Petun to Wyandot: The Ontario Petun from the Sixteenth Century

Foreword

xxvii Foreword “Until more research by Garrad and others is published, the Petuns will remain undeservedly obscure in the archaeological literature.” (Trigger 1985: 221) This volume is a response Bruce G.Trigger’s challenge and is intended to make the Ontario Petun less obscure. My deep regret is that Bruce G. Trigger did not live to see the result. My hope and purpose is to record something of what I think I know at this time about the Petun Indians when they lived in their Ontario homeland, the “Petun Country,” ca. A.D. 1580-1650, and to trace their Wyandot descendants to the present day. Others may continue the research and build on this knowledge. This book summarises and presents the results of more than five decades of work in the Petun Country and is in fact the distillation of an even more detailed account that was produced in very limited numbers.An electronic copy of this encyclopedic work can be found in the Archives of the Canadian Museum of History. Dedication Borrowing the example and wording of the modern Wendat historian Georges E. Sioui (1999: v),“I dedicate this work to the Great Spirit, Supreme Being,” and then to the Petun, properly tribes of the ouendat (Wyandot), known in history as theTionnontate orTobacco Nation, whose story this is. I also respect all descendants of the Petuns, today to be found among the Wyandotte Nation of Oklahoma, the Wyandot Nation of Kansas, and the Wyandot Nation of Anderdon, and of these, especially Cecile Wallace, “Shundiahwah,” Matron of the Big Turtle Clan of the Wyandotte Tribe of Oklahoma, who raised me up to be “Tauromee” nearly four decades ago in 1975, and also Janith English, Principal Chief of theWyandot Nation of Kansas, who adopted my wife Ella, colleague John Steckley and his wife Angie, and me, into the Bear Clan in 1999, on the three hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the last full year of the Petun in Ontario. Ce volume est une étude des Pétuns de l’Ontario et retrace les descendants desWyandots jusqu’à nos jours. Acknowledgements and Thanks To try to assemble into book form some of the knowledge given to me about the Petun over more than a half-century of research with any hope of accuracy is a responsibility indeed.Yet as I write, I feel again, as Ella and I sometimes do on the ancient sites of longgone Petun villages, the presence of the Ancestors, to whom we both give thanks for teaching us through our archaeological research.We hope we got it right. For permitting field research to take place, I gratefully record my thanks to the many owners of archaeological sites in the former Petun Country of the Collingwood area of Ontario who have been so hospitable to me, and tolerant of my strange desire to dig large holes with small tools, and shake cubic yards of their farms through ¼ inch mesh screens. xxviii FOREWORD I also thank all those who helped with the research, who gave me information, access to their artifacts, and sometimes the artifacts themselves. I must also acknowledge funding support. In 1974 I received a grant from the Canada Council to compile“Project the Petun,”an inventory of Petun sites.Thereafter,the Ontario Heritage Foundation provided small support grants for several years to explore some of those sites, until support of archaeological research in Ontario was discontinued. The subsequent assistance of private donors has been most appreciated. Currently, no financial support for avocational archaeology, such as has been accomplished in the Petun Country in Ontario, is available from either federal or provincial agencies. Despite the many years of field work by me and my predecessors, there is much yet to be done. At this time not even a complete Petun longhouse, let alone a village, has been excavated. This is because my emphasis has been on conservation and preservation,and my goal has been to acquire the maximum knowledge with the least destructive excavation. I acknowledge all those who, with me, ensured that all Petun village sites are still in place and substantially intact, awaiting both the necessity and the resources to undertake more extensive and competent excavations. Many of the names of my numerous friends and colleagues who participated in the more than fifty years of research embodied in this work, who excavated, collected and researched with me, taught me from their own expertise, and made this book possible, will be found in its pages, some of them...