Quote Originally Posted by kagemusha
Thanks Aenlic. Is this how you English speaking people spell it?Because i took my spelling from Finish written page.And what is the seventh Nation?
It's the Anglicized version of the word. I believe the word is originally an Onondaga word which as someone pointed out means "People Building a Long House" ; but the languages of the various tribes are really all just dialects of the same root language. As for the 7 nations, I meant 6. It's a typo that I missed. Ignore it. They were originally the 5 nations of the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas with the later addition of the Tuscarora.

There are some alternate spellings of Hodenosaunee. You'll see it sometimes spelled as Haudenosaunee and Hodeneshonee. But I'm reasonably certain that the main line spelling is Hodenosaunee or Haudenosaunee.

Some scholars have dated the advent of the 5 Nations to the 12th century, giving a date of 1142 as the year in which the Seneca were the last tribe to adopt the treaty. That would make the 5 Nations (and later the 6) the oldest existing democracy in the world, far outstripping the U.S. for the record.