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89 Chapter 3 The Origins of the Petun 3.0 Searching for the Origins of the Petun Joseph P. Donnelly claimed that the “origin of the Huron nation is lost in the mists of prehistory”(Donnelly 1975:19).In response,I must point out that the historic Huron were not a nation but a confederacy of separate and distinct nations, temporarily and loosely allied under the compulsion of prevailing circumstances.Each individual nation had its own individual histories since they evolved and separated from a common origin far back in time. The Petun have a different story.Their existence was not recorded until they were actually contacted by Europeans, and no knowledge of them anciently or prehistorically as an independent group was ever acquired, with the exception of the supposed “formerly waged cruel wars against” the Hurons (JR 20: 43) which likely did not occur. Instead, the Petun appear to be a recent protohistoric offshoot from the parent stock of all Ontario Iroquoians, the remnant of which became the Neutrals.The laterWyandot descendants left origin stories which were mythological and not specific to the Petun. Even when Samuel de Champlain first mentioned the Petun in the context of a planned 1616 visit to them and other tribes with Father Joseph le Caron,it may not have been clear to him who or where the Petun people were, and he may have been confusing them with the Neutrals.The Petun were but a two days’ journey away from him in his location in the Huron village of Carhagouha, but Champlain prepared for a journey of three months (Chapter 4.1.3). Even after his visit to the Petun, Champlain explained little. In his writing, he inferred that the Petun lived in but one village and dismissed the seven other nearby villages as those of their “neighbours and allies” (1929: 95). He dismissed the Petun simply as being like the Huron Bear, and having “a fixed abode like the rest.”Above all, he did not explain why he named the Petun for tobacco when the only crop he mentioned seeing was corn. It was not until 1632 that the French recognised the commonality of all the clustered villages and applied the name Petun to them all, and not until 1646 that it was realised that the Petun, by now greatly reduced in numbers both of people and villages from 30 years of disease epidemics, were a confederacy of two distinct nations: the Wolf and the Deer. It is a challenging task to search into prehistory to identify people who were not even known to exist before 1616,and who were never recorded in detail but only in the context of infrequent Huron-centric French visits to them.This task is sometimes compounded by the uncertainty of not knowing if the Petuns are included or not among peoples mentioned as “Hurons,” “Sauvages,” and “Wendats” (Clifton 1977: 3). Nevertheless, the task will be undertaken.Three approaches are available: historical, anthropological, and archaeological. 90 THE ORIGINS OF THE PETUN The historical approach would include an examination of the history of theWyandots as recorded by observers and contemporaries down through the centuries, to find any specific mentions of the origins and earlier times of the Petuns. The anthropological approach would include contacting the descendants of the Petun to ask the people themselves what they remember of their ancient oral traditions and language as pertaining to their origins,and reviewing the records of earlier researchers who have done this. The archaeological approach would include identifying and examining the archaeological record of the former historic Petun Country in Ontario, and any previous location that can be identified for any evidence of the proto-Petun.The work of previous archaeologists must be examined and differences satisfactorily resolved. All three approaches will be followed in this chapter, preceded by an examination of Wyandot creation myths and mythological origins as presumably believed by the Petun. 3.1 Wyandot Creation Myth In 1623-1624, the Recollect friar Gabriel Sagard became the first European to attempt to record and understand the Wyandot creation myth, and to mention the name Ataensiq (Eataentsic, Aataentsic, Ataentsic) (Earth Grasper, Earth-Mother, Old Woman, Sky Woman, the wicked Grandmother) and her role in ‘The Woman Who Fell from the Sky’ myth, and the subsequent events. Sagard noted that there were different versions of the story among the Hurons and concluded “they understand it very poorly and speak of it with great diversity” (Sagard 1866 2: 448). Numerous researchers...

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