Conestoga - Encyclopedia

GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES

CONESTOGA (said to mean "people of the immersed or forked poles"), a tribe of North American Indians of Iroquoian stock. Their country was Pennsylvania and Maryland on the lower Susquehanna river and at the head of Chesapeake bay. They were sometimes known as Susquehannas. They were formerly a powerful people, able to resist the attacks of the Iroquois. In 1675, however, the latter overwhelmed and scattered them. After nearly a century of wandering, the tribe suffered final extinction in the Indian wars of 1763.