The Mohawks were the largest group in the Iroquois confederacy of Native American tribes in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Living in what is now upstate New York and along the Canadian border, they held political control over north-eastern America before the colonial period, and were one of the first native American groups to have contact with European explorers. First published in 1938, this work contains a history of the Mohawks and the Iroquois confederacy from the period 1704 to 1807 taken from the archives of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, founded in 1704 and at first active mainly in North America. J. W. Lydekker provides a detailed history of the Mohawks' co-operation and alliance with the British colonists during the wars of the mid-eighteenth century and during the Revolutionary War, seen from the perspective of the missionaries from the Society.