Etharita

Etharita was a principal village of the Tionontate, the people known to the French as the Petun for the tobacco they cultivated. Their villages stood along the high ground south of Georgian Bay, near their Wendat neighbours. Etharita housed the Jesuit mission of Saint-Jean and became a refuge for Wendat people fleeing attacks on their own communities in the region.

In December 1649 Haudenosaunee warriors attacked the village while many of its defenders were away. Etharita was plundered and burned, and the Jesuit missionary Charles Garnier was killed in the attack. The destruction formed part of a wider upheaval that scattered the Tionontate and Wendat from their homelands. Archaeologists have identified the Kelly-Campbell site with the village remembered in the Jesuit accounts.