Katie Klass
September 2014
 Tribes in the area in the early 1600s
 Wendat (Huron) Confederacy
 Included five Tribes: Attignawantan, Attigneenongahac,
Arendahronon, Tahontaenrat, and Ataronchronon
 Tionontati (Petun) Tribe
 Atiwandaronk (Neutral) Tribe
 Wenro Tribe
 Was part of the Atiwandaronk (Neutral) Tribe early on
 Erie Tribe
 Iroquois (Five Nations) Confederacy
 Included five Tribes: Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida,
and Mohawk
 1609
 The Wendat Confederacy encountered the French
 1630s
 Several epidemics killed half the Wendat people
 Tension was building because the Wendat Confederacy allied
with France and the Iroquois Confederacy allied with England
in the fur trade, and the Iroquois Confederacy changed
military tactics and began wiping out entire villages
 1649
 The Wendat people left their villages on the Georgian Bay
 The Wendat Confederacy split off into many directions, with
some joining with other friendly tribes and some being
absorbed into hostile tribes
 Current location of linguistic Wendat and Tionontati
descendants
 Huron-Wendat Nation (Lorette, Canada)
 Wyandot of Anderdon Nation (Trenton, Michigan)
 Wyandot Nation of Kansas (Kansas City, Kansas)
 Wyandotte Nation (Wyandotte, Oklahoma)
 Closely related languages (sister
languages)
 Northern Iroquoian
 Lake Iroquoian
 Huronian
 Waⁿdat
 Wendat
 Tionontati, Atiwandaronk, Wenro, Erie
 Five Nations
 Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Susquehannock,
Cayuga, Seneca
 Coast Iroquoian
 Tuscarora, Nottoway, Meherrin
 Southern Iroquoian
 Cherokee
 Our last Waⁿdat speaker
 Frank Wilson (pseudonym)
 Alive in 1972, and spoke only Waⁿdat as a child
 Recordings in the 1950s and 1960s
 Ex. Sarah Dushane in 1966 in Miami, OK
 Marius Barbeau
 Canadian folklorist, lawyer, and anthropologist who
worked for the Geological Survey of Canada
 Recorded Waⁿdat in 1911 and 1912
 In Craig’s database, 25,641 words were preserved by
Barbeau, and only 6,294 were preserved by others
 Bruce Pearson
 Started working with the Wyandotte Nation in 1994
 Uses a version of Americanist transcription, with some
of Barbeau’s phonetic symbols maintained (ex. glottal
stop is ʼ)
 Compiled a handbook and dictionary of Waⁿdat based
mostly on Barbeau’s 4o stories
 Translated the 40 stories Barbeau recorded into
Americanist transcription
 Craig Kopris
 Had contact with the Wyandot Nation of Kansas in the
1990s, started working with Waⁿdat in 1991, started
compiling the databases in 1997, began attending
Culture Days in 2010
 Uses a version of Americanist transcript, but does not
maintain Barbeau’s symbols (ex. glottal stop is ʔ )
 Has created three electronic databases
 Vocabulary – 31,935 entries
 Roots – 1,147 entries
 Texts – 48 preserved texts
 Is currently putting together a high school level Waⁿdat
language class
 April 2012
 Recorded artifact words and The Young Woman Fallen
from Above story with Craig for the “Gathering of
Traditions” Barbeau museum exhibit
 June 2013
 Recorded conversational words and phrases with Craig
for the the 2013 Culture Days language presentation
 Verbs are very important and usually consist of three
elements:
 Verb root – Conveys the basic action or state of being
 Pronominal prefix – Identifies the person associated with the
action or state of being
 Suffix – Indicates the status of the action or state of being
 The way a word is pronounced can drastically modify its
meaning
 “H” can do more things than it can in English
 Has “ⁿd” and “ⁿg”
 Has “ž” and “m”
 Waⁿdat uses 14 consonants and seven vowels
 As opposed to the 24 consonants and 14 vowels in English,
but this also depends on your dialect
 Nasalized vowels
 Ę – Like “mend” (not “med” or “meh”)
 ǫ́ – Like “honk” or “song”
 Glottal stops
 ʔ – Like “uh-oh” or “hot tamale”
 Pre-nasal stops
 ⁿd and ⁿg – With the “n” sound being very faint
 Sounds you know but look different
 Š (s-wedge) – Like “sh”
 ž (z-wedge) – Like “pleasure”
 Consonants without aspiration (breathing out)
 K
 T