In the late 17th century, large numbers of Iroquois were converted to Roman Catholicism by French Jesuits, and as a result, many Catholic Iroquois chose to settle at Kanesatake and Kahnawake outside of Montréal, where they were intended by the French to serve as a buffer to protect Montréal, the center of the French fur trade. Historians call the Catholic Iroquois living outside of Montréal the Canadian Iroquois while the Iroquois who remained in Kanienkeh ("the Land of the Flint", the Iroquois name for their historical homeland in what is now upstate New York) are known as the League Iroquois. Today, the descendants of the Canadian Iroquois are called the Seven Nations of Canada. The Canadian Iroquois considered the French to be their allies, not their superiors, with the "Onontio" (the Iroquois term for the governor-general of New France) who represented the "Great "Onontio"" (the King of France) merely an especially important ally whose ways were somewhat strange and had to be constantly humored in order to obtain the European goods that the Iroquois valued so much. As the French did not know the part of Kanienkeh where the Oneida Carrying Place was located very well, they needed the assistance of the Canadian Iroquois to guide them there. Vaudreuil considered destroying the warehouses at the Oneida Carrying Place so important that though he did not want a war with the League Iroquois, he ordered Léry to attack the League Iroquois if any of them objected to the French being in Kanienkeh. From the French viewpoint, it was better to keep the League Iroquois neutral rather than having them fight on the side of British, which was especially the case as the League Iroquois and Canadian Iroquois had a notable reluctance to fight one another.