From Frontier to Border Along the Iroquois Southern Door

The Upper Susquehanna drainage in New York assumed increasingly greater prominence as a borderland during the eighteenth century. Contrary to the idea that geopolitical boundaries were Colonial impositions, the creation of this borderland ensued from long-term strategies on the part of Native American as well as Euro-American powers. Reacting to Colonial encroachments from south and east, the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) populated the valley with multi-ethnic towns consisting of both refugee tribes from the Atlantic seaboard and Iroquois representatives. These actions created a distinctive zone of creolized communities, and reflected the Haudenosaunee ability to play off English notions of demarcating the landscape.