Huron

 

(hyʊr'än') , confederation of four Native North American groups who spoke the Wyandot language, which belongs to the Iroquoian branch of the Hokan-Siouan linguistic stock (see Native American languages). Their name for themselves was Wendat, Huron being the name applied to them by the French. In the early 17th cent. they occupied the region between Lake Simcoe and Georgian Bay in Ontario and numbered some 20,000. Their culture was substantially that of the area of the Eastern woodlands. They lived in palisaded villages and cultivated tobacco.

In 1615, when Samuel Champlain visited the Huron, they were at war with the Iroquois. The long-standing enmity between the Huron and the Iroquois reached a climax in 1648, when the Iroquois, armed with Dutch firearms, invaded Huronia and subsequently disrupted (1649) the Huron confederacy. It was at this time that Father Jean de Brébeuf, who established (1626) a Roman Catholic mission among the Huron, and other Jesuit missionaries were killed by the Iroquois. The survivors of the Huron fled in all directions—southwest to the Tobacco Nation, south to the Neutral Nation, southeast to the Erie, and northeast to a French fort near Quebec. The implacable Iroquois hunted the Huron everywhere; in 1649 the Iroquois attacked the Tobacco Nation, causing the migration of these people in company with the Huron. In 1650 the Neutral Nation was invaded by the Iroquois and practically wiped out, and in 1656 the Erie were almost exterminated.

The Huron who had fled to Quebec ultimately received a small reservation at Lorette, where many still live, but the remnants of the Huron and Tobacco Nation went, under pressure from the Iroquois, first to Michigan, then to Wisconsin and Illinois, where the Sioux attacked them. The Tobacco Nation and Huron eventually settled (1750) in villages near Detroit and at Sandusky, Ohio. In Ohio they became known to the British as the Wyandot and as such fought with the British against the Americans in both the American Revolution and the War of 1812. After the War of 1812 possession of their lands was confirmed by the United States, but by 1842 they had sold their tracts and moved to what is now Wyandotte co., Kans. In 1867 they were settled in NE Oklahoma, where they reside as citizens, their tribe having been terminated in 1959. There were some 2,500 Wyandot in the United States in 1990. About 1,500 Huron live in Canada.

Bibliography

See B. G. Trigger, The Huron Farmers of the North (1969).

Huron refers to the Wyandot indigenous people of North America.

Places

Huron is also the name of several places in the United States of America and in Canada:

Towns

• Huron, California
• Huron, Indiana
• Huron, Kansas
• Huron, Ohio
• Huron, New York
• Huron, South Dakota
• Huron, Tennessee
• Hurontown, Michigan
• Huron Beach, Michigan
• Huron City, Michigan
• Huron Mountain, Michigan
• Port Huron, Michigan

Townships

• Huron Charter Township, Michigan, in Wayne County
• Huron Township, Iowa
• Huron Township, Michigan, in Huron County
• Huron Township, North Dakota
• Huron Township, Erie County, Ohio
• Huron Township, South Dakota
• Port Huron Township, Michigan

Counties

• Huron County, Michigan
• Huron County, Ohio
• Huron County, Ontario

Bodies of Water

• Huron River (Michigan), three different rivers in Michigan
• Huron River (Ohio), a river in Ohio
• Huron Swamp in Springfield Township, Oakland County, Michigan
• Lake Huron, one of the North American Great Lakes

Parks, Forests, Mountains

• Huron National Forest in Michigan
• Huron National Wildlife Refuge in Michigan on Lake Superior
• Huron Mountains, a modest range of mountains in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan

Other uses

• Port Huron Statement, the manifesto of the American student activist movement Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)
• Huron language, the language of the Wyandot indigenous people of North America
• Nottawaseppi Huron Band of Potawatomi, a band of Potawatomi American Indians, based in Calhoun County, Michigan), are also known as the Huron Potawatomi
• USS Huron (CA-9) was a US Navy armored cruiser
• HMCS Huron (G24), a World War II Tribal class destroyer
• HMCS Huron (DDH 281), Iroquois class destroyer active from 1972 to 2005
• C-12 Huron aircraft
• "Hurón", either Galictis vittata or Galictis cuja, two related ferret-like mammals from Central and South America
• Huron High School in Ann Arbor, Michigan

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