Tionontati
The Tionontati or Petun were an Indian people who used one of the Iroquois languages. They originally lived in nine villages on Nottawasaga Bay in Gray and in Simcoe County in what is now the Canadian province of Ontario . The bay forms part of Georgian Bay , a 200 km long and 80 km wide bay on the eastern edge of Lake Huron . Culturally and politically, they were closest to the Wendat (Huron) confederation living in the northeast , so that both peoples are often viewed as a tribal group and are referred to as Wendat-Tionontate or Huron-Petun .
Surname
Samuel de Champlain named it Gens du Petun for the first time in 1616 (shortened to Petun - "Tobacco People", English "Tobacco Nation"). Possibly this word came from a South American Indian language that was adopted by the Portuguese and passed on to the French. Why he named it after this plant, even though all neighboring peoples also cultivated and smoked it, is unclear. Champlain may have noticed the ritual use of tobacco. In any case, after the first publication of Champlain's work, this idea of the tobacco people appears for the first time in the new edition, and not in the text but in an accompanying map. Since then, the idea of large tobacco fields and large-scale trade has been spread unchecked until it has become a myth. In reality, tobacco was grown in small areas in horticulture.
Weakened by the smallpox epidemics and the Beaver Wars (1640–1701) against the Iroquois League , survivors of two formerly important Iroquois confederations - the Wendat (Hurons) and the also strongly decimated Tionontati - united . This group was joined by Iroquois-speaking, also dispersed groups of the Neutral Confederation, the Erie , the Susquehannock , Wenro (also Wenrohronon , possibly a group of neutrals) and some smaller Algonquin and Iroquois tribes. So they formed a new tribal group that was first called the Huron Petun Nation . However, from 1700, the name Wyandot prevailed in the USA, in Canada both Wyandot and Huron are common. Of the two original peoples of today's Wyandot - the Wendat (Hurons) and the Tionantati (Petun) - the Tionontati were by far the largest tribe among these, and their descendants form the majority of the Wyandot to this day.
The name petun (also Tionnontate, Etionontate, Etionnontateronnon, Tuinontatek, Dionondadie, Khionontaterrhonon - People Among the Hills / Mountains on dt. People in the hills / mountains ), is either a designation of the Wendat (Huron) for their southwestern neighbors regarding the hilly tribal area or a petun name. Since the Petun / Tionontati formed the core of the tribal group that later became known as the Wyandot , there is a likelihood that they also called themselves the Wendat .
history
Early history
The number of the Wendat (Hurons) like the Tionontati who lived to the north and west of them grew rapidly in the 14th and 15th centuries, with a population growth of 1.2% per year calculated. The Tionontati around Collingwood is estimated at around 6,500 people for 1615, and at over 10,000 for 1623. From 1634, however, the population collapsed due to smallpox epidemics and the Beaver Wars (1640–1701) against the Iroquois League - and the Tionontati had to join various groups dispersed by the Iroquois.
Before 1610 they lived with the neighboring Wendat (Hurons) in a long-term state of war. However, the fur trade made them close allies in trade with the French. The Sidey-Mackay Village Site, excavated in 1926, west of Creemore in Simcoe County, which was still almost without traces of European trade goods, is believed to have originated from this early phase .
At the time of their first encounter with Europeans in 1616, Ehouae (later mission station St. Pierre et St. Paul), Ekarenniondi (St. Matthieu), Etarita (St. Jean), St. Andre , St. Barthelemy , St. Jacques , St. Jacques et St. Philippe , St. Simon et St. Jude and St. Thomas . They cultivated corn, beans and pumpkins both inside and outside the stockade. Tobacco cultivation could not be proven with them, but traces of tobacco were found in pipe heads.
The Tionontati were divided into two tribal groups or moieties , which were also represented by clans:
- Oskennonton (people of the stag, represented by the stag clan)
- Annaariskoua (people of the wolf, represented by the wolf clan)
First contacts with the French, beaver wars
In 1616 the French came to them for the first time under the leadership of Samuel de Champlain , who was the first to name them the tobacco nation because they cultivated this plant in long fields. They believed that the missionaries, i.e. the Jesuits , brought diseases to them and therefore forbade them to stay in their villages.
As early as 1630, the Tionontati, like the Iroquois and Wendat (Hurons), had decimated the beaver populations to such an extent that they had to look for other hunting grounds. While the Wendat (Hurons) bought furs from the north through middlemen, the Tionontati moved south to Michigan . There, however, sat Algonquin groups (the Tionontati called them Assitaehronon ) who fought against the invasion of the allied Tionontati, neutrals and Ottawa .
This western expansion was ended by the war with the Iroquois League that began in 1640 . They had been armed with guns by the Dutch and in 1645 they neutralized the French with a peace treaty. The Montagnais and some Algonk groups forced them to move east, so that the Wendat (Hurons) were largely isolated. In 1647 they destroyed the villages of the Arendaronon-Hurons. From winter 1648/49 the defeated Attignawantan-Hurons fled to the Tionontati.
Jesuits had set up a first mission station in the main town in 1640, and stations in all other villages followed within a few years. When the Iroquois destroyed the Hurons, many of them fled to the Tionontati. They too did not escape the attacks and Etarita was attacked in December 1649. The attack hit this main village by surprise, there were only a few warriors present. The missionaries there, Charles Garnier and Noel Chabanel, were tortured and killed.
The Iroquois took the survivors into their rapidly growing confederation. However, around a thousand Tionontati managed to escape in canoes in 1649. They wintered on Mackinac Island . They were joined by a few surviving Wendat (Hurons). Further attacks by the Iroquois forced them to flee again. In 1651 they reached an island near Green Bay in Wisconsin . Another Tionontati group apparently fled to the Illinois Confederation . The Seneca , the westernmost Iroquois tribe, demanded their extradition, but the Illinois refused. The Seneca then attacked them in 1655 and forced them to flee to areas west of the Mississippi .
After 1650
After the annihilation of the Wendat (Hurons), the Tionontati, which were also heavily decimated, tried to establish a balance of power between the numerically superior French and Iroquois through changing coalitions and by creating constant strife. However, this contributed to them the hostility, and occasionally also the admiration of the surrounding tribes. Chief Kondiaronk, who maintained good contacts with the French and Iroquois, tried by all means to prevent a reconciliation between the two powers.
In 1658 around 500 of them lived with the Potawatomi St Michel Mission, near Green Bay, Wisconsin . A little later they appeared with the Wendat (Hurons) of Shaugawaumikong (La Pointe). Around 1670 two tribes lived together at Mackinaw ( Fort Michilimackinac ), near Lake Michigan , in 1671 some moved to Chequamegan.
When peace negotiations began at the end of the 1680s, which were finally concluded in 1701 between 39 Indian nations and France, Kondiaronk , one of the chiefs of the Tionontati, distrusted the French who wanted to make peace with his enemies, the Iroquois. He had been in league with the Europeans since 1688 at the latest and had a delegation murdered at what would later become Kingston - ostensibly on behalf of the French. Thereupon the Iroquois, who believed his portrayal, attacked Montréal on August 25, 1689. Nevertheless, Kondiaronk appeared at the peace negotiations in Montréal in 1701, but he died during the stay. The French buried him with military honors.
Tionontati, who lived with Wendat (Hurons) near Detroit after 1701 at the instigation of the French , were still run by their hereditary chiefs in 1721 and continued to have their own name. They were often referred to as "Tionontati Hurons", but were occasionally confused with the Amikwa . Their chiefs tried in vain to get their men accepted into the French army as regular units and receive appropriate pay. They built their first village near Fort Pontchartrain. This led to conflicts with the Potawatomi, Ojibwa and Odawa villages who also lived there. The Tionontati established new villages on Bois Blanc Island (now Bob-lo Island ) near the mouth of the Detroit River in 1742 . In 1748 they were relocated to the Pointe de Montréal across from Detroit. The missionary Pierre Potier worked with them from 1744 to 1781 and made valuable notes about their culture.
With the increasing European settlement of the Windsor area, many Tionontati moved further south on the Canard River. Others lived south of Lake Erie on the Sandusky and Maumee Rivers. The more northerly, more traditional groups received more support from the French, while the southern ones strove for Ohio in order to be able to trade more intensively with the Pennsylvania settlements there. There they also had closer contacts with the Miami. In 1747, Chief Nicolas Orontony made plans to expel the French, but these plans became known to the French. He fled to Ohio after burning down his fortified village on Sandusky, where he died around 1750.
Around this time, Pennsylvania merchants began to refer to the Tionontati as Wyandot. During the Seven Years' War they supported the French, then Pontiac against the British. In 1794 they had to cede part of their land, which was laid down in the Treaty of Greenville in 1795. Hewitt assumed that they were mostly absorbed in the Wyandot of Ohio . In 1843 all Wyandot were relocated to Kansas . Although they could become US citizens in 1855, their tribal status was restored in 1867. They were given a reservation in southeast Oklahoma , where their descendants live to this day. The Tionontati language died out in the early 20th century.
See also
literature
- Elisabeth Tooker: An Ethnography of the Huron Indians, 1615-1649 , Syracuse University Press, 1991.
- Carl Waldman: Encyclopedia of Native American Tribes , 1st ed. 1988, 2nd ed. 1999, 3rd ed. 2006, reprint 2014, Infobase Publishing, p. 292 f.
- Lyal Tait: The Petuns Tobacco Indians of Canada , Ontario: Erie Publishers, Port Borwell 1971.
- Charles Garrad: Iron Trade Knives on Historic Petun Sites , in: Ontario Archeology 13 (1969) 3-15.
- Frederick Webb Hodge: Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico , Volume 4, US Government Printing Office, 1912, pp. 755 f.
Remarks
- ↑ The Wyandot
- ^ Tionontati History
- ^ Gary A. Warrick: A population history of the Huron-Petun, AD 900-1650 , PhD, Montréal: McGill University 1990.
- ^ WJ Wintemberg: The Sidey-Mackay Village Site , in: American Antiquity 11,3 (1946) 154-182.
- ↑ The Tribes (PDF; 3.6 MB)
- ↑ Donald B. Ricky: Encyclopedia of Massachusetts Indians , Somerset Publishers 1999, pp. 69f.