Petun

Petun

See also: petun

English

A Petun medicine man.

Etymology

From French pétun or English petun, an early name for tobacco, which the people grew and traded.

Noun

Petun (plural Petuns)

1. (historical) A member of the Iroquoian "Tobacco nation" or "Tabacco people", or Tionontati a First Nation located on the southwest edge of the Georgian Bay of Lake Huron, west of the Huron territory in Southern Ontario.
   • 2006, Daniel P. Barr, Unconquered: The Iroquois League at War in Colonial America, Greenwood Publishing Group (→ISBN), page 50:

     During the 1650s, the Senecas, Cayugas, and Onondagas expanded their war against the Hurons to include the Petuns, Neutrals, and Eries, in part because these Indian nations offered asylum to refugee bands of Hurons, but also because ...

   • 2014, Charles Garrad, Petun to Wyandot: The Ontario Petun from the Sixteenth Century, University of Ottawa Press (→ISBN), page 155:

     We might always wonder about when the first meeting between a Petun and a European actually took place. Could there have been some Petun travellers in the St. Lawrence Valley visiting with St. Lawrence Iroquoians ...