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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 Wyandot people.
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 (flight by whole villages) of first the Tionontati tribes, then the Neutral groups, as had happened to the Wendat.
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 (opposite to the territory of the Seneca nation) and extended westerly along the right bank (eastern) shores of the Niagara River (opposite lands occupied by the main Neutral people on the Canadian side of today's river) and from lands at its source (Lake Erie, in the vicinity of Buffalo) 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 (and Genesee River gorge area) 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 Nation 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 New France 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 Wyandot people and Haudenosaunee was because they managed to trade simultaneously with both and their presence was valuable as a buffer state.
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 Wyandot people, the Petun, the Neutral Nation, the Shawnee people (in Ohio), 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.
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