Erie people
Iroquoian group native to the Great Lakes region
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The Erie, also known as the Eriehronon, Eriechronon or La Nation du Chat, were an Indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands who lived in the lower Great Lakes region until the mid-17th century. An Iroquoian people, they shared many cultural traits with their neighbors including the Neutral, Wendat and Seneca. Their territory was located southeast of Lake Erie in what is now Western New York and northwestern Pennsylvania. The Erie as a distinct entity became extinct in the mid-1650s after several years of warfare with the Haudenosaunee. Most survivors were absorbed into the Haudenosaunee but is has been suggested that a remnant group of Erie may have fled south to Virginia where they were known as the Richahecrian, and as the Westo after their migration to the Savannah River.
Territory of the Erie people c. 1650 | |
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| Extinct as a tribe after the mid-17th century | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| New York, Pennsylvania | |
| Languages | |
| Erie language | |
| Religion | |
| Indigenous | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Neutral, Wenrohuron, Haudenosaunee, Wendat, Petun |
Name
European contact with the Erie was exceptionally limited. Most of what is known about them comes from the Wendat (Huron) and Seneca. In 1624, Gabriel Sagard, a Recollet missionary, learned about the Eriehronon from the Wendat. He interpreted this word to mean La Nation du Chat (Cat Nation) possibly referring to raccoons rather than felines, as "chat sauvauge" is what the inhabitants of New France called raccoons. The Jesuit Relations for 1653/1654 reports that "we call the Eries the Cat Nation, because there is in their country a prodigious number of wildcats, two or three times as large as our tame cats, but having a beautiful and precious fur."[1] It has been argued that a more accurate translation of Eriehronon would be "People of the Panther" or "People of the Long Tail" referring to the eastern panther (Puma concolor couguar).[2]
Language and culture
The Erie spoke a Northern Iroquoian language. While the language is unattested, Jesuit missionaries recorded that the Erie language was mutually intelligible to that of the Wendat and the Neutral. The Jesuit Relation for 1647/1647 records that the Erie were said to "till the soil and speak the same language as our Hurons." Because the Erie were dispersed by the Haudenosaunee in the mid-1650s, their language is extinct.[3]
Arthur's C. Parker's 1907 archaeological study of the Ripley Site in Chautauqua County, New York identified the Erie as a sophisticated, matrilineal, and clan-based Iroquoian society. Central to their village life were large, bark-covered longhouses arranged within palisaded enclosures, which served as multi-family dwellings for extended maternal kin groups. Their economy relied on the Three Sisters (corn, beans, and squash), supplemented by hunting, fishing and foraging. Their material culture was characterized by pottery featuring incised patterns and flared rims, and by the prevalence of panther effigies. Parker’s recovery of specialized artifacts such as pipes and bone carvings featuring feline motifs suggested a spiritual connection to the eastern panther. His analysis of Erie burial customs, which included "flexed" positioning and the placement of high-quality pottery and grave goods, suggested a culture with a complex belief in the afterlife and a high social value placed on kinship and communal care.[4]
Territory
The Erie were likely a confederacy of two or more groups with a population estimated at roughly 14,500.[5] Their homeland formed a crescent along the southern and southeastern shore of Lake Erie. Although French maps from the period show the Erie occupying the entire south shore of Lake Erie, modern archaeological research generally supports a tripartite division of the south shore of Lake Erie in the early 17th century.[6]
Archaeological evidence places the Erie at the eastern end of Lake Erie between the Buffalo River and Cattaraugus Creek, and at Presque Isle Bay.[7] To the east of the Erie was the homeland of the Seneca, one of the five nations that made up the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois} Confederacy. North of the Buffalo River were the Wenrohronnon who the Haudenosaunee dispersed in 1639. Across Lake Erie were the Neutral whose villages were concentrated in the Grand River valley and the Niagara Peninsula. To the south, Erie territory extended up onto the Allegheny Plateau, however, there is no evidence to suggest Erie habitation in this area.[8]
West of Presque Isle Bay was an buffer zone between the Erie and people in the Cuyahoga River region belonging to what archaeologists call the Whittlesey tradition. Once thought to be Erie, the people of the Whittlesey tradition built their villages atop isolated river bluffs protected by ditches and embankments. They lived in small oval or rectangular structures instead of the communal longhouses typical of Iroquoian cultures, and produced grit-tempered as opposed to shell tempered pottery. The people represented by Whittlesey tradition were once thought to be a distinct Iroquoian entity closely related to the Erie, however, there has been a shift toward seeing the Whittlesey as a Algonquian entity influenced by Iroquoian neighbors.[9][10]
The names of two Erie villages appear in the Jesuit Relations. Rigué was the target of a massive Seneca and Onondaga attack in 1654. The village was heavily fortified with a double-rowed palisade. The name comes from Riquéronon meaning "people of the place of the cherry" or "people of the place of the rock." Archaeologists generally place it in western New York, although some older theories placed it as far west as Presque Isle Bay. The identification of Gentaienton as a village is based on the accounts of Erie captives or adoptees among the Seneca and Oneida taken many years after the Erie were dispersed. Anthropologist Marian White argues that Gentaienton, a word meaning "people who carry a field," refers to a subgroup of the Erie people rather than a physical location.[8]
History
Precontact
Clip from John Senex map ca 1710 showing the people Captain Vielle passed (1692–94) by to arrive in Chaouenon's country, as the French Jesuit called the Shawnee
While Indigenous peoples lived along the Great Lakes for thousands of years in succeeding cultures, historic tribes known at the time of European encounter began to coalesce by the 15th and 16th centuries. The Erie were among the several Iroquoian peoples sharing a similar culture, tribal organization, and speaking an Iroquoian language which emerged around the Great Lakes, but with elements that may have originated in the south. People from the Whittlesey culture and Fort Ancient culture of Ohio and Pennsylvania may have been ancestors of the Erie people.[11]
Haudenosaunee oral history suggests that the Erie are descendants of Iroquoians specifically from the St. Lawrence River Valley. It also says the Eries defeated an unknown tribe who built earthworks.[12] Names given for this group are of uncertain origin, with one account using Alligewi, the Lenape word for the Erie themselves, and the other using Squawkihaw, the word the Iroquois used for the Meskwaki.[13] Neither group built the mounds in question,[which?] three of which were excavated by archaeologists in Pennsylvania and Ohio. These are Sugar Run Mound,[14] North Benton Mound [15] and Towner's Mound.[16][unreliable source] Only Towner's Mound, in Kent, Ohio, still stands. Linguists who have studied the handful of words on record believed to be of Erie origin believe the tribe was closer to the Huron than the Iroquois, however. If descended from the Iroquois, archaeology suggests they couldn't have arrived before the 12th or 13th centuries. A Huron origin would suggest them arriving even later.[a]
The editors of New American Heritage state the various confederacies of Iroquoian tribes migrated from south to the Great Lakes regions and in between well before pre-Columbian times. Conversely, others such as the editors of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica suggest the tribes originated in what became Algonkian territories along the Saint Lawrence and moved west and south when the Algonquian tribes moved north up the coast and spread west.[better source needed]
Post-contact
By the time of European contact, Algonquian and Iroquoian tribes traded and competed with each other and spent most years in uneasy peace. Separation between tribes living in wilderness ensured contacts were mainly small affairs before the use of firearms tipped the balance of warfare to enhance the killing ability of a people who could not outrun a bullet, a limitation which existed before guns and the ability to kill at range. Rivalries and habitual competition among American Indians tribes for resources (especially fire arms) and power was escalated by the lucrative returns of the fur trade with French and Dutch colonists beginning settlements in the greater area before 1611. Violence to control the fur-bearing territories, the beginnings of the long-running Beaver Wars, began early in the 17th century[b] so the normal peace and trading activity decreased between the tribes, who had responded to the demand for beaver and other furs by over-hunting some areas.
The Erie encroached on territory that other tribes considered theirs.[17][unreliable source?] During 1651, they'd angered their eastern neighbors, the Iroquois League, by accepting Huron refugees from villages that had been destroyed by the Iroquois.[citation needed] Though reported as using poison-tipped arrows (Jesuit Relations 41:43, 1655–58 chap. XI), the Erie were disadvantaged in armed conflict with the Iroquois because they had few firearms.[17][c] In 1653, the Erie launched a preemptive attack on western tribes of the Iroquois, and did well in the first year of a five-year war.[19]
Consequently, in 1654 the whole Iroquois Confederacy went to war against the Erie. Their villages were burned by Haudenosaunee warriors. This destroyed their stored maize and other foods, added to their loss of life, and threatened their future, as they had no way to survive the winter. The Haudenosaunee Confederacy was known for adopting captives and refugees into their tribes. The surviving Erie are believed to have been largely absorbed by other Iroquoian tribes, particularly families of the Seneca, the westernmost of the Five Nations. Susquehannock families may also have adopted some Erie, as the tribes had shared the hunting grounds of the Allegheny Plateau and Kittanning Path that passed through the gaps of the Allegheny. The members of remnant tribes living among the Iroquois gradually assimilated to the majority cultures, losing their independent tribal identities. As a result, over several years of war they destroyed the Erie confederacy. By the mid-1650s, the Erie had become a broken tribe. Dispersed groups survived a few more decades before being absorbed into the Iroquois, especially the westernmost Seneca nation.[citation needed]
Historically the Monacan and Erie were trade allies, especially copper, but years later that relationship fell apart due to growing colonial pressure.[citation needed] During that period remnant Erie were believed to have migrated to Virginia by 1656 and became known as the Richahecrian when they fought alongside the Nahyssans and Manahoac, against the Virginia colonialists and Pamunkey, at the Battle of Bloody Run.[20] Another branch also migrated to South Carolina and became known as the Westo.[21]
Because the Erie were located further from the coastal areas of early European exploration, they had little direct contact with Europeans. Only the Dutch fur traders from Fort Orange (now Albany, New York) and Jesuit missionaries in Canada referred to them in historic records. The Jesuits learned more about them during the Beaver Wars, but most of what they learned, aside from a single in-person encounter, was learned from the Huron who suffered much reduction before the Erie did.[17] What little is known about them has been derived from oral history of other Native American tribes, archaeology, and comparisons with other Iroquoian peoples.
After the Haudenosaunee routed the Erie in 1654 and 1656, the group dispersed.[22] In 1680, a remnant group of Erie surrendered to the Seneca people.[22] Erie descendants merged with Haudenosaunee in Ohio, who lived on the Upper Sandusky Reservation from 1817 to 1832, when Ohio forcibly removed its tribes to Indian Territory. These included the tribes who would form the present-day Seneca-Cayuga Nation in Oklahoma.[22]
See also
Notes
- In Virginia, visiting Susquehannocks were described by an admiring Captain John Smith. Further, Tuscarora and Cherokee lived in the south from before Jamestown was founded, and the powerful Susquehanna had a lock on the Susquehanna basin into the upper Chesapeake Bay shores, probably into the northern Shenandoah Valley.
- Beaver Wars are usually blamed upon the Iroquois who were believed to have a joint population dwarfed by surrounding tribes.