"The Wyandot bore an important part in all the stirring times of the Lakes and of the border of that day. They became the western representatives of their old-time enemies, the Iroquois, who claimed sovereignty of the country by virtue of their early conquests. At their instance the Wyandot were made Keepers of the Council Fire of the North-western Confederacy of Indian tribes. In this capacity they were always potent in the councils of the tribes opposed to the settlement of the country by the Americans. When the resistance of the Indians was broken by Wayne, the Wyandot made treaties with the United States. They gathered along the south shore of Lake Erie, in northern Ohio. Some of them had long lived in the Sandusky Plains, and their principal town was near the present Upper Sandusky."
Indian Myths
The Wyandot
The Wyandot are a tribe of the great Iroquoian linguistic family of North American Indians.
By the French the Wyandot were called Huron. It is said that this name was given them because of the band of thick, erect hair they left from the forehead to the back of the necks. This reminded the French of the bristling hair of the wild boars of Europe. From this circumstance they were called “Hures” or Hurons – from hure, “bristly,” as applied to the rough stiff hair of man or beast.
The Wyandot were found by the French in 1615. They were living about Lake Simcoe and the Georgian Bay of Lake Huron. The Jesuits were early among them. They set up a mission with stations in the principal villages of the tribe. The Relations of the Jesuit priests or missionaries make up a collection embracing many volumes-one of the great authorities on the North American Indians.
These priests relate that the Huron were a confederation of four tribes – the Attignaouanton, or Bear People; the Attigneenongnahac, or Cord People; the Arendahronon, or Rock People; the Tohontaenrat, or Deer People.
There were a number of dependent villages or small tribes attached to the confederation. The name of the confederacy in the Huron tongue was Wen’ doot, supposed to signify “Islanders,” or a people dwelling in the vicinity of bays and inlets of a large body of water.
The Bear People and the Cord People claimed to have been the original settlers in this ancient seat of the Huron stock. They affirmed that they had dwelt there at least two hundred years when the Rock People appeared in the country and were made a part of the confederacy. Twenty years later the Deer People applied for admission.
The Jesuits were told that the Rock People came into Huronia about the year 1590, and that the Deer People arrived some twenty years afterward. It is believed that the Rock and Deer People came from the Upper St. Lawrence Valley, as the result of wars with other tribes there – that is, that they were driven out. Their enemies must have been other Iroquoian tribes. The latter-day Huron have a tradition that they and the Seneca were formerly one people, and there are different accounts of the separation and its causes.
To the south of the Huron dwelt their kindred, the Tionontati and the Neutral Nation. East of these lived other related tribes; they occupied most of the valley of the St. Lawrence and the northern portion of the present state of New York. Those who lived in New York became known as the Six Nations. These engaged in the conquest of the country about them and their wars soon involved the Huron Confederacy, which was finally destroyed. To escape complete annihilation the broken Huron tribes fled westward along the Great Lakes. For many years the fragments of these tribes wandered from place to place about these inland seas. They were as far west as the Mississippi. They lived at the southwest extremity of Lake Superior. They fled to Shagwamigon Point, near the islands of the Twelve Apostles. There seemed no place exempt from the attacks of the Iroquois. At length the wandering Huron grouped themselves about the remnant of the Tionontati, whose social system had survived in a form, somewhat resembling that of the days of its power. In this way a homogeneous people was formed from the ruins of the Huron. And the ancient name of the confederacy – Wen’ doot – became the name of the new tribe. This name went through various forms and ended as “Wyandot.” This is the origin of the Wyandot of historic times in the country northwest of the Ohio.
The Wyandot bore an important part in all the stirring times of the Lakes and of the border of that day. They became the western representatives of their old-time enemies, the Iroquois, who claimed sovereignty of the country by virtue of their early conquests. At their instance the Wyandot were made Keepers of the Council Fire of the North-western Confederacy of Indian tribes. In this capacity they were always potent in the councils of the tribes opposed to the settlement of the country by the Americans. When the resistance of the Indians was broken by Wayne, the Wyandot made treaties with the United States. They gathered along the south shore of Lake Erie, in northern Ohio. Some of them had long lived in the Sandusky Plains, and their principal town was near the present Upper Sandusky.
In the year 1816 John Stewart, a free Negro, appeared among them as voluntary missionary of the Methodist Episcopal church. He founded, at Upper Sandusky, the Wyandot Mission, the first mission ever established in the world by the Methodist Episcopal Church.
In 1843 the Wyandot, having sold their possessions in Ohio, moved to the fork of the Kansas and Missouri rivers. They settled on a track of land, which they purchased from the Delaware, in what is now Wyandotte County, Kansas. The present city of Kansas City, Kansas, is a part of this tract, and was, in the beginning, only a Wyandot village. Here the Wyandot began to move for the organization of a territory to be known as Nebraska Territory. It was to embrace all of what is now Kansas and Nebraska and a part of Colorado. Abelard Guthrie, a Wyandot by marriage and adoption, was elected a delegate to Congress in 1852. William Walker, the principal man of the Wyandot Nation, was elected provisional governor. This government was not recognized by Congress, but the movement caused the repeal of the Missouri Compromise and the organization of Kansas and Nebraska territories.
In 1855 the Wyandot dissolved their tribal relations, took their lands in severalty, and became citizens of the United States. Many of them live yet in Kansas City, Kansas. They are successful in business and the professions and are excellent citizens. Some members of the tribe, after the Civil War, went to the Indian Territory - now Oklahoma. They secured by purchase a reservation of twenty thousand acres near Seneca, Missouri, and there resumed their tribal relations. Their land has been allotted, and they are now citizens of the United States.
The Wyandot brought with them from Ohio a written code of laws for their government, probably the first in what is now the state of Kansas. They brought the organization of the Wyandot Mission. They immediately set up this mission in the present bounds of Kansas City, Kansas, where, at the present time, it is the Washington Boulevard Methodist Episcopal Church.
