The Eighteenth-Century Wyandot: A Clan-Based Study

Chapter Six: Wyandot Leadership: Male Political Roles

Chapter Six Wyandot Leadership Male Political Roles In this chapter we will be looking at the male-leadership structure of the Wyandot of the eighteenth century. With the highly detailed material available from Potier’s writing, we have a unique opportunity to look at this subject in some depth. We also have the Wendat language to guide us concerning the nature of Wyandot male leadership. the nature of wyandot leadership To get some sense of what the nature of Wyandot leadership was, you need to become familiar with one verb root that was used by Wendat speakers to describe positions of significant authority: -nda,era- “to copy, imitate” (Steckley 2007b, 136). In The Jesuit Relations, the writers often used the French word “capitaine” to refer to Wendat and other Aboriginal leaders. In what may be the oldest surviving Jesuit dictionary of the Wendat language, we have the following entry for “Capitaine” using this verb root: Capitaine auoir pour Enda,erati...honenda,erati il est capitaine [to have for “Captain, leader”] 1 [He is “captain,” leader.] (Steckley 2010b, 80) InalaterJesuitdictionary,wehavethefollowing,withtheFrenchword“chef”: 135 136 chap ter six Capitaine Enda,erati...honenda,erati on l’a p[ou]r chef [they, people have him for chief] (FH1697:30) The -t- in the word translated here is the causative suffix, meaning typically “to cause something to be.” It is the people who are doing the causing here, a statement of fundamental democracy. They have chosen a strong role model, to use a sociological term, a (very) significant other. The eighteenth-century Jesuit historian Pierre François Xavier de Charlevoix (1682–1761), wrote in 1721 about the chiefs of the Wyandot and other Iroquoians, discussing the limits of their power: These chiefs generally have no great marks of outward respect paid them, and if they are never disobeyed, it is because they know how to set bounds to their authority. It is true that they request or propose, rather than command ; and never exceed the boundaries of that small share of authority with which they are vested. Thus it is properly reason which governs and the government has so much the more influence, as obedience is founded in liberty; and they are free from any apprehension of its degenerating into tyranny. (Charlevoix 1761, 24) Chiefs “Chief” in English, “chef” in French, connotes more power than what most Aboriginal leaders had traditionally. The Wyandot did not form what anthropologists would call a “chiefdom.” This involves a more complex socio-political structure than what they had, as well as more authority going to a leader, and typically the existence of large-scale economic redistribution in which the chief creates social debts among those to whom he has distributed goods. In traditional Aboriginal Canada, the term chiefdom would have only applied to some of the West Coast peoples, with the potlatch being the classic redistribution tool for chiefs. A good historical example of an influential chief of this kind was Maquina (ca. 1786–1825), a leader of the Nuu’chah’nulth or Nootka people of Vancouver Island. Roughly onehundred people lived in his house, including about fifty “slaves.” Here the translation is much more accurate than when used to refer to Wyandot “prisoners.” For the West coast peoples, “slave” represented a long-term low-ranking status. Maquina’s house was about forty-five metres long, about half the length of a football field (Steckley and Cummins 2007, 118). He can be called rich and his potlatches involved a great redistribution of goods: In his potlatch of 1803, he was reported to have given away 200 muskets, 200 yards of European-manufactured cloth, 100 shirts, 100 looking-glasses, and seven barrels of gunpowder. How much he gave away in Native goods wyandot leadership 137 such as wooden carvings, Chilkat blankets, and salmon was not written down, possibly reflecting the bias of the non-Native writer as to what was important. (Steckley and Cummins 2007, 173) Not all the items given away would have been his, as he would have drawn upon his clan members for such a gathering, but he would have controlled the redistribution. The Wyandot did not have such chiefly socio-economic or political means to have a giveaway on such a scale, although gift-giving was an important part of their culture. The Sastaretsi The Wyandot of the eighteenth century would be called a tribe by anthropologists , a political level in which...