Vends

The Vends were a small tribe who lived in the twelfth-sixteenth centuries in the area around the town of Wenden (now Cēsis) in what is now north-central Latvia. The origin of the Vends and their language is disputed; sometimes they are associated with the Western Slavic Wends, while other researchers believe they spoke a Baltic-Finnic language and were related to the neighboring Livonians and the Votians. The Vends were first mentioned in the Chronicle of Henry of Livonia as they were chased away from Courland and Christianized by Germans during Livonian Crusade.