Cayuga

Cayuga, Native Americans of the Iroquoian language family and of the Northeast culture area, and one of the original tribes of the Iroquois Confederacy, or League of Six Nations. Their ancestral homeland was on the shores of Cayuga Lake in central New York. The native word for the Cayuga people, Guyohkohnyoh, has been translated in various ways, including “people of the great swamp.”

Like other Iroquois (or Haudenosaunee), the Cayuga practiced farming in addition to hunting and gathering. Their most important crops were corn, beans, and squash. They had villages of communal longhouses, typically placed near water and surrounded by palisades (sharpened wooden posts stuck upright in the ground) for fortification.

Situated between the Seneca to the west and the Onondaga to the east, the Cayuga controlled the smallest expanse of territory of the Six Nations. Their hunting territory extended north to Lake Ontario and south to the Susquehanna River. Like the Mohawk, Onondaga, and Seneca, they sided with the British in the American Revolution (1775-1783), opposing the Oneida and Tuscarora for the first time in centuries. During and after the conflict many tribal members moved to Canada. Some Cayuga were absorbed into other Iroquois tribes following the American victory.

Today, the largest number of Cayuga live on the Six Nations Reserve on the Grand River in Ontario. Other Cayuga live in western New York on ancestral Seneca lands. The Seneca-Cayuga Tribe of Oklahoma has federal trust lands in Ottawa County, Oklahoma.