Description
The Petun, also known as the Tobacco people or Tionontati ,("People Among the Hills/Mountains"), were an indigenous Iroquoian people of the woodlands of eastern North America. Their last known traditional homeland was south of Lake Huron's Georgian Bay, in what is today's Canadian province of Ontario The Petun were closely related to the Huron, or Wendat. Similarly to other Iroquoian peoples, they were structured as a confederacy. One of the less numerous Iroquoian peoples when they became known to Europeans, they had eight or nine villages in the early 17th century, and are estimated to have numbered around 8000 prior to European contact.
Language
Iroquoian-speaking
Culture
The Jesuit Relations in 1652 describes the practice of tattooing among the Petun and the Neutrals: And this (tattooing) in some nations is so common that in the one which we called the Tobacco, and in that which on account of enjoying peace with the Hurons and with the Iroquois was called Neutral, I know not whether a single individual was found, who was not painted in this manner, on some part of the body. The Tionontati maintained trading relationships with the Neutral and Huron-Wendat, and with the Algonquian-speaking Odawa and Nipissing. They had walled villages that were occupied year-round and that contained numerous longhouses. The population subsisted by cultivating corn, beans and squash, as well as by hunting and fishing.