Petun

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Clip from John Senex map ca 1710 showing the people Captain Vielle, in 1692, passed by to arrive in Chaouenon's country as the French Jesuit called the Shawnee.
Clip from John Senex map ca 1710 showing the people Captain Vielle, in 1692, passed by to arrive in Chaouenon's country as the French Jesuit called the Shawnee.

The Petun or Tionontati, meaning "Tobacco People", were an Iroquoian-speaking people closely related to the Huron. They were, with the Huron, dispersed by the Iroquois in the late 17th century. The remmants joined with some refugee Hurons to become the Huron-Petuns, later known as the Wyandot.

"The Wyandots, or Hurons, were ancient occupants of Central and Eastern Ohio and Northwestern Pennsylvania, to which region they retreated from Canada, to escape the fury of the conquering Iroquois, or Five Nations, in the middle of the seventeenth century," cites W. M. Darlington.[1] The Tobacco Indians were so called from their industrious habit of cultivating that plant. Petun was the nickname given to them by the French traders. It became an obsolete word for tobacco which had derived from the early French Brazilian trade.[2] In the Mohawk dialect of the Iroquois the name for tobacco is O-ye-aug-wa.[3] In Ohio Valley Iroquoian Mingo dialect, the phrase for tobacco is "Oyngowa".[4] Ohio Valley colonial tradesmen and following settlers called the Wyandot, Guyandotte. The Guyandotte River in south-western West Virginia was named for these elements of Wendat who also migrated to the area during the Fur Trade wars.

[edit] References

  1. ^ ("American Antiquarian Society Transactions," Vol. I, p. 271-2; id. Vol. II, p. 72. Charlevoix's "History of New France.")
  2. ^ "Historical Magazine," Vol. V, O. S., 1861, p. 263.
  3. ^ Gallatin's "Synopsis American Aboriginal Archives," Vol. II, p. 484.
  4. ^ In the Huron of La Hontan, Vol. II, p. 103, Oyngowa; and in Campinus "History of New Sweden," in the Mingo. WILLIAM M. DARLINGTON [1815-1889], CHRISTOPHER GIST'S JOURNALS WITH HISTORICAL, GEOGRAPHICAL AND ETHNOLOGICAL NOTES AND BIOGRAPHIES OF HIS CONTEMPORARIES BY WILLIAM M. DARLINGTON [1815-1889] PITTSBURGH, J. R. WELDIN & CO., 1893.
 This article relating to Indigenous peoples of North America is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.