The Children of Aataentsic: A History of the Huron People to 1660 is both an ethnohistory of the Huron Confederacy and a study of the causes of its collapse under the impact of the Haudenosaunee attacks of 1649. Drawing upon the archaeological context, the ethnography presented by early explorers and missionaries, and the recorded history of contact with Europeans, Bruce Trigger traces the development of the Huron (Wendat) people from the earliest hunting and gathering economies in southern Ontario, many centuries before the arrival of the Europeans, to their key role in the fur trade in eastern Canada during the first half of the seventeenth century. Trigger's work integrates insights from archaeology, history, ethnology, linguistics, and geography. He argues convincingly that the European impact upon Indigenous cultures cannot be correctly assessed unless the nature and extent of precontact change is understood. His study not only stands Euro-American stereotypes and fictions on their heads, but forcefully and consistently interprets European and Indigenous actions, thoughts, and motives from the perspective of the Wendat culture. The Children of Aataentsic revises widely accepted interpretations of Indigenous behaviour and challenges cherished myths about the actions of some celebrated Europeans during the so-called heroic age of Canadian history. In the preface, Trigger describes and evaluates contemporary controversies over the ethnohistory of eastern Canada. Bruce Trigger was a member of the Department of Anthropology, McGill University.
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