The Seneca know as the "Great Hill People" are a group of indigenous Iroquoian-speaking people native to North America who historically lived south of Lake Ontario. Their nation was the farthest to the west within the Six Nations or Iroquois League (Haudenosaunee) in New York before the American Revolution. The Seneca traditionally lived in what is now New York state between the Genesee River and Canandaigua Lake. The dating of an oral tradition mentioning a solar eclipse yields 1142 AD as the year for the Seneca joining the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee). Some recent archaeological evidence indicates their territory eventually extended to the Allegheny River in present-day northwestern Pennsylvania, particularly after the Iroquois destroyed both the Wenrohronon and Erie nations in the 17th century, who were native to the area. The Seneca were by far the most populous of the Haudenosaunee nations, numbering about four thousand by the seventeenth century. A legend of the Seneca tribe states that the tribe originated in a village called Nundawao, near the south end of Canandaigua Lake, at South Hill.Close to South Hill stands the 865 foot-high Bare Hill, known to the Seneca as Genundowa. Bare Hill is part of the Bare Hill Unique Area, which began to be acquired by the state in 1989. Bare Hill had been the site of a Seneca or pre-Seneca indigenous fort.