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This article deals with the role of the Native Americans as authors and actors of American federalism. It first questions the theory according to which the League of the Iroquois influenced the authors of the US Constitution and served as a model of democracy for the Young Republic. However, if Native Americans were not the “authors” of the American democracy, they were nevertheless “actors” in the establishment and consolidation of federal power, because they played a major role in the legitimacy claimed by the first federal government. The presence of American Indians on the continent thus enabled the federal government to assert its superiority over the States. Indigenous nations have therefore transformed a monolithic notion of sovereignty into a plural and diversified notion