The League of the Haudenosaunee (also called the Iroquois Confederacy) was a union of five Iroquoian language groups formed sometime between 1350 and 1600. It is believed by members to have been created by a man named Hiawatha, an Onondaga Indian raised by the Mohawks, and Dekanahwideh, a Huron. Probably as a result of effects from the Little Ice Age, Indians in the northeastern woodlands experienced a period of enormous subsistence pressure leading to serious and prolonged warfare. Under Hiawatha’s and Dekanahwideh’s influence, the Mohawks...