Iroquois

Iroquois
Haudenosaunee

Regions with significant populations
Languages
Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, Tuscarora, English, French
Religion
Longhouse Religion; Christianity; others

The Iroquois (pronounced /ˈɪrəkwɔɪ/), also known as the Haudenosaunee or the "People of the Longhouse",^[1] are a group of tribes of indigenous people of North America. After the people who spoke Iroquoian came together as different tribes, which were mostly in what is now central and upstate New York, in the 16th century or earlier they came together in an group known today as the Iroquois League, or the "League of Peace and Power". The first Iroquois League was often known as the Five Nations, as it was made up of the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca. After the Tuscarora nation joined the League in 1722, the Iroquois became known as the Six Nations. To this day, fifty sachems who represent different clans of the Iroquois meet at the Grand Council^[2] near Syracuse, New York.

When Europeans first arrived in North America, the Iroquois lived in what is now the northeastern United States, mostly in what is today upstate New York, west of the Hudson River and through the Finger Lakes region.^[3] Today, the Iroquois live mostly in New York and Canada.

The Iroquois League has also been called the Iroquois Confederacy. Some modern scholars now think the League and the Confederacy are different.^[4][5][6] According to this belief, the term "Iroquois League" stands for the ceremonies and culture found in the Grand Council, while the term "Iroquois Confederacy" stands for what was the spread out political and diplomatic group that was made after Europeans began colonizing America. The League still exists. The Confederacy broke up after the defeat of the British and allied Iroquois nations in the American Revolutionary War.^[4]

1. ↑ Haudenosaunee is pronounced /hɔːdɛnəˈʃɔːniː/ in English, Akunęhsyę̀niˀ in Tuscarora (Rudes, B., Tuscarora English Dictionary, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), and Rotinonsionni in Mohawk.
2. ↑ Encyclopedia of the Haudenosaunee pg.135. Greenwood Publishing Group. 2000. ISBN 9780313308802. Retrieved 2010-04-02.
3. ↑ "First Nations Culture Areas Index". the Canadian Museum of Civilization.
4. ↑ ^{4.0 4.1} Richter, "Ordeals of the Longhouse", in Richter and Merrill, eds., Beyond the Covenant Chain, 11–12.
5. ↑ Fenton, Great Law and the Longhouse, 4–5.
6. ↑ Shannon, Iroquois Diplomacy, 72–73.