Dispersed but Not Destroyed - A History of the Seventeenth-Century Wendat People

Murowanyj 2

Dispersed but Not Destroyed- A History of the Seventeenth-Century Wendat People

This book review report is based upon the book “Dispersed but Not Destroyed”- A

History of the Seventeenth-Century Wendat People, written by Kathryn Magee Labelle. UBC

Press, The University of British Columbia in Vancouver, published this book in 2013. This book

is all about examining the Wedant Diaspora creation because of Iroquois attacks.1

Introduction to the Author

The book, Dispersed but Not Destroyed”- A History of the Seventeenth-Century Wendat

People, written by Kathryn Magee Labelle who is an assistant professor in the History

Department at the University of Saskatchewan. She is also an adopted member of the Wyandot

Nation of Kansas.

Introduction to the book

The book, Dispersed but Not Destroyed”- A History of the Seventeenth-Century Wendat

People, written by Kathryn Magee Labelle and is about examining the Wedant Diaspora creation

because of Iroquois attacks. She finds dispersion as the means to solve the problem to the

challenges of disease and war.2 She proved the fact that the demise of Wendat was very much

exaggerated and she addressed the population decline caused due to battles and sickness well in

her writing. She takes the readers of this book to a journey of Wedant people who could recover

quickly from difficulties and with this she writes a new chapter in North American history.

Summary of the Book

1
Kathryn Magee Labelle, Dispersed But Not Destroyed (Vancouver: University of British
Columbia Press, 2013)
2
Labelle, Dispersed But Not Destroyed, 4-6
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I thought this book to be well thought and written with the way author speaking up about

personalizing the narrative of the Wendat people in three different parts. The first part talks about

resistance, which is a fight against the disease and the ever-decreasing population. This was also

about the struggle with the adversaries of Iroquois and of the Settler region who wanted to have a

conversion of guns. In the second part, there is addressing of relocation of the population from

the selection of new territories and the third section is all about diaspora and its results. The

author has done an outstanding job of pointing out many errors in the classic narrative and shows

the fact that the demise of Wendat was largely exaggerated.

The book tells us about the area of a stretch from the Georgian Bay in the north to Lake

Simcoe in the east where the Wendat Confederacy had flourished for around two hundred years.

In the middle of the seventeenth century, a European disease threatened Wendat society and

Iroquois attacks. The author takes the readers of this book to a journey of Wedant people who

could recover quickly from difficulties and with this she writes a new chapter in the North

American history.3

Author’s Core Concerns

In this book, the author demonstrates a perfect understanding of the history of the Wendat

people including her precise scholarship and creation of a Wendat diaspora after the conquest of

Iroquois in the year 1649. The core concern of the author here is the idea about historians citing

the disease and the war as the reason for the demise of the Wendat people. She in her writing

proves the fact that the demise of the Wendat people was largely exaggerated with recognizing

the Wendat displacement creation along with dispersion as the means of solution to the

challenges of disease and war outbreak. She shows the resiliency power of the Wendat people in

3
Ibid.
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this book that creates a new chapter in the history of North America. The author argues on the

fact that though the Confederacy and Wendat Country might have disintegrated in the mid-

century, the people of Wendat with their culture, beliefs and diplomatic power had remained

untouched further creating a diaspora tic polity in the Great Lakes of the region. 4 The author goes

beyond the collapse of the political understandings of the Pre-Wendat’s and puts the Wedant

identity as the centre of attraction.

Accurate Summary of key themes of the book

The book is comprised of three main parts in which the entire thought process of the

author is put up. The first part is called “Resistance” which was all about the analysis of disease

and diplomacy before the dispersal, which expressed the loss of leadership and the like in

Wendake. It also included a matter about the culture of the war of the Wendat War Chiefs and

also of the Nadowek Conflicts before 1649 well explained. The second part of the book is called

“Evacuation and Relocation” which was all about Wendat Country including Gahoendoe Island,

the coalition of the Anishinaabe neighbours, the country of the people of the sea in the west and

the Lorettans of the East. This section of the book also writes about the Iroquois

Country[ CITATION Kat13 \l 1033 ].

The last section of the book is called “Diaspora” which is all about the leadership of

Community memory and Cultural Legacy, the women of that time who showcased some good

amount of unity, social mobility and Spirituality. The author has successfully demonstrated her

idea and thoughts behind the main source in the account of Wendat People with its subtle shades

and readable account of the history of Wendat people that challenge the concept of Wendat’s

demise due to the Iroquois attacks in the middle of the seventeenth century.

4
Ibid, 6-8.
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Author’s use of sources

While writing down this history, I strongly feel that the author has given a good amount

of weight to the personal biographies of the individual Wendats as the ways to show the offset of

the history of Native North America that is depicted to be faceless in the eyes of so many

historians today. The historians have drawn more attention to group actions and pan-Indian

policies and not on individual agency. So by including the biographies of the Wendats people,

the author can bring up the voice to the individuals who have constructed the period of the

Wendat history.5

The dissertation part of the author begins with a prologue that puts up the persistence and

the wide form of North American culture. The information from the secondary textbooks,

curriculum’s, movies, public history has been very narrative and the author successfully explores

the myth within the modern Wendat nations and the Prologue of the author identifies both the

problem and also suggests one of another way of looking at the Wendat history.

The way the author has identified to an understanding of the Wendat people and also the

complete real history, the book has been successfully been able to contribute to an understanding

of the past and as a result, the present that we all can continue to mend in these ancient wounds.

The dramatic dispersal of Wendat had made many historians and anthropologists had put up the

end of Wendat history in the eyes of so many people around 6 The author has been able to

forcefully challenge and demolish the ‘discourse of destruction’ in her book and at the same time

she successfully puts up a broader question about society, power and the overall study of North

America in the seventeenth century. The author has made sure to give it an attractive end to her

5
Ibid.
6
Ibid, 4-5.
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project with an epilogue, “Reconnecting the Modern Diaspora, 1999,”7 which showed the

renewal of Wendat in their homeland around Georgian Bay which was another unknown aspect

of this entire subject.

Some distinctive features of the Book

The book successfully pulls out the reality behind the disappearance of Wendat (Labelle

2013) as pointed out by many historians. The author has used personal biographies to create

Wendat diaspora due to Iroquois attacks. She put the main focus on the dispersal and also the

aftermath by extending the seventeenth-century Wendat narrative. Her writing turns the story of

the Wendat conquest on its head and this book shows the power of resiliency of the Wendat

people with an all-new chapter in North American history. She in her writing proves the fact that

the demise of the Wendat people was largely exaggerated with recognizing the Wendat

displacement creation along with dispersion as the means of solution to the challenges of disease

and war outbreak.

The author has successfully demonstrated the hardships that were there during that time

and further proves the fact that the Wedant people had good resiliency powers to manage the

hardships even then. The historians have drawn more attention to group actions and pan-Indian

policies and not on individual agency and so the author made a point to put the maximum

possible weightage on individual biographies to give a real picture of the entire situation. The

book itself is so beautifully written that it appealed well to Aboriginal studies scholars,

historians, anthropologists and to all who were interested in the history of the people of Wendat

Conclusion

7
Ibid, 9.
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The author adds her voice to the Wendat voices of the past to accomplish the mission of

retelling and personalizing the narrative of the Wendat people. She shares the different names

and stories of the Wendat individuals all through the book and helps the reader to think of

diaspora as not a conquest but a method to maintain the cultural integrity while accommodating

the power of resiliency. The author showcases diaspora as a whole new transformation of a new

era where the Wendat leaders have continued to be seen at the negotiations.8

She also shares the personalized accounts of the Wendat at this time of a sudden change

and shows the true picture of the Wendat lifestyle in the seventeenth century including all the

difficulties of maintaining the people and the nation altogether. In one of her examples, she

demonstrates the opposing nature of the Wendat headmen who both had to struggle to find the

way of making sure the continuity of their people. She takes the readers of this book to a journey

of Wedant people who had the power and capability to recover quickly from all the difficulties

and with this she writes a new chapter altogether in the North American history. All these

features of the book make it a good read and an informative source of investment for all of us

who are interested to know about the lives of the Wendat people in the seventeenth century and

all those who are interested to dig into their lives at that point of time.

8
Ibid
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Bibliography

Labelle, Kathryn Magee. Dispersed But Not Destroyed: A History of the Seventeenth-Century

Wendat People. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2013.