Attignawantan

The Attignawantan, or Attinniaoenten, “people of the bear,” were the leading nation of the Wendat Confederacy of southern Ontario. With the Cord people they formed the first Wendat alliance in the mid-fifteenth century, the nucleus of the later confederacy.

Their country lay at the heart of Wendake between Georgian Bay and Lake Simcoe, and the village of Ossossane, where more than six hundred Wenro refugees were welcomed in 1639, was the confederacy’s capital in the Jesuit period; the smaller Ataronchronon group may itself have been a division of the Bear nation.

Dutch-armed Haudenosaunee destroyed Wendake in 1648 and 1649 in the Beaver Wars. It was chiefly Attignawantan survivors who took refuge with the Tionontati, and their union, later joined by Wenro and Neutral refugees, formed the Wyandot, who settled at Michilimackinac in 1671 and near Detroit in 1701.