Editing Wyandot people (section)

===European contact and Wendat dispersal===
{{See also|Jesuit missions in North America|Huronia (region)}}
[[File: Le Grand Voyage du Pays des Hurons 1632 Gabriel Sagard.jpg|thumb|upright|'' Le Grand Voyage du Pays des Hurons'', [[Gabriel Sagard]], 1632]]

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 nation, went to [[Quebec City|Quebec]] and allied with the French in 1609.

The ''[[Jesuit Relations]]'' of 1639 describes the Huron:

{{blockquote|text=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.|author=François du Peron|source=''Jesuit Relations'', Volume XV<ref>{{cite book |editor-last=Thwaites |editor-first=Reuben Gold |chapter=Letter of Father Francois du Peron of the Society of Jesus, to Father Joseph Imbert du Peron, his Brother, Religious of the same Society |title=The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents: Travels and Explorations of the Jesuit Missionaries in New France, 1610–1791 |date=1896 |location=Cleveland, Ohio |publisher=Burrows Brothers Company |volume=XV | series=Hurons and Quebec: 1638–1639 |page=155 |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/jesuitrelations74jesugoog/page/n164}}</ref>}}

The total population of the Huron at the time of European contact has been estimated at 20,000 to 40,000 people.{{sfnp|Heidenreich|1978|p=369}} From 1634 to 1640, the Huron were devastated by Eurasian infectious diseases, such as measles and smallpox, which were endemic among the Europeans. The Indigenous 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 (epidemiology)|endemic]] smallpox. Historians believe the disease spread from the children to the Huron and other nations, often through contact with traders.<ref name="Warren" />

So many Huron died that they abandoned many of their villages and agricultural areas. About half<ref>{{cite journal|last=Labelle|first=Kathryn Magee|title='They Only Spoke in Sighs': The Loss of Leaders and Life in Wendake, 1633–1639|journal=Journal of Historical Biography|date=Autumn 2009|volume=6|pages=1–33|url=https://www.ufv.ca/job/Volume_6/Volume_6_Magee.pdf}}</ref> to two-thirds of the population died in the epidemics,{{sfnp|Heidenreich|1978|p=369}} 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.<ref name="Warren" />

Before the French arrived, the Huron had already been in conflict with the [[Haudenosaunee]] Confederacy (Five Nations) to the south. 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.

[[File:Huronie.JPG|thumb|250px|right|Trek of Huron diaspora]]

The 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 1,000 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, bows and arrows, stone scrapers, and cutters. This is compared to the near-universal use of European iron tools by Iroquois groups in the area. Huron trade routes were consistently pillaged by raiders, and the lack of firearms discouraged the Hurons' trade with the French, at least without French protection. As a result of their lack of exposure, the Huron did not have as much experience using firearms compared to their neighbors, putting them at a significant disadvantage when firearms were available to them, and when available, their possession of firearms made them a larger target for Iroquois aggression.<ref>Carpenter, Roger. "Making War More Lethal: Iroquois vs. Huron in the Great Lakes Region, 1609 to 1650." ''Michigan Historical Review'' 27, no. 2 (2001): 33–51. Accessed February 25, 2020. DOI:10.2307/20173927.</ref>

After 1634 their numbers were drastically reduced by epidemics of new infectious diseases carried by Europeans, among whom these were endemic. The weakened Wendat were dispersed by the war in 1649 waged by the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, then based largely south of the Great Lakes in [[New York (state)|New York]] and Pennsylvania. Archaeological evidence of this displacement has been uncovered at the [[Rock Island II Site]] in Wisconsin.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Mason |first1=Ronald J. |title=Rock Island: Historical Indian Archaeology in the Northern Lake Michigan Basin |date=1986 |publisher=Kent State University Press}}</ref>

By May 1, 1649, the Huron had burned 15 of their villages to prevent their stores from being taken and fled as refugees to surrounding areas. About 10,000 fled to [[Christian Island (Ontario)|Gahoendoe]] (now also called Christian Island). Most who fled to the island starved over the winter, as it was an unproductive settlement and could not provide for them. After spending the bitter winter of 1649–50 on the island, surviving Huron relocated near Quebec City, where they settled at [[Wendake, Quebec|Wendake]]. Absorbing other refugees, they became the [[Huron-Wendat Nation|Huron Confederacy]]. Some Huron, along with the surviving Petun, whose villages the Iroquois attacked in the fall of 1649, fled to the upper Lake Michigan region, settling first at Green Bay, then at [[Michilimackinac]].

In the late 17th century, the Huron (Wendat) Confederacy merged with the Iroquoian-speaking [[Petun|Tionontati]] nation (known as the ''Petun'' in French, also known as the Tobacco people for their chief commodity crop). They may originally have been a splinter colony of the Huron,{{sfnp|Brandon|1961|pages=189, 194}}{{efn|The ''American Heritage Book of Indians'' says the Wyandot name may have evolved after the union of the two related peoples, the Tobacco (Petun) and the Huron, who consolidated after the mid-17th-century invasions and conquests by Iroquois League nations from south of the Great Lakes. The editors imply that the Tobacco people were directly and closely related to the Huron, and had possibly developed from the four main tribes of the Huron/Wyandot.{{sfnp|Brandon|1961|pages=189, 194}} }} to their west to form the historical Wendat.

[[File: Great Lakes Lake Huron Georgian Bay.png|thumb|200px|Main body of Georgian Bay highlighted on the map of the Great Lakes directly above Lake Ontario, with its outlet on the [[Saint Lawrence River]]. This is where the Huron encountered the French.]]

The '''Huron Range''' spanned the region from downriver of the source of the St. Lawrence River, along with three-quarters of the northern shore of Lake Ontario, to the territory of the related [[Neutral people]], extending north from both ends to wrap around Georgian Bay. This became their territorial center after their 1649 defeat and dispossession.{{efn|The ''American Heritage Book of Indians'' editors write that the Huron suffered an attack during the depths of winter in March 1649, when the Iroquois had established a war camp within Huron territory. The Iroquois attacked with more than 1,000 warriors, destroying two Huron towns, and severely damaging most of a third. When other Huron villages learned about this, they panicked, fleeing their homeland and moving west. In the event, the northern shore of Lake Ontario came under the control of the Iroquois. They continued with the [[Beaver Wars]], attacking and defeating the Tobacco, Neutral, and Erie peoples in present-day western Pennsylvania and beyond.{{sfnp|Brandon|1961|pages=182, 189}} }}<!-- Sources need updating - much new academic work has been published -->