584 



HURON 



[b. a. e. 



4, 32d Cong., spec. sess.. 161, 1853. TJp-pa.— Hazen 

 quoted by Gibbs, Nabiltse MS. vocab., B. A. E. 



Huron (lexically from French hure, 

 'bristly,' 'bristled,' from hure, 'rough 

 hair ' ( of the head ) , head of man or beast, 

 wild boar's head; old French, 'muzzle of 

 the wolf, lion,' etc., 'the scalp,' 'a wig'; 

 Norman French, hure, 'rugged'; Rou- 

 manian, huree, 'rough earth,' and the 

 suffix -071, expressive of depreciation and 

 employed to form nouns referring to per- 

 sons) . The name Huron, frequently with 

 an added epithet, like vilain, ' base,' was 

 in use in France as early as 1358 ( La Curne 

 deSainte-PalayeiuDict. Hist.de I'Ancien 

 Langage Frangoise, 1880) as a name ex- 

 pressive of contumely, contempt, and in- 

 sult, signifying approximately an un- 

 kempt person, knave, ruffian, lout, wretch. 

 The peasants who rebelled against the 

 nobility during the captivity of King John 

 in England in 1358 were called both 

 Hurons and Jacques or Jacques hons hom- 

 mes, the latter signifying approximately 

 'simpleton Jacks,' and so the term Jac- 

 querie was applied to this revolt of the 

 peasants. But Father Lalement(Jes. Eel. 

 for 1639, 51, 1858), in attempting to give 

 the origin of the name Huron, says that 

 about 40 years previous to his time, 

 i. e., about 1600, when these people first 

 reached the French trading posts on the 

 St Lawrence, a French soldier or sailor, 

 seeing some of these barbarians wearing 

 their haircropped and roached, gave them 

 the name Hurons, their heads suggesting 

 those of wild boars. Lalement declares 

 that while what he had advanced con- 

 cerning the origin of the name was the 

 most authentic, "others attribute it to 

 some other though similar origm." But 

 it certainly does not appear that the re- 

 bellious French peasants in 1358, men- 

 tioned above, were called Hurons because 

 they had a similar or an identical manner 

 of wearing the hair; for, as has been 

 stated, the name had, long previous to 

 the arrival of the French in America, a 

 well-known derogatory signification ni 

 France. So it is quite probable that the 

 name was applied to the Indians in the 

 sense of 'an unkempt person,' 'a bristly 

 savage,' 'a wretch or lout,' 'a ruffian.' 



A confederation of 4 highly organized 

 Iroquoian tribes with several small de- 

 pendent communities, which, when first 

 known in 1615, occupied a limited terri- 

 tory, sometimes called Huronia, around 

 L. Simcoe and s. and e. of Georgian bay, 

 Ontario. According to the Jesuit Rela- 

 tion for 1639 the names of these tribes, 

 which were independent in local affairs 

 only, were the Attignaouantan (Bear peo- 

 ple), the Attigneenongnahac (Cord peo- 

 ple), the Arendahronon (Rock people), 

 and the Tohontaenrat {Atahonta' en rat or 

 Toho7i(a'enrat, White-eared or Deer peo- 

 ple ) . Two of the dependent peoples were 



the Bowl people and the Ataronchronon. 

 Later, to escape tlestruction by the Iro- 

 quois, the Wenrohronon, an Iroquoian 

 tribe, in 1 639, and the Atont rataronnon, an 

 Algonquian people, in 1644, sought asylum 

 with tlie Huron confederation. In the 

 Huron tongue the common and gen- 

 eral name of this confederation of tribes 

 and dependent peoples was Weiidat (8en- 

 dat), a designation of doubtful analysis 

 and signification, the most obvious mean- 

 ing being 'the islanders' or 'dwellers on 

 a peninsula. ' According to a definite tra- 

 dition recorded in the Jesuit Relation for 

 1639, the era of the formation of this con- 

 federation was at that period compara- 

 tively recent, at least in so far as the date 

 of membership of the last two tribes men- 

 tioned therein is concerned. According 

 to the same authority the Rock people 

 were adopted about 50 years and the 

 Deer people about 30 years (traditional 

 time) previous to 1639, thus carrying 

 back to about 1590 the date of the immi- 

 gration of the Rock people into the Huron 

 country. The first two principal tribes 

 in 1639, regarding themselves as the orig- 

 inal inhabitants of the land, claimed that 

 they knew with certainty the dwelling 

 places and village sites of their ancestors 

 in the country for a period exceeding 200 

 years. Having received and adopted the 

 other two into their country and state, 

 they were the more important. Officially 

 and in their councils they addressed 

 each other by the formal political terms 

 'brother' and 'sister'; they were also 

 the more populous, having incorporated 

 many persons, families, clans, and peo- 

 ples, who, preserving the name arjd mem- 

 ory of their own founders, lived among 

 the tribes which adopted them as small 

 dependent communities, maintaining the 

 general name and having the community 

 of certain local rights, and enjoyed the 

 powerful protection and shared with it 

 the community of certani other rights, 

 interests, and obligations of the great 

 Wendat commonwealth. 



The provenience and the course of mi- 

 gration of the Rock and Deer tribes to 

 the Huron country appear to furnish a 

 reason for the prevalent but erroneous 

 belief tliat all the Iroquoian tribes came 

 into this continent from the valley of the 

 lower St Lawrence. There is presump- 

 tive evidence that the Rock and the Deer 

 tribes came into Huronia from the middle 

 and upper St Lawrence valley, and they 

 appear to have been expelled therefrom 

 by the Iroquois, hence the expulsion of 

 the Rock and the Deer people from lower 

 St Lawrence valley has been mistaken 

 for the migration of the entire stock from 

 that region. 



In his voyages to the St Lawrence in 

 1534-43, Jacques Cartier found on the 



