Andastoerrhonon

Andastoerrhonon was the Wendat name for the Susquehannock, an Iroquoian-speaking people of the Susquehanna River country. Their settlements lay along a river linking the inland valleys to Chesapeake Bay. English, Dutch and Swedish traders knew them by other names, including Susquehannock and Minquas, as they exchanged furs for goods brought from the Atlantic coast.

John Smith met Susquehannock people near the upper Chesapeake in 1608. During the following decades they traded and fought with neighbouring peoples and colonial settlements; a treaty with Maryland in 1652 brought a period of alliance. Disease and warfare weakened their communities, and in the 1670s many moved south into Maryland. Colonial militias besieged their fortified village near Piscataway Creek in 1675. Survivors escaped, and some later returned to the Susquehanna country, where the name Conestoga came to be used for their community.