Wendake, Quebec

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wendake is the current name for the Huron-Wendat reserve, an enclave within Quebec City, Quebec. This was formerly known as Village-des-Hurons, or "Huron Village", and also as (Jeune)-Lorette. The Huron-Wendat of Wendake (formerly called the Hurons of Lorette) originally came from the Georgian Bay region. Until the middle of the 17th century, their ancestors occupied a vast territory straddling part of what is now of the United States (from Detroit as far south as Oklahoma), south-eastern Ontario (Penetanguishene and Midland) and Quebec; they hunted and trapped throughout this territory (mainly in the Laurentian Mountains, between the central section of the St. Maurice River and the Saguenay).

Between 1634 and 1650, the Wyandot Confederation was dismembered; its families, having been gathered into four or five tribes, were dispersed. It is estimated that the Huron population totalled approximately 20,000 to 30,000 people in 1634.

By 1650, only a few hundred individuals remained. Most of the rest had been decimated by epidemics or had perished over the previous twenty years in wars involving Hurons and Iroquois, French and British.

Part of the Huron population had also been integrated into the Iroquois Confederation. The survivors of this tragic episode divided into two groups: the Great-Lake Wyandots and the Huron-Wendat, who were the ancestors of the Huron-Wendat of Wendake.

This marked the beginning of a period of exile for the three hundred (300) or so Wendat, an era during which they would occupy as many as six different sites in the province of Quebec before settling for good in the village of Lorette (which was until recently called the Huron Village) in 1697. First established on Orleans Island in 1651, the community moved to Quebec City in 1668. Subsequently, the Wendat temporarily resided in Beauport, Notre Dame de Foy, Ancienne-Lorette and then the New Lorette in 1673. The current population of the Indian reserve is 1,555 persons (2001 census). The land area is only 1.46 km² (about 360 acres).

Wendake was also the name given by Hurons to this original Ontario homeland south of Georgian Bay in Simcoe County and Grey County, a region also informally known as "Huronia" or the Georgian Triangle.