[2] Their nation was almost exterminated in the mid-17th century by five years of prolonged warfare with the powerful neighboring Iroquois for helping the Huron in the Beaver Wars for control of the fur trade.

This destroyed their stored maize and other foods, added to their loss of life, and threatened their future, as they had no way to survive the winter.

The members of remnant tribes living among the Iroquois gradually assimilated to the majority cultures, losing their independent tribal identities.

They were once believed, due to a misidentification of villages by early French explorers mapping the Great Lakes, to control all the land from northwestern Pennsylvania to about Sandusky, Ohio, but archaeologists have now attributed the western half of that to another culture referred to as the Whittlesey's, who were likely an Algonquian people.

[8] A site once thought to be Erie in Conneaut, Ohio, is attributed to Whittlesey culture, who surrounded their villages with earthen embankments instead of wooden palisades and lived in longhouses, rather than wigwams, by the time of European contact.

[9] Another Erie settlement was discovered in Windsor, Ohio, at the southwestern corner of Ashtabula County, which is two river valleys further west than the sites at Conneaut.

[10] No significant settlement remains from prior to the Beaver Wars was ever documented in Trumbull or Mahoning Counties, leaving the exact border between the two peoples in question.

[citation needed] The names of only some villages have survived, and those include Kentaientonga (Gentaguehronon, Gentaienton, Gentaguetehronnon), Honniasont (Black Minqua, Honniasontkeronon, Oniassontke), and Rigué (Arrigahaga, Rigueronnon, Rique, Riquehronnon).

While Indigenous peoples lived along the Great Lakes for thousands of years in succeeding cultures, historic tribes known at the time of European encounter began to coalesce by the 15th and 16th centuries.

[a] The editors of New American Heritage state the various confederacies of Iroquoian tribes migrated from south to the Great Lakes regions and in between well before pre-Columbian times.

By the time of European contact, Algonquian and Iroquoian tribes traded and competed with each other and spent most years in uneasy peace.

Rivalries and habitual competition among American Indians tribes for resources (especially fire arms) and power was escalated by the lucrative returns of the fur trade with French and Dutch colonists beginning settlements in the greater area before 1611.

Historically the Monacan and Erie were trade allies, especially copper, but years later that relationship fell apart due to growing colonial pressure.

Only the Dutch fur traders from Fort Orange (now Albany, New York) and Jesuit missionaries in Canada referred to them in historic records.