Onondowaga

The Onondowaga, or Great Hill People, called Seneca by English colonists, were the westernmost founding nation of the Haudenosaunee, or Iroquois Confederacy, known as Keepers of the Western Door. Their homeland lay between the Genesee River and Canandaigua Lake. Oral tradition dates their entry into the confederacy to about 1142 through an eclipse.

They fought the Beaver Wars and in 1675 crushed the Andaste, or Susquehannock, absorbing the survivors. In 1687 a French army under the Marquis de Denonville destroyed their largest town, Ganondagan, after which the Seneca leaned toward the British Covenant Chain.

Most Seneca followed the British in the Revolution, and the Sullivan Expedition of 1779 burned their towns and winter stores. The Treaty of Canandaigua of 1794 let them keep lands in western New York, where the prophet Handsome Lake taught his religious code.