Austin Bradt HIS 161, Erik Seeman TA Elisabeth George

During the period of 1634 to 1650, the Wendat people, often called the Hurons, very much had control of their destiny, or had agency over their lives. They decided many things that brought about change; they had full control over those actions and, though they might not have known what the consequences of those actions were going to be, they still had control over initializing them. When the French first arrived in Wendake, the Wendat people began trading and quickly realized that the French goods were invaluable to them. The goods allowed the Wendat people to increase the wealth and quality of the goods that were put into the graves of their deceased. Honoring the dead was very important to the Wendat, and with the increase in trade goods, the French became almost necessary to the Wendat. Wendats considered it a great honor to be able to give gifts at a funeral . . . the main reason they accumulated goods in the first place (pg. 22). The Wendat people had control of this. They were the ones unable to let go of the goods that allowed them to venerate their dead in a much more honorific manner. They had been getting along fine for a long time before the French arrived, and yet they refused to return to their older way of venerating the dead with just their own goods. One side effect of the trade with the French was the addition of Jesuit missionaries to the Wendat communities. While the Wendats would have rather not had the missionaries preaching in their villages, they valued the trade with the French too much to kick the Frenchmen out of

their villages. The cost of banishing or killing the Jesuits would be high: it would mean the end of trading with the French, who had long indicated that the Jesuit presence was a precondition of the alliance. If the Wendats were willing to have ignored the French, they would not have had the Jesuits in their villages and none of them would have been converted to Christianity, which is another factor in the Wendats destiny. While the Jesuits succeeded in converting several hundred Wendats (pg. 11), it was still up to the people of their communities to decide what to do with their lives. Even if they were supposed to check with the missionaries about what was proper for a Christian, they still got to decide what they did with their own lives. When converted to a religion, there is just a code you must live by, not anything that says what you much do with your life or that your destiny is preordained. When the Iroquois attacked in 1642 looking for furs and captives, the Wendats were the ones who decided how to deal with the threat. One group decided to go south on the advice of a shaman and the Christian group decided to go to the west based on where the majority of the Iroquois attacks were coming from. The Christians didnt trust the advice of a demon that the talked to, because their Jesuit teachers had warned them that the demon would be an agent of the devil (pg. 110). The two groups each met different ends, the Christians found nothing and the traditionalists found defeat; the Wendats could have decided to work together, and probably would have met with different, or better, results when facing the Iroquois (Pg. 110) .After the Iroquois attacked, some of the Wendats who stayed in Wendake decided that, in order to preserve their culture and way of life, they needed to submit to the Iroquois (pg. 106). In order to do this, the Wendats had to get rid of the Jesuits that were living in their villages;

soon after coming to this decision, a group of wendats decided to kill the first Jesuit they came across and they ended up killing one man outside of Saint Marie (pg. 123). This lead to a whole process of gift giving in which the majority of the Wendat people tried to appease the Jesuits for the death of their dear brother. The Jesuits accepted the apology, and moved on with their conversions, even closer to the Wendat people than before (pg. 125). When the Iroquois attacked again on June 6th, 1648, they drove the Wendat people from their homeland. The Wendat people decided to flee when the Iroquois came (pg. 131) and they had control of where they went after they fled (pg. 134, 136). The Wendats were in control of where they went, no one was forcing them. The Iroquois attack was just instigation, it didnt force the Wendats to do anything, and they still retained their choice. Destiny is all about the choices a person makes as they have full control over their action at all times. In every instance, the Wendats had a choice; they made their choice and then dealt with the consequences of that choice. Like when a parent says, Your brother didnt make you do anything; you are the one thats moving your arms. You are responsible for your own actions. Anything people do, they are responsible for and they are the ones who put themselves into that position.