Iroquois Finger Lakes region, and upstate New York along the St. Lawrence River area downstream to today's Montreal. French, Dutch and British colonists in both New France (Canada) and the what became the Thirteen Colonies recognized a need to gain favor with the Iroquois people, who occupied a significant portion of lands west of colonial settlements. Their first relations with them were for fur trading, which was favorable and became lucrative to both sides. The colonists also sought to establish positive relations to secure their settlement borders. For nearly 200 years the Iroquois were a powerful factor in North American colonial
Cherokee word for Cherokee. Many theories, though none proven, abound about the origin of the name "Cherokee". It may have originally been derived from the Choctaw word "Cha-la-kee", which means "people who live in the mountains", or Choctaw "Chi-luk-ik-bi", meaning "people who live in the cave country". The earliest Spanish transliteration of the name, from 1755, is recorded as "Tchalaquei". Another theory is that "Cherokee" derives from a Lower Creek word "Cvlakke" ("chuh-log-gee"). The Iroquois Five Nations based in New York have historically called the Cherokee "Oyata'ge'ronoñ" ("inhabitants of the cave country").Also the word Cherokee means “people of different speech.” Anthropologists