Haudenosaunee

The late sixteenth century confederation of five (later six) tribes into the Haudenosaunee League in upstate New York created the most dominant native force in the northeast United States and eastern Canada. At the height of their empire in the late seventeenth century, they held sway over lands stretching from the Chesapeake Bay to the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers, and from Kentucky to Ontario. They are remarkable for many achievements, including their political system of checks and balances. The central law of its confederacy was to never war with each other. Against enemies, however, they usually presented a united political and military front . The Haudenosaunee population had boomed following the adoption of agriculture in the fourteenth century, and they settled in villages of distinctive wood-framed and bark-covered longhouses. The first Europeans they encountered were the French, fighting against them in support of other tribes along the St. Lawrence. The Haudenosaunee in turn traded for weapons with the Dutch of New Amsterdam. A series of wars followed, mostly over the fur trade. The Haudenosaunee were often in the middle when France and Britain engaged in their periodic wars. By the later eighteenth century the Haudenosaunee were being pressured by English settlers moving west from the coast and down the Ohio River Valley. When the American Revolution broke out in 1776, the Haudenosaunee tried to remain neutral, but the league finally splintered and tribes fought on both sides. In 1779 George Washington sent three columns into Haudenosaunee territory, burning forty villages, and driving most of them into Canada. The millions of acres the Haudenosaunee once held in New York were reduced to a few small reservations, which they still hold today.

From the game's History encyclopedia.