Indigenous peoples lived along both sides of the Saint Lawrence River for thousands of years. The first people known to have encountered the Europeans in the area were the St. Lawrence Iroquoians, a group distinct from and preceding the Iroquois nations of the "Haudenosaunee," based further to the south. While the explorer Cartier recorded about 200 words in their Laurentian language and the names of two villages, the people had disappeared from the area by the late 16th century. Anthropologists believe they may have been driven out or defeated by the powerful Mohawk people of the Iroquois Confederacy (Haudenosaunee), who by then reserved the Saint Lawrence Valley as a hunting ground.