Huronia (region) facts for kids
Huronia is a historical region in the Great Lakes area of eastern North America. It is positioned between Lakes Erie, Ontario, and Huron. Similarly to the latter, it takes its name from the Huron, an Iroquoian society that flourished in the years leading up to contact with Europeans.
The term Huronia, which was coined by later Europeans, is distinct from the term the Huron themselves used for their dwelling place, which is wendake ("the peninsula country").
At the time of first European contact, Wendake was "one of the most densely populated territories north of Mexico." It consisted of twenty to twenty-five settlements occupying about 544 square kilometres (210 sq mi) between Nottawasaga Bay and Lake Simcoe West to East, and Matchedash Bay and the swampy basin of the Nottawasaga River, North to South. The population was estimated to be 20-30 thousand.
Following the dispersal of the Ontario Iroquoians during and after the Beaver Wars, wendake came to mean new lands as far away as Quebec and Ohio where the Huron resettled. Early European maps and accounts do not use the term Huronia; rather, Jesuit missionaries used terms such as Pays de Huron, or, later, Huronum. In his 1745 Huron–French dictionary, the Jesuit Father Pierre Potier defined the Huron term wendake ehen as "La Defunte huronie", referring to the pre-dispersal homeland.
The geographic scope of Huronia has been fluid over time. One of the earliest European written conceptions of Huronia, by the Jesuit Jérôme Lalemant in 1639, included the land of the Petun (a related people whose territory is sometimes retrospectively called the Petun Country), which lay to the west of the core Huron territory. This core Huron territory was termed "Huronia Proper" by the late 19th and early 20th century historian Arthur E. Jones.
In the 20th century, the territory lent its name to the Huronia movement, a northern-oriented political movement in Ontario which pursued regional autonomy.
