page_title: Wyandot people
section_title: European contact and Wyandot dispersal
hierarchical_section_title: Wyandot people / History / European contact and Wyandot dispersal
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Le_Grand_Voyage_du_Pays_des_Hurons_1632_Gabriel_Sagard
context_page_description: The Wyandot people or Wendat, also called the Huron Nation and Huron people, are Iroquoian-speaking peoples of North America who emerged as a tribe around the north shore of Lake Ontario.
  Today, numerous Wyandot people in the United States are enrolled members of Wyandotte Nation, the federally recognized tribe headquartered in Wyandotte, Oklahoma.
  In Canada, the Wyandot have a First Nations reserve in Quebec.
  By the 15th century, the precontact Wyandot had settled in the large area from the north shores of most of present-day Lake Ontario, northwards up to the southeastern shores of Georgian Bay. From this homeland, they encountered the French explorer Samuel de Champlain in 1615. They historically spoke the Wyandot language, a Northern Iroquoian language. They were believed to number more than 30,000 at the time of European contact in the 1610s to 1620s.
  In the late 17th century, the Huron Confederacy merged with the Tionontati nation. This may originally have been a splinter colony of the Huron, to their west to form the historical Wyandot.
context_section_description: The earliest written accounts of the Huron were made by the French, who began exploring North America in the 16th century. News of the Europeans reached the Huron, particularly when Samuel de Champlain explored the Saint Lawrence River in the early 17th century. Some Huron decided to go and meet the Europeans. Atironta, the principal headman of the Arendarhonon tribe, went to Quebec and made an alliance with the French in 1609.
  The Jesuit Relations of 1639 describes the Huron:
  They are robust, and all are much taller than the French. Their only covering is a beaver skin, which they wear upon their shoulders in the form of a mantle; shoes and leggings in winter, a tobacco pouch behind the back, a pipe in the hand; around their necks and arms bead necklaces and bracelets of porcelain; they also suspend these from their ears, and around their locks of hair. They grease their hair and faces; they also streak their faces with black and red paint.
  — Jesuit François du Peron, Jesuit Relations (1898) Volume XV
  The total population of the Huron at the time of European contact has been estimated at about 20,000 to 40,000 people. From 1634 to 1640, the Huron were devastated by Eurasian infectious diseases, such as measles and smallpox which were endemic among the Europeans. The peoples of North America had no acquired immunity to these diseases and suffered very high mortality rates. Epidemiological studies have shown that beginning in 1634, more European children emigrated with their families to the New World from cities in France, Britain, and the Netherlands, which had endemic smallpox. Historians believe the disease spread from the children to the Huron and other nations, often through contact with traders.
  So many Huron died that they abandoned many of their villages and agricultural areas. About half to two-thirds of the population died in the epidemics, decreasing the population to about 12,000. Such losses had a high social cost, devastating families and clans, and disrupting their society's structure and traditions.
  Before the French arrived, the Huron had already been in conflict with the Haudenosaunee Confederacy (Five Nations) to the south. Several thousand Huron lived as far south as present-day central West Virginia along the Kanawha River by the late 16th century, but they were driven out by the Haudenosaunee, who invaded from present-day New York in the 17th century to secure more hunting grounds for the beaver trade. Once the European powers became involved in trading, the conflict among natives intensified significantly as they struggled to control the lucrative fur trade and satisfy European demand. The French allied with the Huron, because they were the most advanced trading nation at the time. The Haudenosaunee tended to ally with the Dutch and later English, who settled at Albany and in the Mohawk Valley of their New York territory.
  Introduction of European weapons and the fur trade increased competition and the severity of inter-tribal warfare. While the Haudenosaunee could easily obtain guns in exchange for furs from Dutch traders in New York, the Wendat were required to profess Christianity to obtain a gun from French traders in Canada. Therefore, they were unprepared, on March 16, 1649, when a Haudenosaunee war party of about 1000 entered Wendake and burned the Huron mission villages of St. Ignace and St. Louis in present-day Simcoe County, Ontario, killing about 300 people. The Iroquois also killed many of the Jesuit missionaries, who have since been honored as North American Martyrs. The surviving Jesuits burned the mission after abandoning it to prevent its capture. The extensive Iroquois attack shocked and frightened the surviving Huron. The Huron were geographically cut off from trade with the Dutch and British by the Iroquois Confederacy, who had access to free trade with all the Europeans in the area especially the Dutch. This forced them to continue to use lithic tools and weapons like clubs arrows, stone scrapers, and cutters. This is compared to the near-universal use of European iron tools by Ir
caption: Le Grand Voyage du Pays des Hurons, Gabriel Sagard, 1632
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