The Country of the Neutrals / (As Far As Comprised in the County of Elgin), From Champlain to Talbot

by James H. Coyne

Owing to their scanty number and the calumnies circulated amongst the Indians respecting the Jesuits of the Huron Mission the latter resolved to concentrate their forces. The Neutral mission was abandoned, but Christian Indians visited the Neutrals in 1643 and spread the faith amongst them with a success which elicits Lalemant's enthusiastic praises. Towards the end of the following winter a band of about 500 Neutrals visited the Hurons. The fathers did not fail to avail themselves of their opportunity. The visitors were instructed in the faith and expressed their regret that their teachers could not return with them. A different reception from that experienced by Brebeuf and Chaumonot three years before was promised.

Lalemant relates that in the summer of 1643, 2,000 Neutrals invaded the country of the Nation of Fire and attacked a village strongly fortified with a palisade, and defended stoutly by 900 warriors. After a ten days' siege, they carried it by storm, killed a large number on the spot, and carried off 800 captives, men, women and children, after burning 70 of the most warlike and blinding the eyes and "girdling the mouths" of the old men, whom they left to drag out a miserable existence. He reports the Nation of Fire as more populous than the Neutrals, the Hurons and the Iroquois together. In a large number of these villages the Algonkin language was spoken. Farther away, it was the prevailing tongue. In remote Algonkin tribes, even at that early day, there were Christians who knelt, crossed their hands, turned their eyes heavenward, and prayed to God morning and evening, and before and after their meals; and the best mark of their faith was that they were no longer wicked nor dishonest as they were before. So it was reported to Lalemant by trustworthy Hurons who went every year to trade with Algonkin nations scattered over the whole northern part of the continent.

Ragueneau in the Relation of 1648 refers to Lake Erie as being almost 200 leagues in circuit, and precipitating itself by "a waterfall of a terrible height" into Lake Ontario, or Lake Saint Louys.

The Aondironnons a tribe of the Neutrals living nearest to the Hurons were treacherously attacked in their village by 300 Senecas, who after killing a number carried as many as possible away with them as prisoners. The Neutrals showed no open resentment but quietly prepared to revenge themselves. A Christian Huron, a girl of fifteen, taken prisoner by the Senecas, escaped from them and made her way to the Neutral country, where she met four men, two of whom were Neutrals and the others enemies. The latter wished to take her back to captivity; but the Neutrals, claiming that within their country she was no longer in the power of her enemies, rescued her and she returned in safety to Ste. Marie on the Georgian Bay. These incidents were the prelude to the storm which shortly afterward burst.

In 1650 the principal part of the Iroquois forces was directed against the Neutrals. They carried two frontier villages, in one of which were more than 1600 men, the first at the end of autumn, the second early in the spring of 1651. The old men and children who might encumber them on their homeward journey were massacred. The number of captives was excessive, especially of young women, who were carried off to the Iroquois towns. The other more distant villages were seized with terror. The Neutrals abandoned their houses, their property and their country. Famine pursued them. The survivors became scattered amongst far-off woods and along unknown lakes and rivers. In wretchedness and want and in constant apprehension of their relentless enemy, they eked out a miserable existence.

The Journal (April 22, 1651) adds that after the destruction of the Neutral village in the previous autumn, the Neutral warriors under the lead of the Tahontaenrat (a Huron tribe) had followed the assailants and killed or taken 200 of them; and 1,200 Iroquois warriors had returned in the spring to avenge this disaster. In August a Huron reported at Montreal the capture of Teot'ondiaton (probably the village in which Brebeuf composed his dictionary, and which is referred to in the Relation as having been taken in the spring). The condition of the Neutrals was desolate and desperate. In April, 1652, news reached Quebec that they had leagued with the Andastes against the Iroquois, that the Senecas had been defeated in a foray against the Neutrals, so that the Seneca women had been constrained to quit their village and retreat to the Oneida country; also that the Mohawks had gone on the war path against the Andastes during the winter, and the issue of the war was unknown. The last of July, 1653, seven Indians from the Huron country arrived at Quebec and reported a great gathering near Mackinac of all the Algonkin nations with the remains of the Tobacco and Neutral Nations at A'otonatendie three days above the Sault Ste. Marie (Skia'e) towards the south. The Tobacco Indians had wintered at Tea'onto'rai; the Neutrals to the number of 800 at Sken'chio'e towards Teo'chanontian. These were to rendezvous the next fall with the Algonkins, who were already on the spot to the number of 1,000.

This is probably the last we hear of the Neutrals under their own name. Some of the survivors united with the remnant of the Hurons at Mackinac and on Lake Superior; and under the name of the Hurons and Wyandots they appear from time to time on the page of history. Their removal to Detroit on the establishment of the latter trading post by Cadaillac, is perpetuated by the name of Wyandotte, to the south of the City of the Straits.

Parkman mentions the circumstance that an old chief named Kenjockety, who claimed descent from an adopted prisoner of the Neutral Nation, was recently living among the Senecas of Western New York.

It is stated in the "History of the County of Middlesex" that over 60 years ago, "Edouard Petit, of Black River, discovered the ruins of an ancient building on the Riviere aux Sables, about 40 miles from Sarnia. Pacing the size, he found it to have been 40×24 feet on the ground. On the middle of the south or gable end, was a chimney eighteen feet high, in excellent preservation, built of stone, with an open fire place. The fire place had sunk below the surface. This ruin had a garden surrounding it, ten or twelve rods wide by twenty rods in length, marked by ditches and alleys. Inside the walls of the house a splendid oak had grown to be three feet in diameter, with a stem sixty feet high to the first branch. It seemed to be of second growth, and must have been 150 years reaching its proportions as seen in 1828-9."

This must have been the mission of S. Francois shown on Sanson's map.