look at their history is needed.
The Oneida are a Native American tribe belonging linguistically to the Iroquoian family and forming part of the Iroquois Confederacy. The name by which the tribe is known is a corruption of a Native American word meaning ôstanding rock,ö referring to a boulder sacred to the tribe situated near the site of their ancient village on Lake Oneida, New York. Their territory included the region surrounding the lake and later extended south to the Susquehanna River. The tribe was friendly toward the French colonists and Jesuit missionaries, although most members of the confederacy were hostile to the outsiders. During the American Revolution the Oneida sided with the colonists and were obliged to take refuge within the American settlements when their fellow tribes took the side of the British. After the war most of the Oneida returned to Canada and settled in the region of the Thames River, Ontario, where their descendants still remain Campis and Hauptman 33-37).
Between 1820 and 1835, most of the Oneida who had returned to their homes in New York State sold their land and moved to a reservation near Green Bay, Wisconsin. The Oneida now number about 3500 (Hauptman 24).
The Iroquois as a whole were an important confederacy of Native Americans of the Iroquoian language family and of the Eastern Woodlands culture area founded in the 16th century in what is now central New York State. The original confederacy consisted of five tribes û the Mohawk, Onondaga, Cayuga, Oneida, and Seneca û and was known as the Five Nations, or the League of Five Nations. Sometime between 1715 and 1722, however, the Tuscaroras, an Iroquoian tribe originally of North Carolina, which had migrated to New York, was formally admitted to the confederacy, and the name of the league was changed to the Six Nations, or the League of Six Nations (Hauptman 12).
The Iroquois had an agricultural economy, based mainly on corn, with supp...