300 THE INDIAN OCCUPANCY 



had no fire arms they for some time successfully resisted the 

 Senecas. They were at last vanquished by the Iroquois, and 

 their people killed, scattered or carried captive to the Iroquois 

 towns. 



Their manner of living can only be inferred from the re- 

 mains that they have left. The refuse heaps and graves of a 

 village site once inhabited by the Eries, situated on the shore of 

 Lake Erie throw much light upon their customs. 



This village was located upon a bluff on the edge of Lake 

 Erie, in the present town of Ripley, N. Y. It was excavated 

 by Mr. Arthur C. Parker, State Archaeologist, (i). It was pal- 

 isaded, and had been inhabited for a longtime. Its inhabitants 

 were just emerging from the Stone Age, for of the many articles 

 found there, but very few showed the influence of the European 

 trader. Their tools and weapons were made of stone, bone and 

 antler. Their kettles were still of clay of their own manufacture. 



In character their artifacts resembled those of the Neutrals 

 and the Senecas. They buried their dead in individual graves, 

 and with the bodies they placed kettles of food, pipes, and the 

 weapons and tools which had belonged to them in life. In all 

 things they resembled the others of the Iroquoian family to the 

 east and north of them. 



The war with the Senecas that resulted in the destruction 

 of the Erie Nation began in 1654. Owing to the fact that Jesuit 

 missionaries were at that time established in the villages of the 

 Senecas and others of the Five Nations, a detailed record of 

 that war remains. 



The first news of the war reached the Jesuits at Quebec in 

 1654, (2) when a "fleet of Tobacco Indians" informed them that 

 the Ehriehronnons were arming against the Iroquois. "These 

 we call the Cat Nation because of the prodigious number of wild 

 cats in their country". They further informed them that the 

 Eries had already captured a village of the "Sonnontoehronnon 

 Iroquois" and had set it on fire, and that a party of Eries had 

 pursued a war-party of Senecas which was returning victorious 

 from the direction of "the great lake of the Hurons", had cutoff 

 eighty men and had come almost to the gates of the Seneca vil- 

 lages. A celebrated Onondaga chief, Annenraes, whose supposed 



1. Arthur C. Parker, Excavations in an Erie Indian Village and Burial 

 Site, at Ripley, Chautauqua Co., N. Y. 



2. Jes. Rel. 1654, Vol. 41, P. 77. Burrows ed. 



