The Huron Collection
The Huron Collection is a series of 36 paintings depicting the life and culture of Canada’s Huron/Wendat First Nations. It was a passion project of Lewis Parker in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. Parker was commissioned by the Huronia Council of Ontario to create historical paintings for Sainte-Marie-Among-the-Hurons. This series included on-site presentations of pre-European Native life on location at the site in Midland, Ontario. Between 1968 and 1974, Parker worked in collaboration with acclaimed painter Gerald Lazare on this and several other extended projects.
The Longhouse Interior
The Longhouse Interior: The activities at a longhouse feast include dancers, gamblers playing the bean game and examining their winnings, women cooking, an elder storyteller and his fascinated young listeners, the welcoming of an esteemed visitor with a special dog's head morsel, as well as spectators and children relaxing in the bunks.
Burial of the Drowned
Burial of the Drowned: Believing the sky angry when anyone is drowned or dies of cold, the Huron have a special ceremony. The body is stretched on a mat by a ditch and cut into sections marked out by coal. Men chosen by the relatives vie with each other in cutting up the body while being encouraged by the grieving women. The whole family is present in mourning. Finally, stripped of flesh and the entrails which are burnt, the carcass is buried in the ditch. This ceremony ensures the soul's arrival in a special heaven.
The Children
The Children: This scene depicts the various activities of young people in the village. A group of boys play the spear and hoop game: others practice with a bow and arrow. Older warriors instruct the youngsters. Boys in the background endure the "hot coal" test, others play rough boys games. Girls are seen preparing corn meal as they use mortar and pestle, grinding, sifting and rolling of the dough. Other girls take care of babies, making the fire, cleaning, offering instruction, piercing ear-lobes or tatooing and dressing of a young boy's hair as he whittles arrows, tattooing the skin of another youth. The children play with the many dogs living in the village.
Games
Games: One of the most popular games was lacrosse, played on fiesta days between families, villages and clans. The danger in the game as the Huron played it is indicated by the harsh body bruises.
Family Devotion
Family Devotion: An anecdote described in the Jesuit Relations illustrates how one member of a family would give his life for another. Here a young brother's life is protected from the arrows of hostile Iroquois.
Longhouse Fire
Longhouse Fire: An orphaned group of children, their relatives recently dead in an epidemic, are burned out of the lodge in which they lived. Luckily, the prevailing wind kept the fire from spreading to the other longhouses. The villagers are shown taking immediate care of the children.
Iroquois Assembly
The next day a council is called to agree on contributions to assist the children. As the "Old Stones"(elders) approach the chiefs lodge where the children spent the night, women take the children to other quarters. Because of the affection and concern shown by their elders, the children are seen enjoying the situation, rather than being frightened by it.
Iroquois Council Meeting
The council separates into family groups to discuss what the family can afford to contribute to the welfare of the orphans. One group is solemn, one in a lighter mood, and one in the background is arguing noisily. Women at the far end of the longhouse are attending to a meal at the fire. As usual, dogs are present.
Iroquois Gift Pledges
The discussions done with and the decisions made, a spokesman commits each family to the gifts they pledged to donate. Each gift is represented by a stick. The donation is recorded by the keeper of the sticks.
Gift Parade
On the appointed day the villagers bring the gifts to the centre of the village to be presented to the orphans. Among the gifts are corn, pumpkins, squash, beans, oxroot, berries, cornmash, fish, furs, and wampum trinkets. The mood is festive as the villagers happily give up their possessions. The woman in the foreground donates her precious beads and a returning fisherman in the background gives his catch of the day.
Criminal Cache
Criminal Cache: Sendetsi steals from his father-in-law in a neighboring village and hides the loot in his mother's house where he lived. The cache includes a cooking pot, a knife stone, a tobacco pouch, a paddle, wampum strings, a war club, a bear claw necklace, moccasins, moccasin trousers and the adze with which Sendetsi digs.
Iroquoian Cache Reprisal
Iroquoian Cache Reprisal: If the thief were unknown a medicine man would detect him through ritual ceremonies. But in this case the father-in-law suspected Sendetsi, so by custom he took all the possessions from Sendetsi's lodge, leaving the family with hardly enough to cover themselves.
Murder
Murder: In vengeance, which to the Huron was the worst of crimes because it led to more bloodshed, Sendetai lured his brother to the forest and killed him. There was an eye-witness.
Reparation Sticks
Reparation Sticks: The crime and the punishment is determined by the council. Relatives of the murderer present to the chief thirty gift sticks. The gift sticks indicate the number of gifts the relatives will bring to the bereaved family. The death of a female brought forty sticks.
Reparation Gifts
Reparation Gifts: An elder presents the gifts one by one to the bereaved family. The first nine gifts are to relieve the family's anguish and some are to ease tensions between the villages concerned. Displayed are typical Huron. Iroquoian and Algonquian artifacts.
Mourners
Mourners: The last four gifts are to acknowledge the deep mourning of the murdered boy's mother. Tobacco, water, food and a mat are given to complete her mourning.
Iroquoian Gift Pole
Iroquoian Gift Pole:The final gifts are hung on a pole that is raised over the head of the accused. They are items belonging to the victim. The chief speaks eloquently and in metaphor while explaining the meaning of each present.
The Moose Hunt
The Moose Hunt: Having trailed a moose until the harassing of dogs forces its collapse, a team of six Algonkian hunters close in for the kill. They will strip the animal of its hide, feed some of the moose to the dogs and then cache the remaining animal for the woman to gather and bring back to the camp on sleds. The hunters continue to seek further prey.
The Beaver Hunt
The Beaver Hunt: Blocking off the escape of the beavers with upright stakes at the damned end of the frozen pond, the Algonkians here methodically destroy the beaver house. The animals, forced up for air are netted and snared by hand. The beavers avoiding the main hole are speared as they locate themselves in the air pockets. The ice is broken by a tool with an arched blade set at right angles to the handle, called the adze. In the foreground, one man deals the death blow, one rolls and cleans the bodies, another strips the pelts and loads the furs and flesh separately to be taken back to the camp.
Algonquian Camp
Algonquian Camp: An Algonquian clan of several families arrive by birch bark canoes. After the spring break-up of the ice these canoes will carry their furs to trade. The clan prepares itself for winter camp. The women and elders collect poles and strip elm bark for their wigwams. Women prepare meals and erect a drying rack. An oki sends the hunters in a direction decreed by omens. Fishing through the ice was done with both nets and spears.
Wigwam Interior
Wigwam Interior: This is to show the contrast of the dwellings of the Hurons, with their longhouses to the temporary lodges of the nomadic Algonkians. The floor is covered with pine needles. Smoke from the cooking fire escape through a single roof opening. The activities shown are the stripping of a fox pelt, the tying of arrowheads and snowshoes, the shafting of a spear, the preparation of smaller animals for a meal, the filleting of fish and the diversion of a baby with
a rattle and chewing cob.
Trade
Trade: Here the Hurons are seen bringing their basic trade of corn and vegetables to Algonkian country in exchange for furs. The location is at Old Women's Bay near Wawa, Ontario. Specific items of trade were corn in kernels, corn ground in skin bundles, baskets, hemp nets, wampum, copper, dried fish, pigment, shells, bone beads and tobacco leaves in tight bundles bound with bark.
Natural Medicine
Natural Medicine: This composite scene depicts the treatment of physical ills. Warriors have their wounds attended with knives and hot coals. Herbs, poultices and the root and bark emetics are prepared by the women. A pregnant women is present at the extraction of an arrow. Hot coals are blown on cuts. A medicine man in bear dress is drawing blood from a head wound. A warriors leg sinews are cut to aid his running. A boy's broken arm is set. A sweat bath ceremony ends with participants plunging into water. Hot coals are passed from hand to hand. Medicine items are grouped in the foreground.
Dreams and Desires
Dreams and Desires: This scene illustrates a description in the Jesuit Relations (JR 13: 259-263). It tells of how in a typical ceremony a sick man's malaise was cured by the fulfillment of a desire expressed in a dream. The sick man dreamt that he was cured by hunchbacks wearing wooden masks and carrying sticks. For two days preparations were made by the villagers and disguised dancers re-enacted the dream in the sick man's presence.
Sorcerers and Dreams
Sorcerers and Dreams: This montage shows aspects of the oki and sorcerer. In the center, a figure beats a turtle rattle while studying the flames and water for omens. Clockwise, from the top, the chief and oki administrate a ritual cure during an epidemic. Next, two sorcerers handle fire, putting hot coals in their mouths. An oki shakes the "sands of an illness" from the patient.
A black sorcerer injects a curse in the form of a bear's foot into a victim, while another oki drives out the curse by the pointing of a bone knife. A sorceress determines the outcome of a battle between the Huron and the Iroquois with fires around an outline of the "Lake of the Iroquois" (Lake Ontario). The sorcerer having decried a woman as a witch, now has to select her own executioner during the ceremony in which she is to die.
Origin Myths
Origin Myths: The central figure is Iouskeha, provider and sun god of the Huron. He holds their food in his hands: corn and fish. The origins of the Huron are shown as the woman Ateentsic is falling from the sky following the tree which she had felled in the sky world. She fell gently onto the island provided by the back of Turtle, who had been covered with earth by aquatic animals. She had a daughter, Aetentsic, who had two sons, Tawiscaron and Iouskeha. In a fight, Iouskeha killed his brother with the horns of a deer; from the death blood came flint.
Iouskeha released the animals from their cave, wounding in the foot all but the wolf, who in escaping remains the one hardest to capture. Iouskeha is the god of the traveller, protecting him from Turkey Cock, the thunder, and Garfish, the storm monster. Puncturing the armpit of a frog, Iouskeha brought water to earth. He is the sun and giver of life, living at the end of the world with his mother, the moon, goddess of death, from whom he protects the living and on whom he plays tricks. She is both a beautiful girl and ugly crone. In the Huron sky is also the dwarf God of War and Fire, against whom the corn straw mask is magic. The Corn Maiden assures a good crop, except in times of drought. With drought comes the caterpillar and the skeletal Iouskeha walks after gnawing on a man's leg. Iouskeha learned how to make fire to boil kettles from Turtle.
Afterlife Myths
Some of the Huron myths reflect remarkably the myths of ancient Greece, even in details. This is the legend of the Seven Sisters (Pliades), one of whom was loved by a Huron warrior who went to the stars to be with her. An eclipse is caused by the Turtle blotting out the sun, his is felled by arrows to restore the light. The heaven of dead children are in the fields around the village, where they are heard chasing the birds. To ensure a good fishing season, the Ceremony of the Seine weds to the river two young virgins, who will keep the river happy and provident. To ensure their status, the oki's selection of brides was quite young.
To placate the furies, tobacco was thrown to the tormented waters and placed in landmark rocks. A boy, after fasting, sculpts into a tree a form seen in a dream. This form will remain with him as an amulet throughout his life. Souls of the dead are seen traveling to the Land of the Dead, where the Sun and the Moon live. On the way a dwarf ghost plucks their brains and puts them in a bag, to be kept in pumpkins. They cross a river and a huge dog frightens some of them into the rapids, lessening their chances of reaching their heaven. The legend of the Brother and Sister tells of how a young man travels to the Land of the Dead to find a beloved sister. He returns with instructions from a magician to carry her soul in one pumpkin, her brain in another and to have her body exhumed from the village grave over his back. He must carry them the length of the longhouse at a special feast where all present should not watch him.
But one guest looks up just as her body starts to revive and she is lost to her brother forever. The center illustration depicts the Legend of the Bark-Wrapped Bow. After a series of adventures in their search for the unbendable bow, one youth , resisting the temptations of a witch and heeding the advise of a wise man, succeeds in bending the bow.
The Raising of the Chief
The Raising of the Chief: After a new Chief had been elected by council, he underwent a ceremony of resuscitation. All rose except the one who was taking the old chief's name. They put their hands down to pretend to lift him from the ground, indicating that they drew out of the tomb that great man who was dead and restored him to life in the person of the other, who then rose to his feet, the new "Chief". He is treated as the dead man he represents, so that the memory of good chiefs
never dies among them.
Corn Culture
The Hurons would clear a section of the forest near water, and plant corn around the burnt tree stumps. The tree stumps would stay in the fields because they didn't have the tools to remove them. The women tended to the corn, harvesting and husking their crop. By the river, men return from hunting and fishing trips, displaying their catches. In the background men build another longhouse in their village. Children played in the corn fields. On the hill, the warriors stand guard from potential attack.
Suitors
Suitors: A young man accompanied by an uncle, presents to a girl of his choice gifts which, if accepted, signifies that they will co-habit for a certain time until betrothal is determined. Around the girl are casual members of her family, there to assess the worth of her dowry. Beyond is a group painting and interpreting symbols on a longhouse. In the background is a group of men erecting a stockade around the village. The scene is typical of the Huronia flats area, near Midland. Ontario.