Jeune-Lorette and Detroit: Huron-Wendat Connections during the Eighteenth Century

This paper was delivered at the Wendat Studies Conference in Wendake, Que in June 2012

Abstract: The Huron-Wendat at Jeune-Lorette were different from the other Aboriginal communities who had moved into the St. Lawrence valley during the seventeenth century. Unlike the Abenaki and Mohawk along the St. Lawrence, who lived much closer to the home villages of their ancestors, the Huron-Wendat had been driven from Wendaké in the mid-seventeenth century; parts of their former Confederacy were spread over thousands of kilometers around the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence valley. This paper addresses how some Huron-Wendat at Jeune-Lorette and Detroit overcame the large distance between their communities during the mid-to-late eighteenth century. Over the course of the eighteenth century, these people continued to be connected by kinship, religion and the French military. This paper explores the nature of these relationships, focusing on their communal identity and asking whether these connections were a seventeenth-century legacy from Wendaké or whether they developed after the Confederacy dispersed.