The Iroquois or Haudenosaunee are a historically powerful northeast Native American confederacy in North America. They were known during the colonial years to the French as the Iroquois League, and later as the Iroquois Confederacy, and to the English as the Five Nations, comprising the Mohawk, Onondaga, Oneida, Cayuga, and Seneca. After 1722, they accepted the Tuscarora people from the Southeast into their confederacy, as they were also Iroquoian-speaking, and became known as the Six Nations
The Iroquois originally lived near Lake Ontario and along the Mohawk River in New York State. Around 1600, five tribes -- the Mohawks, the Oneidas, the Onondagas, the Cayugas, and the Senecas -- banded together to form a confederacy
