This core Huron territory was termed "Huronia Proper" by the late 19th and early 20th century historian Arthur E.

Huron settlements and population were concentrated on the Penetanguishene peninsula, near the present day town of Midland, Ontario, in the northernmost part of Wendake.

The northern border of Huronia abutted on the Canadian Shield, a rocky region of thin soils and cold climate in which agriculture was difficult or impossible.

The Huron cleared forest from much of the land in Huronia and produced an agricultural surplus which they traded to their non-farming Algonquin neighbors.

[12] Archaeological investigations have indicated that the ancestral home of the people known to the French as the Huron and to themselves as the Wendat was near the northern shore of Lake Ontario.

Some Wendat began migrating 100 km (62 mi) or further northward to the historic Huronia area as early as the 13th century.

The abandonment of the Lake Ontario area and the consolidation of the four peoples making up the Wendat confederation in Huronia was complete about 1600.

[14] The reason for the movement of the Wendat north from Lake Ontario to the Huronia area was possibly to move further away from the hostile Iroquois of New York.

[23] In his 1745[24] Huron–French dictionary, the Jesuit Father Pierre Potier defined the Huron term wendake ehen as "La Defunte huronie", referring to the pre-dispersal homeland.