- Wyandot
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1. an Indian of the former Huron confederacy.2. a dialect of the Huron language, esp. as used by those elements of the Huron tribe regrouped in Oklahoma.Also, Wyandotte.
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or HuronNorth American Indian people living in Lorette, north of Quebec city, Que., and in southwestern Ontario, Can.; and in Kansas and Oklahoma, U.S. Their language is of the Iroquoian family. At first contact, the people who mostly call themselves Wyandot lived in Ouendake (Huronia), between Georgian Bay and Lake Simcoe. Their villages, sometimes palisaded, consisted of large, bark-covered dwellings that housed several families related through maternal descent. Crops included corn, beans, squash, sunflowers, and tobacco. Hunting and fishing were of lesser importance. Villages were divided into clans, the chiefs of which formed councils. Women were influential in clan affairs, and clan matrons had the responsibility of selecting political leaders. The Wyandot were bitter enemies of tribes of the Iroquois Confederacy, with whom they competed in the fur trade. Iroquois invasions in 1648–50 devastated the tribe, forcing a remnant westward. Today the Wyandot, or Wyandotte, as they are known in the U.S. number about 6,800 in the U.S. and Canada.* * *
Universalium. 2010.
