Erie (people)

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Traditional residential area of ​​the Erie and neighboring tribes around 1630.

The Erie or Eriehonon were a group of North American Indian tribes belonging to the Iroquois language family . Around 1630 they inhabited an area on the south coast of Lake Erie , which stretched between the present-day cities of Buffalo in the US state of New York and Cleveland in Ohio , as well as south to the area of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania . Due to the early annihilation of the ethnic group and the lack of contact with Europeans, there are almost no records. The knowledge of this people is therefore extremely sketchy. By 1680, the Erie lost their identity as a separate tribal group.

Surname

Your name is interpreted as a short form of the Iroquois word Ee-ree-a-gee or Eriehonon , which means "long tail". They made blankets out of raccoon skins lined with the animals' tails, hence the name. The French mistakenly associated the word with the puma . That's why the French called them Nation du Chat (German: people of the cat ).

A second version is that this is not a translation error by the French. They referred to the raccoon as chat sauvage ("wild cat"), so that an association with the puma is highly unlikely.

Demographics

The population of the Erie is largely unknown. Apparently there was only one contact between the French and Erie, but neither the number of villages nor the extent of the tribal area or the population was reported. Population estimates range between 4,000 and 15,000 tribesmen. The resistance of the Erie to the Iroquois League suggests a number not below 10,000. Around 1653 there was a sudden increase in population, probably a result of the admission of refugee Wyandot and neutrals who were exposed to violent attacks by the Iroquois League at that time. According to excavations, the villages of the Erie were mainly in the coastal plain on Lake Erie, as well as on the edge of the Alleghany plateau .

Culture

Map of the Upper Ohio Valley with the territory of the Nation du Chat from 1710.

Archaeological artifacts show that the material culture and settlement patterns of the Erie were similar in many details to those of the Wyandot and Iroquois. The Wyandot and Iroquois leagues were confederations or alliances made up of a number of individual tribes. In the first half of the 17th century, each tribe consisted of several main villages, which, depending on their size, could be divided or merged over time. It is obvious that the Erie also had such a settlement pattern. The Erie were made up of a group of tribes believed to have formed an alliance , with each tribe inhabiting one to three palisade- protected villages. The name of the village was mistakenly regarded as a tribal name by the French and probably also by the Wyandot. Rather, the name could refer to a local characteristic, because when the village moved to another location, its name also changed.

Rigué was the name of an Erie village around 1655 and the residents were called Rigueronnon or Riquehronnon , according to reports from French Jesuits . The period between the first and last mention is 25 years and apparently does not correspond to the period in which the village was settled in the same place. It can therefore be assumed that Rigué and the Riquehronnon were the only known names for a village or a tribe at that time and were therefore applied by the French to the entire tribal group alongside Erie and Chat .

Gentaienton was the name of an Erie village whose name was not mentioned until 1679, long after it was destroyed around 1655 or 1656. The residents were called Gentaguetehronnon or Gentagega . A third village was probably called Kakouagoga and was inhabited by the Kahkwa .

The Erie were farming. They were involved in permanent battles with the Iroquois Federation, by whom they were respectfully referred to as great warriors . They reported that the Erie used poisoned arrows in war. This characteristic does not apply to any of the other tribes in North America and should therefore be viewed with some caution.

history

Around 1615, the French missionary Étienne Brulé met a group of Erie near Niagara Falls . It was probably the only contact with French Jesuits the Erie ever had. At that time the Erie were fighting in an alliance with the Wenro and Attiwandaronon (neutrals) against the Iroquois League. In addition, some Erie were apparently allied with the Susquehannock and supported them against the Iroquois. Until 1638 the Erie had almost no contact with European traders and only received European goods through the Susquehannock as a middleman. The Susquehannock, however, tried, but in vain, to prevent the Erie from having access to European weapons. The Erie subsequently decimated the beaver populations in their territory, whose skins they needed as a commercial commodity in order to get to the goods of the Europeans.

The easternmost Erie settlements were believed to be north of the Buffalo River near rich beaver populations on the banks of the Niagara River and the Oak Orchard Swamp , which they shared with the neighboring Wenro. Around 1638 the Wenro left their territory , a temporarily uninhabited area that stretched between the Neutral and Seneca residential areas. Almost at the same time, the Neutral built a few villages on the abandoned area east of the Niagara River. These neutral villages were apparently the reason why the Erie briefly withdrew from the Niagara River to the south and west. You probably wanted to leave the crisis area between Seneca and Neutral.

After the Wyandot and Neutral were destroyed by the Iroquois League, the French tried to negotiate peace with the individual tribes on the Great Lakes . In Jesuit records of these negotiations in Montreal and Québec , the Erie are referred to as tribes related to the Iroquois League . In June 1654 the Jesuits learned from the Onondaga that a combined force from Seneca , Mohawk , Onondaga and Oneida was planning an attack on the Erie that same summer. It was a counterattack, triggered by an attack by the Erie on a Seneca village and an Onondaga group, in which the Onondaga chief Anenraes was kidnapped. At this time, there were numerous Wyandot refugees with the Erie, who they had probably instigated to the attacks. These events were detailed in 1656 by Father Claude Dablon , who lived with the Onondaga. According to him, the Erie sent thirty negotiators to the Seneca to hold peace talks. After a Seneca was killed by an Erie for an unknown reason, twenty-five of the negotiators were killed in retaliation, five of whom escaped. The captive chief Anenraes was also killed.

Hostilities escalated and in late August 1654 a large Iroquois force, including 1,200 Onondaga and 700 Mohawk, entered the Erie area to avenge the death of Chief Anenraes. The Onondaga burned down numerous Erie villages and pursued fleeing residents. Eventually the Erie reached a wooden fort that they had built as a refuge. Here they gathered and resisted until they ran out of ammunition. They were then overwhelmed by the attackers and either killed or captured. The victorious warriors of the Iroquois League stayed in Erie land for two months, buried their dead and returned to their home villages with the captives and booty before the onset of winter.

The Onondaga feared retaliation from other Erie tribes and asked for French arms deliveries and troops. According to French representations, the Erie were still a dangerous opponent in the winter of 1655–56. Obviously, the situation must have changed in the course of 1656, although there is no report of a major battle. Later information came from dispersed groups of the Erie, for example from around 600 men, women and children who surrendered to the Iroquois in the south near Virginia . Numerous Erie fell into Iroquois captivity in various other places. In the Seneca villages west of the Genesee River there were many residents of Eri origin at the end of the 1650s. The Mingo may at least in part have been descendants of the Erie. In the second half of the seventeenth century this group took in numerous dispersed Indians in the valley of the Alleghany River . Around 1680, the Erie finally lost their identity as a separate tribal group. Her name lives on in the name of Lake Erie , the Erie Canal and various places in the United States.

swell

The basis of the ethnohistorical sources for the Erie are mainly Jesuit Relations , born 1896–1901.

See also

List of North American Indian tribes

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Virginia C. Holmgren: Raccoons in Folklore, History and Today's Backyard . Capra Press, Santa Barbara (California) 1990, ISBN 978-0-88496-312-7 , pp. 19-20 .
  2. ↑ Bruce G. Trigger (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians , Vol. 15: Northeast, p. 416. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington DC 1978, ISBN 0-16004-575-4
  3. ↑ Bruce G. Trigger (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians. Vol. 15: Northeast, p. 412.
  4. ↑ a b Bruce G. Trigger (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians. Vol. 15: Northeast, p. 413.
  5. ↑ a b c d e Bruce G. Trigger (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians. Vol. 15: Northeast, pp. 415-416.
  6. ↑ Bruce G. Trigger (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians. Vol. 15: Northeast, p. 417

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