Iroquois Confederacy, self-name Haudenosaunee (“People of the Longhouse”), also called Iroquois League, Five Nations, or (from 1722) Six Nations, confederation of five (later six) Indian tribes across upper New York state that during the 17th and 18th centuries played a strategic role in the struggle between the French and British for mastery of North America. The five original Iroquois nations were the Mohawk (self-name: Kanien’kehá:ka [“People of the Flint”]), Oneida (self-name: Onᐱyoteʔa∙ká [“People of the Standing Stone”]), Onondaga (self-name: Onoñda’gega’ [“People of the Hills”]), Cayuga (self-name: Gayogo̱hó:nǫ’ [“People of the Great Swamp”]), and Seneca (self-name: Onödowa’ga:’ [“People of the Great Hill”]). After the Tuscarora (self-name: Skarù∙ręʔ [“People of the Shirt”]) joined in 1722, the confederacy became known to the English as the Six Nations and was recognized as such at Albany, New York (1722). Often characterized as one of the world’s oldest participatory democracies, the confederacy has persisted into the 21st century.

Iroquois Confederacy Map of the initial nations of the Iroquois Confederacy, from History of the Five Indian Nations Depending on the Province of New-York, by Cadwallader Colden, 1755. Library of Congress, Rare Book Division, Washington, D.C.

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The Peacemaker story of Iroquois tradition credits the formation of the confederacy, between 1570 and 1600, to Dekanawidah (the Peacemaker), born a Huron, who is said to have persuaded Hiawatha, an Onondaga living among Mohawks, to advance “peace, civil authority, righteousness, and the great law” as sanctions for confederation. Cemented mainly by their desire to stand together against invasion, the tribes united in a common council composed of clan and village chiefs; each tribe had one vote, and unanimity was required for decisions. Under the Great Law of Peace (Gayanesshagowa), the joint jurisdiction of 50 peace chiefs, known as sachems, or hodiyahnehsonh, embraced all civil affairs at the intertribal level.

Iroquois Confederacy Leaders from five Iroquois nations (Cayuga, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, and Seneca) assembled around Dekanawidah c. 1570, French engraving, early 18th century. From Second Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1880-1881, edited by J.W. Powell, 1883

The Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) Confederacy differed from other American Indian confederacies in the northeastern woodlands primarily in being better organized, more consciously defined, and more effective. The Iroquois used elaborately ritualized systems for choosing leaders and making important decisions. They persuaded colonial governments to use these rituals in their joint negotiations, and they fostered a tradition of political sagacity based on ceremonial sanction rather than on the occasional outstanding individual leader. Because the league lacked administrative control, the nations did not always act in unison, but spectacular successes in warfare compensated for this and were possible because of security at home.

During the formative period of the confederacy about 1600, the Five Nations remained concentrated in what is now central and upper New York state, barely holding their own with the neighbouring Huron and Mohican (Mahican), who were supplied with guns through their trade with the Dutch. By 1628, however, the Mohawk had emerged from their secluded woodlands to defeat the Mohican and lay the Hudson River valley tribes and New England tribes under tribute for goods and wampum. The Mohawk traded beaver pelts to the English and Dutch in exchange for firearms, and the resulting depletion of local beaver populations drove the confederacy members to wage war against far-flung tribal enemies in order to procure more supplies of beaver. In the years from 1648 to 1656, the confederacy turned west and dispersed the Huron, Tionontati, Neutral, and Erie tribes. The Andaste succumbed to the confederacy in 1675, and then various eastern Siouan allies of the Andaste were attacked. By the 1750s most of the tribes of the Piedmont had been subdued, incorporated, or destroyed by the league.

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The Iroquois also came into conflict with the French in the later 17th century. The French were allies of their enemies, the Algonquins and Hurons, and after the Iroquois had destroyed the Huron confederacy in 1648–50, they launched devastating raids on New France for the next decade and a half. They were then temporarily checked by successive French expeditions against them in 1666 and 1687, but, after the latter attack, led by the marquis de Denonville, the Iroquois once again carried the fight into the heart of French territory, wiping out Lachine, near Montreal, in 1689. These wars were finally ended by a series of successful campaigns by New France’s governor, the comte de Frontenac, against the Iroquois in 1693–96.

For a century and a quarter before the American Revolution, the Iroquois stood athwart the path from Albany to the Great Lakes, keeping the route from permanent settlement by the French and containing the Dutch and the English. In the 18th century the Six Nations remained consistent and bitter enemies of the French, who were allied with their traditional foes. The Iroquois became dependent on the British in Albany for European goods (which were cheaper there than in Montreal), and thus Albany was never attacked. The Iroquois’ success in maintaining their autonomy vis-à-vis both the French and English was a remarkable achievement for an aboriginal people that could field only 2,200 men from a total population of scarcely 12,000.

During the American Revolution, a schism developed among the Iroquois. The Oneida and Tuscarora espoused the American cause, while the rest of the league, led by Chief Joseph Brant’s Mohawk loyalists, fought for the British out of Niagara, decimating several isolated American settlements. The fields, orchards, and granaries, as well as the morale, of the Iroquois were destroyed in 1779 when U.S. Maj. Gen. John Sullivan led a retaliatory expedition of 4,000 Americans against them, defeating them near present-day Elmira, New York. The confederacy acknowledged defeat in the Second Treaty of Fort Stanwix (1784). In a treaty that was made at Canandaigua, New York, 10 years later, the Iroquois and the United States each pledged not to disturb the other in lands that had been relinquished or reserved. Of the Six Nations, the Onondaga, Seneca, and Tuscarora, as well as some Oneida, remained in New York, eventually settling on reservations, the Mohawk and Cayuga withdrew to Canada, and, a generation later, a large group of the Oneida departed for Wisconsin, with still others settling in Ontario, Canada.