The Iroquois

After years of infighting, the Iroquois, a group of separate tribal peoples who lived in the Northeast and Carolina regions of the eastern United States and were united by similar languages and cultures, decided to create a sophisticated political and social system to help govern their people. The five original tribes -- the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca -- created the Iroquois Confederacy more than five hundred years ago and were later joined by the Tuscarora, an Iroquoian-speaking people from North Carolina. The confederacy stretched from the Hudson River in the east, north to the St. Lawrence, River, and west to the Genesee River. The people of the Six Nations, as they were known, called themselves Haudenosaunee, which loosely translates as "people of the longhouse." Book jacket.