The Susquehanna River valley known as Onaquaga was inhabited more than 400 years ago, appeared on a 1614 Dutch map as Ogehage, and became an important Oneida crossroads village and trading center on the southern edge of the Iroquois world, strategically placed between the Susquehanna and Delaware rivers. By the 18th century its population included primarily Oneidas, later joined by Tuscaroras and others from the Six Nations, while traders such as Sir William Johnson and missionaries from New England made it a significant colonial contact point; the long-running mission established in 1753 by Rev. Gideon Hawley, with Rebecca Kellogg Ashley as interpreter, became the only permanent mission among the Iroquois, and leaders such as Good Peter emerged there before the American Revolution. After the 1768 Fort Stanwix Treaty Line left Onaquaga on Oneida land but nearly enclosed by frontier settlements, the village became a center of border warfare during the Revolution, especially as Mohawks displaced by the treaty gathered there and Joseph Brant used it as a British-aligned base for raids. In 1778, while Brant and his warriors were away, Colonel William Butler's force entered Onaquaga without resistance, burned the town and nearby settlements, and destroyed its houses, crops, orchards, and livestock; the loss helped turn the frontier conflict toward harsher retaliation and preceded the wider devastation of Iroquois towns by the 1779 Sullivan-Clinton Expedition. After the war, despite Good Peter's effort in 1785 to preserve his people's homeland, New York purchased the lands west of the Fort Stanwix Line and the remaining Indians were forced to leave, after which settlers from Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania established Old Oquaga settlements along the river. These early communities, including those founded by John Lamphere, John Doolittle, David Hotchkiss, and Robert Harpur, became the earliest recorded settlements in what would become Broome County, where pioneers endured severe hardship, floods, and famine while transforming the valley into a new American frontier.