HURON/WYANDOT

HURON/WYANDOT. The Hurons were a confederation of four or five tribes, whose foundation originated in the fifteenth or sixteenth century. At the time of European contact, there were twenty thousand Hurons living close to the banks of Georgian Bay in the modern province of Ontario, Canada, in semi-sedentary farming communities, which relocated every fifteen to twenty years when the grounds were no longer productive and wood for heating fuel was exhausted.

This matrilineal and matrilocal society traces its origins back to a first woman, Aataentsic, who is at the core of the creation myth. Clan segments—the groupings of people related to the women lineage living in the same longhouse—were the basic social units. The political system was based on councils representing kinship networks at the village, tribe, and confederation levels. The Hurons played a central role in the commercial and diplomatic networks of their region.

Starting in 1634, misfortunes descended on the Hurons. Terrible epidemics followed by Iroquois attacks brought about the complete destruction of Huronia by 1650. Most of the survivors were reduced to captivity; a few hundred survivors took refuge close to the French settlement at Quebec. A similar number of traditionalist Hurons, together with the Tobacco Indians, formed the Wyandot community of the Great Lakes region, first at Michilimackinac and later in Detroit. Within this group, the Huron chief Kondiaronk played a decisive role in the conclusion of the 1701 Great Peace in Montreal, which ended the war with the Iroquois. In 1697, the Quebec-region Hurons settled in Lorette (now Wendake), Quebec, to become a prosperous community of approximately two thousand people. The American removal policy forced the Great Lakes Wyandots to settle in Oklahoma. Only a few hundred still live in that state, where they have no reservation territory. The remainder of the three thousand Wyandots of the United States are scattered throughout the country.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Barbeau, Marius. Huron and Wyandot Mythology. Ottawa, Canada: Government Printing Bureau, 1915.

Heidenreich, Conrad. Huronia: A History and Geography of the Huron Indians, 1600–1650. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1971.

Trigger, Bruce G. The Children of Aataentsic. A History of the Huron People to 1660. 2 vols. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1976.

DenysDelâge

See alsoWarfare, Indian .