The Iroquois call themselves the ""Haudenosaunee"", which means "People of the Longhouse," or more accurately, "They Are Building a Long House." They believe that the Great Peacemaker came up with the name when the League was formed. It means that the nations of the League should live together as families in the same longhouse. Symbolically, the Mohawk guarded the eastern door, as they lived in the east closest to the Hudson River. The Seneca guarded the western door of the "tribal longhouse", the land they controlled in New York. The Onondaga, who lived in the center of Haudenosaunee territory, were keepers of the League's (both literal and figurative) central flame. 