The Wenrohronon or Wenro people were an
Iroquoian
The Iroquoian languages are a language family of indigenous peoples of North America. They are known for their general lack of labial consonants. The Iroquoian languages are polysynthetic and head-marking.
As of 2020, all surviving Iroquoian la ...
indigenous nation of
North America
North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...
, originally residing in present-day western
New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
New York may also refer to:
Film and television
* '' ...
(and possibly fringe portions of northern & northwestern Pennsylvania), who were conquered by the Confederation of
the Five Nations of the Iroquois in two decisive wars between 1638–1639
and 1643. This was likely part of the Iroquois Confederacy campaign against the
Neutral people
The Neutral Confederacy (also Neutral Nation, Neutral people, or ''Attawandaron'' by neighbouring tribes) were an Iroquoian people who lived in what is now southwestern and south-central Ontario in Canada, North America. They lived throughout t ...
, another Iroquoian-speaking tribe, which lived across the
Niagara River
The Niagara River () is a river that flows north from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario. It forms part of the border between the province of Ontario in Canada (on the west) and the state of New York (state), New York in the United States (on the east) ...
. This warfare was part of what was known as the
Beaver Wars
The Beaver Wars ( moh, Tsianì kayonkwere), also known as the Iroquois Wars or the French and Iroquois Wars (french: Guerres franco-iroquoises) were a series of conflicts fought intermittently during the 17th century in North America throughout t ...
, as the Iroquois worked to dominate the lucrative fur trade. They used winter attacks, which were not usual among Native Americans, and their campaigns resulted in attrition of both the larger Iroquoian confederacies, as it had against the numerous Huron.
After defeating the Huron in 1649, the Iroquois conducted a December 1649 attack against the
Tabacco people
The Petun (from french: pétun), also known as the Tobacco people or Tionontati ("People Among the Hills/Mountains"), were an indigenous Iroquoian people of the woodlands of eastern North America. Their last known traditional homeland was sou ...
, who fell in 1650-1651. The Iroquois continued to campaign westwards along the north shores of
Lake Ontario
Lake Ontario is one of the five Great Lakes of North America. It is bounded on the north, west, and southwest by the Canadian province of Ontario, and on the south and east by the U.S. state of New York. The Canada–United States border sp ...
. As had happened to the
Huron people
The Wyandot people, or Wyandotte and Waⁿdát, are Indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands. The Wyandot are Iroquoian Indigenous peoples of North America who emerged as a confederacy of tribes around the north shore of Lake Ontario wi ...
s, the sudden unexpected winter attack led to disorganization and isolation of clan groups, and early losses of key towns by the Neutrals in the 1651-53 campaign by the warriors of the
League of the Iroquois
The Iroquois ( or ), officially the Haudenosaunee ( meaning "people of the longhouse"), are an Iroquoian Peoples, Iroquoian-speaking Confederation#Indigenous confederations in North America, confederacy of First Nations in Canada, First Natio ...
leading to eventual defeat and displacement (flight by whole villages)
[
] of first the Tabacco tribes, then the Neutral groups, as had happened to the Huron.
Geographically
Through the first half of the 1600s sources report the Wenrohronon tribe inhabited lands along both ends of the Lakes Erie and Ontario and their connecting river, the
Niagara River
The Niagara River () is a river that flows north from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario. It forms part of the border between the province of Ontario in Canada (on the west) and the state of New York (state), New York in the United States (on the east) ...
. This range ran from the west side of the lower
Genesee River
The Genesee River is a tributary of Lake Ontario flowing northward through the Twin Tiers of Pennsylvania and New York in the United States.
The river provided the original power for the Rochester area's 19th century mills and still provides h ...
valley around
Rochester, NY
Rochester () is a city in the U.S. state of New York, the seat of Monroe County, and the fourth-most populous in the state after New York City, Buffalo, and Yonkers, with a population of 211,328 at the 2020 United States census. Located in Wes ...
(opposite to the territory of the
Seneca peoples) and extended westerly along the right bank (eastern) shores of the
Niagara River
The Niagara River () is a river that flows north from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario. It forms part of the border between the province of Ontario in Canada (on the west) and the state of New York (state), New York in the United States (on the east) ...
(opposite lands occupied by the main
Neutral Nation
The Neutral Confederacy (also Neutral Nation, Neutral people, or ''Attawandaron'' by neighbouring tribes) were an Iroquoian people who lived in what is now southwestern and south-central Ontario in Canada, North America. They lived throughout ...
on the Canadian side of today's river) and from lands at its source (Lake Erie, in the vicinity of Buffalo) continued a comparatively shorter distance along the southern shores at the eastern end of Lake Erie.
While the terminal southern and western end of this range is unknowable, the extent along the southern shore of
Lake Ontario
Lake Ontario is one of the five Great Lakes of North America. It is bounded on the north, west, and southwest by the Canadian province of Ontario, and on the south and east by the U.S. state of New York. The Canada–United States border sp ...
from
Rochester
Rochester may refer to:
Places Australia
* Rochester, Victoria
Canada
* Rochester, Alberta
United Kingdom
*Rochester, Kent
** City of Rochester-upon-Medway (1982–1998), district council area
** History of Rochester, Kent
** HM Prison ...
to
Buffalo) is about . North to south, it is likely their lands extended up from Lake Ontario farther southerly more than the approximately shown on the map, possibly to the
drainage divide
A drainage divide, water divide, ridgeline, watershed, water parting or height of land is elevated terrain that separates neighboring drainage basins. On rugged land, the divide lies along topographical ridges, and may be in the form of a singl ...
(and Genesee River gorge area) formed atop the terminal moraine left behind by the
Laurentide Ice Sheet
The Laurentide Ice Sheet was a massive sheet of ice that covered millions of square miles, including most of Canada and a large portion of the Northern United States, multiple times during the Quaternary glacial epochs, from 2.58 million years a ...
, but in all likelihood, into a shared hunting ground shared with the
Erie tribes near the headwaters of the
Allegheny River
The Allegheny River ( ) is a long headwater stream of the Ohio River in western Pennsylvania and New York (state), New York. The Allegheny River runs from its headwaters just below the middle of Pennsylvania's northern border northwesterly into ...
.
While not well known today even as a tribal name in the aftermath of becoming extinct during generations-long plagues and near continuous internecine warfare, the Wenro People are known primarily through the mentions in the decades the
Jesuit Relations
''The Jesuit Relations'', also known as ''Relations des Jésuites de la Nouvelle-France'', are chronicles of the Jesuit missions in New France. The works were written annually and printed beginning in 1632 and ending in 1673.
Originally written ...
were published. The tribe's villages the Missionaries describe seem to have been reduced to relatively fewer permanent settlements than their neighbors by internecine warfare in the late 16th century before becoming known to the
few French who encountered them.
Protected by the gorges of the Genesee River on the east, their small territory likely contained few valuable resources save for hunting lands, and their survival between the oft warring
Huron
Huron may refer to:
People
* Wyandot people (or Wendat), indigenous to North America
* Wyandot language, spoken by them
* Huron-Wendat Nation, a Huron-Wendat First Nation with a community in Wendake, Quebec
* Nottawaseppi Huron Band of Potawatomi ...
and
Iroquois
The Iroquois ( or ), officially the Haudenosaunee ( meaning "people of the longhouse"), are an Iroquoian-speaking confederacy of First Nations peoples in northeast North America/ Turtle Island. They were known during the colonial years to ...
was because they managed to trade simultaneously with both and their presence was valuable as a buffer state.
History
The Wenro were recorded by Franciscan missionary
Joseph de La Roche Daillon Joseph de La Roche Daillon (died 1656, Paris) was a French Catholic missionary to the Huron Indians and a Franciscan ''Récollet'' priest. He is best remembered in Canada as an explorer and missionary, and in the United States as the discoverer of o ...
in 1627, who encountered them at the site of
Oil Springs. Daillon noted the tribe's use of crude
petroleum
Petroleum, also known as crude oil, or simply oil, is a naturally occurring yellowish-black liquid mixture of mainly hydrocarbons, and is found in geological formations. The name ''petroleum'' covers both naturally occurring unprocessed crud ...
(then a largely unknown substance) as an alleged medicine. The editors of American Heritage Magazine writing in ''the American Heritage Book of Indians'' suggested the French visitors encountered the Wenro people shortly after they had lost an internecine war, probably with the Senecas, accounting for the relatively small size of their territory,
as they were on fair terms with the Erie
and good terms with both the Neutrals and Huron
at that time, and the
Susquehannock
The Susquehannock people, also called the Conestoga by some English settlers or Andastes were Iroquoian Native Americans who lived in areas adjacent to the Susquehanna River and its tributaries, ranging from its upper reaches in the southern p ...
s were both remote and have little to compete over in consequence. (De La Roche was likely preceded twelve years prior by
Etienne Brule, who passed through an unspecified land "west of Seneca territory" in 1615; Brule did not document anything specific about any of the tribes or lands he encountered.) The Wenro are documented to have conducted a mass migration out of western New York and into Huron territory in 1639, with many dying along the way; the few survivors who completed the trip were accepted into the Huron tribe.
Later in the 1640s-1650s,
after the Beaver Wars turned genocidal, they had a falling-out with their former allies, the Neutrals, which made it impossible for the Wenros to withstand their long-time enemies, the Iroquois. To a greater degree than their successive stunning defeats of the
Huron people
The Wyandot people, or Wyandotte and Waⁿdát, are Indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands. The Wyandot are Iroquoian Indigenous peoples of North America who emerged as a confederacy of tribes around the north shore of Lake Ontario wi ...
, the
Tabacco people
The Petun (from french: pétun), also known as the Tobacco people or Tionontati ("People Among the Hills/Mountains"), were an indigenous Iroquoian people of the woodlands of eastern North America. Their last known traditional homeland was sou ...
, the
Neutrals, the
Shawnee people
The Shawnee are an Algonquian-speaking indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands. In the 17th century they lived in Pennsylvania, and in the 18th century they were in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, with some bands in Kentucky an ...
(in Ohio), the Wenro were ultimately conquered by the
Iroquois
The Iroquois ( or ), officially the Haudenosaunee ( meaning "people of the longhouse"), are an Iroquoian-speaking confederacy of First Nations peoples in northeast North America/ Turtle Island. They were known during the colonial years to ...
nations in a manner closer to the later destruction of the
Susquehannocks, and the
Erie nation
The Erie people (also Eriechronon, Riquéronon, Erielhonan, Eriez, Nation du Chat) were Indigenous people historically living on the south shore of Lake Erie. An Iroquoian group, they lived in what is now western New York, northwestern Pennsylvani ...
s.
In the aftermath of battle, there were few survivors and the society was broken.
Iroquoian cultures allowed for survivors to be adopted (assimilated) into the victorious nations, to the point that one French observer in the 1870s estimated the majority of Iroquois were adopted.
Many were possibly absorbed into the Seneca Nation, whose descendants inhabit some of their former territory today, but the Erie were given an ultimatum to return Huron and Neutrals sheltered by the tribe, which led to the three years of warfare reducing the Erie Confederation and the Iroquois invasion pushing the Shawnee out of eastern and northern Ohio.
Remaining survivors were exiled into
Huron
Huron may refer to:
People
* Wyandot people (or Wendat), indigenous to North America
* Wyandot language, spoken by them
* Huron-Wendat Nation, a Huron-Wendat First Nation with a community in Wendake, Quebec
* Nottawaseppi Huron Band of Potawatomi ...
territory.
Language
Wenrohronon was an
Iroquoian
The Iroquoian languages are a language family of indigenous peoples of North America. They are known for their general lack of labial consonants. The Iroquoian languages are polysynthetic and head-marking.
As of 2020, all surviving Iroquoian la ...
language and thus was related to
Susquehannock
The Susquehannock people, also called the Conestoga by some English settlers or Andastes were Iroquoian Native Americans who lived in areas adjacent to the Susquehanna River and its tributaries, ranging from its upper reaches in the southern p ...
,
Wyandot
Wyandot may refer to:
Native American ethnography
* Wyandot people, also known as the Huron
* Wyandot language
* Wyandot religion
Places
* Wyandot, Ohio, an unincorporated community
* Wyandot County, Ohio
* Camp Wyandot, a Camp Fire Boys and ...
,
Erie
Erie (; ) is a city on the south shore of Lake Erie and the county seat of Erie County, Pennsylvania, United States. Erie is the fifth largest city in Pennsylvania and the largest city in Northwestern Pennsylvania with a population of 94,831 a ...
and
Scahentoarrhonon.
See also
*
Allegany Indian Reservation
Allegany Reservation (Uhì·yaʼRudes, B. ''Tuscarora English Dictionary'' Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999 in Tuscarora) is a Seneca Nation of Indians reservation in Cattaraugus County, New York, USA. In the 2000 census, 58 percent of t ...
*
Oil Springs Reservation
Oil Springs Reservation or Oil Spring Reservation is an Indian reservation of the federally recognized Seneca Nation that is located in southwestern New York, United States. As of the 2010 census, the Indian reservation had one resident; in 2005 n ...
References
Further reading
*
*
External links
*http://www.accessgenealogy.com/native/wenrohronon-tribe.htm
{{authority control
Iroquoian peoples
Extinct languages of North America
Indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands
Native American tribes in New York (state)
Native American tribes in Pennsylvania