Finding the Wendat (Huron) Civilization

Popular imagination tends to portray Native American existence before European contact as a peaceful, primitive situation replete with tepees and elaborate headdresses, but little in the way of any sort of settled, complex civilization.  Popular imagination, of course, is sorely lacking.  Not including the advanced civilization of the Aztecs (who, yes, had a pretty glaring dark side too) and other cultures in central Mexico and further south, there were a great deal of peoples in lands as diverse as the Rio Grande Valley to the Great Lakes area that raised great cities and engaged in extensive agriculture to feed large populations.  The finest remains of such civilizations can be seen in the American southwest, but impressive mounds and fragments of cities can be found in key locations throughout the eastern part of North America, particularly in Illinois, Ohio, and Ontario.  Disease and European involvement in already viscous warfare between various peoples would finish off these great, yes, urban cultures that had already begun to decline due to climactic shifts in rainfall patterns.

While we are fairly certain of conditions that have existed since the 1500s, however, we still know relatively little about what settled life was like for our true first-families, and exciting discoveries keep popping up on a regular basis.  Such is the case of ongoing discoveries made at the "Mantle Site", a Wendat (Huron) where as many as 2,000 people might have lived in a large settlement of permanent structures laid out in a meaningful urban design.  Some news about this can be found here:

http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/article/1222889--how-did-huron-wendat-get-cursed-european-axe-a-century-before-european-contact

So who were the Wendat (Hurons) and why is this a big deal?  Well, that funny thing called popular imagination labels them as a weak people who lovingly embraced the French and Christianity when it was offered to them.  As such, they became scattered to the winds by the other nations of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) attacked them in their weakened state, who had it coming anyway because they sided with the newcomers.  In truth, the Wendat were no weaker than any individual nation of the Haudenosaunee and actually controlled a series of trade routes and contacts because of their strategic position located in the heart of territory that had long been contested by various Algonquin and Haudenosaunee nations.  Settled on the northern shores of Lake Ontario and the eastern and southern shores of Lake Huron (essentially southern Ontario and parts of Michigan), the Wendat saw passage of goods and peoples from the Algonquins, Ojibwa, Potawatamis, Illinois, Ottawas, Chippewas, Senecas, Cayugas, Onandagas, Oneidas, Mohawks, the nations which surrounded them.  Furthermore, as they were such a vital link between so many nations of two major cultural groups, they also had extensive contact with nations further afield such as the Cree, various nations of the Sioux, Shawnees, Delawares, Mahicans, and the various nations who lived further down the Mississippi and Atlantic corridors.  The Wendat were big news, as they were not afraid to facilitate the passage of a lot of economy through their land.

So what else would such a nation do when in such a prestigious and dangerous position of being in contact with so many other nations?  They dug in, made a pretty big city, and instead of fighting everyone else or making peace with them, opened up an exchange of commerce and ideas with them.  The recent find of a Basque axe at the Mantle Site has only furthered proof that the Wendat drew in a lot of distant exchanges of various sorts.  Even before they had seen a Basque or any other European, the Wendat were busy trading some stuff Europeans had traded to nations on the margins of the continent.  Now this might be stretching, but it seems plausible that one of the reasons why the French were so eager to seek out contact, trade, and evangelistic efforts with the Wendat were because other nations, such as the Algonquins, told them that this was a people who were interested in working with others and freely moving around goods both material and intellectual.  While the French found the other Haudenosaunee to be less than friendly towards them, and the Algonquins amicable but also largely ambivalent about helping a people that had set up camp right on their doorstep, they found the Wendat to be very willing to help them trade and explore in a mysterious land of pines, moose, and very cold winters.

In time, this would come to a very beautiful, and very tragic, sharing that would become one of the great marriages of culture that our Canada would be born from.  That, of course, is a passionate story for me to tell you on another day.