The Haudenosaunee Confederacy ( HOH-din-oh-SHOH-nee; lit. 'those who build the longhouse'), also known as the Iroquois ( IRR-ə-kwoy, -kwah), are a confederacy of Iroquoian-speaking Native Americans and First Nations peoples in northeast North America. They were known by the French during the colonial years as the Iroquois League, and later as the Iroquois Confederacy. They have also been called the Six Nations (Five Nations before 1722).
Their country has been called Iroquoia and Haudenosauneega in English, and Iroquoisie in French. The peoples of the Haudenosaunee included (from east to west) the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca. After 1722, the Iroquoian-speaking Tuscarora people migrated from the southeast and were accepted into the confederacy, henceforth known as "Six Nations".
The Confederacy was likely formed between 1142 and 1660, but there is little agreement on the date. At its peak around 1700, Haudenosaunee power extended from what is today New York State, north into present-day Ontario and Quebec along the lower Great Lakes–upper St. Lawrence, and south on both sides of the Allegheny mountains into present-day Virginia and Kentucky and into the Ohio Valley.
In 2010, more than 45,000 enrolled Six Nations people lived in Canada, and over 81,000 in the United States.
Haudenosaunee (People of the Longhouse) is the autonym by which the Six Nations refer to themselves. Iroquois is a term of colonial origin which some scholars consider a derogatory name adopted from the traditional enemies of the Haudenosaunee. A less common, older autonym for the confederation is Ongweh’onweh (Original People).
Haudenosaunee derives from two phonetically similar but etymologically distinct words in the Seneca language: Hodínöhšö꞉ni꞉h, meaning "those of the extended house", and Hodínöhsö꞉ni꞉h, meaning "house builders". The name "Haudenosaunee" first appears in English in Lewis Henry Morgan's work (1851), where he writes it as Ho-dé-no-sau-nee. The spelling "Hotinnonsionni" is also attested from later in the 19th century. An alternative designation, Ganonsyoni, is occasionally encountered as well, from the Mohawk kanǫhsyǫ́·ni "the extended house", or from a cognate expression in a related Iroquoian language; in earlier sources it is variously spelled "Kanosoni", "akwanoschioni", "Aquanuschioni", "Cannassoone", "Canossoone", "Ke-nunctioni", or "Konossioni". More transparently, the Haudenosaunee confederacy is often referred to as the Six Nations (or, for the period before the entry of the Tuscarora in 1722, the Five Nations). The word is Rotinonshón꞉ni in the Mohawk language.
The origins of the name Iroquois are somewhat obscure, although the term has historically been used in French texts, according to the Haudenosaunee Conferedacy. Its first written appearance as "Irocois" is in Samuel de Champlain's account of his journey to Tadoussac in 1603. Other early French spellings include "Erocoise", "Hiroquois", "Hyroquoise", "Irecoies", "Iriquois", "Iroquaes", "Irroquois", and "Yroquois", pronounced at the time as [irokwe] or [irokwɛ]. Competing theories have been proposed for this term's origin, but none has gained widespread acceptance. In 1978 Ives Goddard wrote: "No such form is attested in any Indian language as a name for any Iroquoian group, and the ultimate origin and meaning of the name are unknown."
Jesuit priest and missionary Pierre François Xavier de Charlevoix wrote in 1744:
The name Iroquois is purely French, and is formed from the [Iroquoian-language] term Hiro or Hero, which means I have said—with which these Indians close all their addresses, as the Latins did of old with their dixi—and of Koué, which is a cry sometimes of sadness, when it is prolonged, and sometimes of joy, when it is pronounced shorter.
In 1883, Horatio Hale wrote that Charlevoix's etymology was dubious. Hale suggested instead that the term came from Huron, and was cognate with the Mohawk ierokwa "they who smoke", or Cayuga iakwai "a bear". In 1888, J. N. B. Hewitt expressed doubts that either of those words existed in the respective languages. He preferred the etymology from Montagnais irin "true, real" and ako "snake", plus the French -ois suffix. Later he revised this to Algonquin Iriⁿakhoiw as the origin.
A more modern etymology was advocated by Gordon M. Day in 1968, elaborating upon Charles Arnaud from 1880. Arnaud had claimed that the word came from Montagnais irnokué, meaning "terrible man", via the reduced form irokue. Day proposed a hypothetical Montagnais phrase irno kwédač, meaning "a man, an Iroquois", as the origin of this term. For the first element irno, Day cites cognates from other attested Montagnais dialects: irinou, iriniȣ, and ilnu; and for the second element kwédač, he suggests a relation to kouetakiou, kȣetat-chiȣin, and goéṭètjg – names used by neighboring Algonquian tribes to refer to the Haudenosaunee, Huron, and Laurentian peoples.
The Gale Encyclopedia of Multicultural America attests the origin of Iroquois to Iroqu, Algonquian for "rattlesnake". The French encountered the Algonquian-speaking tribes first, and would have learned the Algonquian names for their Haudenosaunee competitors.
The Haudenosaunee Confederacy is believed to have been founded by the Great Peacemaker at an unknown date estimated between 1450 and 1660, bringing together five distinct nations in the southern Great Lakes area into "The Great League of Peace". Other research based on astronomical events dates the founding to 1142. Each nation in confederacy had a distinct Iroquoian language, territory, and function in the League.
The League is embodied in its Grand Council, an assembly of fifty chiefs, each representing a clan of a nation.
When Europeans first arrived in North America, the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois League to the French, Five Nations to the British) were based in what is now central and west New York State including the Finger Lakes region, occupying large areas north to the St. Lawrence River, east to Montreal and the Hudson River, and south into what is today northwestern Pennsylvania. At its peak around 1700, Haudenosaunee power extended from what is today New York State, north into present-day Ontario and Quebec along the lower Great Lakes–upper St. Lawrence, and south on both sides of the Allegheny Mountains into present-day Virginia and Kentucky and into the Ohio Valley. From east to west, the League was composed of the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca nations. In about 1722, the Iroquoian-speaking Tuscarora joined the League, having migrated northwards from the Carolinas after a bloody conflict with white settlers. A shared cultural background with the Five Nations of the Haudenosaunee (and a sponsorship from the Oneida) led to acceptance of the Tuscarora as the sixth nation in the confederacy in 1722; the Haudenosaunee become known afterwards as the Six Nations. Note that until 1707, treaties were between the "Five Nations" and "England", but after 1722 they were between the "Six Nations" and "Britain", as both entities had new names due to political unions.
There were many other independent Iroquoian-speaking peoples outside the Haudenosaunee League. The Erie, Susquehannock, and Wyandot (Huron), lived at various times along the St. Lawrence River and around the Great Lakes, often competing and warring with neighboring nations of the League. In the American Southeast, the Cherokee were another Iroquoian-language people who had migrated to that area centuries before European contact.
French, Dutch, and English colonists, both in New France (Canada) and the Thirteen Colonies, recognized a need to gain favor with the Haudenosaunee, who occupied a significant portion of lands west of the colonial settlements. Their first relations were for fur trading, which became highly lucrative for both sides. The colonists also sought to establish friendly relations to secure their settlement borders.
For nearly 200 years, the Haudenosaunee were a powerful factor in North American colonial policy. Alliance with the Haudenosaunee offered political and strategic advantages to the European powers, with the Haudenosaunee often holding the balance of power between the French and British Empires. Some of their people settled in mission villages along the St. Lawrence River, becoming more closely tied to the French. While they participated in French-led raids on Dutch and English colonial settlements, where some Mohawk and other Haudenosaunee settled, in general the Haudenosaunee resisted attacking their own peoples.