The basic structure of the US government was not a foreign concept to the English colonists. It was preceded by the United Colonies of New England in the 1600s, for example, which established an intercolonial government over Massachusetts, Plymouth, New Haven, and Connecticut. This was before the first thorough English-language description of the Iroquois political system (Colden's History of the Five Indian Nations) was published in 1727. And of course, there were European precedents, from the Roman senate to the English parliament, that would have been familiar to the educated colonists that formed the bulk of the Revolutionary elite.

While the US doesn't seem to have borrowed anything directly from the Iroquois system that it couldn't have also acquired from its European predecessors, the two didn't exist in a vacuum. If there is a link, the strongest connection can be made through Benjamin Franklin. We know Franklin was familiar with Colden's book, as he reprinted it in the mid-1700s and encouraged its sale in Philadelphia bookshops. He also printed and distributed the English-Iroquios negotiations during the Treaty of Lancaster in 1744, during which the Onondaga diplomat Canasatego famously recommended that the colonies unite as body:

We have one Thing further to say, and that is, We heartily recommend Union and a good Agreement between our Brethren. Never disagree, but preserve a strict Friendship for one another, and thereby you, as well as we, will become stronger.

Our wise Forefathers established Union and Amity between the Five Nations; this has made us formidable; this has given us great Weight and Authority with our neighbouring Nations.

We are a powerful Confederacy; and, by your observing the same Methods our wise Forefathers have taken, you will acquire fresh Strength and Power; therefore whatever befalls you, never fall out one with another.

Franklin seems to have taken this advice to heart. In 1751, he wrote back to James Parker, a New York-based printer who had previously sent him a pamphlet written by Archibald Kennedy that argued for a unified colonial administration for dealing with Indian affairs and for mutual defense. In his letter to Parker, Franklin said, "It would be a very strange thing if Six Nations of Ignorant Savages should be capable of forming a Scheme for such an Union and be able to execute it in such a manner, as that it has subsisted Ages, and appears indissoluble, and yet a like union should be impracticable for ten or a dozen English colonies."

In 1754, Franklin and Kennedy worked together on a proposal to unite the colonies. They built on Kennedy's original plan and included additional features like a intercolonial legislative body. The proposal was accepted by the Albany Congress, which had met to discuss how the colonies should respond to the French threat (the French and Indian War was just beginning). The plan was rejected by the colonial legislature however, and any hope of uniting the colonies would be dormant for another generation. Kennedy returned to Scotland in 1770, but Franklin and others of the prior generation remained influence Revolutionary sentiments.