While we know our northern friends may not feel it, in the South, Spring is
here. So we thought we'd share a few of our gardening sites appropriate
for this time of the year. Along with gardening, there's grilling, and getting
ready to diet so that you can fit back into that bathing suit this summer!
All Wyandot proper names had
their foundation in this clan system. They were clan names. The unit of
the Wyandot social and political systems was not the family nor the
individual, but the clan. The child belonged to its clan first, to its
parents afterwards. Each clan had its list of proper names, and this list
was its exclusive property which no other clan could appropriate or use.
They were necessarily clan names.
The customs and usages governing the formation of clan
proper names demanded that they be derived from some part, habit, action
or peculiarity of the animal from which the clan was supposed to be
descended. Or they might be derived from some property, law, or
peculiarity of the element in which such animal lived. Thus a proper name
was always a distinctive badge of the clan bestowing it.
When death left unused any original clan proper name,
the next child born into the clan, if of the sex to which the vacant name
belonged, had such vacated name bestowed upon it. If no child was born,
and a stranger was adopted, this name was given to such adopted person.
This was the unchangeable law, and there was but one proviso or exception
to it. When a child was born under some extraordinary circumstances, or
peculiarity, or with some distinguishing mark, or a stranger adopted with
these, the council-women of the clan informed themselves of all the facts
and devised a name in which all these facts were imbedded. This name was
made to conform to the ancient law governing clan proper names if
possible, but often this could not be done. These special names died with
their owners, and were never perpetuated.
The parents were not permitted to name the child; the
clan bestowed the name. Names were given but once a year, and always at
the ancient anniversary of the Green Corn Feast.
Anciently, formal adoptions could be made at no other time. The name was
bestowed by the clan chief. He was a civil officer of both his clan and
the tribe. At an appointed time in the ceremonies of the Green Corn Feast each clan chief
took an assigned position, which in ancient times was the Order of
Precedence and Encampment, and parents having children to be named filed
before him in, the order of the ages of the children to be named. The
council-women stood by the clan chief, and announced to him the name of
each child presented, for all clan proper names were made by the
council-women. This he could do by simply announcing the name to the
parents, or by taking the child in his arms and addressing it by the name
selected for it.
The adoption of a stranger was
into some family by consent, or at the instance of the principal woman of
the family. It was not necessary that the adoption be made at the Green
Corn Feast. The adoption was not considered complete, however, until it
was ratified by the clan chief at the Green Corn Feast. This ratification
might be accomplished in the simple ceremonial of being presented at this
time to the clan chief by one of the Sheriffs. His clan name was bestowed
upon him, and he was welcomed in a few well-chosen words, and the ceremony
was complete. Or the adoption might be performed with as much display,
ceremony and pomp as the tribal council might, from any cause, decree. The
tribal council controlled in some degree the matter of adoptions. In
ancient times, when many prisoners of war were brought in it determined
how many should be tortured and how many adopted.
Lalemant says the original and true name of the
Wyandots is Ouendat.
In history the Wyandots have been spoken of by the
following names:
1. Tionnontates
2. Etionontates
3. Tuinontatek
4. Dionondadies
5. Khionontaterrhonons
6. Petuneux or Nation du Petun (Tobacco)
They call themselves:—
1. When'-duht, or
2. When'-dooht
They never accepted the name Huron, which is of French
origin.
The Wyandots have been always considered the remnant of
the Hurons. That they were related to the people called Hurons by the
French, there is no doubt. After having studied them carefully for almost
twenty years, I am of the opinion that the Wyandot are more closely
related to the Seneca than they were to the ancient Hurons.
Both myth and tradition of the Wyandot say they were
“created” in the region between St. James's Bay and the coast of Labrador.
All their traditions describe their ancient home as north of the
mouth of the St. Lawrence.
In their traditions of their
migrations southward they say they came to the island where Montreal
now stands. They took possession of the country along the north bank of
the St. Lawrence from the Ottawa River to a large lake and river far below
Quebec.
