FOOD AND ECONOMY

The Huron were agricultural and therefore less nomadic than the tribes who relied on hunting for food. They grew corn, beans, squash and pumpkin. The Petun, a neighbouring tribe, also grew tobacco which they used as a trading commodity. The corn was dried and pounded and sometimes made into a corn soup called sagamite. Women generally managed the agriculture and the gathering of wild foods while the men would hunt and fish. They used weirs on nearby streams to block the fish so they could catch them. Nets were used in Georgian Bay. Hunting was more difficult. There was little in the way of local game because the Huron lands were so densely populated. This meant the men would go off on major expeditions to find deer which they would share. They used the meat for food, but hunting was more important as a source of hides for clothing.

The Huron lived in fortified villages. Their longhouses were made of arched poles covered with sheets of cedar, elm or ash bark (birchbark wasn’t prevalent in this area). Some of the longhouses were very large, measuring 45-55 metres in length and 11 metres in width. Fires ran down a centre corridor and each fire was shared by the two families opposite it. Along the sides there were raised platforms for sleeping. Each village moved every 10 or 15 years when the soil became too depleted to grow good crops.

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

Within a village there were several different chiefs representing different clans. Some were civil chiefs; some were war chiefs. They achieved chief status through inheritance, but they also had to have ability in hunting and warfare. The chiefs met in councils to discuss issues and once a year there was a council of the whole Huron Confederacy. Family lineage was through the mother (matrilineal).

RELIGION AND FESTIVALS

The Huron believed that all things - people, animals and inanimate objects - had a spirit or soul which must be respected. They felt dreams were very important and shouldn’t be ignored since they were a communication of the person’s soul. One of their most important social and religious festivals was the Feast of the Dead. Every 10 years or so (usually when a village moved) the temporarily buried bones of all the relatives would be dug up and carried to a central burial site where several villages gathered with their dead. The bones were all buried, with great ceremony, in a central burial mound called an ossuary. This experience united the people of different villages and provided an opportunity for the elders to tell stories and pass on the accumulated history of the tribe.