Western New York State Ancestral Home To The Eriez And Seneca Tribes

It Sounds Like It Was A Happy Time

The Best Apples Come From The Great Lakes Region

Presque Isle Bay From Space

Until the mid 17th Century Erie Pennsylvania held the tribal center of the Eriez Indians. The name Eriez or Erie is a shorter form of the Iroquoian word "Erielhonan" meaning literally "long tail" referring to the native panther skins that many of the tribe wore ceremonially. The panther (cougar or mountain lion) was the native Eriez totem. They honored and emulated the stealthy cats that were the top of the contemporary indigenous food chain. Although a small tribe when compared to their neighbors the Seneca or Susquehannocks, they stood boldly against larger enemies and welcomed refugees from neighboring wars. this did not make them very popular with the other tribes in the area and by the late 17th century the Eriez tribe had been either wiped out by war or assimilated by the Iroquois. Within a century the large panthers that were the totem of the Eriez had also vanished from the lands of North Western Pennsylvania.