The Wyandotte Nation is the only federally recognizedNative American tribe in the U.S. descended from the Wendat Confederacy. Historically, they lived near Georgian Bay in Canada. Under pressure from Haudenosaunee and other tribes, then from European settlers and the United States government, the tribe gradually moved south and west to Michigan, Ohio, Kansas, and finally Oklahoma in the United States. As of 2025, just over 7000 people were enrolled in the Wyandotte Nation.
The nation's traditional name in its own Iroquoian language is Waⁿdát (often rendered Wendat). The nation was renamed "Wyandotte" after merging with related groups from the Northeastern woodlands in the seventeenth century. The name is commonly thought to mean "dwellers on a peninsula" or "islanders".[1][2]:27
The nation's flag is white, with a central turtle emblem. The turtle, an earth symbol in the nation's creation stories, carries a peace pipe and war club representing peace and war, with willow branches signifying lasting life. A twelve‑pointed shield on the turtle's shell symbolizes the nation's clans, and a central council fire alludes to its traditional role as "Keepers of the Council Fire."[3][4]
Government
The Wyandotte Nation is a federally recognized Indian tribe in the United States.[5][6] Under U.S. federal law, the Wyandotte Nation can participate in all programs and services provided to American Indians.[7] The nation exercises inherent sovereignty and the "self-evident right to govern [itself]." [8]
Administration
As of 2025[update], the current administration is:[9]
The Wyandotte Nation operates two main health and wellness sites: the Bearskin Health and Wellness Center [12] and the Bearskin Fitness Center.[13]:16[14] The Nation also operates environmental services, including the Lost Creek Recycling Center, managed by the tribe's Environmental Department and Planning and Natural Resources Department.[13]:20[15][16] The nation has its own newspaper, The Turtle Speaks.[17][18]
The Wyandotte Nation issues its own tribal vehicle tags and operates its own housing authority. It has a ten-man police department providing 24-hour law enforcement response to the Nation and surrounding area.[10]
Demographics
As of May 2025, 7,254 people were enrolled citizens of the nation.[19] Enrollment is based in lineal descent; that is, the nation has no minimum blood quantum requirement.[8] This broad definition of enrollment was partially driven by negotiations between Chief Leaford Bearskin and the Bureau of Indian Affairs when determining eligibility for settlement compensation, as the BIA requested that the Wyandotte must distribute the settlement to all Wyandotte descendants regardless of blood quantum.[20]:80 This requirement is similar to other nations, such as the Cherokee Nation and Choctaw Nation.[21]
Only about 25 percent of enrolled Wyandottes live within the state of Oklahoma. In 2011, 1,218 of the 4,957 Wyandotte citizens lived in Oklahoma.[10]
The Nation also operates retail locations. It owns a truck stop, Turtle Stop fuel stations, and a smoke shop.
Culture
The tribe's annual powwow is held in Oklahoma in September and features traditional dances, regalia, music, food vendors, and other family-friendly activities.[24] It is a three day event that attracts dancers and drum groups from around the country. Dances include shawl dancing, fancy dancing, gourd dancing, and stomp dance.[25]
Language
Today, most members speak English. Although the last native speaker died in 1972, the Wyandot language is the subject of ongoing revitalization efforts. The Wyandotte Nation offers preschool and elementary‑level Wyandot classes and has developed online lessons for self‑study.[26][27]
History
The Wyandotte Nation descends from multiple groups: the Tionontati (Petun), the Wendats (Hurons), the Wenro, the Attiwandaronk (Neutrals) and the Erie.[28]:29 The Wyandotte Nation has continuity to the first Wendat Confederacy. This confederacy was created around 1400 CE, when the Attignawantan (Bear Nation) and Attigingueenongnahac (Cord People) combined forces.[2]:174 They, in turn, were joined by the Arendaronon (People of the Rocks), Ataronchronon (People of One Lodge), and the Tahontaenrat (Deer Nation).[2]:175 Archaeologists have excavated a number of large, 16th-century settlements north of Lake Ontario, including the Mantle Site, northeast of Toronto, suggesting that this may have been a location for the coalescence of the Wendat people.[29] These ancestors of the Wyandottes later migrated further north to the area near Georgian Bay, where they were encountered by French explorers in the early 17th century.
Early European contact
The key historical record for this period is The Jesuit Relations, which describes the groups that would become the Wyandotte.[30] At this time, the Wendat were fierce enemies of the nations of the Iroquois Confederacy, then based in present-day New York. The Wendat allied more closely with the French while the Iroquois allied more closely with the Dutch and later the British.[2]
Eventually the Wendat Confederacy was devastated by smallpox epidemics and became seriously weakened during the early decades of the early 17th century. After the third and most deadly epidemic of smallpox, the Wendat population was reduced from about 18,000 in 1634 to about 9,000 people in 1640[2]:589 From 1648-1649, the Haudenosaunee killed many of the remaining Wendat.[2]:752-769[31]:95-96 As they fled, many of the remaining Wendat "died by the hundreds" from starvation and lost most of their valuables, such as furs.[2]:780-782
Some Wendat moved east into Quebec and became the present-day Wendat Nation.[28] Others went west as refugees within other communities that were enemies of the Haudenosaunee such as the Wenro, Petun, and Neutrals.[31]:95-96[28]:504 The Haudenosaunee pursued the Wendat within these communities and dispersed them as well, forcing them to head farther west to lands occupied by the Ho-Chunk, Menominee, and Dakota.[31]:95-96. For some time, they settled with Odawa and Illinois tribes.[1] These Wendat survivors and the other refugees from the Iroquois formed a new, unified group, known as the Wyandot or Wyandotte.[28]:504 This group, which was mostly Petun, is the group from which today's Wyandotte Nation descends.[28]:504
These ancestors of the Wyandotte Nation spent most of the second half of the seventeenth century looking for a new home, traveling as far as Michilimackinac in Michigan and the Apostle Islands and Rock Island in Wisconsin.[28]:502 They returned east to present-day Detroit, where the ancestors of the present-day Wyandot of Anderdon Nation split from the Wyandotte Nation and remain today.[28]:516
18th-century developments
By the beginning of the 18th century, the Wyandotte people had moved into the Ohio River Valley.[28]:517 Around 1745, large groups settled near Upper Sandusky, Ohio. These Ohio Wyandots, dominated by former Wenro became more distinct from those who remained at Detroit, who were more former Petun.[28]:517 By the end of the 18th century, the Ohio Wyandots (who would become the Wyandotte Nation) were the dominant community.[28]:518
The area around Ohio seemed safe from colonial expansion, as the Royal Proclamation of 1763 at the end of the French and Indian War suggested that colonists could not expand west of the Appalachians. Even after more territory was opened to colonists in the 1768 Treaty of Fort Stanwix, Wyandottes in Upper Sandusky were far from any borders with colonists. After the American Revolution, some newly independent Americans were eager to expand beyond the terms laid down by the British. Some Wyandottes signed the Treaty of Fort McIntosh with the United States in 1785 to confirm their landholdings and appease the Americans.[32]:28 Many felt that the Wyandottes were secure, given that the Ohio River had been considered a natural boundary between the Great Lakes and American settlers.[31]:181
Northwest Indian War
Despite this treaty, the Kentucky militia attacked Native Americans in incidents such as Logan's raid to begin the Northwest Indian War. The Wyandottes joined the Indigenous Northwestern Confederacy and at first argued for conciliation with the United States,[32]:42 but later joined raids against the Americans.[32]:72 The Wyandottes were part of the Confederacy throughout the war, including at St. Clair's defeat in 1791, one of the American army’s worst defeats in history.[32]:188-195 But the war turned against the Indigenous coalition. The Wyandottes asked for help from the British, were joined by a few volunteers from the Canadian militia, but were ultimately defeated at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794.[32]:293-305
The Wyandottes ceded much of their land to the United States under the Treaty of Greenville
After this defeat, the Wyandottes were among the first to advocate for peace among the coalition.[32]:316 Under their chief Tarhe, they negotiated a peace at Greenville in 1795. The chief declared the United States to be the Wyandottes "Father," with Tarhe telling the American commander, Major General Anthony Wayne about his "happiness in becoming your children" and asking the American government to now "take care of all your little ones."[32]:330 The Wyandottes lost most of their territory under the Treaty of Greenville.[1]
19th-century developments
After the Treaty of Greenville, the Wyandottes were divided on whether to pursue war or peace with the United States. While Tarhe preferred peace, the war chief Roundhead took a leading role in Tecumseh's confederacy against the United States during the War of 1812. Allied with British forces led by Colonel Henry Procter, Roundhead led Wyandottes and other Indigenous warriors in a victory over the Americans at the Battle of Frenchtown. But the Wyandottes and the British eventually suffered defeat at the Battle of the Thames. With Roundhead and Tecumseh dead, the Wyandottes sued for peace. During the war, the British had sought an "Indian barrier state" that would include Wyandotte lands and stop American expansion, but the Americans rejected this in the 1814 Treaty of Ghent. Three years later, the Treaty of Fort Meigs reduced Wyandotte lands drastically, leaving the people only small parcels in Ohio and the Michigan territory.[citation needed]
After the War of 1812, the American policy of settler colonialism was formalized in the Indian Removal Act of 1830 under Andrew Jackson.[31]:213 The American government's goal was to "acquire the countries occupied by the red men of the South and West [including the Wyandotte] . . . and . . . to send them to [another] land."[31]:213 The policy reached the Wyandotte in 1842, when the Wyandottes ceded all their land east of the Mississippi River.[1] The Wyandottes made a treaty with the U.S. government by which it was to be compensated for its lands. The tribe was removed to the Delaware Reservation in present-day Kansas, then considered Indian Territory.[1] During this migration and the early months, it suffered much illness. In 1843, survivors buried their dead on a high ridge overlooking the Missouri River in what became the Huron Cemetery in present-day Kansas City, Kansas. In 1971 it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It was renamed Wyandot National Burying Ground.
In 1893, the Dawes Act required that the tribal communal holdings in the Indian Territory be divided into individual allotments. The land was divided among the 241 tribal citizens listed on the Dawes Rolls. The Wyandotte citizens in Oklahoma retained some tribal structure, and still had control of the communal property of the Huron Cemetery, which by then annexed into Kansas City, Kansas.[1]
20th century
In 1937, seizing the opportunity presented by the US Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act of 1934 to regain tribal structure and self-government, citizens of the Wyandotte tribe organized into the Wyandotte Nation.[1] The act enabled Native Americans to hold property in common again, and to develop self-government and sovereignty.
From the 1950s-1970s, the Wyandotte's federal recognition was in jeopardy. On August 1, 1956, the US Congress passed Public Law ch. 843, 70 Stat. 893 to terminate the Wyandotte Tribe of Oklahoma as part of the federal Indian termination policy. Three years were allotted for completing the termination.[34] One of the stipulations required that a parcel of land in Kansas City, Kansas, reserved as the Huron Cemetery, which had been awarded to the Wyandot by treaty on January 31, 1855, was to be sold by the United States. Litigation was filed by a group of Absentee Wyandot against the United States and Kansas City, prohibiting the federal government from fulfilling the terms of the termination statute and ultimately preventing the termination of the Wyandotte Nation.[35] The Bureau of Land Management records confirm that the Federal Register never published the termination of the Wyandotte lands and thus they were never officially terminated.[36]
Congress later restored several Oklahoma Tribes, including the Wyandotte. On May 15, 1978, in a single Act titled Public Law 95-281, the termination laws were repealed, and the three tribes were reinstated with all rights and privileges they had prior to termination.[7] In 1983, former civil servant Leaford Bearskin was elected chief.[20]:67 The next year, he led the Wyandottes in receiving compensation for eight million acres of Ohio land, which gave the Wyandottes a trust fund to operate the government.[20]:67 This was the first time in U.S. history that a tribe had succeeded in a settlement like this, including their right to administer the trust. He also moved the government offices from Miami, Oklahoma to Wyandotte.[20]:73
The tribe later changed the Nation's name to simply "Wyandotte Nation" by the time of the Nation's 1999 Constitution.[8]
The twentieth century also saw a century-long dispute over the Huron Cemetery, which the Wyandot Nation of Kansas wanted to preserve for cultural activities, while the Wyandotte Nation's preferences shifted over time. In 1998, after more than 100 years of disagreement, the two organizations agreed to use the Huron Cemetery only for religious, cultural, or other compatible sacred activities. [37]
21st century
In August 1999, the Wyandotte Nation joined the contemporary Wendat Confederacy, together with the Wyandot Nation of Kansas, the Huron-Wendat Nation of Wendake (Quebec), and the Wyandot of Anderdon Nation in Michigan. The tribes pledged to provide mutual aid to each other in a spirit of peace, kinship, and unity.[38][39]
This followed an important meeting of Huronia reconciliation in Midland, Ontario, Canada, attended by representatives of the Iroquois Confederacy, Wyandotte nations, British, French, Dutch, Anglican Church, and Catholic Jesuit brothers. The weekend of events was organized by the Huronia Reconciliation Committee.[40]
12"Statute 92: Public Law 95-281"(PDF). uscode.house.gov. United States Code. May 15, 1978. pp.246–247. Archived(PDF) from the original on May 26, 2021. Retrieved December 29, 2014.
↑"Gyah'-Wish Atak-ía"(PDF). The Turtle Speaks. 23 (3): 1. August 2024. Archived from the original(PDF) on November 10, 2024. Retrieved June 2, 2025– via Wyandotte Nation.
12345678910Garrad, Charles (2014). Petun to Wyandot: The Ontario Petun from the Sixteenth Century. University of Ottawa Press.
↑Birch, Jennifer; Williamson, Ronald F. (2013). The Mantle Site: An Archaeological History of an Ancestral Wendat Community. Lanham, Maryland: Altmira Press. ISBN9780759121003.
↑Greer, Allan (2000). The Jesuit Relations: Natives and Missionaries in Seventeenth-Century North America. Bedford/St. Martin's. ISBN978-0-312-16707-3. OCLC964896863.
123456Blackhawk, Ned (2023). The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History. Yale University Press.
1234567Sword, Wiley (1985). President Washington’s Indian War: The Struggle for the Old Northwest, 1790–1795. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN0806118644.
↑"Chapter 843: Public Law 887"(PDF). uscode.house.gov. United States Code. August 1, 1956. pp.893–897. Archived(PDF) from the original on February 9, 2017. Retrieved December 29, 2014.
↑"The Wendat Confederacy". Wyandotte Nation of Oklahoma. August 2, 1999. Archived from the original on December 22, 2004. Retrieved February 8, 2009.
↑"Huron". Encyclopaedia Britannica. Retrieved February 2, 2026. The Wendat Confederacy was reaffirmed in 1999, with a document signed by the four constituent members of the confederacy: the Huron-Wendat of Wendake (Quebec, Canada), Wyandotte Nation of Oklahoma, Wyandot Nation of Kansas, and the Wyandot of Anderdon Nation (Michigan, U.S.).
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