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The Erie people (also Erieehronon, Eriechronon, Riquéronon, Erielhonan, Eriez, Nation du Chat) were a Native American people historically living on the south shore of Lake Erie. An Iroquoian group, they lived in what is now western New York, northwestern Pennsylvania, and northern Ohio before 1658. They were destroyed in the mid-17th century by five years of prolonged warfare with the neighboring Iroquois, especially the Seneca, for helping the Huron in the Beaver Wars for control of the fur trade."
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Their villages were burned as a lesson to those who dare oppose the Iroquois, adding to their loss of life and likely forcing emigration. The Iroquoian confederacies were known for adopting others into their tribes, and true to form, the remaining defeated Erie are believed to have been absorbed by other Iroquoian tribes, particularly the Seneca, and possibly their kindred Susquehannocks with whom they shared the hunting grounds of the Allegheny Plateau and the Amerindian paths through the gaps of the Allegheny. Whatever their individual fates, the remnant tribes living among the Iroquois, gradually lost their independent identity.
The names Erie and Eriez are shortened forms of Erielhonan, meaning "long tail." The Erielhonan were also called the Chat ("Cat" in French) or "Raccoon" people, referring to that characteristic. It appears that the cat reference may be to depict a connection to the sacred Underwater Panther, who was believed to have lived in the Great Lakes. Like all the Iroquoian stock, they lived in multi-family long houses in villages enclosed in palisades, which often enclosed crops. They cultivated the "Three Sisters": varieties of corn, beans, and squash, during the warm season. In winter, tribal members lived off the stored crops and animals taken in hunts.
History
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; nations which may have originated in the south Traditional rivalries and habitual competition among Amerindian 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 for 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 demand for beaver and other furs by over-hunting some areas.
The Erie encroached on territory other tribes considered theirs. During 1651, they'd angered their eastern neighbors, the Iroquois League, by accepting refugees from their allies, the Huron villages which had been destroyed by the Iroquois. Though rumored to use 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. By the mid-1650s, the Erie became a broken tribe— beginning 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.
Consequently, in 1654 the whole Iroquois Confederacy went to war against the Erie and neighboring tribes such as the Neutral people along the northern shores of Lake Erie and across the Niagara River, the Tabacco people between the Erie and Iroquois, neighbors to all three groups. As a result, over five years of war they destroyed the Erie confederacy, the Neutrals, the Tobacco, with the tribes surviving in remnants. Dispersed groups survived a few more decades before being absorbed into the Iroquois, especially the westernmost Seneca nation.
Anthropologist Marvin T. Smith (1986:131–32) theorized that some Erie fled to Virginia and then South Carolina, where they became known as the Westo. Some were said to flee to Canada. Members of other tribes claimed later to be descended from refugees of this defunct culture, who intermarried with other peoples. Among those are members of the Seneca people in Oklahoma and Kansas.
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 reported on 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 Hurons which pre-deceased the Erie. What little is known about them has been derived from oral history of other Native American tribes, archaeology, and comparisons with other Iroquoian peoples.
Language
The Erie spoke an Iroquoian language said to have been similar to Wyandot.