Taontaenrat

The Taontaenrat, or Atahontaenrat, were one of the four nations of the Wendat Confederacy of southern Ontario; their name meant “two white ears” and the French knew them as the Deer nation. They were the last people to join the confederacy, around 1610, and lived in palisaded longhouse villages in Wendake, between Lake Simcoe and Georgian Bay, where women farmed maize, beans and squash under matrilineal clans.

Epidemics carried by Europeans cut Wendat numbers by more than half between 1634 and 1640, and in 1648 and 1649 Dutch-armed Haudenosaunee armies overran Wendake during the Beaver Wars.

The Taontaenrat dispersed with the other Wendat: some were adopted into Haudenosaunee nations, some fled to French protection near Quebec, and others merged with the Tionontati to become the Wyandot.