Tuscarora

The Iroquois

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The Iroquois traditionally lived in what is now upstate New York, subsisting on wild plant foods, game, and fish from the area's fertile forests and teeming waterways, along with corn, beans, and squash. Long ago the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca tribes formed the League of the Five Nations. Despite its ideal of cooperation, the League was fearsome in war as it attempted to extend its rule. In the 16th century, the League challenged other Indian groups for access to European traders and their goods, siding first with the French, then with the Dutch and English.

Author:

Barbara Graymont

The First Peoples of New York

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Traveling back to the time before European explorers colonized New York, many Native American tribes roamed the forests and rivers of this resource-rich land. Tribes within the Iroquois League and Algonquian-speaking groups each had their own cultures and ways of living off the land—and each had their own inventive ways of using New York's abundant resources to survive and thrive. This book examines the earliest occupants of what is now New York State and how the arrival of European explorers greatly changed their way of life.