Archeologist Dean Snow gives a population estimate of around 300 people, fewer than had lived at the Fox Farm site due to the departure of converted Catholic Mohawk to Canada by 1679.
[2] The French and other European settlers began to apply the term Caughnawaga to the mostly Mohawk people who lived in the area of the Lachine Rapids on the St. Lawrence River.
They were also called the "Praying Indians", as they were Mohawk who had converted to Roman Catholicism, under the influence of Jesuit French missionaries.
Numerous Mohawk were still living in this area at the time when the Dutch colonists formed an early settlement in what is now the eastern part of the village of Fonda, New York and called it Caughnawaga.
In 1788, the land north of the river became organized as the Town of Caughnawaga, named after the Dutch settlement.