Seneca
/ˈsɛnɪkə
/noun (plural same or Senecas)
1A member of an American Indian people that was one of the five nations comprising the original Iroquois confederacy.French sources do mention Ohioan Senecas, but the company consisted mainly of Indians long allied with France....
- Cusick's text implicitly adopts or could be used to support the anti-removal position of the Seneca and other Iroquois nations.
- Tales of the Lakota, the Cherokee, the Inuit and the Seneca, all laid out right at the foot of the Capitol.
2 [mass noun] The Iroquoian language of the Seneca, now with few speakers.The Cherokee language belongs to the Iroquoian family of languages and is therefore related to Mohawk, Seneca, Onondaga, Oneida, Cayuga, and Tuscarora, among others....
- Father also spoke Seneca and Cayuga, but he preferred Onondaga, the language of his father and of our longhouse.
- Mrs Asher Wright, who spoke Seneca perfectly, and who labored as a missionary among them for fifty years, recorded two Seneca myths as they had been related to her by Esquire Johnson, an old Seneca chief.
adjective
Relating to the Seneca or their language.The treaty established the sovereign relationship between the federal government and the Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca nations....
- The Oneida language belongs to the Iroquoian language family, which also includes the Mohawk, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca tongues.
- While the relationship has been strained at times, the treaty remains unbroken and in effect and was used as recently as 1995 by a federal judge to uphold the sovereignty of the Seneca nation.
Origin
Via Dutch from Algonquian.