They consisted of the tribes or, as their allies were fond of asserting, in order to raise their consequence, of the several nations of the Mohawks, the Oneidas, the
Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas; who ranked, in the confederation in the order in which they are named.
"Them careless imps, the Mohawks, with their Tuscarora and
Onondaga brethren, have been here slaking their thirst," he muttered, "and the vagabonds have thrown away the gourd!
The story of man's involvement with the lake begins with the Onondagas, one of the six nations of the Iroquois Confederacy of upstate New York.
In 1654, the Onondagas revealed the location of natural salt brine springs to a French missionary, Father Simon LeMoyne.
Attracted by Onondaga Lake's clean, clear water and the beauty of its shores, entrepreneurs opened a number of lakeside resorts in the mid to late 1800s.
Hofstra begins by recalling a violent skirmish in 1742 on the Virginia frontier between white settlers and a group of Oneidas and
Onondagas traveling from their homelands in New York to the Carolinas.
The Cayugas moved to Canada, Wisconsin, and Ohio; the Mohawks to Canada: the Oneidas now live on a small reservation in New York, although some field to Canada, some to the West; some of the Onondagas removed to Canada and others to the West, but most of them remained in New York; and the Senecas now reside on three small reservations in New York.
About 1570 the Mohawk, Onondaga, Oneida, Cayuga, and Seneca Indians formed a confederacy to abolish war among themselves--but not to prevent them from making war on others.
The
Onondagas had some interesting myths, but their most important literary memorial is the so-called
Onondaga Book, translated by Horatio Hale in the Iroquois Book of Rites (1883).
The approved I-81 route directs trucks to travel south through Jefferson and Oswego counties to Onondaga County, where drivers would be required to use the Interstate 481 bypass to avoid Syracuse.
Leaders of the Onondaga Nation were informed several years ago by federal officials that the nuclear waste shipments could cross through their territory as the trucks travel south of Syracuse on Interstate 81.
One way I've come to visualize the Occupation is to imagine the indigenous
Onondaga Nation here in
Onondaga County (NY), a Nation that white settlers long ago reduced to a fraction of its former territory.