Hurons

Hurons, a once powerful tribe of American Indians, belonging to the Huron-Iroquois family. In the early part of the 17th century the Hurons numbered about 30,000 persons, living in twenty-five villages within a small territory near Georgian Bay. By the end of the century the tribe had been nearly destroyed by the Iroquois, famine, and disease; and in 1693 the few survivors were removed by the French to Jeune Lorette, near Quebec. Here two or three hundred descendants still live; but very few are of pure blood, and all are Catholics, and have abandoned their own language for French.