Haudenosaunee

The Haudenosaunee, also known as the Iroquois Confederacy or Six Nations, are a group of northeastern Indigenous nations, originally the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca, joined later by the Tuscarora, united under the Great Law of Peace into one of the oldest continuously operating participatory governments in the world, traditionally dated to sometime between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries CE. Haudenosaunee territory spanned present-day upstate New York and adjacent Ontario and Quebec, and the confederacy played a major diplomatic and military role in the colonial contest between Britain and France before the American Revolution split its member nations between opposing sides. The Haudenosaunee's matrilineal clan system and the Three Sisters companion planting of corn, beans and squash remain central to its enduring cultural legacy.