WENDAT

also spelled Wyandot, among North American Indians, a confederacy of four Iroquoian-speaking bands of the Huron (q.v.) nationthe Rock, Bear, Cord, and Deertogether with a few smaller, dependent communities that joined them at different periods for protection against the Iroquois Confederacy. When first encountered by whites in 1615, they occupied a territory, sometimes called Huronia, around what are now Lake Simcoe and Georgian Bay, Ontario. Some of the Wendat villages, consisting of large, bark-covered dwellings housing several families each, were palisaded for protection. They were situated near fields where the Wendat grew maize (corn), the staple of their diet, which was supplemented by fish and, to a lesser extent, game. The Wendat, weakened by diseases introduced by Europeans and unable to obtain as many firearms and ammunition as their enemies, were destroyed by the Iroquois Confederacy in 164850, and the constituent tribes dispersed. The neighbouring Tionontati (q.v.) united with some Huron refugees and became known to the English as the Wyandot, a corrupted form of Wendat.