France, Britain and America all saw the advantages in using Indian forces against their enemies. The Iroquois were superb fighters and they lent their skills to all sides. Of the Six Nations, the most feared were the Kanien’kehá:ka – the Mohawk – the Keepers of the Eastern Door and the first nation to join the Rotinonshón:ni. They supported the British against the French in a series of inter-colonial wars and aided them against the Americans in both the Revolution and the War of 1812.

But after the wars, when the guns fell silent, as has happened so many times over the course of history, the indigenous population and their contribution to the struggle for control of their continent were ignored.

By 1800, after a succession of disastrous treaties and through liberal use of bribery, deception, intimidation and force, Iroquois lands, which had once stretched for more than a thousand miles, covering tens of millions of acres, were reduced in size to a few small reservations in New York State. Home villages were abandoned when their inhabitants moved to new settlements in Canada. Since then, the ownership of the lands they vacated has always been in contention.

In 1974, Mohawk from the Kahnawá:ke Reserve in Canada and the Ahkwesáhsne Reservation, which lies close to the St Lawrence River in New York State, occupied an abandoned 612-acre girl-scout camp at Moss Lake, in the western Adirondacks and declared the re-establishment of the Independent North American Indian State of Kanièn:keh – also called Ganienkeh – on their traditional homeland.

After three years, the occupation ended. In 1977, after nearly 200 sessions of negotiation, the people of Kanièn:keh reached an agreement with the New York State authorities that saw the Mohawk leave their settlement at Moss Lake and move to a new site on Miner Lake, near Altona, New York.

The founding of Kanièn:keh was that rare instance where a native people took back their land from a colonial power. Today, Kanièn:keh claims that it has the right to exist as a sovereign entity under international law and functions under the original Kaianere’kó:wa – The Iroquois Confederacy’s Great Law of Peace – without interference from either the United States or Canada.

For many years, historians claimed that the democratic ideals of the Kaianere’kó:wa served as inspiration to Benjamin Franklin and James Madison and the others who framed the United States Constitution.

Their faith was rewarded. In October 1988, the US Congress passed Concurrent Resolution 331 recognizing the influence of the Iroquois Constitution upon both the American Constitution and the US Bill of Rights.