The Iroquois (or Haudenosaunee) Confederacy embarked on a rapid period of expansionism during the early 17th century, causing the displacement of many neighboring tribes, including the Erie and Wenro. Though war had been endemic in the eastern Great Lakes long before Europeans arrived, most conflicts appear to have been relatively small-scale. The 17th century changed that. However, it should be noted the Iroquois did not exclusively force their conquered enemies off of their lands - indeed, for many defeated peoples, if they were not killed outright, their fate was enslavement. While slaves still clearly occupied a lower position in Iroquois society, slavery among the Iroquois was distinctly not chattel slavery - slave status was not inherited, and living captives may have frequently been able to integrate themselves into Iroquois society. Indeed, the evidence suggests that this system led to what was essentially the absorption of many groups into the Iroquois. A quote from a French observer in 1660:

If anyone should compute the number of pure-blooded Iroquois, he would have difficulty in finding more than twelve hundred of them in all of the Five Nations, since these are, for the most part, only aggregations of different tribes whom they have conquered — as the Hurons; the Tionnontatehronnons, otherwise called the Tobacco Nation; the Atiwendaronk, called the Neutrals when they were still independent; the Riquehronnons, who are the Cat Nation; the Ontwagannhas, or Fire Nation; the Trakwaehronnons, and others, — who, utter Foreigners although they are, form without doubt the largest and best part of the Iroquois.

Most notably, despite their extensive system of warfare and enslavement, there is little evidence that the Iroquois ever participated in the extensive indigenous slave trade of the era - no captives seem to have ever been sold to Europeans or to other indigenous groups. The rise of slaving in the southeast around the same period of time can, in large part, be attributed to markets in Virginia and Carolina that were willing to purchase indigenous slaves. So what, exactly, prompted this massive rise in Iroquois militarism if not the slave trade?

In part, the answer is “mourning wars”. These were wars wherein the Iroquois would take captured enemies and integrate them into their society as a means of symbolically replacing the deceased. While this occurred at a small scale prior to European arrival in the New World, with the onset of new diseases these wars took on a much greater demographic significance, as they were required to keep Iroquois numbers from plummeting. This, combined with other non-slave trade interests, led the Iroquois to a massive period of expansionism and warfare that displaced great numbers of indigenous peoples across the Great Lakes region.

Where do the Erie and Wenro come into this? Unfortunately, we know little about the Wenro. They were defeated in the 1640s and fled to join other nearby groups, including the Neutrals and the Huron, both of whom were ultimately defeated by the Iroquois only a few years later. The remaining Wenros were likely either killed or absorbed into the Iroquois.

We know a bit more about the Eries. After they were defeated by the Iroquois, the remaining Erie that were not absorbed into the Iroquois seem to have migrated south. A strange indigenous group called the Richahecrians appeared in Virginia in 1656 and defeated a force of English and Pamunkey in battle. These new arrivals lived in Great Lakes-style longhouses rather than the traditional southeastern wattle-and-daub, and conveniently appeared following the Iroquois defeat of the Erie. Though the case that they were Eries is not airtight, there is very strong evidence to suggest that the Richahecrians were Erie refugees from the north.

Rather than continue warfare against this strange new group, the English instead reversed course and decided to initiate trade. With this, the Richahecrians - who would soon become known as the Westos - became one of the biggest players in the southeastern indigenous slave trade. Further migration led the Westos to settle along the Savannah River, from which they launched raids into Spanish Florida and into adjacent indigenous territories in modern Georgia and the Carolinas. Their actions made them deeply feared among local indigenous populations; when English settlers arrived to settle the Carolina Colony in 1670, the local peoples begged them for protection against the Westos.

It was Carolina that would doom the Westos. Before long, as the indigenous slave trade truly took off, the Westos found that they faced new competition from other armed raiding groups, Virginia became disillusioned with the power that the Westos held over the trade, and finally disgruntled Carolinians decided to be rid of them altogether. In 1680, they hired Shawnee warriors to destroy the Westo, reducing them to fifty warriors by 1682, and by 1715 the Westo disappear from records entirely.

As to the first part of your question, I don’t think that’s something that can be answered definitively. Part of it is almost certainly that both the Erie and Wenro disappear from colonial records fairly early on, and neither survived into the post-American-independence era, let alone to the present. However, the question of why certain parts of history are neglected while others are highlighted is not easy to answer, and I don’t think a definitive “why” can ever be given.

Source:

Ethridge, Robbie Franklyn, and Sheri M. Shuck-Hall. Mapping the Mississippian Shatter Zone: The Colonial Indian Slave Trade and Regional Instability in the American South. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009.

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