Cayuga people in the context of "Ithaca, New York"

The Beaver Wars (Mohawk: Tsianì kayonkwere, pronounced [d͡ʒanî gajũgwere]), also known as the Iroquois Wars or the French and Iroquois Wars (French: Guerres franco-iroquoises), were a series of conflicts fought intermittently during the 17th century in North America throughout the Saint Lawrence River valley in Canada and the Great Lakes region which pitted the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) against the Wendat, northern Algonquians and their French allies. As a result of this conflict, the Iroquois destroyed several confederacies and tribes through warfare: the Wendat or Hurons, Erie, Neutral, Wenro, Petun, Susquehannock, Mohican and northern Algonquins whom they defeated and dispersed, some fleeing to neighbouring peoples and others assimilated, routed, or killed.

The Iroquois sought to expand their territory to monopolize the fur trade with European markets. They originally were a confederacy of the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca tribes inhabiting the lands in what is now Upstate New York along the shores of Lake Ontario east to Lake Champlain and Lake George on the Hudson River, and the lower-estuary of the Saint Lawrence River. The Iroquois Confederation led by the Mohawks mobilized against the largely Algonquian-speaking tribes and Iroquoian-speaking Wendat (Huron) and related tribes of the Great Lakes region. The Iroquois were supplied with arms by their Dutch and English trading partners; the Algonquians and Wendat were backed by the French, their chief trading partner.

The Iroquois (/ˈɪrəkwɔɪ, -kwɑː/ IRR-ə-kwoy, -⁠kwah), also known as the Haudenosaunee Confederacy (/ˌhoʊdɪnoʊˈʃoʊni/ HOH-din-oh-SHOH-nee; lit. 'people who are building the longhouse'), are an Iroquoian-speaking confederacy of Native Americans and First Nations peoples in northeast North America. They were known by the French during the colonial years as the Iroquois League, and later as the Iroquois Confederacy. They have also been called the Six Nations (Five Nations before 1722).

Their country has been called Iroquoia and Haudenosauneega in English, and Iroquoisie in French. The peoples of the Iroquois included (from east to west) the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca. After 1722, the Iroquoian-speaking Tuscarora people from the southeast were accepted into the confederacy, from which point it was known as the "Six Nations".

Cayuga County is a county in the U.S. state of New York. As of the 2020 census, the population was 76,248. Its county seat and largest city is Auburn. The county was named for the Cayuga people, one of the Native American tribes in the Iroquois Confederation. The county is part of the Central New York region of the state.

Cayuga County comprises the Auburn, NY Micropolitan Statistical Area, which is also included in the Syracuse-Auburn, NY Combined Statistical Area.

In 1749, the Sulpician missionary, Abbé Francois Picquet, built a fort where the Oswegatchie River empties into the St. Lawrence River (present-day Ogdensburg, New York). He invited the Iroquois to come to Fort de La Présentation to learn about Catholicism. To settle at La Présentation, families had to agree to live monogamously, convert to Catholicism, give up alcohol and swear allegiance to France. By 1751, 396 Haudenosaunee families, largely Onondaga with some Oneida and Cayuga, had settled in the area between Toniato Creek (now known as Jones Creek, in Thousand Islands National Park) and the Long Sault. They came to be called the Oswegatchie. This was one of the Seven Nations of Canada.

While never allowed as a separate tribal member of the Iroquois Confederation, the Oswegatchie were considered "nephews" because of their members' family ties to the Six Nations. When the Seven Years' War broke out between France and England, the Oswegatchie fought with the French on numerous raids in the Ohio, Champlain and Mohawk valleys, where they attacked British colonists.