Hi and welcome back to Maple History. Today we will be talking about the Wendat people
and my guest for this is my friend Jessica. Hello. So what we'll be talking about today
is the Wendat Confederacy and Culture and Society. There's a lot to cover in one episode, but
I will try to give you a pretty good idea of how they lived, governed, worshipped, went
to war, died and what happened to Wendat people, I guess their souls, after death. You
could never fully capture an understanding of a people with an hour's discussion, but
I hope at the end of this you will get a feel for who the Wendat people were before they
enter the era of European contact. So what I'm going to be talking about is pre-contact
and the Wendat Confederacy really started like 1400 and then it ended 1649. So we know
those dates pretty well, but we're not going to get into that bar. That's European contact.
There's a lot to talk about in that, but that's going to be for another day. So first off,
who are the Wendat? And I say are because they still exist. Like they're just moved.
Say that's something to note because a lot of people think that they were
eliminated, but that's not true. They just were moved and dispersed and joined other people.
So up until relatively recently, most people would have called the Wendat people the Huron.
And I don't think I had heard the name Wendat until after university or maybe sometime during
university. So yeah, it seems a newer term here. Huron is what I heard growing up as well.
Yeah. So admittedly, I didn't take that many courses on Indigenous 17th century history,
but anyways, so archaeologists Bruce Trigger who wrote the book on early Wendat people,
even in like pre history, like deep, deep archaeology and up until the term used is
dispersal, which is it seems very sanitized. So say is there is there a distinction on dispersal
versus diaspora? So that's a good question about dispersal versus diaspora, diaspora.
Yeah, probably pronouncing it. It's words you read, but you don't actually hear your said. Yeah.
Yeah, because there's like an Irish diaspora, there's obviously Jewish diaspora. That's a good
question. I don't know. Maybe it's maybe how fast it happened. Maybe that it wasn't. It's not really
immigration. It's just they were removed from their own land. Yeah. Yeah, they were yeah, from like
this kind of Simcoe County North Lake Ontario kind of region. And then they just gone. Yeah.
Yeah, that's a good question. Okay, so Bruce Trigger wrote this doorstop of a book, the children of,
let's try and say this because the children of atnatsic, atnatsic. Okay, sorry. It's,
it tried to look it up and get pronunciation guides. They weren't helpful. So in his book,
he says that it's great of great symbolic importance that the shift towards using the names that
indigenous people use for themselves, replace the names that Europeans gave them. So, but he
also noted in his book, in the introduction that in the reprinting that it would have been extremely
time consuming for him to replace every time he said here on with Wendat. Yeah. So he did not do
that. Or he didn't have one of his grad students do that. And I think the ubiquity of the name
here on in general society and older history books does make it difficult to shift, to make
the shift in the popular mindset. But it is still worth doing. Because again, it's not a, it's not
like, it's not a difficult name to say. No, Wendat's easy. We can do that one. There's other
indigenous names that are a lot more challenging on an English speaking tongue. So to contrast,
to there was two more books that I've read about Wendat history, and they make different choices
to one another. So one book by Catherine McGee Lebel, it's called Dispersed, Not Destroyed,
a history of 17th century Wendat people. She uses the name Wendat, unless quoting
an original source where the term Huron was used. And then on that flip side of that is Mark Bory's
book on Jean de Brébouff crosses in the sky. He uses the term Huron rather than Wendat,
and he made a conscious choice to do that. Because he's doing from the French perspective?
Yeah, he is doing, it is a biography. But it was very, he has a lot in there of kind of
ethno history of the Wendat people as well. Definitely a lot of the Jesuits and early New
France. But yeah, he, he explained his reasoning for the choices of why he made that choice. And I
kind of disagree with him about why he did that. I'm going to get into that actually.
I think it's important to talk about this because people get their backs up when they're asked to
make a change of a name, something that they grew up with. And we can make this shift.
So just where did the name Huron come from? So Bruce Trigger explains that the story was passed
down that the French sailors saw the hairstyles of the Wendat warriors and likened them to Bors
bristles. So this may just be like a folk tale that they that they that because the term Hur
was a common slang term for ruffian was already being used as slang. It was common. Mark Bory's
argument centers around the idea that Hur refers to the bristles of wild bors who are considered a
dangerous prey that noblemen hunted as a pastime rather than insulting reference to pigs.
So he wrote for years, some writers have seized on the idea that Huron comes from
what they saw as a racist and insulting French term, Hur's or Bors head. I do think the term Huron
was given to the Wendat as an insult. But to say it was racist is a stretch. The French considered
themselves to be the top tier of civilization and surely saw the indigenous people as barbarians.
So yeah, they gave him a nickname and it stuck. The second part of Bory's argument was that the
Wendat themselves called Wendat called themselves Huron at different points in time, including when
they came to live outside Quebec City after they lost the war to the Haudenosaunee. And some modern
people in Canada and the United States still call themselves Huron Wendat. The final part of his
argument is that the Huron is what people know this nation as. So it's easier to use in a non-academic
history book. And I can see his point on that for sure because it's a popular history. It's
people know that it's easy to follow. It keeps that continuity that people are like,
this group is still here and was always here kind of thing. Yeah. And the continuity of like,
oh, these are the people that I learned about in school. Yeah. And just learning a different
aspect of their history. And it is jarring to learn a whole new name for people. When for many
people they've gone their whole lives understanding that they're the Huronans, the Huron fought the
Iroquois. And that's who were part of the early story of New France. But on the other hand,
we learn new names for people all the time. The other points about it being actually not an insult,
but a nod to a noble prey. And that they kind of like that name anyways. It just doesn't hold up
for me. The French were basically calling the Wendat punks and it stuck. So some people do answer
to crap nicknames, which is what the Huron did. Like they, oh, I guess you're calling the Huron.
Yeah. But they're basically they're asking us to stop now. That's fair. Yeah.
But aside from his use of colonial names for indigenous people, crosses in the sky is an
excellent book. I really do recommend it. It's really good. All right. So we've got that sorted.
So the Wendat Confederacy was made up of four nations. It started with two. And then that nascent
Confederacy lasted about 200 years, according to oral tradition. So dates and times are not exact
in in an oral culture, because it wasn't important to keep that kind of calendar exactness. So we
can't be sure of the story of the creation of the Confederacy. Anna's Bruce trigger notes about
Wendat ideas about history. Quote, the purpose of their traditions was not to preserve a literal
memory of the past, but rather to supply them with a guide to the social, political, and moral
order in which they lived. Which I think is not unusual in many cultures. Like the history of Rome
has been very well documented. The origin story is very clearly a little bit made up. So I think
an origin story and and where are people came from that it completely makes sense that there's
it's as much about the values we feel we engender as it is about the actual like what happened and
who did what? Yeah. And they would like, you know, oh, well, it started 200 years ago. That's
they're like, it started a really long time ago. Yeah. Like that's kind of what was probably meant
more than more than in the year 1400. Yes. Our Confederacy began. Miss like many generations
ago, this Confederacy between these two nations started and then we added two more, possibly three
more things are iffy because the their Confederacy wasn't as locked in as say the Haudenosaunee.
So the first two, I'm going to be. This is where I guess tricky. I know what I'm going to type in
the chat, the names so that you can you can give your opinion on how they should be pronounced.
Because I've already failed at the S for us. So I don't hold out high hopes on this.
But maybe you've read maybe you've been to an indigenous storytelling event and you've heard
names pronounced. Okay. So the first the original nations are their bear nation at Tigno Watson,
that one I can do a Tigno Watson is bear nation and coordination as in like rope making courts.
Atig na, I'm going to try. Let's just do this again. A T I G D N E E N O N G N A H A C.
No. Yeah. All right. The pronunciation suggested by probably AI was third.
So not helpful. Okay. So the original nations were at Tigno Watson, that's bear nation at atig
me non jahak coordination. Okay. That's probably around 1400 and around 1570.
The tahan tainrat sorry, people of the deer joined and finally in 1610, the aran the ronon,
the nation of the rock joined possibly another one joined in and around that time, the ata ron
charon on the people of the marsh joined. So it's four or five people in this confederacy or
group sorry not people nations in this confederacy. And then they would have lived. So I gave you that
map. Yep. In and around Nautosaga Bay on Bay, all around Lake Simcoe. Okay. And the top
part of Lake Ontario, like little south of Mississauga. Okay. And then all the way over to
like almost Montreal. Yeah. Around there. Okay. And kind of this kind of wedge shape around
there. And most of the sites are found west of Lake Simcoe, kind of Georgian Bay down south to
Toronto. Okay. The area like the yellow area is more Anishinaabe territory. And then and
different ones around there. But they were more allied with them. I'm sure that they were they
had some warfare or conflict. Yeah. Well, and like traveling and yeah. Okay. They weren't
the Anishinaabe didn't live in villages, especially the size of the Wendat because they went out
lived in villages around maybe a thousand people, like a thousand to two thousand people would be
like the max of their largest villages. Okay. And population kind of the max population before
Europeans came and disease and warfare and everything decimated them around 18,000. It was just really
hard to get those numbers. Okay. Accurately, because censuses were not done. No. Yeah. You'd
have to be sort of ballparking based on number of people in an archaeological site and then
extrapolating. Exactly. And then records, uh, kept by Jesuits when they were there and because they
would have sent back how many souls that they're trying to save at any given time. Yeah. And then
there would be eight around 18 to 25 villages that they would lived in. Okay. So who were they? Now
that we've got where they were. So the Wendat people, they don't have a pantheon of gods. But
their origin myth is one of the places where characters, so in the Wendat story,
the atanatsic, atanatsic is the mother of all humankind. She lived in the sky world. And
depending on who's telling the story, because again, oral traditions change, you know, the
uh, bear nation may have a had a slightly different version than coordination. Okay. So she lived in
the sky world. So she was either chasing a bear or cut down a tree to obtain medicine for her
husband and fell through a hole in the sky. Okay. And as she was following, the great tortoise saw
her who was swimming around in like a big sea. Yeah. And instructed animals to collect earth from
the bottom of the water. They were all swimming in and put it on his back. And this was done and
the earth formed and atanatsic landed gently on the earth that had been created. So often in the
story, she's pregnant when she lands. And sometimes she gives birth to a daughter who in turn gives
birth to twins. But sometimes she's the one who gives birth to the twins. So the twins are Ayu
eska ha and Tao eska ran, Tao eska ran, sorry, Tao eska ran. So theirs is a very fractious
relationship, which is quite common in twin stories. Yeah. So Ayu eska wounds Tao eska ran
and from his blood flint forms, which will be used for weapons used by humans. And Ayu eska is
responsible creating rivers and lakes, foreign growing, but weather is also the sun. Okay. And
atanatsic is the moon. So he's the sun, because he does he just gives the growing season and
all good things. Yeah. And he released all the animals that were in a cave, trapped in a cave.
And atanatsic always works in opposition to him. And then they and they live together in a bark
happen in the village of the dead. So something that's interesting is that Ayu eska ha is male.
And he is responsible for farming in the animals. And atanatsic is a woman. And she is, she brings
the violence to this world, which is an opposition to how the lived world is. Yeah, the women bring
forth life and do all the farming. And the men have the violence. So in the story, it's there in
there are an opposite to it, which is quite an interesting parallel symmetry, like a mirror. Yeah,
yeah. So it's really quite interesting. So so related to when that's understanding of their
origin myth, is their concept of spirituality in general and religion. So for Wendat people,
they didn't really have a religion that you took lessons or catechism on. Yeah. And it's not
something that you can set aside because it's who you are in such a way that it's hard to like
learn a new religion and then replay and replace it. Yeah. So they'll we'll find that out later
when we do the post contact. Yeah. So everything they believe everything had a soul, lakes, rivers,
stones, rocks, and beings that could influence humans had something called Okey, okay, I,
but humans could also have Okey, but not everybody did. So people with Okey were the more extraordinary
humans as in great warriors, powerful shamans, and witches. So big charisma and lots of life.
Yeah. People who like leave a big mark. Yeah. Now, as for shamans, there was two types,
generally, of shamans. So there was the Okata, who were the regular shaman who treated illnesses,
interpreted dreams and would do kind of regular ceremonies, healing ceremonies. And then the
other type of shaman was the Aratthon, and they were the type that would treat spiritual attacks
from witchcraft. Okay. So yeah, so shamans were really important for general health care. Like that
was the one's more physical health and one's more mental health. You could be affected by
witchcraft physically as well. Like it, there was different types of categories of illnesses.
So there was natural causes. There was witchcraft. And then there was a soul's unfulfilled desire,
which I will go into a little bit. So natural causes, you know, your usual sicknesses, broken
bones, and but also depression. So like mental health. And if they couldn't understand where
this illness was coming from, it would be witchcraft. Or if someone was really tormented mentally,
probably witchcraft. But also the soul's unfulfilled desire would cause emotional and mental torment.
And those would be revealed to a person with the shaman's help via dreams. And these
unfulfilled desires and dream interpretation was really important to their understanding of
themselves. And so, and if there was an unfulfilled desire, the shamans and the community
would work to resolve it, that dog. So they've just given them the dog. Yeah. Or canoe, or
something, even if it like, the spirit of the sense of generosity was just like, Oh, well,
I'll just give it to you. So you can have it. But sometimes it could be extremely antisocial.
As in, I want your wife to navigate, or you want to do something evil. You want to commit a violence,
like a saying against someone. So the shaman would help to figure out how to
cure that without disrupting the entire community by having this act done. So sometimes it's
really simple. If someone says, I want all of their corn or all of their tobacco. Well,
here, you can have a basket full of it. That's an easy, you know, you give the, and then there's
like, sure, and then they do ceremony and, and they are satisfied. They're like emotional turmoil,
I can, but terminal can be ended. Sometimes it would be like, why want to, I want to kill
that guy? Well, we can now take this dog. Sorry about the dogs, but they would, they did that.
They would sacrifice the dog in his place. So that would kind of cure that very antisocial desire.
So that they didn't disrupt the social cohesion of the village.
Because like this is a, like these are a thousand people, right? And many of them, would you,
your relatives? Yeah, and it's, I mean, you can't just leave and go somewhere else.
No. You have to find a way to all work together or you're not going to survive solo for all of
that people thinks if I could just live by myself in the woods, life would be perfect.
It's a lot harder than it looks. So.
And even if they left and say left to go live with the Anishinaabe,
they were, you're trading with these people all of the time. You know, if you went to Anishinaabe
group, because they had small, they didn't have the villages, but they had kind of smaller,
and then they would come together in the summertime for ceremonies and spending time together.
That person's cousin might be married to someone within the Wendat village.
Like this is not, these are, these are really, this is a very small world. So one of the ways they,
they would cure any major disruption from illness and mental would be through curing
ceremonies or festivals. So, and some of these were quite, once the Jesuits come on the scene,
they were quite shocked by some of them. They weren't fan of the dream interpretation either.
I mean, they, they can be a little uptight sometimes.
They could, they're a lot. Yeah, they were, they were a bit much. Even like your average
Catholic thought, oh my god, these guys. So one of the curing ceremonies was the Ananharaya.
And this was used when many people in the village were ill or depressed. So I can imagine the
wintertime, it would get real bummer. Yeah, it's, it's, it's cold, it's dark, it's no fun.
So kind of a mass depression could happen. So this was a three day festival that started
with people boisterously breaking into houses, tossing furniture around and breaking things like
pots and kind of throwing like a bit of fire around like it was a little, it was kind of freaky.
And then people have affected by the malady. They would have a dream of the objects that they
desired. And then they were showered with gifts. And then when they received, when they were given
what they desired, when they're like, after all these like, oh, yes, it was the tobacco that I
wanted, or it was that robe, or, you know, then they would believe that they're, that's a sign of
their troubles are over and they will be cured. And at the end of the festival, all these, this
shower of gifts, they were returned except for that desired object. So again, that kind of
restores the balance to the community by not having, you know, that dozen people who got all
these things and they gave them back. It's just kind of what they did. Now the ritual that really
got the Jesuits to lose it was the one called the andakwander. So this ritual was to cure
more of an individual sick person who other methods hadn't worked, I guess. And it involved
having the unmarried people go to the sick person's house and have sex with one another in front of
him all night. I mean, that's going to cheer a lot of people up. Like, yeah, not just the sick person,
but everybody else, you know. And the shamans would sing and like do perform the ceremony.
And the Jesuits didn't like that one very much. That was too much for them.
Because they weren't getting invited or they were invited, but they were not, they weren't
happy to be there. They were, they were not cool. They were not cool guests to benefit the community.
So those ones, those rituals are a little different than what was happening in the Western world.
But societal structure itself was quite familiar to a Western observer. Like, you know, they had
gender roles, like very clear gender roles, which is something that the French would have seen
and be like, oh, yeah. So women looked after women, looked after home young children with the support
of the other women and her family. Women would live with their sisters and their family. So men
would come into a woman's home and this connection is reflected on how cousins referred to one
other within that longhouse. They called, they called each other a brother and sister and they
called their aunts and mother and grandmother. They would call their father's brother's children
cousins. Okay. So on the matrilineal side, your siblings and on the patrilineal side, your cousins.
That's right. So women were, yeah, they were responsible for all of the farming and meal
preparation and also clothing. Men and young boys, they did not help with that. They were, well,
they would, I'm sure they cared for their children, but not making clothing and they were not doing
farming. So what were they doing? They built the longhouses, they built the canoes, the weapons,
obviously warrior training, hunting, trade, but something that was very physically taxing
and took a lot of time was the clearing of fields, which they had to basically continuously
be in preparation for because after 10 to 15 years, the fields would be exhausted because they did
not do any crop rotation or fertilize and replace the nutrients. So there would just be a declining
of yield over time and they were like, well, we got to go, we just moved to a new field. And
that's when they would do a big village changeover. So when they were clearing the fields,
they were not, they're not miles and miles away. They're like, yeah, wherever there's forest,
you clear it. So which is like all of, it's all forest. Oh yeah, women made the pottery as well.
And in an interesting way, interesting way that archaeologists can get an understanding of
intermarriage patterns between nations is to look at the pottery. So like decorative patterns or like
construction technique? More patterns, decorative patterns. They probably would have very similar ways
to fire, to own fire the pottery. But yeah, the decorations, you would see like this
Haudenosaunee women would be adapted into the family, but also Anishinaabe women would be more,
there would be more of an intermarrying situation to have the women in the village. And then they
would just, you're sitting making pottery, you just make what your mother taught you. And then you
would use, oh, I like that. And then you kind of intricate, you know, the kind of blending. Because
you're all sitting together, just doing all the stuff, talking and being together all the time
within the longhouse or just outside the longhouse. I don't know where they made the pottery.
So while the women, while the girls worked with their mothers and ants with domestic and farming
work, the young boys basically participated in play-based learning to prepare for their future
lives as warriors and hunters. So they would play ballgames, they'd spearfish, shoot arrows,
and just generally get it about. I'm sure they were following their uncles and fathers around
to learn from them, kind of hang around as the men kind of grouped together and
bonked and had councils. Was there a specific age at which that, so I think, and when we really
rest down this, I think like with Aztecs, it was sometime around age seven, eight, like prior to that,
mothers watched both genders of kids. And then there was a point at which boys would move to
hanging out with the male side of things. Was there sort of an age at which that split happened?
No, really, just more because they were just as long as they could be around,
they would probably stay close to their mothers when they're really little,
but then they just start to gradually be with their older boys, older brothers and older cousins,
and then they would go fishing and whatnot and kind of play around. But even when they're little,
they wouldn't help their mothers. You wouldn't have like a five-year-old boy helping make
Otterie. Otterie or, honestly, I bet you that happened. I can't see it not happening. Can you not see?
I can't imagine anyone convincing a two-year-old not to play with clay. I don't care which gender
they are. No. So they would have, when they were following around the men, they would have seen
the importance of calm rhetoric amongst other men. Like if they're having arguments,
if someone wants to go to war or someone wants to do something different or they're
whatever it is arguing about, steady calm, no emotion to be overly emotional and openly.
So you wouldn't be, you would just be stoic. Yes, there were historical devices. It wouldn't be
quite the same as us because the rise and fall of the language. Like when you're in someone's
making a speech, you wouldn't have that. It would be just steady and you don't interrupt each other,
like some things like that. So to be an ideal man in the when.world, he would be a good warrior,
good hunter, clever and trade, and to have a reputation for giving wise counsel. Now,
interrelations between men and women of the romantic kind started in puberty. Naturally.
And boys and girls were very sexually liberated. The teenage years of a when.youth was just theirs.
Whatever they wanted. They would just try each other out all the time.
And if a young woman did get pregnant and there was multiple potential fathers,
all of the young men would claim parentage and the young woman would choose who she wanted.
Yeah. And once married, men and women were monogamous and divorce was an option. So before,
if they got married and they didn't have children, a chance of divorce was much higher.
No one say had children, it was less likely, but still would happen. So if there was,
if they're having marital problems, the family would try and help them solve it. But if they
couldn't, let them go, let them separate. Well, I mean, it's the same sort of thing of like,
if you all have to try and find a way to get along, I mean, you try and resolve the conflict.
And if it's not going to then having a couple continuing to live in acrimony,
it's going to be much more disruptive. Yeah, because it's communal house. You're living there
with your sister, your mother, your grandmother, your grandfather, their husbands, who are all
rolling their eyes because you guys have had this argument a thousand times already, people seriously.
It's the houses were like 20 feet wide by like 40 to 60. I could be quite a little wrong on that.
Like there were maybe not feet, but you know, like they're not huge. And you had your own space
for your family, but it's open like you're not you're with each other a lot. So that's why divorce
would be an option. And it's also and it makes it easier having a matrilineal society,
if you have children and you need to divorce while the man just leaves. Yeah. So you can carry on,
your family will be looked after and he will go back to his family, I assume,
get another wife, whatever. Adultery, of course, did happen. So that's kind of how they kept that
peace amongst the but I'm sure there would be so much gossip.
Right? You are not going to believe what they were doing last week in the other
long house over there. Did you hear them? They were fighting so much. Can someone please talk
to them and get them sorted out? Yeah, because again, it's like you're it's it's a small it.
You got a small village. Yeah. And there's only so they had different within the within the nation,
they would have different clans, like turtle and whatever. So you didn't intermarry, you had to
marry outside your clan. So you would and you would all know who's who, you know, I'm sure the
teenagers knew that oh, this guy is from the bear clan. So I'm not going to go with him because
that's taboo. Yeah. All right. So status within the community for men, you had to be a wise leader
and a run out warrior. And it was the older men that held this status because it had to be earned
over time. So naturally, this chafed against the young men's ambitions. So older men did not want
to disrupt peace whenever possible. But younger men wanted to earn their battle stripes, so to speak.
So they would pick fights, which would lead to war or blood feud. So if a warrior was killed,
their family would seek revenge against his killer, then their family would seek revenge if they
succeeded in killing him and so on. So to stop this endless bloodshed, a family could give gifts
to the family to keep peace and stop the vengeance cycle. This would be done if tempers within the
village. So if if there was a fight within the village and someone was hurt or killed, so they
would probably try and give gifts to keep the peace within the village rather than kill. Yeah,
like it was a murder rather than a like a fight with an enemy. But if it's a fight within it against
an enemy, they would still they would know who did it. Because again, even with the their enemies,
these probably they still know each other. So that's what they would so it's now onto warfare.
So if there was a call for warfare, since I brought that up against the Wendat enemies,
it was the war chiefs that would organize that. And there were hereditary chiefs that were
more like governmental leaders. So they kind of maintain when big ceremonies needed to happen.
You know, the feast of the dead, like things like that. And they would have
daily councils, but also the war chiefs would be part of the group too. They would always
they would always be there is older these are older men they'd be hanging out all the time together.
That's what they would do. So yeah, we have to keep in mind these are villages about 1000 people,
right? So we just think about their percentage like it's half of them are women and girls. Yeah.
And then certain percentage of children and certain percentage are young warriors,
young teenage boys, then there's only so many like, you know, 200 older men.
So and if some of them are the chiefs, and then you know, they would always be chat. So it was
time to go to war. The warriors would have a big send off feast and they would travel with a
sort of pack ration of easy to eat cornmeal that did not need to be cooked. They would take a lot
with them. So they didn't have to stop and hunt. Sometimes they'd sneak into an enemy village and
kill whoever they could to try and capture enemy warriors. And other times they would have like
more pitched battles. They would set up outside of Palisaded Village and then their warriors would
come out and they would wear armor. And the armor was like wooden slat armor. Now, of course,
battles and warfare are just the same everywhere. You you physically attack your enemy and capacitate
him or kill him. But he did it to you. But these battles would not result in the eye-watering
high casualty numbers of Western warfare, even in that time period. So for example,
the 1400, like the 1500, like we're talking wars of the roses. So like Henry of course,
and Richard III and those people. Yeah, giant giant battles with hundreds dead. And when you're
done, you just go back through the battlefield, find everybody who's wounded and finish them off.
Yeah, yeah, they would. It would be a little bit like earlier period, like 1300 1200 like the
100 years war, like Adjunct Court, where they would take hostages of the nobility. Okay. But
and then brand some back or people they would keep they didn't go back.
But you're not looking but the battle itself would be so even if it was a big pitched battle,
if you know, it was a massive war party of like a thousand warriors came to a Haudenosaunee village
and their warriors knew they're coming and they had, you know, so you're looking at 2000 men fighting.
You're not going to end up with 1000 casualties. They would stop after like 100 and then they would
whoever one would take the warriors that they could capture back to their villages.
And the way they did that was pretty nasty. So yeah, they weren't annihilating each other.
They wanted to take them captive. They took women and children captive, but more often not,
they didn't want to take the women and children. They would kill them on the spot and take their
scalps. So the prize would be a warrior, a captured warrior. So what they would do
is they needed to take them, they needed to march them home. So they would tie them up,
but they would also they would cut their shoulders and necks to like make because they'd have their
hands tied behind their backs. So it is really difficult to wiggle your way out of that if you've
had all your tendons and muscles cut in your shoulders. Yeah, they would.
The first thing they would do is they would cut or bite off their fingers. Okay. So yeah,
I was like, oh man, I'll enter out their fingernails. Okay. So very hands on, very visceral, very like
and this was, and then they get them back and sometimes they would take them back and then they
would be adopted into families while their fate was decided by the chiefs. Okay. So it would be
a family of someone who's had their loved one killed by this group. And sometimes they got adopted
into back into the family and lived. Okay. Sort of a replacement or who died. Yeah. But usually
wasn't done without torture. Okay. So but if they did decide that, nope, this guy's it is done.
They would have a day or multiple days of pretty hideous torture. So let's go into that. So buckle
up. So it was basically a prisoner sacrifice. That's what it looks like. And it was very sacred.
And it was very personal. And everybody was involved with the torture. So this time period is
Reformation and counter Reformation, right? So it's it's it's getting pretty gnarly over in Europe,
too. In Europe. Yeah. But it wasn't individual, like the like the whole village wasn't coming out
to do the torture. It would have been the priestly and or the. Well, it would have been in this case
in the in North America. It was the representative or it was the whole village coming out. The whole
village. So the whole like it would be in a long house. So not everybody in the village. So all
of the like the children, like people lived there, right? So it would be the torture happened in the
home. Okay. I mean, public executions were still popular viewing. Mm hmm. You know, you pack a
picnic lunch and take the kids and go watch some people be executed. Yeah. In Europe at that time,
too. You know, the burning of the steak and yeah. But the pre show was indoors, usually for the
Europeans, like the rack and things like that. But yeah. So anyways, because it was it was a
reclamation of the salt, like of their people, this vengeance, their people have been taken. Okay.
So this person is a toning for that. And they would be made to sing. And they would have like a
mournful song that it probably prepared like of their, they're basically like their life story,
who they were. Okay. They would try to sing through the whole torture as a mark of their
fortitude. So it would begin in the evening. And it would take maybe several days. But they would
always keep the person alive until morning so that they would die outside. So the sun could be a
witness to this because it was a sun sacrifice, which is really interesting because they are
people who grow corn. They're people who grow beans and squash, like the Mayan people.
I was going to say there's a definite tie there too, because yeah, the Mayans and the Aztecs,
it was the goal was to capture a future sacrifice, which is one of the reasons, I mean, jumping
head on your stories, but in a different part of the world. So I think it's okay that the Spanish
in battle were there to kill. Yeah. And the Aztecs were trying to like capture people. And that's
going to be an uneven footing when you go to battle. Yeah. So yeah, is this then this is groups that
have gradually moved further and further north and moved into sort of this territory?
No, it's more of a religious influence rather than these aren't former Mayan or they aren't.
It's not groups moving further up. It's the ideas moving rather than the people. That's right.
So in previous episode, when I was talking about the Hopel people, like Spears of Incent
Fluence, the treatment of the dead and things like that, they would, they just adopt it. And
especially because of the agricultural adoption. So they were taught probably by the same,
like it just kind of, oh, this is what we do. And this is how you plant these things. And this is,
oh, that's great. Oh, I'm going to take that home and and up the river they go. And yeah. And
then that just kind of evolves in their own way. Like obviously the Aztec and the Mayan, they had
very different gods and they had much more well established kind of elaborate. Yeah. Very elaborate.
Like they had a very elaborate priestly class or very powerful. I mean, not elaborate.
Would cannibalism have been part of this? So like it sure did.
Yep. All right, let's go in. Let's just go into what it won't happen. This this guy's worst day.
So yeah, it's an act of blood revenge. Okay. And then the sacrifice to the sun god and renewal
and all this sort of. So they would be stripped of whatever clothes they still had. And then they
would make their way from one to the long house to other running this gauntlet of hell. They would
poke him with flames. They would cut pieces out and they would stick flame sticks into the wounds.
The flaming sticks would go in other places. So they would start the torture on the limbs
because they want them to survive till morning. So you're not going stabs in the torso and things
like that. So it's limbs and genitals that are going to get the brunt of this at first. And then
they would break. So they break the hands. They break the feet. A lot of fire, a lot of fire and
hot ashes and rubbing and they would be a lot of the people there would be mocking them. It would
be very disturbing to watch. Yeah. So because of how personal it was, we so the Jesuits like they
witnessed a ton of torture and they would have like it was normal for them to see. Oh, yes, you
have to bring this person at the stake. Of course you did. Yeah. You had to break them. You had to
get the truth out of them or whatever it was. And same with the Protestants, they did the same.
Yeah. The back and forth. Yeah. But the intimacy of this long house torture situation was very
shocking to them. If their strength was failing, they would kind of let them rest a bit and they
give them some water and to perk them up. And eventually they would have to carry them
and stop for drinks if you wouldn't do that five percent rise. And when he would revive,
he would often sing again. So just this fortitude, this strength of this warrior all through the
night. And then the morning that the prisoner was to die. So like I said, because sometimes it would
do multiple nights, they would go through this. They would build a scaffold six or seven feet high
and they would make the prisoner climb it or they would place them on it depending on how
far along they were. Yeah. Yeah. But he would try. Like if he was able, he would do it. Like this,
the strength that they would show through this torture is amazing. And so they would
they would burn his body and attack his vital organs, be made to eat pieces of his own flesh.
And honestly, I don't really want to say it. It's gross. So yeah, so then he would be burned and
stuck, you know, and then they'd let him bleed out and he would finally die. But then he would
they would cut out his heart and they would eat it. So that would that's very much like what we'd
see like in the Aztec and the like the heart kind of. Yeah, I suppose that there's the heart
rule. But like I think in the Aztec, it's that the entire body is consumed. And okay, the interpretation
I have heard and obviously this is hearsay and not based on me having a whole lot of research
background was it's related to like there were just many sources of protein. And so there's some
aspects that that's how it started. Yeah, potentially. But again, take that with a massive
grain of salt that is me trying to vaguely remember things I've heard. So, oh, it's also
possible it's a hitchhiker story or urban legend. So they cut off the hands and feet and cut out
the heart and they eviscerated the corpse. And the children took the intestines to hang them off
a sticks and go run around and play with them. That would have been horrifying to see. But
that was life. That was the way it was. So yeah, and if the prisoner had been really,
so they would have only really, they would have only eaten the heart if he had been extremely brave
in his time. So if he had died not bravely, they would have just let it go. Yeah, well,
because they wouldn't be very empowering to consume that. Yeah, not everybody loved this part. The
eating of the human flesh. Some were horrified and some dug it like they were into it. So it's,
yeah, some were really, but they did it anyways because of the ritual, some importance of it.
So yeah, on the after sunset on the day the prisoner was killed, everyone made a lot of like a huge
racket to chase away the victim's spirit to get rid of. So speaking of dead spirits and things
like that, the feast, how they let's talk about how they treated the dead. So people who died
violently, they would not be included in the feast of the dead. They would have been buried
immediately. And another thing, people who drowned or froze to death also were not included in the
feast of the dead. So they would have had their flesh cut off and the flesh and trails would have
been burned. And then the skeleton would have been buried. Okay. And they would do it right away.
And it was so that they wouldn't anger the sky or Lake spirits. They did that to prevent more
misfortune, similar misfortune happening to the people. So I thought that was an interesting
differentiation. Oh, and very, very young children were not part of the feast of the dead. So babies
and little wee ones, they were buried on pathways alongside pathways. Okay. So that women are passing
by that baby's soul could enter that woman's womb and that person could be reborn. Okay. Because they
had two souls, basically one that was reborn and one that died and went to the village of the dead
or whatever. So the feast of the dead, what was that? So I've talked about that quite a bit or
mentioned it quite a bit. So this is really important. So they would have their cemeteries
of the regular deaths. And people took care of that because they believed that their souls
were still there. But when you were leaving the village, no one was going to be able to take care
of them anymore. So they needed to be gathered up and have this big feast that would take 10 days.
This whole process was 10 days. So in the first three days, it was the women that took care of
things. So they would be dug up. And if they were already decomposed, the skeletons would be
gathered into a beaver skin bag. And then they're ready to go to the next stage. But if they were
not, if they were partially decomposed, they would be defleshed. And those would be burned.
So it would be pretty, Bruce Trigger notes that the women did this, what was the term you used,
basically with incredible fortitude, they were not grossed out. They were tough. They
could handle it because they would have like, there was worms and like, it was a lot. So they
would defleshed them. And then again, once that was done, bones are cleaned into the bag, they go.
If someone is recently dead, they would not defleshed the body. So those would go on like a scaffold.
And then they would have this big ceremony, they'd be feasting and gifts and goods put into this
kind of pit. They called it a kettle. I don't know why they called it a kettle.
Then basically a hut would be put over it. So when I was talking about the hope well,
people, this would be very similar to the hope well mounds. Okay, that they would put this
hut over and then the people would be there and they're the, oh yeah, they, sorry, I forgot to
mention the beaver skin bag. So they would open the bags and then they would pour the bones and
they would always make sure that everyone was intermingled, the bones, which was very, so they
would always be together and interming. It was a very important part of that.
Okay, must drive archaeologist bonkers. Yeah, it's quite the challenge.
Yeah, so then they, and then they would build this hut over it and the bill or whatever,
kind of safely protected. And then eventually that would rot and collapse and then it would be
all buried over and seat them because they would move on, right? So they would move on to
another village then every 10 or 15 years. And this was a huge cultural event for the surrounding
villages. They would have other people from villages come. They would have allies come.
Sometimes they would invite their allies to join the mingling, the intermingling.
Yes. But sometimes they were just guests. So I guess it depends on how important they were.
Yeah, I guess like you'd be then sharing space in the afterlife. So it would build a connection.
So you'd have to value them enough to be like, yeah, we want you guys to be in our allies for
yeah, because they would travel because once they were buried in this piece of the dead,
their souls could depart to the village of the dead. So they would go together.
So you want your good travel companions. You're going to make that trip. You got to have people
you like. And that's why babies and very young children couldn't because they're terrible
travelers. Yes. So they had another go. So yeah, that was those are the feasts of the dead. And
yeah, and I think that's pretty much it. I think I got it all covered. Just looking at my notes
here, there's so much that I missed. I did not cover all of the different clan system. Like
there's, but I'm leaving room for more for another day. So is there any like questions or things that
you were wondering about that I didn't quite cover that you were curious about?
No, like it covered quite a lot of stuff. And it's sort of interesting to see
sort of in terms of in time ways in which Europeans and like they wouldn't have been
intermingling yet. And yet there were some ways in which they were similar. So like,
osteo areas exist in Europe at this time. Atacombs. Yeah, like that sort of houses where all of the
dead are buried together kind of thing would still exist. And so just sort of that
ways in which people end up in similar places through different paths. Yeah. So yeah,
and the agricultural norms of women working together and the men doing their thing.
Yeah. Whereas in other like in a shopping, they'll be a little bit more everyone's going hunting
together. Yeah, like men would still hunt more. But like, yeah, I thought that was kind of a,
oh, yeah, that makes sense. The farming revolution and the impact on gender norms.
Exactly. As it impacts everywhere. Yeah. That's right. And that's why when the French came,
they're like, Oh, oh, yeah. Okay, I see what you're doing here. They knew that story. Whereas it
was a little bit more, well, what are you guys up to over like the Ojibwe or something of that?
Okay, a little different and seeing that poor. So yeah, I think so next, the next episode,
I'm going to be talking about the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. So they were in parallel and they
were enemies big time, which is so interesting because they have a lot of the state like their
sky, their sky woman story is the same more or less. Like, where did you guys like, what happened?
So well, there's there's a reason why those twin stories, right? It's always the really close
that like, to be able to drive each other. Yeah. So yeah, I don't when I was doing the
reason I don't have a good answer about why they were at such enemies, because the Iroquois,
sorry, Haudenosaunee, were a lot of people's enemies. But they were also had a very tight
Confederacy. So it's a very interesting thing. But we'll get into that. And I think I've had
their coming next week. So thank you guys for listening. And I hope you listen to the next one.
And like, subscribe, all that good stuff, whatever people do. For me, I'm a Spotify listener. So I
hit that follow button. If you're Apple, I don't know what you do for Apple. I can't remember.
In a long time since I use that. I don't know. Anyways, thanks so much, Jessica. I really,
really appreciated having over. And I really hope you can come back and we'll talk about something
in our school in history. Yeah, no, this was a lot of fun. Thanks.
