The Mohawk people (who identify as Kanien'kehá:ka) are the most easterly tribe of the Haudenosaunee, or Iroquois Confederacy. The name means "People of the Flint Place." They are an Iroquoian-speaking indigenous people of North America. The Mohawk were historically based in the Mohawk Valley in present-day upstate New York west of the Hudson River; their territory ranged north to the St. Lawrence River, southern Quebec and eastern Ontario; south to greater New Jersey and into Pennsylvania; eastward to the Green Mountains of Vermont; and westward to the border with the Iroquoian Oneida Nation's traditional homeland territory. As one of the five original members of the Iroquois League, the Mohawk were known as the Keepers of the Eastern Door. For hundreds of years, they guarded the Iroquois