Wendat

Wendat

 or Wyandot

North American Indian alliance of four bands of the Huron nation together with a few smaller communities that joined them at different periods for protection against the Iroquois Confederacy. Their language is of the Iroquoian family. At first European contact, the people who mostly call themselves Wendot lived in Ouendake (Huronia), between Georgian Bay and Lake Simcoe in Ontario, Can. Their villages, sometimes palisaded, consisted of large, bark-covered dwellings that housed several families related through maternal descent. Crops included corn, beans, squash, sunflowers, and tobacco; hunting and fishing supplemented the diet. The Wendat were nearly annihilated by the Iroquois in 1648–50. The survivors dispersed, some joining with remnant Tionontati; these newly formed groups were sometimes known as the Wyandot. In the early 21st century, population estimates indicated some 3,500 Wendat descendants.