St. Lawrence Iroquoians

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The St. Lawrence Iroquoians were an Iroquoian Indigenous people who existed until about the late 16th century. They concentrated along the shores of the St. Lawrence River in present-day Quebec and Ontario, Canada, and in the American states of New York and northernmost Vermont. They spoke Laurentian languages, a branch of the Iroquoian family.

The Pointe-à-Callière Museum estimated their numbers as 120,000 people in 25 nations occupying an area of 230,000 square kilometres (89,000 sq mi).^[1] However, many scholars believe that estimate of the number of St. Lawrence Iroquoians and the area they controlled is too expansive. The current archaeological evidence indicates that the largest known village had a population of about 1,000 and their total population was 8,000–10,000.^[2] The traditional view is that they disappeared because of late 16th-century warfare by the Mohawk nation of the Haudenosaunee or Iroquois League, which wanted to control trade with Europeans in the valley.^[3]

Knowledge about the St. Lawrence Iroquoians has been constructed from the studies of surviving oral accounts of the historical past from the current Native people, writings of the French explorer Jacques Cartier, earlier histories, and anthropologists' and other scholars' work with archaeological and linguistic studies since the 1950s.^[4]

Archaeological evidence has established that the St. Lawrence Iroquoians were a people distinct from the other regional Iroquoian peoples, the Five Nations of the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat (Huron). However, recent archaeological finds suggest distinctly separate groups may have existed among the St. Lawrence Iroquoians as well. The name "St Lawrence Iroquoians" refers to a geographic area in which the inhabitants shared some cultural traits, including a common language, but were not politically united.

The name of the country of Canada is probably derived from the Iroquoian word kanata, which means village or settlement.^[5]