Erie people
Iroquoian group of the Great Lakes region
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Erie, also known as the Eriehronon, Ehriehronnons, 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 (Huron) and Seneca. Their territory was located southeast of Lake Erie in what is now western New York and northwestern Pennsylvania. The Erie ceased to exist as a political entity in the mid-1650s after several years of warfare with the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois). Most survivors were absorbed into the Haudenosaunee but is has been suggested that a remnant group may have fled south to Virginia where they were known as the Richahecrian, and as the Westo following their later 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 French missionaries and their Wendat informants. 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 was what the inhabitants of New France called raccoons. The Jesuit Relation for 1653/1654 records "the Ehriehronnons... these we call the Cat Nation, because of the prodigious number of Wildcats in their country, two or three times as large as our domestic Cats, but of a handsome and valuable fur."[1] It has been suggested 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."[3] Because the Erie were dispersed by the Haudenosaunee in the mid-1650s, their language is extinct.[4]
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 (maize, 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.[5]
Territory
The Erie were a loose confederacy of three distinct settlement clusters, potentially representing three to five nations.[6][7] Their total population, before European diseases including smallpox and measles halved their numbers, is estimated at roughly 12,000.[8] Although French maps from the period show the Erie occupying the entire south shore of Lake Erie, archaeologists currently support a threefold division of the region: two Algonquian groups inhabited the western reaches, while the Erie were situated to the east."[9]
The Erie lived near the southeastern shore of Lake Erie between the Buffalo River and Presque Isle Bay.[10] To the east of the Erie was the homeland of the Seneca, one of the five nations that made up the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy. Across Lake Erie were the Neutral whose villages were located in the Niagara Peninsula and the Grand River watershed. North of the Buffalo River were the Wenrohronon (Wenro), who proactively joined the Wendat in 1638 after losing the protection of the Neutral. To the south, Erie influence extended up onto the northern Allegheny Plateau, but there is no archaeological evidence of permanent habitation in the early 17th century.[7]
West of Presque Isle Bay was an buffer zone between the Erie and people in the Cuyahoga River region belonging to 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 the Whittlesey tradition were initially believed to be a distinct Iroquoian entity closely related to the Erie, however, there has been a movement toward seeing the Whittlesey as an Algonquian entity influenced by their Iroquoian neighbors.[11][12]
The names of two Erie villages appear in the Jesuit Relations. Rigué has traditionally been identified as the Erie "capital" and the site of a massive Seneca and Onondaga attack in 1654.[13] Pioneer linguist and ethnographer J.N.B. Hewitt interpreted Rigué to mean "at the place of the panther."[14] More recent work in ethnolinguistics supports a definition of "at the place of the cherry trees."[2][15] While Hewitt placed Rigué at Presque Isle Bay, archaeologist Marion White suggested that the village would have been located further to the east. The identification of Gentaienton as a village is based on the accounts of Erie adoptees among the Haudenosaunee recorded many years after the Erie were dispersed. Gentaienton, a word meaning "people who carry a field," may refer to a subgroup of the Erie people rather than a physical location.[6][13]
History
Prehistory
The prehistory of the Erie is characterized by the transition during the Late Woodland period (c. 900–1650 AD) from semi-sedentary bands to an agricultural society centered on large, palisaded villages. This evolution was driven by the adoption of intensive maize cultivation and the increasing necessity of collective defense.[6] Although early ethnographers, such as Horatio Hale and James Mooney, believed that the Iroquoian-speaking peoples of the Great Lakes region migrated north from the southern Appalachian Highlands,[16][17] archaeologists, including Richard MacNeish, shifted the consensus toward in situ development.[18] The prevailing model now maintains that the Erie developed locally on the Erie Plain and Allegheny Plateau.[7][19]
There has been a marked shift from seeing the Erie as a single nation to seeing them as an informal alliance of three regional clusters.[6][7] The "Eastern" Erie, situated on the Erie Plain between the Buffalo River and Cattaraugus Creek, evolved as dispersed Iroquoian bands in the Niagara Frontier coalesced and underwent rapid cultural change during the 14th century. They adopted a material culture and social organization heavily influenced by the Ontario Iroquois Tradition, a framework that describes the cultural evolution of populations north of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario.[20]
In the early 1960s, Marian White identified a "southeastern drift" of two settlement sites away from the Buffalo River. While Iroquoian communities typically moved as local resources were depleted, White noted parallels between these locations and sites found north of Lake Erie. Because the sites south of the Buffalo River so closely resembled assemblages west of the Niagara River, White initially identified them as the easternmost extension of the Neutral Confederacy.[13] Specifically, the presence of Glen Meyer-style pottery led researchers to believe an Ontario Iroquois Tradition population had moved in and displaced local bands.[20] Later, the consensus pivoted toward the view that these Niagara Frontier groups were a distinct Iroquoian entity that had been "culturally overwhelmed" by Ontario Iroquois Tradition influences during the Middleport Phase (1300–1450 AD).[21] This phase represents a rapid shift from scattered hamlets to large, nucleated villages—a process of settlement aggregation that required new social and defensive structures to maintain community stability.[22]
Conversely, the "Central" and "Western" Erie emerged during a late 16th-century ethnogenesis driven by the rapid migration of Iroquoian populations onto the Erie Plain from the Allegheny Plateau. This movement was likely precipitated by the Little Ice Age, which shortened the growing season in the uplands and necessitated a move to the more temperate microclimate near Lake Erie. Bands belonging to the Glaciated Allegheny Plateau tradition migrated north onto the Erie Plain in the area between Cattaraugus Creek and Presque Isle Bay.[19] The Glaciated Allegheny Plateau tradition is a cultural framework that describes the continuous technological and social evolution of populations within the French Creek and Upper Allegheny River watersheds—including the Chautauqua Lake basin—from 1100 to 1600 AD. Its terminal stage, the McFate Phase, is characterized by the construction of small palisaded villages and the production of geometrically incised ceramics.[23]
During this transition, characterized by the abrupt depopulation of the northern Allegheny Plateau in the late 16th century, McFate Phase populations underwent a multi-stage migration. Evidence from sites like Wintergreen Gorge suggests that scattered hamlets in the French Creek watershed first consolidated into a large, palisaded village on the Portage Escarpment before moving as a unified group onto the Erie Plain. This population merged with the plain's sparse in-situ inhabitants to create a settlement cluster south of Presque Isle Bay. Simultaneously, scattered McFate bands living on the glacial lake ridges near Chautauqua Creek—having migrated from the Chautauqua Basin decades earlier—coalesced at a single ridge-top site. This newly unified community subsequently moved onto the plain, possibly establishing a palisaded village on a bluff overlooking Lake Erie.[19]
Proto-history
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 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.[24][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.[24] 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.[25]
Consequently, in 1654 the whole Iroquois Confederacy went to war against the Erie.[citation needed] 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.[26] Another branch also migrated to South Carolina and became known as the Westo.[27]
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.[24] 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.[28] In 1680, a remnant group of Erie surrendered to the Seneca people.[28] 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.[28]