St. Lawrence Iroquoians

The St. Lawrence Iroquoians were a prehistoric First Nations/Native American indigenous people who lived from the 14th century until about 1580 concentrated along the shores of the St. Lawrence River in present-day Quebec and Ontario, Canada, and New York State, United States, although their territory extended east. They spoke Laurentian languages, a branch of the Iroquoian family. They were believed to have numbered up to 120,000 people in 25 nations. The traditional view is that they disappeared because of late 16th century warfare by the Mohawk nation of the Haudenosaunee, who wanted to control fur trade in the valley. But other possibilities, including climate change and exposure to European diseases, may have been equally important.

Knowledge about the St. Lawrence Iroquoians has been constructed from the studies of surviving oral accounts of the historical past from the current Native people, writings of the French explorer Jacques Cartier, earlier histories, and anthropologists' and other scholars' work with archeological and linguistic studies since the 1950s. Archeological evidence has established this was a people distinct from the other regional Iroquoian peoples, the Five Nations of the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat (Huron). Recent archeological finds suggest distinctly separate groups may have existed among the St. Lawrence Iroquoians as well.