Huron (tribe)

Wyandot
Wendat-Huron

Wyandot moccasins, ca. 1880, Bata Shoe Museum
Total population
21,000
Regions with significant populations
Canada (southern Quebec)	3,000
United States (Kansas, Michigan, Oklahoma)	5,900
Languages
Wyandot, English, French
Religion
Christianity, others

The Wyandot people or Wendat, also called the Huron Nation and Huron people, in most historic references are believed to have been the most populous confederacy of Iroquoian cultured indigenous peoples of North America. They traditionally spoke the Wyandot language, a Northern Iroquoian language and were believed to number over 30,000 at the time the first European trader-explorers made contact with them in the second decade of the 17th century.

By the 15th century, the pre-contact Wyandots settled in the large area from the north shores of most of present-day Lake Ontario, northwards up to Georgian Bay. From this homeland, these more numerous cousins of the League of the Iroquois first encountered the French explorer Samuel de Champlain in 1615;

The historical Wyandot emerged in the late 17th century from the remnants of two earlier groups: the Wyandot (Huron) Confederacy and the Tionontate (Petun, or the Tabacco people). They were located in the southern part of what is now the Canadian province of Ontario around Georgian Bay. Drastically reduced in number by epidemic diseases after 1634, they were dispersed by war in 1649 from the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee), then based in New York.

Today the Wyandot have a First Nations reserve in Quebec, Canada. They also have three major settlements in the United States, two of which have independently governed, federally recognized tribes. Due to differing development of the groups, they speak distinct forms of Wendat and Wyandot languages.