Wenrohronon
The Wenrohronon or Wenro people were an Indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands, historically from western New York and possibly northern Pennsylvania.
They were defeated by the Haudenosaunee Confederacy 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. This warfare was part of what was known as the Beaver Wars, 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 they had against the numerous Wendat.
After defeating the Wendat in 1649, the Iroquois conducted a December 1649 attack against the Tionontati, who fell in 1650–1651. The Iroquois continued to campaign westwards along the north shores of Lake Ontario. As had happened to the Wendat, the sudden and unexpected winter attack led to disorganization and isolation of clan groups, and early losses of key towns by the Neutrals in the 1651–1653 campaign by the warriors of the League of the Iroquois leading to eventual defeat and displacement of first the Tionontati tribes, then the Neutral groups, as had happened to the Wendat.
Territory
In the 1630s, French missionaries wrote that the Wenro's territory was north and east of the Erie peoples, East of the Neutral people across the Niagara River, and west of the Genesee River valley and the Genesee Gorge across which the Seneca people had their home.Through the first half of the 17th century, sources report the Wenrohronon tribe inhabited lands along both ends of the Lakes Erie and Ontario and their connecting river, the Niagara River. This range ran from the west side of the lower Genesee River valley around Rochester, New York and extended westerly along the right bank shores of the Niagara River and from lands at its source 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 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 formed atop the terminal moraine left behind by the Laurentide Ice Sheet, but in all likelihood, into a shared hunting ground shared with the Erie tribes near the headwaters of the Allegheny River.
The Wenro people's history was primarily recorded in the Jesuit Relations. 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 Wendat and Haudenosaunee was because they managed to trade simultaneously with both and their presence was valuable as a buffer state.
History
17th century
The Wenro were recorded by Franciscan missionary Joseph de [La Roche Daillon] in 1627, who encountered them at the site of Oil Springs. Daillon noted the tribe's use of crude petroleum 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 Wendat at that time, and the Susquehannocks were both remote and have little to compete over in consequence. The Wenro are documented to have conducted a mass migration out of western New York and into Wendat territory in 1639 following the first attack of the Beaver Wars by the Seneca, with many dying along the way; the few survivors who completed the trip were accepted into the Wendat.Later in the 1640s and 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 Wendat, the Petun, the Neutrals, the Shawnee people, the Wenro were ultimately conquered by the Iroquois nations in a manner closer to the later destruction of the Susquehannocks, and the Erie nations. In the aftermath of battle, there were few survivors and the society was broken.