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This is an account of the five tribes - Onandagas, Senecas, Mohawks, Oneidas and Cayugas - who together made up the Iriquois nation, from their origins in prehistory to their dispersal and confinement after the American Revolution. At the time of the first post-Viking contacts with Europeans, the League of the Iriquois, founded by Hiawatha at the end of the 16th century, were the most powerful of the north-east Native American peoples, and had either destroyed, absorbed or reduced to client status all the tribes around them. The series of mutual misunderstandings between the Iriquois and the French, the English and the new Americans - and their tragic and still evident consequences - have acted to obscure the true nature of Iriquois culture and society both before and after the European invasion. This account draws on a range of archaeological and historical evidence to provide a narrative interpretation of the Iroquois.