Wyandot

:This article is about the First Nations people, the Wyandot, also known as the Huron. For other uses, see Huron (disambiguation).

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The Wyandot or Wendat (also called the Huron) are a First Nations people originally from modern day Southern Ontario, Canada. The early French explorers called the members of a four-tribe confederacy the Huron. This name may have been applied to the Wyandot people either from the French huron (peasant), because the Huron were an agricultural people, growing corn and sunflowers; or, according to Jesuit Father Gabriel Lalemant, the name referred to a hure, the rough-haired head of wild boars.

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The Wendat homelands, near Georgian Bay, were known as Wendake.

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French explorers and settlers encountered the Hurons in the 17th century. The French, in particular members of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits), learned their language and examined their social organization. The Huron were divided into various "nations," comprising the Huron Confederacy. These nations were four to six in number, and included the Arendarhonon, the Tahontaenrat, the Attigneenongnahac, the Attignawantan, of whom the Ataronchronon seem to have been a subdivision. (The Hurons were not the only Iroquoian people in the area to be organized into confederacies. The Petun nation, the tribes who lived around Georgian Bay in southern-central Ontario, were further divided into Bear, Cord, Deer, and Rock tribes. To the south, on southern Lake Huron and northern Lake Erie, were the Attiwandaronk or Neutral Indian, who were less well known to the French. And of course, the Iroquois themselves were a league of five (later six) nations.)

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Before the French arrived, the Hurons were already in conflict with the Iroquois to the south. Once the European powers become involved, the conflict became significantly more intense and is considered a war. The French allied with the Huron, because they were the most advanced trading nation at the time. The Iroquois tended to be allies of the English, who took advantage of their hatred of the Hurons and their new French allies. The introduction of European weapons increased the severity of the war, and by about 1650 the Iroquois had almost completely destroyed the Huron tribes. The Jesuit mission of Sainte-Marie among the Hurons, near modern Midland, Ontario, was one focus of Iroquois attacks; it was destroyed in 1648 and many of the Jesuit missionaries were killed (see Canadian Martyrs). After a bitter winter on Christian Island, Ontario, some Huron-Wendat relocated near Quebec City and settled at Wendake, Quebec.

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The western Hurons eventually established themselves in the area of Ohio and southern Michigan. It is this group that became commonly known to English speakers as "Wyandots" (notably in James Fenimore Cooper's novel Wyandotte, published in 1843). In the late 18th century, the Wyandots obtained a position of symbolic importance as the "uncles", or senior members, of the Wabash Confederacy, which waged war against the United States in the 1790s. Some Wyandot of the Wyandot Nation of Anderdon still live in southern Ontario and Michigan. However, most of the surviving people were displaced through Indian Removal in the early 19th century, and a large population of Wyandot (over 4,000) can be found in Kansas and Oklahoma.

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The approximately 3,000 Huron-Wendat in Quebec are primarily Catholic and have French as their first language, although there are currently efforts afoot to promote the use and study of the Wendat language. For many decades, a leading source of income for the Huron-Wendat of Quebec has been selling pottery and other locally produced crafts.

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In 1999, representatives the far-flung Wendat bands of Quebec, Kansas, Oklahoma and Michigan gathered at their historic homeland in Midland, Ontario, and formally re-established the Wendat Confederacy.

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The historian Georges Sioui is a Wendat from a family active in the local politics of Wendake; Bruce Trigger is a noted scholar in Huron-Wendat studies and has been adopted as an honorary Wendat.

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