FIVE NATIONS • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Five Nations

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/faɪv nˈeɪʃənz/ Listen

noun

Nation n.

(Ethnol.) A part, or division, of the people of the earth, distinguished from the rest by common descent, language, or institutions; a race; a stock. "All nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues."

The body of inhabitants of a country, united under an independent government of their own. "A nation is the unity of a people." "Praise the power that hath made and preserved us a nation."

Family; lineage. (Obs.)

(a)

One of the divisions of university students in a classification according to nativity, formerly common in Europe.

(b)

(Scotch Universities) One of the four divisions (named from the parts of Scotland) in which students were classified according to their nativity.

A great number; a great deal; by way of emphasis; as, a nation of herbs.

Five nations. See under Five.

Law of nations. See International law, under International, and Law.

Synonyms: people; race. See People.

adjective

Five adj. Four and one added; one more than four.

Five nations (Ethnol.), a confederacy of the Huron-Iroquois Indians, consisting of five tribes: Mohawks, Onondagas, Cayugas, Oneidas, and Senecas. They inhabited the region which is now the State of new York.

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Etymology of 'Five Nations'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Five nations" Quotes from Famous Books

... consisted of five nations, but afterward embraced six, by the addition of the Tuscaroras, a tribe that once occupied the territory of ...

— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard

... of the Susquehanna; the Miamis, Shawnees, and others in the western wilderness; the Ottawas in Canada; and all the tribes still left to the northeast of New England. Thirdly, there were the Iroquois, of whom the most famous were the Five Nations of what is now central New York. These five great tribes—the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas—had for several generations been united in a confederacy which they likened to a long wigwam with its eastern door looking out upon the ...

— The War of Independence • John Fiske

... chapters I have passed in review the hero-myths of five nations widely asunder in location, in culture and in language. I have shown the strange similarity in their accounts of their mysterious early benefactor and teacher, and their still more strange, because true, presentiments of the arrival of pale-faced ...

— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton

... reading, if it were only for his account of the Indians. Perhaps the very strangest thing about them, and the most unaccountable, is their small numbers. The Iroquois were one of the most formidable of tribes. They were of the Five Nations, whose scalping-parties wandered over an expanse of thousands of square miles. Yet there is good reason to doubt whether the whole five nations could have put as many thousand warriors in the field. It ...

— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle

... the Indians were slain in battle, others were driven from fort to fort. But not for two years were they thoroughly subdued. Then at length, finding themselves no match for the white men, those who were left fled from the province and joined the Five Nations in New York, making from this time ...

— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall