Neutral Nation


The Neutral Confederacy, Neutral Nation, or Neutral people were an Iroquoian-speaking North American indigenous people who lived in what is now southwestern and south-central Ontario. In particular, they lived throughout the area bounded by the southern half of Lake Huron, the entire northern shoreline of Lake Erie from the Detroit River in the west to the Niagara River in the east, plus northward around the western end of Lake Ontario. Their territory was southwest of the Tabacco Nation and west of the southern area of the Huron peoples territory. They were related to the Huron peoples, the Tabacco people, the Wenro people to their east and to the Iroquois Confederation further to the east, as well to as the Erie people of the south shore of Lake Erie, and the Susquehannocks of Central Pennsylvania. Like the others of Iroquoian culture, the tribes would raid and feud with fellow Iroquoian tribes when they were not gaming and engaging in friendly competitions. They were generally wary of rival Algonquian peoples, such as those that inhabited Canada to the East, along the Saint Lawrence valley drainage catchment. Iroquoian tribes were later known to historians for the fierce ways in which they waged war. Some tribes were highly inclined to competitive games. A largely agrarian society, Neutral farmsteads were admired and marveled over by European leaders writing reports home.
The Neutrals were primarily engaged in hunting and traded with others by using animal skins. The largest group referred to themselves as Chonnonton, partly because of their practice of herding deer into pens, a strategy used while hunting. Another group, the Onguiaahra, populated the more southern Niagara Peninsula and account for the origin of the word "Niagara." The Chonnonton territory contained large deposits of flint, which was a valuable resource for sharp tools, fire-starting and, eventually, firearms, which, as a primary resource, allowed them to trade simultaneously with often-warring Huron and Iroquois tribes.
Since they were not at war with the Huron or the Iroquois in 1600, Jesuits traveling in the area of what is now Hamilton, the lower Grand Valley and Niagara, called them the Neutrals. However, the confederacy had feuds with the Algonkian people, who were believed to live in what is now Michigan. In 1616, the Neutral Nation was estimated to have 40 villages and 4,000 warriors. In 1641, after a serious epidemic, the Jesuits counted 40 Neutral villages, with about 12,000 people.

Territory

During the late 16th and the early 17th centuries, the territory of the Attawandaron, as they were called by the Huron Nation, was mostly within the limits of present-day southern Ontario. The Museum of Ontario Archaeology summarizes that territory as follows: they "inhabited dozens of villages in Southwestern Ontario stretching along the north shore of Lake Erie from the Niagara Peninsula to the Detroit River, perhaps as far north as Toronto in the east and Goderich in the west." They had population concentrations on the Niagara Peninsula and in the vicinity of the present-day communities of Hamilton and Milton, Ontario. In addition to this main territory there was a single population cluster to the east, across the Niagara River, near modern-day Buffalo, New York, which was just west of the Wenro people.
Souharissen was the warrior chief who lived in a village called Ounontisatan, which was visited by the French in 1625-1626, and reached a trade agreement with the Neutral people, who then received protection from Souharissen. The "principal headman" took on and defeated the "Fire" Nation in what is now Michigan. The Recollect priest Joseph de la Roche Daillon lived with him for five months in the winter of 1626–1627. Daillon visited 28 Neutral villages, including the capital, which came to be known as Notre Dame de Angels. The fertile flats of the various oxbows that Big Creek, three miles from its mouth at Grand River make, are ideal for a long-term settlement pattern. Noble even uses the term "Neutralia" to designate th e concentration of Iroquoian-speaking natives.
F. Douglas Reville's The History of the County of Brant stated that the hunting grounds of the Attawandaron ranged from Genesee Falls and Sarnia and south of a line drawn from Toronto to Goderich.
Étienne Brûlé passed through the Attawandaron territory in 1615.but left no documentation of his presence. Daillon conducted a missionary journey in Neutral territory in 1626. St. Jean de Brébeuf and Pierre-Joseph-Marie Chaumonot visited eighteen villages of the Neutrals in 1640–1641 and gave each of them a Christian name. The only ones that are mentioned in their writings were Kandoucho, or All Saints, the nearest to the Huron Nation; Onguioaahra, on the Niagara River; Teotongniaton or St. William, in the centre of their country; and Khioetoa, or St. Michel.
Reville described their territory as having been heavily forested and full of "wild fruit trees of vast variety," with nut trees, berry bushes, and wild grape vines. "Elk, caribou, and black bear; deer, wolves, foxes, martens and wild cats filled the woods."

Society and culture

The Neutrals were called Attawandaron by the Huron, meaning "people whose speech is awry" or "a little different." The Iroquois called them Atirhagenrat and Rhagenratka. Some of the tribes of the Neutral confederacy included the Aondironon, the Wenrehronon, and the Ongniaahraronon. They spoke Iroquoian languages but were culturally distinct from the Iroquois and competed with them for the same resources.
The French called the people "Neutral" because they tried to remain neutral in the many wars between the confederacy of the Huron tribes and the nations of the Iroquois Confederacy. The Neutral territory contained flint grounds near the eastern end of Lake Erie. That important resource was used to make spearheads and arrowheads and so gave the Neutrals the power to maintain their neutrality. Once the neighbours began receiving firearms through trade with the Europeans, however, the possession of the flint grounds was much less of an advantage. Flints were still used in trade for the flintlocks on guns. The Neutral continued to trade commodities such as maize, tobacco, and black squirrel and other high-grade furs for steel axes, glass beads, cloaks, conch shells, gourd containers, and firearms.
The Neutral Confederacy had much in common with the Petun Nation and may have had shared ancestry. The Jesuit Relations in 1652 describes tattooing among the Petun as well as the Neutrals: "And this in some nations is so common that in the one which we called the Tobacco, and... the Neutral. I know not whether a single individual was found, who was not painted in this manner, on some part of the body."
The chief of 28 villages, villas, and towns in the last years of the Neutral confederacy was named Tsouharissen or Souharissen who led several raids against the Mascouten, who lived in territory in present-day Michigan and Ohio. A 1627 report called him the chief of all of the nation. Tsouharissen died around 1646. Within a generation, all of the nearby first nations, the Erie, the Huron, Neutrals, Tobacco tribes, and even the fierce Susquehannocks would all fall between rampaging epidemic diseases or in the bloody Beaver Wars between themselves and/or to the last tribe standing with any significant military power, the Iroquois.

Language

Records left by Jesuit priests in the 1600s indicate that the Neutral language was similar to Huron and so was a dialect of Iroquoian. They believed that all three groups had once been a part of a single group.
Their neighbours, the Wendat Nation referred to the Neutrals impolitely as "Attawandaron," meaning "Those whose speech is awry" because their dialect was different. Because the language of the Neutral Nation has been extinct for over three centuries, like many of the original northern Iroquoian based languages, nothing more is known about the Neutrals' dialect.

Fate

The Neutrals had an alliance with the Wenrohronon, also Iroquoian-language people, to defend against the powerful Iroquois Nations, who were also Iroquoian speakers. That dissolved in 1639, with devastating effects, particularly to the Wenrohronon. The Wenrohronon made an alliance with the Huron, who were located farther away and could not offer much support.
After destroying the Hurons, the Iroquois attacked the Neutrals. Around 1650, during a period that is now loosely referred to as the Beaver Wars, referring to the theft of furs, the Iroquois Confederacy declared war on the Attawandaron. Some historians state that the Iroquois destroyed the Neutral society, which ended as a separate entity in 1651. However, the Neutral population had already been reduced by diseases such as smallpox and measles carried by Europeans. By 1652, the Iroquois had also destroyed the Huron, Petun and Erie Nations. Some of the Neutrals were incorporated into Seneca villages in upstate New York, and others were absorbed into various other societies. The Kenjockety family, one of the last known families to trace their ethnicity to the Neutrals, still lives among the Senecas.
Jesuits wintered with the Neutral people in 1652-1653; the last reference to the Neutrals as an independent society is from the fall of 1653. A historical mention in 1864 refers to the "Huron de la nation neuter" and "Hurons neutres".

Archaeology

The Southwold Earthworks, near St. Thomas, Ontario, contains the remains of a pre-contact Neutral village and is a National Historic Site of Canada. It is known for conspicuous earthworks, which were rare in southern Ontario, and are well preserved.
The Museum of Ontario Archaeology in London, Ontario, is located adjacent to the site of another 500-year-old Neutral village, which is designated as the Lawson Prehistoric Iroquoian Village and has been under study since the early 1900s. An Ontario historical plaque commemorates the site, which was occupied by Neutrals in the 1500s. About 1000 to 2000 people lived in longhouses in the fortified community. Scientific excavation was first completed in 1921-1923, when the site was owned by the Lawson family. The searches have recovered 30,000 artifacts and the remains of 19 longhouses. Some of the longhouses and the pallisade have been reconstructed.
The McMaster University professor William Noble has excavated and documented the existence of many villages southwest of Hamilton, comprising a Neutral Confederacy, which he believes to have been centred at the "Walker" site and was presided over by the chief Souharissen. Noble was instrumental in excavating and documenting other Neutral sites in Thorold, Grimsby, and Binbrook. Reports from those and other Southern Ontario sites near Milton and Oakville have indicated that the Neutral Confederacy hunted not only deer but also elk, moose, beaver, raccoons, squirrels, black bear, fox and muskrat. The remains of catfish, whitefish, salmon and trout were also common at many of the sites.
In 1983-1985, another site was excavated. One of the largest Attawandaron villages, the location covered 13 acres of the Badenoch section of Puslinch, on the east side of Morriston, Ontario. The estimated population of the so-called Ivan Elliot site was 4,000; the Neutrals lived in longhouses and used the village for about 20 years. Another nearby site, on the McPhee farm, owned by Raymond Reid, was excavated in 1983. The village had a population of about 1,000 around 1500-1530.
The Neutral Nation's decline and eventual end can be attributed to genocide. The final catastrophe that led to its end by the early 1650s was investigated by the archaeologist Mary Jackes. The demise of the Neutral Nation occurred in spite of reports by the French, who first met it, "in 1610 as strong, healthy and numerous. They lived in the most fertile and warmest part of Ontario. They were determined to remain neutral in the conflicts between the Iroquois from south of the Great Lakes and the Ontario Iroquoians who lived to the north of the Neutral. They throve on trade, rather than war." Jackes re-examined French reports including the Jesuit Relations and the artifacts found in the Grimsby site.
When grounds were prepared for a new housing development in Grimsby, Ontario, in 1976, a Neutral Nation burial site was uncovered in sheltered embayment of the Niagara Escarpment. The excavation by Kenyon was closed after only two months in 1977, and the skeletons were reburied near the original site. It was estimated that over 100 bodies were recovered at the time. "Natural disruption, disease, famine and years of severe weather would have been sufficient to begin population decline. Intensifying war, with many killed, taken captive or forced to become refugees, led to almost complete population collapse." Jackes suggested that this burial site "had significance and that it was a place of refuge... especially for women and children."