The Iroquois nation is composed of some of the most important Native American tribes that we have known throughout history. The Iroquois nation consisted of five different tribes that inhabited the northeast of the United States, mainly in the area of Upstate New York, where there are actually five counties named after the five tribes of the Iroquoian nation. The five tribes of the great Iroquois nation consisted of the Seneca Indians, Mohawk Indians, Cayuga Indians, Oneida Indians, and the Onondaga Indians. They say before the Revolutionary War there were around 20,000 native American people among these five nations. One of the most interesting things about the Iroquois history is seeing how organized the government they assembled was, and for a people that many believe to be very primitive, they were actually quite advanced. Their government was ruled by three different Indian chiefs, and they also had many other prominent and intelligent men serving as tribal and federal councils, and these councils were consulted before a new chief would take over in a position of power. Studying Iroquois history can help many people see how advanced these Native American people were three hundred years ago.
As the Iroquois history went on and European settlers began to arrive the great Iroquois nation started to get tore apart and many of the tribes started moving to other areas of the country, and there were also many tribes that went into Canada. In modern times there is an estimated 70,000 Native Americans that have bloodlines of the Iroquois Indian tribes, and there are many Iroquois reservations in a few different states including New York, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, and a few more north of the border in Canada. The numbers of Iroquois Indians are actually at an all time high in the great Iroquois history. Some of the Iroquois tribes were also known to be very violent and all of them were always willing to go to war to defend their land, which they had to do many times throughout history. In addition, the British enlisted the aid of some Iroquois to fight against the colonists during the Revolutionary War. As settlers moved in they brought diseases that killed off many Native American people and then slowly their lands were taken over but a large influx of European settlers.