The Eighteenth-Century Wyandot: A Clan-Based Study, by John L. Steckley

Abstract

The Eighteenth-Century Wyandot: A Clan-Based Study, by John L. Steckley. Waterloo, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2014. 305 pp. $85.00 Cdn (cloth). While scholars and laypeople might remember the Wyandots, or Hurons, as New France's important allies in the seventeenth century, their story after 1649--when the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) defeated and dispersed them--is more obscure. Like a growing number of studies, however, John Steckley shows that the Wyandots not only survived their dispersal but rebuilt their communities in diaspora and thus have persisted to the present. In particular, Steckley argues that their matrilineal clan system kept the Wyandot strong and allowed them to weather the maelstrom of colonialism (p. 6). Using an innovative ethnohistorical and qualitative methodology, Steckley successfully explores the Wyandot clan system and, in the process, demonstrates how using indigenous, rather than Eurocentric, categories enhances our understanding of native peoples. At the heart of Steckley's work is a 1747 census of those Wyandots who had settled at Detroit (other Wyandots had moved east to Jeune-Lorette near Quebec and are not addressed in this study). Created by Pierre Potier and his Wyandot informants, the census provides the clan identity of a large segment of the community. Since the names of Wyandot individuals are clan-specific--that is, the clans the names of individuals and passed them down from generation to generation within the clan--Steckley is able to ascertain the clan identity not only of those listed in the census but also those who possessed the names before or after that time (p. 29). By systematically searching for these names in the documents, especially the records of the Wyandot mission, Steckley has built an impressive database of the Wyandot clans. Coupled with Steckley's expertise on the Wyandot language and culture, this methodology provides us an unparalleled picture of Wyandot political and social structure. Based on this data, Steckley argues that the clans served as most important constituent parts (p. 25) of Wyandot society (p. 6). Most importantly, in times of crisis the clans served as a stabilizing force; they simultaneously provided a common touchstone for Wyandot identity and allowed the Wyandots to experiment with different adaptive responses to the challenges they faced (p. 6). For example, when the Wyandots found themselves depopulated, displaced and in a precarious diplomatic position in the late seventeenth century, different clan leaders adopted possible strategies to deal with the problems confronting their people (see chapter three). Steckley also finds that different clans developed different relationships with outsiders (chapter four) and adopted different approaches to Christianity (chapter five). Clans also determined the Wyandot's political structure (chapter six) and the political and social roles of Wyandot women (chapter seven). Although this book will be useful to specialists on the Wyandots, scholars interested in indigenous history more generally can learn much from Steckley's methodology and findings. …