The Iroquois ( or ), also known as the Haudenosaunee , are a historically powerful and important northeast Native American confederacy. They were known during the colonial years to the French as the "Iroquois League," and later as the "Iroquois Confederacy," and to the English as the "Five Nations" (before 1722), and later as the "Six Nations", comprising the Mohawk, Onondaga, Oneida, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora peoples.