The Iroquois were initially a federation of five tribes - Cayuga, Mohawk, Seneca, Oneida and Onondoga, later increased to six by the Tuscarora, the latter a tribe that was forced northward from Carolina by white immigrants. At their greatest extent the Iroquois controlled an area from what is now western Massachusetts west to Ohio, from Southern Canada to North Kentucky.

At the Treaty of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1744, between the Government of Virginia and the Six Nations, the commissioners from Virginia informed the Indians of a college at Williamsburg which had a fund for the education of Indian youth; and that if the Chiefs of the Iroquois would send half a dozen of their sons to that college, the Government would take care that they would be well provided for, and instructed in all the learning of the white people. The following is the Indian spokesman’s reply.

‘We know that you highly esteem the kind of learning taught in those colleges, and that the maintenance of our young men, while with you, would be very expensive to you. We are convinced, therefore, that you mean to do us good by your proposal and we thank you heartily.

‘But you, who are wise, must know that different nations have different conceptions of things; and you will not therefore take it amiss, if our ideas of this kind of education happen not to be the same as yours. We have had some experience of it; several of our young people were formerly brought up at the colleges of the northern provinces; they were instructed in all your sciences; but, when they came back to us, they were bad runners, ignorant of every means of living in the woods, unable to bear either cold or hunger, knew neither how to build a cabin, take a deer, nor kill an enemy, spoke our language imperfectly, were therefore neither fit for hunters, warriors, nor counsellors; they were totally fit for nothing.

‘We are however not the less obligated by your kind offer, though we decline accepting it, and to show our grateful sense of it, if the gentlemen of Virginia will send us a dozen of their sons, we will take care of their education, instruct them in all we know, and make men of them.’