A Population History of the Huron-Petun, A.D. 500–1650 (review)

This work is a full-bore investigation into the lifeways of the Huron-Petun (or Wendat-Tionontaté), who inhabited the region between Lakes Huron and Ontario from at least the mid-first millennium until they ceased to exist as a separate entity in the 1650s. The emphasis is on the archaeological recovery and interpretation of evidence—the only possible source before the sixteenth century. Based on the number, and size, of sites discovered that can be attributed to this group, Warrick concludes that the Huron-Petun population remained fairly steady, even after the introduction of maize cultivation, until the fourteenth century when the group expanded and the population increased, reaching a maximum of around 30,000.

This level remained much the same until the seventeenth century, when all kinds of catastrophes began to visit the Huron-Petun. For Warrick, this run of misfortune does not include the onset of European epidemic diseases, at least not at first and not directly. The arrival of the Europeans, however, helped to create a domino effect, in which the Iro-quois were constrained to move ever westward, seeking new sources for new trading opportunities. But, at this time, “there is no archaeological evidence for catastrophic depopulation” (204), from any cause. When the first Old World diseases struck during the 1630s, abruptly and dramatically, things took a distinct turn for the worst. In less than twenty years, the Huron-Petun lost more than 60 percent of their population and were dispersed and integrated into neighboring groups.

Warrick attributes this delayed effect to the fact that few children were born to Europeans in the northeast until well after 1600, and that earlier-arriving adults did not carry the requisite pathogens, which died en route. He does not fail to note that his position contradicts the early-and-often scenarios that some scholars have advanced—although their version has proved less popular in the Northeast than in many other areas of the Americas.

Warrick’s conclusions are partly based on contemporary documentation—or sometimes the lack of it—but, as noted, most heavily on archaeological data. He believes that “[c]ase studies, such as this one, are the only means of resolving the problem of Native American depopulation” (5), but his notion seems to be unduly sanguine. For instance, Warrick bases his estimate of the pre-epidemic Tionontaté population on “[a]rchaeological and inferred but undiscovered site totals” (222), a fair way of admitting that archaeologists always work with undetermined—and undeterminable—parts of possibly much larger wholes. Archaeology can contribute at the level of orders of magnitude, but it is hard to see how it could credibly do much more toward solving the thorny quantitative issues that cluster around American Indian population and depopulation beginning in 1492 with any degree of precision.

Nonetheless, as an intensive study of a small but centrally located group, Population History is particularly useful in dispelling prevailing notions about the rapid and unrestrained spread of highly mortal diseases. The work also exemplifies well the daunting amount of work that lies ahead for those who wish to learn more about the course of history in the pre-contact Americas.