A 12:30 2002-02-25 -0500, John Cowan a �crit :
>>http://iquebec.ifrance.com/cyberiel/ProvCanada.jpg
>
>IIRC it was a Huron who, when asked where he and the Cartier expedition
>were, replied "kanata" = "at the village", thus beginning what is
>certainly the most massive extension of a name in human history.
[Alain] This story is quite correct (and he was near "�le d'Orl�ans" when
he was answered this [the center of the map indeed], an island which
Cartier then called � �le de Bacchus � because vine was growing there
naturally).
Are you sure it was a "Huron" though (Huron is an Iroquoian language --
although it is true that even if the Hurons lived quite far from this area,
their language was the "lingua franca" of the whole of North Eastern North
America, as they were the traders "par excellence", even if they were
sedentarian in their home land of the Great Lakes)?
When Cartier stopped his 1535 trip in Stadacon� (now part of the city
of Qu�bec), Stadacon� was indeed an Iroquoian village (but not Huron per
se, we know this -- however the first Amerindian he met in Gasp� -- 1000 km
even more to the East -- were Hurons indeed, we know this). Later on, in
1608, when Champlain founded the city of Qu�bec, no trace of any Iroquoian
village out there (nobody knows what happened in the meanwhile)...
Montagnais (the "Innus", who were then nomad, an Algonquian tribe) had
completely replaced their village by camps (they were also sporadically
present all over the territory in 1535)... It is Samuel de Champlain who
brought the Hurons (his allies) to the city of Qu�bec under his protection
(where they still live in the suburbs [currently a deluxe federal
reservation -- but in fact no different from the surrounding suburbs in
appearance] of "8endake" [Wendake] -- the other only group of Hurons
remaining being in Oklahoma City -- as the Hurons have been massacred by
their Iroquois � cousins � near Lake Huron in the XVIIth Century [they
lived around the current town of Sault-Ste-Marie originally - then called
"Ste-Marie-au-pays des-Hurons"]).
So I don't know, you maybe right, it might be an Iroquoian word after
all... but I'm still not sure...
Alain LaBont�
Qu�bec
