Wendake is the current name for two urban reserves, Wendake 7 () and Wendake 7A, () of the Huron-Wendat Nation in the Canadian province of Quebec. They are enclaves entirely surrounded by the La Haute-Saint-Charles borough of Quebec City, within the former city of Loretteville. One of the Seven Nations of Canada, the settlement was formerly known as Village-des-Hurons ("Huron Village"), and also as (Jeune)-Lorette ("New Lorette"). Since the late 20th century, archeologists have found large 16th-century villages of the Wendat (Huron) in the northern Lake Ontario region, which is where they believe the people coalesced as a distinct group. Later they migrated south and by the early 17th century had settled in their historical territory of Wendake in the Georgian Bay region. The Wyandot Confederation was made up of loosely associated tribes who spoke a mutually intelligible Iroquoian language. History Archeologists have excavated 16th-century settlements north of Lake Ontario at the Mantle Site (2005), Aurora Site and Ratcliff Site in Whitchurch-Stouffville, Ontario, all attesting to distinctly Wendat (Huron) occupancy. They have concluded the people coalesced in this area as a distinct group. Later they migrated to the Georgian Bay area, where they encountered Europeans in the 17th century. Until the middle of the 17th century, the Wendake ancestors occupied a vast territory straddling part of what is now the United States (from Detroit to south-eastern Ontario (Penetanguishene and Midland) and Quebec. They hunted and trapped throughout this territory (mainly in the Laurentian Mountains, between the central section of the Saint-Maurice and the Saguenay rivers). Between 1634 and 1650, the Wyandot Confederation was dismembered; its families, having been gathered into four or five tribes, were dispersed. It is estimated that the Huron population totalled approximately 20,000 to 30,000 people in 1634. By 1650, only a few hundred individuals remained. Most had been decimated by infectious disease epidemics, to which they had no natural immunity; survivors were attacked by wars, especially by the Iroquois Confederacy, who pushed from the south (present-day New York) trying to control hunting grounds and the fur trade. Part of the Huron population had also been integrated into the Iroquois Confederation. The survivors of this tragic period divided into two groups in Canada: the Great-Lake Wyandot and the Huron-Wendat. The latter were the ancestors of the Huron-Wendat of Wendake. This marked the beginning of a period of exile for the 300 or so Wendat who remained, an