I think Mo is being kind about TBE. If TBE claims to be Erie, why give yourself the name of the most famous Shawnee chief? His geneology chart also claims he has a CHEROKEE ancestor on the Dawes Roll, though that could be Cherokee Freedman. So why go around claiming to be Erie? Why not just enroll in the Cherokee Nation? (Pretty obvious: this way he gets to play at being an Indian Chief.) Why call yourself mound builders when they were a people once spread over what is now the eastern half of the US, not this one tribe? Most of what we know about the mound builders points to them either coming from, or at least being very much influenced by, NDNs of central Mexico.
TBE is on a UFO/paranormal site.
http://www.burlingtonnews.net/pastshows-7-06.htmlAlso on a motivational speakers radio show to talk about "ancient codes and secrets."
The "tribal" website has a lot of bizarre links to sites about "ancient mysteries," the "secret language of Atlantis revealed" and one link the site of a now deceased New Age fraud, Robert Franzone (Ghostwolf). Do a search of our site, Franzone was pretty notorious, and yet this "tribe" links to him.
Why does his "tribal" website have outdated archeology accounts rather than Erie traditions for their origin story? He knows so little about NDN traditions he supports the Bering Strait Theory.
http://www.eriemoundbuilders.com/erie%5Findian%5Fhistory/Then after a long, looooong recitation of the BST, he finally describes the EMB.
"The EIMTN is the direct descendant of Mississippi Valley Erie-Mound Builders Indians, who called themselves hErie, Alliwegis, sometimes called Talliwegis.
As soon as we assert we were the hErie-Alliwegis, others usually say we are related to the Iroquois Nations because that’s the way they heard it. But the Iroquois in the 5 Nation ,now 6 Nation Confederacy are uniquely different from the Alliwegis, who were from the Mississippi Valley Erie-Mound Builders Culture. We also are uniquely different from the Iroquois 5 Nations. We mainly are the Eries, the Erie-Neutral Nation and Erie-Sussquehannocks to name only a few of the 70 plus names we were given or called."
Most of the rest is extremely detailed to hide just how little they know or say about actual Erie history. For example, the Erie were nowhere near the Mississippi Valley. They lived around modern day Erie PA. The accounts I saw said they were no further south than Virginia, no further west than the start of the Ohio River.
Isn't there another group calling themselves Susquehannocks, whose "chief" mostly does ceremony selling in Europe, that Trish exposed? If I remember right, the Susquehannocks were wiped out in the 1730s or so.
A more accurate site on Erie history.
http://www.dickshovel.com/erie.html"It took the Seneca, Cayuga, and Onondaga until 1656 before the Erie were defeated. Many survivors were incorporated into the Seneca to replace their losses in the war, and the Erie ceased to exist as a separate tribe. The Erie, however, did not entirely disappear at this time....Some of the Erie, Neutrals, Tionontati, and Huron escaped...the last group of Erie (southern Pennsylvania) did not surrender to the Iroquois until 1680. Where they had been hiding during the intervening 24 years is a mystery.
In 1656 an unknown tribe fleeing the Iroquois entered the Virginia Piedmont and settled near the falls of the James River (Richmond). They built a large, fortified village and terrorized the local Powhatan tribes who called them the Ricahecrian. A combined English and Powhatan army went out to expel these intruders but was soundly defeated....it is very possible they were Erie. Where did the Ricahecrian go afterwards? No answers...just possibilities....
Of course, they could just as easily gone north, or the Ricahecrian may not have been Erie in the first place. Other than the final Erie surrender in 1680, only one other identifiable mention occurred after 1656. In 1662 the Susquehannock told the Dutch they expected 800 Honniasont warriors to join them in their war with the Iroquois. Honniasont is a Iroquian word meaning "wearing something around the neck" and refers to the Black Mingua habit of wearing a black badge on their chests. The Honniasont (Black Mingua) are believed to have been a division of the Erie that lived around the upper Ohio River in western Pennsylvania....they were gone by 1679. Many of the descendents of the Erie that were adopted by the Seneca began leaving the Iroquois homeland during the 1720s and returned to Ohio. Known as the Mingo (Ohio Iroquois), they were removed to the Indian Territory during the 1840s. It is very likely that many of the Seneca in Oklahoma today have Erie ancestors."
So from what we know the Erie have been gone since the 1680s.
