Only twice, according to this narrative, did the federal government redeem itself: firstly during the Indian New Deal from 1933 to 1945, and secondly in the final decades of the century when Congress belatedly attempted to redress some Native American grievances. There is a lot of truth in this summary, but it is also simplistic. The federal government of the United States has three branches of government: the legislature, executive, and judiciary, as established in the United States Constitution. When the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution, they wanted to make sure that their new government would not have any of the problems that the colonial British government did. When a group of people or nations form an alliance, it is called a confederation, allowing each member to govern itself but agreeing to work together for common causes.