The Seneca are a group of Indigenous Iroquoian-speaking people who historically lived south of Lake Ontario, one of the five Great Lakes in North America. Their nation was the farthest to the west within the Six Nations or Iroquois League (Haudenosaunee) in New York before the American Revolution. For this reason, they are called “The Keepers of the Western Door.”
Seneca Chief Cornplanter Portrait by F. Bartoli, 1796
Seneca woman Ah-Weh-Eyu (Pretty Flower), 1908.
The Fate of Jane Wells. A non-combatant woman killed during the Cherry Valley Massacre.
Seneca people message stick, inviting tribes to Six Nations dance, received in 1905. Exhibit from the Native American Collection, Peabody Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts
The Iroquois, also known as the Five Nations, and later as the Six Nations from 1722 onwards; alternatively referred to by the endonym Haudenosaunee are an Iroquoian-speaking confederacy of 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, while the English simply called them the "Five Nations". The peoples of the Iroquois included the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca. After 1722, the Iroquoian-speaking Tuscarora people from the southeast were accepted into the confederacy, from which point it was known as the "Six Nations".
Photo of an Iroquois woman in 1898.
Engraving based on a drawing by Champlain of his 1609 voyage. It depicts a battle between Iroquois and Algonquian tribes near Lake Champlain, with interference by the colonialists.
Iroquois conquests 1638–1711
The four "Mohawk Kings" who travelled to London in 1710.