Graeber / Wengrow 486: "The exact time and circumstance of the League of Five Nations' creation is unclear; dates have been proposed ranging from AD 1142 to sometime around 1650"
the Five Nations pose an ongoing threat to French settlements in the Americas, and in 1687 the Marquis de Denonville invites the League council to a peace negotiation, and arrests the 200 delegates who arrive ("including all the permanent officers of the confederation," 491) and "shipped them off to France to serve as galley slaves"
the Jogonsaseh, Mother of Nations, who did not attent the meeting, became the highest-ranking League official; "she and the remaining clan mothers formed an army" (consisting at least partly of Seneca women)
"After routing the invading French troops near Victor, New York, her forces were at the point of entering Montreal when the French government sued for peac, agreeing to dismantle Fort Niagara and return the surviving galley slaves"
only a "dozen or so, out of the original 200, [...] made it back alive" -- perhaps unsurprisingly, they returned "highly critical of French institutions"