A league of Iroquois tribes including originally the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca (the Five Nations); after 1722 they were joined by the Tuscarora (the Six Nations)
The rights of the Six Nations to all this territory were purchased at Albany, New York, by the Susquehanna Company in 1754, but the work of colonization was delayed for a time by the Seven Years' War.
In the meantime the Six Nations (in 1768) had repudiated their sale of the region to the Susquehanna Company and had sold it to the Penns; the Penns had erected here the manors of Stoke and Sunbury, the government of Pennsylvania had commissioned Charles Stewart, Amos Ogden and others to lay out these manors, and they had arrived and taken possession of the block-house and huts at Mill Creek in January 1769.
In October-November 1768, Sir William Johnson and representatives of Virginia and Pennsylvania met 3200 Indians of the Six Nations here and made a treaty with them, under which, for 10,460 in money and provisions, they surrendered to the crown their claims to what is now Kentucky and West Virginia and the western part of Pennsylvania.
At the fort, on the 22nd of October 1784, a treaty was made by Oliver Wolcott, Richard Butler and Arthur Lee, commissioners for the United States, with the chiefs of the Six Nations.
In 1746 he was made commissary of the province for Indian affairs, and was influential in enlisting and equipping the Six Nations for participation in the warfare with French Canada, two years later (1748) being placed in command of a line of outposts on the New York frontier.