The union of the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga,…

The union of the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, and Mohawk peoples is known as the Iroquois League. (Some historians of North American native culture, who suggest that the confederacy was probably formed by the early sixteenth century, view its formation as a defensive response to warfare with neighboring Huron and other Algonquian-speaking tribes.)

The League’s Five Nations are Iroquoian speakers, occupying a territory comprising present New York's Mohawk Valley and Finger Lakes region, bordered on the north by Lake Ontario and the Adirondacks and on the south by the Catskills and what today approximates the New York-Pennsylvania state line.

According to Iroquois legend, Deganawidah, a leader of divine status, had persuaded the Five Nations to give up intertribal warfare, marked by blood feud and cannibalism.

The Mohawk prophet Hiawatha, Deganawidah's earthly spokesman, had doggedly traveled among the five tribes in an attempt to unify them.

His persistence had succeeded, and the tribes had united in what has proven to be a nearly invulnerable political alliance.

The dates he lived are not fixed, but after the Mohawk joined the union, the Seneca nation debated joining the union and there is a tradition of a solar eclipse happening.

The most likely eclipse for this event was in 1142 AD, which actually fell over the land of the Seneca.

Carbon dating of sites of habitation of the Onondaga shows dates starting close to 1200AD ± 60 years.

Sporadic warfare and raiding against tribes outside the league afford opportunities for young Iroquois warriors to earn prestige and honor.

Initially, conquest and the gaining of economic and political advantages are of secondary importance.

The league is patterned after existing family, clan, and community organizations; its aim is not only to unite its members through symbolic kinship relationships but also to maintain the autonomy of individual tribal members.

An Onondaga site, centrally located, had been chosen as the meeting place for the league’s annual Grand Council, which consists of fifty life-appointed male sachems, or peace chiefs, who are nominated by the headwoman of certain sachem-producing lineages in each clan.

The Onondaga have fourteen sachems, the Cayuga ten, the Oneida and Mohawk nine each, and the Seneca eight.

The Onondaga are designated "keepers of the fire" and "wampum keepers," thus becoming the unofficial capital and the national archives of the league.

After lengthy ratification procedures, the council members had become responsible for keeping the internal peace, representing the body of tribes to outsiders, and coordinating tribal activities in unified warfare against nonmembers.

The league, a highly democratic political organization, arrives at major decisions through unanimity, compensating for otherwise unequal tribal representation.

An individual sachem can be deposed through impeachment proceedings initiated by his lineage's headwoman.