When the founders of the United States designed the Constitution, they were learning from history that democracy was likely to fail – to find someone who would fool the people into giving him complete power and then end the democracy.
They designed checks and balances to guard against the accumulation of power they had found when studying ancient Greece and Rome. But there were others in North America who had also seen the dangers of certain types of government and had designed their own checks and balances to guard against tyranny: the Native Americans.
