The Five Nations (Haudenosaunee) originally known as the Iroquois League is presently based in upstate New York. Originally, the League consists of the nations of Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca. In 1722, the transition to what is called the Six Nations came to being when Tuscarora joined. According to history, the Five Nations started as distinct tribes by the middle of the 15th century. Each nation occupies a distinct territory and performs a different task. Iroquois influence and earlier domination ranges from Canada, to the Great Lakes and from Allegheny Mountains to Virginia and Kentucky. To live harmoniously with each other, the people from each nation came together and formed the Iroquois League which means Nations of Peace and Power as per their language. Would this change prove to be affluent or detrimental to the future of the Iroquois people?
The League also known as the confederacy was known to have been established before contact with Europeans (Tooker, 1978) and its influence through alliances with other Indians, stretched east to west from New England to the great lakes, with Canada and south of Georgia. Strategically located in New York between French Canada and the English colonies along the river routes from north and west, the Iroquois have been reduced in number by a series of epidemics in the seventeenth century (Tooker, 1978).
Iroquois settlements consisted of groups of 30 to 150 longhouses containing related families and their relatives by marriage (Tooker, 1978). Ranging in size from
