Kanien'kehaka

The Kanien’kehaka, known to Europeans as the Mohawk, were an Iroquoian people of the Mohawk Valley. They cultivated corn, beans and squash, traced descent through mothers, and guarded the eastern door of the Haudenosaunee league.

In 1609 Champlain joined a Wendat party that fired on them near Lake Champlain. The Dutch supplied firearms for furs; the Mohawk defeated the Mohicans in 1628 and dominated regional trade. Most sided with Britain under Joseph Brant in the American Revolution; after Sullivan’s expedition destroyed their towns in 1779, survivors settled on the Grand River and elsewhere.