Abstract
THE tribe of North American Indians known by the name of Hurons appears, when first brought to the knowledge of the intruding French, to have been settled in palisaded villages around Lake Simcoe, in Western Canada. They called themselves Ouandots or Wyan-dots. They consisted of four septs or nations; the Attignaouentans, or Nation of the Bear, the chief member of the league, the Attvgnenonghaes, the Ahrendarr-honons, and the Tohotaenrats. They occupied thirty-two villages when visited by the Jesuit missionaries in 1639. Brcbeuf reckoned them in all in 1635 at 30,000, and they were stated in the Relation of 1660 at 35,000. The Hurons with other tribes dwelling at this time in Canada, were fully acquainted with agriculture, as Dr. Wilson shows, wholly independent of any European influences. The Hurons became known to the civilised world only in their decline, and immediately before their extirpation. They were then in alliance with the Adirondacks and other Algonquins, against their common Iroquois enemy. This latter is the name of a league of tribes often designated the Indians of the Five or of the Six Nations, This confederation of tribes during the seventeenth century was the great aggressive nationality of the American Continent, which subdued, exterminated, or incorporated the other tribes with which they came into contact. Cartier discovered Canada in 1535. Champlain explored and settled it subsequently. He visited the Huron country in 1615, and appears to have found the whole district between the river Ottawa and Lake Simcoe to have been almost depopulated, which is to be attributed to the implacable enmity of the Iroquois. This region, “in the latter part of the seventeenth century became the scene of the indefatigable operations of a succession of missionary fathers, some of whom divided their self-denying labours between them and their Iroquois foes, and several suffered martyrdom at the hands of the savage nations whose conversion they aimed at. Minutely detailed maps and narratives of exploration and missionary labours, record the progress of discovery in the region around the Georgian Bay, and illustrate the topography of the Huron villages so accurately, that most of their sites have been identified in recent years. Dr. J. C. Taché devoted such leisure as he could command during a period of five years, prior to 1865, to a minute exploration of the Huron country. Following in the steps of early writers whose accounts are preserved in the Relations of the Jesuit Fathers, communicated to the Provincial of the Order at Paris, from 1611 to 1672, he was able to determine the sites of their principal villages, and to explore their cemeteries, abounding with implements, weapons, and numerous other archæological records of native arts and habits.
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The Huron Race and its Head Form* . Nature 6, 264–265 (1872). https://doi.org/10.1038/006264a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/006264a0