The Wyandot people, also called Huron, are indigenous peoples of North America. They traditionally spoke Wendat. The pre-contact people formed by the 15th century in the area of the north shore of present-day Lake Ontario, before migrating to Georgian Bay. It was in their later location that they first encountered the French explorer Samuel de Champlain in 1615.
The modern Wyandot emerged in the late 17th century from the remnants of two earlier groups, the Wendat or Huron Confederacy and the Tionontate, called the Petun (tobacco people) by the French because of their cultivation of the crop. They were located in the southern part of what is now the Canadian province of Ontario around Georgian Bay. Drastically reduced in number by epidemic diseases after 1634, they were dispersed by war in 1649 from the Iroquois of the Haudenosaunee, then based in present-day New York.
Today the Wyandot have a reserve in Quebec, Canada. In addition, they have three major settlements, two of which have independently governed, federally recognized tribes, in the United States. Due to differing development of the groups, they speak distinct forms of Wendat and Wyandot languages.
Read more about Wyandot People: Emergence of The Wyandot
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