Petun

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The Petun (tobacco in French), or Tionontati, were an Iroquoian-speaking First Nations people closely related to the Huron Confederacy. Their homeland was located along the southwest edge of Georgian Bay, in the area immediately to the west of the Huron territory in Southern Ontario of present-day Canada. They had eight to ten villages, and may have numbered several thousand prior to European contact.^[1].

Following decimation by disease, both Huron and Petun survivors were dispersed by Iroquois warfare and encroachment in the late 17th century. The remnants joined with some refugee Hurons to become the Huron-Petuns, later known as the Wyandot.

Name

French traders called these First Nations people the Petun (tobacco), for their industrious cultivation of that plant. Petun as a word for tobacco became obsolete; it was derived from the early French Brazilian trade.^[2] In the Mohawk dialect of the Iroquois, the name for tobacco is O-ye-aug-wa.^[3]

French colonial tradesmen and the following settlers in the Ohio Valley called the Wyandot, Guyandotte. The Guyandotte River in south-western West Virginia was named for the Wendat people who had migrated to the area during the North American fur trade wars.

References

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