois Confederacy would play a key part in the English and French struggle over North America.