The Huron: Farmers of the North

This book was first published in 1969 as part of the Case Studies in Cultural Anthropology series. It is essentially an overview of all anthropolgical information known about the Huron Indians, who at the time of contact with Europeans in the early 1600's were settled in a relatively small tract of land between Lake Simcoe and Georgian Bay. There are three main sources of contemporary information on the Huron, the writings of: 1) Samuel Champlain; 2) Gabriel Sagard; 3) The Jesuits (on the Jesuit Relations). All of these writings are incomplete in their observations and tainted by bias. But regardless of this, they provide us with a rare glimpse into the lives of Native Americans who had been little disrupted by direct contact with Europeans. Trigger does an excellent job of summarizing and interpreting the information from these sources, and does so in a highly readable manner. This book is by no means a dry academic work, but is rather a very accesable social and historical study, one that should be read by anyone with an interest in Canadian or Ontarian history.