There is nothing more colorful in the North American Indian history than the story of the League of the Iroquois. These five (and later six) tribes or nations were welded into a powerful confederacy about 1570 under founder and lawgiver Hiawatha. The Iroquois tribes had been weakened by continuous intertribal wars and conflict with the Algonquin, so the league was formed for the double purpose of acquiring strength and establishing and enforcing peace. The tribes that formed the League expected all other nations to acknowledge the League's supremacy and join it beneath the symbolic peace tree.