The Oneida Indians joined the Mohawks, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas about 1550 to form the Five Nations, or Iroquois Confederacy, in the legendary Great Peace made by the Indian statesmen Hiawatha and Dekanawidah. Called the People of the Standing Stone from an upright rock at their meeting place, the Oneidas had their principal settlement south of Oneida Lake. In 1722, the Tuscaroras came from North Carolina, settled west of the Oneidas, and became the sixth Iroquois nation. Living along the Mohawk River trade route and near the source of the Susquehanna River, the Oneidas were hunters, traders, and farmers. Influenced by their missionary Samuel Kirkland, the Oneidas sided with the Americans during the Revolution while others of the Confederacy aided the British. Some of their lands were opened for settlement by the Fort Stanwix Treaty of 1768, and later more Oneida land was ceded to the state. Early in the nineteenth century, turnpikes built through this region provided a principal route westward, followed by the Erie Canal in 1825, and later by railroads and improved highways; the fertile bottom land came to be intensively cultivated for large-scale truck farming.