In the 1700s and before, the Mohawk people, a section of Iroquois Confederacy, were based in the Mohawk Valley, which included the area around the creek. Their territory ranged north to the St. Lawrence River, southern Quebec and eastern Ontario; south to greater New Jersey and into Pennsylvania; eastward to the Green Mountains of Vermont; and westward to the border with the Iroquoian Oneida Nation's traditional homeland territory.