The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European Colonization

Richter examines a wide range of primary documents to survey the responses of the peoples of the Iroquois League — the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, Senecas, and Tuscaroras — to the challenges of the European colonialization of North America. He demonstrates that by the early eighteenth century a series of creative adaptations in politics and diplomacy allowed the peoples of the Longhouse to preserve their cultural autonomy in a land now dominated by foreign powers.