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 Iroquoia ...

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 th ...

, 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, 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 in the United States (on the east). There are diffe ...

. 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-speaking confederacy of First Nations peoples in northeast North America/ Turtle Island. They were known during the colonial years to ...

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

. 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 (opposite to the territory of the Seneca peoples) and extended westerly along the right bank (eastern) shores of the

(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

from Rochester 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 year ...

, 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. The Allegheny River runs from its headwaters just below the middle of Pennsylvania's northern border northwesterly into New York then i ...

. 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 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 Potawato ...

and

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 ...

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 ...

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 pa ...

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

, the

Neutrals 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 ...

, the Shawnee people (in Ohio), the Wenro were ultimately conquered by the

nations in a manner closer to the later destruction of the

Susquehannocks 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 pa ...

, 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 Pennsylva ...

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

territory.

Language

Wenrohronon was an

language and thus was related to

, Wyandot, Erie and Scahentoarrhonon.

References

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

Geographically

History

Language

See also

References

Further reading

External links