I R O Q U OIS c PEOPLES of NORTH AMERICA Introduction Still viewed today as one of America’s most beautiful regions northern New York was home a thousand years ago to five Indian nations that hunted in its rolling hills fished in its c many rivers and lakes and farmed its fertile soil This environment of the eastern woodlands provided food and shelter for the Oneida Onondaga Seneca Mohawk and Cayuga Known in historic times as the Iroquois those five nations and later a sixth the Tuscarora came to play an important role in the history of what would become the United States The Haudenosaunee as the Iroquois call themselves are often re ferred to as the People of the LONGHOUSE This name was given to them to show how important their dwellings were to their culture The ancestors of the Iroquois spread across northern New York as early as a d 1000 They developed a culture that revolved around farming Within two centuries of their first contact with Europeans the Iroquois became embroiled in wars between European powers and were fighting to hold on to their ancestral lands By the end of the American Revolution in 1783 the Iroquois like many Indian na tions found themselves directly in the path of persistent westward moving settlers As time went on and their lands were gradually overtaken the Iroquois struggled to maintain their culture Their story is one of the most fascinating in all of American history The Mohawk lived near Heart Lake close to the town of Lake Placid in the Adirondacks 6
I R O Q U OIS P E O P L E S of N O R T H A M E R I C A From East to West A rchaeological discoveries and Iroquois oral history traditions show that the Iroquois culture originated in the area around the St Lawrence River Lake Simcoe in Ontario and the Susquehanna River By a d 1000 the ancestors of today’s Iroquois were growing corn in New York Six hundred years later historians believe there were approxi mately 15,000 Iroquois living in the eastern woodlands From the 1500s to 1722 when the Tuscarora joined the Iroquois Confederacy the Haudenosaunee were arranged from west to east across northern New York The Mohawk were on the easternmost end and the Seneca were westernmost with the Oneida Onondaga and Cayuga spread out between Each nation had its own customs and language and each exer cised control over its respective area Referred to as the Keepers of the Western Door the Seneca were likely the most numerous tribe of Haudenosaunee and occupied villages between the Genesee River and Canandaigua Lake Thanks to military campaigns that extended their reach to present-day northwestern Pennsylvania the Seneca were powerful but often faced opposition from another local tribe the Huron They and every other nation requiring materials for making tools traded A Mohawk leader who was grandfather to Joseph Brant was an early friend of the British in the 1700s 9
