Wyandot people

The Wyandot people or Wendat, also called Huron, are indigenous peoples of North America. They traditionally spoke the Wyandot language, an Iroquoian language. By the 15th century, the pre-contact Wyandots settled in the area of the north shore of present-day Lake Ontario, before migrating to Georgian Bay. Later in that location they first encountered the French explorer Samuel de Champlain in 1615.

The modern Wyandot emerged in the late 17th century from the remnants of two earlier groups, the Wendat or Huron Confederacy and the Tionontate, called the Petun (tobacco people) by the French because of their cultivation of the crop. 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, the 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.