The original residents of the upper Susquehanna Valley were the Paleo-Indians, big-game hunters and foragers who roamed the area some 11,000 years ago after the retreat of the glaciers. They were followed by small groups of hunters and gatherers who for several millennia made the valley their home, their movements guided by the seasons. Then, about AD 1000, the Indians turned to farming, growing corn, beans, and squashes, and building larger and more permanent settlements. These were Iroquoian-speaking Indians, known historically as the Mohawks and Oneidas, whose villages were east of the other member groups of the five nations, the Senecas, Cayugas, and Onondagas of western and central New York (the Tuscaroras, who fled from their homeland in North Carolina, would become the sixth nation in the early 1700s). Between about AD 1300 and 1700, however, the upper Susquehanna was abandoned, the Indians appearing to have drifted generally north into the Mohawk Valley perhaps as a response to warfare and difficulties with the short growing season of the northern Catskills. The Indians who later returned to the area were mostly refugees from the French and Indian War. Today, Hartwick College's Yager Museum houses an extensive collection of archaeological materials from the area. In 1971, the New York State Museum, in cooperation with SUNY Oneonta, began the multi-year Upper Susquehanna Valley Archaeological Project, which added greatly to the history of the region's American Indian people.