The Iroquois (Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Kayugas, and Senekas) dominated much of what is now New York State, and from the mountain country of the Adirondaks and Catskills descended on the St.Lawrence valley and the shores of Lakes Ontario and Huron to rob and massacre.
[Footnote 21: Huron was a French name given to the westernmost group of the Iroquois family (see p.

159).

The Huron group included the Waiandots, the Eries or Erigas, the Arendaronons, and the Atiwandoronk or "neutral" nation.

The French sometimes called all these Huron tribes "the good Iroquois".

Iroquois was probably pronounced "Irokwa", and seems to have been derived from a word like Irokosia, the name of the Adirondack mountain country.] [Footnote 22: The confederacy was founded about 1450 by the great Hiawatha (of Longfellow's Poem), himself an Onondaga from south of Lake Ontario, but backed by the Mohawks only, in the beginning of his work.] The route into the enemy's country lay along the Richelieu River and across Lake Champlain to its southern end, in sight of the majestic snow-crowned Adirondak Mountains.