North American Indian people living mainly in what is now central New York and Wisconsin, U.S., and Canada.
They constitute one of the original five nations of the Iroquois Confederacy . Their language is Longhouse s sheltered families related through maternal descent and belonging to one of three clans, Bear, Turtle, or Wolf. Each community had a local council that guided the chief or chiefs. The Oneida supported the colonist cause in the American Revolution and were attacked by the pro-British Iroquois under {{link=Brant, Joseph">Joseph Brant . By the mid-19th century most Oneida had dispersed. They number some 12,000.