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Cornell University Library 1993.A FORGOTTEN PEOPLE:
THE FLINT WORKERS.
PAPER READ BEFORE THE SOCIETY, MARCH 23, 1896.
BY THE VERY REV. WILLLIAM R. JIARRIS,
Dean of St. Catharines.
On the farm of a man named Chester Henderson, close to
what is known as the Talbot Road, and about three miles inland
from Port Stanley, on the north shore of Lake Erie, a little over
one hundred miles west of Buffalo, there is a circular rim of earth
enclosing about two and a half acres of land. On the 29th of
last September, accompanied by Mr. James H. Coyne, who has
written a valuable monograph on the early tribes of this section
of the country,* I visited this historic embankment and secured
photographs, which, unfortunately, give but a feeble idea of its
height and extent. Within the fort and north of it the trees are
still standing, but it is only a few years since the primeval
forest shrouded it from profanation. Rooted on the raised earth
are venerable chronological witnesses of its great age. On the
stump of a maple we counted two hundred and forty rings, and
on that of an elm, which measured four feet in diameter, were
two hundred and sixty-six. The average height of the bank was
three feet, and allowing for the subsidence of the soil, it was
probably at one time four feet high. A small stream runs along
this elliptical enclosure, which for about half its course has cut
for itself, before leaving the fort, a bed about seven feet below
*“ The Country of the Neutrals. . . . from Champlain to Talbot.” By James H.
Coyne. Map, 8vo, pp. 44, St. Thomas, Ont., 1895.—Ed.
227
ex228
A FORGOTTEN PEOPLE:
the general level. To the south, where this stream trickles
through an opening, there is a rude and desolate gap, and indi-
cations of what was once a gateway. The walls terminating at
this entrance are squarely shouldered, and show a deftness and
skill of no mean order on the part of the builders.
These embankments are familiarly known as the “ Southwold
Earthworks/’ and are probably the best ruins of an Indian
palisaded village to be found in Western Canada. The plan of
the fort is purely aboriginal, and the labor involved and patience
required in its construction must, with their primitive tools, have
been very great. A plaster model of the fort is now in the
museum of the Canadian Institute, Toronto. In the ash heaps
and kitchen-middens in its immediate neighborhood there was
not found anything that would give the slightest hint of European
presence. Flint spear and arrow heads, stone casse-tStes (or
skull-crackers), fragments of pottery, clippings of flint, rubbing
stones, pipes of steatite, and clay and mealing stones have from
time to time been dug up; but no article bearing a trace of cop-
per or iron was found.
More than two hundred and fifty years have passed away
since the fort was constructed, and the hardy settlers of the
region still look with wonder and ^curiosity upon the relic of a
vanished people, whose origin is to them as much a mystery as
the law of gravitation. Indeed, the little that the students of
ethnology and archaeology know of this peninsular tribe, is
gathered from the writings of the early missionaries, and col-
lected from the embankments, mounds, ossuaries, separate
graves and village sites. From the tools and weapons of bone,
instruments of horn and stone, we are left to draw our own con-
clusions, and reduced to the necessity of surmising and guessing.
The prehistoric Neutrals are in the age of the world but of yes-
terday, yet it is easier to present the lover of technological lore
with illustrations of the arts and industries of Egypt and Assyria,
than to illustrate from actual specimens of household utensils,
working tools and ceremonial implements, the social and domes-
tic state of this North American tribe. If Sanson’s map be
accurate, within these earthwalls was the Neutral village of Alexis,
visited by the heroic Brebeuf and the saintly Chaumonot in the
winter of 1640-41.THE FLINT WORKERS.
229
But let us reconstruct the village, and people it as it was when
the devoted priests entered the gateway already mentioned.
When the chief men of the eighty or ninety families composing
a Neutral village selected this site to be their abiding place for
twelve or fifteen years, they examined with characteristic sagacity
its savage surroundings. Its seclusion in the gloomy forests, the
fertility of the land, the gurgling brook winding through and
around the giant elms; the abundance and variety of berries, and
the succulent beech nuts, that fell in showers every autumn,
promised them years of indolent repose. They are satisfied with
their selection and begin at once their new village. The ditch
around the town is dug with primitive wooden spades, the earth
carried or thrown up on the inside, trees are felled by burning
and chopping with stone axes, and split into palisades or pickets.
These are now planted on the embankment in triple rows, that
are lashed together with pliable twigs and strips of elm bark.
Sheets of bark are fastened on the inside to the height of six or
seven feet, and a timber gallery or running platform constructed,
from which heavy stones may be cast, or boiling water poured
upon the heads of the attacking Iroquois or formidable Mas-
coutin. Notwithstanding the enormous labor expended upon its
construction, this fortified embankment scarcely deserves the
name of a fort, but it is at least as strong and well built as those
of the enemy. Within the inclosure cluster the lodges of the
tribe, formed of thick sheets of bark fastened to upright poles
and cross-beams, covered with bark and skins. Many of the
lodges house from eight to ten families. The fires are on the
ground on a line drawn through the center, with openings in the
roof, which serve for chimneys and windows. Here grizzly
warriors, shriveled squaws, young boys aspiring to become
braves, and girls ripening into maturity, noisy children and dogs
that never bark, mingle indiscriminately together. There is no
modesty to be shocked, no decency to be insulted, no'refinement
of feeling to be wounded; for modesty, decency and refinement
of feeling were dead ages before the tribe began its western
wanderings. In these ancient wilds, clearings are made, branches
hacked off from the wind-felled trees, piled around the standing
timber and set on fire, or the trees girdled, through whose leaf-230	A FOR GO TTEN PE OPLE :
less branches the sun ripens the Indian-corn, beans, tobacco and
sunflowers, planted in the spring by the squaws, and whose seeds
were probably obtained in the remote past from Southern tribes.
The people who inhabit this village are Attiwandarons, or mem-
bers of the great Neutral nation, whose tribal grounds stretched
from the Genesee to the Detroit Narrows.
But before entering upon an epitomized history of this popu-
lous and formidable nation, one of whose fortified towns we have
just resurrected, it will be expedient rapidly to outline the terri-
torial and tribal divisions east of the Mississippi, when in 1612,
Champlain entered the St. Lawrence and began the ascent of the
Ottawa. All the nations whose tribal lands drained into the
valley of the St. Lawrence River were branches of two great
families: the roving Algonquin, the Bedouins of the mighty
wilderness, who lived by fishing and hunting, and the Huron-
Iroquois, hunters and tillers of the soil, whose warriors were the
boldest and fiercest of North America. The Algonquins were
divided and subdivided into families and tribes. The Gaspians,
Basques, Micmacs and the Papinachois or Laughters roamed the
forest on both sides of the Great River, as far as Tadoussac and
Cacouna. Along the banks of the gloomy Saguenay, and into
the height of land forming the watershed towards Lake Nimis-
kan, the Mistassini, the Montagnais, the Tarcapines and White-
fish hunted in that desolation of wilderness and fished in its
solitary lakes and streams. Ascending the Ottawa River to the
Alumette Islands, tribes of lesser note paid tribute to the One
Eyed nation, called by the French, ‘ ‘Du Borgne,” from the
fact that for three generations their war chiefs had but one eye.
They held the Ottawa and exacted tribute from other tribes
passing up or down the river. On the borders of Lake Nipis-
sing, dwelt the Nipissings or Sorcerers, while to the north and
northwest were the hunting grounds of the Abbitibis and Temis-
camingues, after whom Lake Temiscamingue is named. North
of Lake Huron, running from the mouth of French River and
circling around the coast to Sault Ste. Marie, roved five or six
hordes of Algonquins. The writings of Brother Gabriel Sagard,
the map of Champlain, 1632, that of Ducreux, 1660, the Jesuit
Relations and the memoirs of Nicholas Perrot certify to theTHE FLINT WORKERS.
231
hunting and fishing grounds of these Algonquin Bedouins. The
Bruce peninsula and the great Manitoulin, “The Island of
Ghosts,’’ were the home of the Ottawas, or Large Ears, called by
the French, Cheveux-Releevs (Raised Hairs), from the peculiar
manner in which they wore their hair. Further west were the
Amikones or Beavers, the Sauteurs or Chippewas, including the
Mississagues and Saugeens. The roving hordes that stretched
from the headwaters of Lake Superior to the Hudson Bay, the
Wild Oats, Puants and Pottawatamies, the Mascoutin, or Nation
of Fire, the Miamis, the Illinois, were all branches of one Al-
gonquin tree. The great Huron-Iroquois family included the
Tiontates or Petuns, the Hurons or Wyandots, the Andastes of
the Susquehanna, the Tuscaroras of North Carolina, the five
Iroquois nations, the Eries and the Attiwandarons or Neutrals.
The tribes of this family were scattered over an irregular area of
inland territory, stretching from Western Canada to North Car-
olina. The northern members roved the forests about the Great
Lakes, while the southern tribes lived in the fertile valleys
watered by the rivers flowing from the Alleghany Mountains.
A problem of ethhology, which will perhaps never be solved,
confronts us in the study of the aboriginal people of this section
of our country. What were the causes that led to the migration
and settlement of the tribes in Western New York and South-
western Ontario ? At what time did the Iroquois separate from
the Hurons, and the Attiwandaron or Neutrals claim independ-
ent sovereignty? When did the exodus of the Neutrals occur,
and what was the route followed by this adventurous clan ?
Mr. David Boyle, the Canadian archaeologist, in his “ Notes
on Primitive Man,” claims that the Neutrals were among the
first to leave the main body. “ Regarding their movement,”
he continues, “ there is not even a tradition, but their situation
beyond the most westerly of the Iroquois, and the fact that they
had no share in the Huron-Iroquois feuds, point to an earlier
and wholly independent migration. It is known also that their
language varied but slightly from that of the Hurons, which
there is reason to regard as the parent tongue, and the inference
is that their separation must have taken place from the Wyandot
side of the mountain down by the sea, long before the great dis-232	A FORGOTTEN PEOPLE:	^
ruption compelled the older clans to seek a refuge on the
Georgian Bay.*9
Dr. Hale, in his “Book of Iroquois Rites,” expresses the
opinion that, centuries before the discovery of Canada, the
ancestors of the Huron-Iroquois family dwelt near the mouth of
the St. Lawrence. As their numbers increased dissensions arose.
The hive swarmed, and band after band moved off to the west
and south. Following the south shore of Lake Ontario, after
ascending the St. Lawrence, the main bodies of the migrants,
afterwards known as the Hurons or Wyandots, reached the
Niagara Peninsula. Remaining here for a period, they eventually
rounded the western end of the lake, and in the course of time
took permanent possession of the country lying to the south of
the Georgian Bay. After a while they were joined by the Tion-
tates, who followed the Ottawa route. This, however, is but
tradition, and in it there is nothing to account for the migra-
tions and settlement of the Neutrals along the north shore of
Lake Erie, and eastward till they reached the country of the
Iroquois. The first authentic mention of this powerful nation,
we find in Champlain’s writings, where he tells us that in 1616,
when he visited ,the Georgian Bay region they were then in
friendly alliance with the Ottawas and Andastes, and were wag-
ing war on the Nation of Fire, whose tribal lands extended
through Michigan, as far east as Detroit. When Champlain was
on a visit to the Ottawas, he expressed a wish to visit the Neu-
trals, but it was intimated to him that his life would be in dan-
ger, and he would better not undertake the journey. In 1626,
Father Daillon, a member of the Franciscan Order, was evangel-
izing the tribes of the Huron Peninsula, when he received a
letter from Father LeCaron, the Superior, instructing him to
visit the great Neutral tribe or Attiwandarons, and to preach to
them the saving truths of Christianity. Joseph de la Roche
Daillon was a man of extraordinary force of character, “as dis-
tinguished,” wrote Champlain, “ for his noble birth and talents,
as he was remarkable for his humility and piety, who abandoned
the honors and glory of the world for the humiliation and pov-
erty of a religious life.” Of the aristocratic house of the Du
Ludes, society tendered him a courteous welcome, the army andTHE FLINT WORKERS.
233
the professions were opened to him, wealth with its correspond-
ing advantages, too, were his, when he startled his friends,
shocked society and grieved his family by declaring his inten-
tion of becoming a member of the Order of St. Francis, a reli-
gious association of bare-footed beggars. The ranks of the
secular clergy offered him the probabilities of a mitre, and the
hope of a Cardinal’s hat. His family’s wealth and position in
the State, his father’s influence at Court, his own talents and the
prestige of an aristocratic name, all bespoke for him promotion
in the Church. His friends in vain pleaded with him to asso-
ciate himself with the secular priesthood, and when they learned
that he was not only inflexible in his resolution to join the Fran-
ciscans, but had asked to be sent into the frozen wilds of Canada,
they thought him beside himself. He left France in the full
flush of his ripening manhood, and, for the love of perishing
souls, entered upon the thorny path that in all probability would
lead to a martyr’s grave. On the 19th of June, 1625, he
reached Quebec, and in the following spring, accompanied by
Fathers Brebeuf and De la Noue, he left Quebec with the flotilla,
whose canoes were headed for the Huron hunting grounds in
northern forests. When he received LeCaron’s letter, he was at
Carragouha, on the western coast of the Huron peninsula, where
he opened the mission of St. Gabriel. In obedience to the re-
quest of his Superior, accompanied by two French traders,
Grenalle and LeVallee, he left Huronia, October 18, 1626, and
on the noon of the sixth day entered a village of the Neutrals.
“ All were astonished,” he writes, “ to see me dressed as I was,
and to learn that I desired nothing of theirs, but only invited them
by signs to lift their eyes to heaven, make the sign of the cross
and receive the faith of Jesus Christ.” Meeting with a hospitable
welcome he advised Grenalle and LeVallee to return to Huronia,
and after escorting them some distance on their way, he retraced
his steps to the Indian town. Gilmary Shea, in an article which
he wrote for the “ Narrative and Critical History of America,” is
of the opinion that he crossed the Niagara River and visited the
villages on its eastern side. Daillon states in his valuable letter
that a deputation of ten men of the eastern branch of the Neu-
trals, known as Ongiaharas or Kah-Kwahs, waited upon him bear-234
A FORGOTTEN PEOPLE:
ing a request to visit their village, Onaroronon, a day’s march
or about thirty miles from the land of the Iroquois, and that he
promised to do so when spring opened. Notwithstanding the
deservedly great authority of Gilmary Shea, I am of the opinion
that Daillon never crossed the Niagara River. Aside from this
promise, which he was not in a position to fulfill, there is no
hint in his letter to lead us to believe that he visited the eastern
villages. The priest spoke to the Neutrals of the advantage of
trading with the French, and suggested that he himself would
accompany them if a guide could be furnished, to the trading-
post on the river of the Iroquois. Differing from the majority
who have touched on this subject, I am satisfied that the place of
trade was on Lake St. Peter, fifty miles below Montreal. It was
called Cape Victory or Cape Massacre, in memory of the hun-
dred Iroquois, who, in 1610, were killed by Champlain and his
Algonquin allies. On the Island of St. Ignace, directly opposite
the mouth of the Richelieu, was the “ Place of Trade ” referred
to by Sagard in 1636. Champlain says that the Iroquois held
possession of the St. Lawrence and closed it against other tribes,
and it was for this reason that the Hurons always went by the
Ottawa, when leaving on their trading excursions with the
French. The Hurons hearing that Daillon was likely to prevail
upon the Neutrals to deal directly with the French, and fearing
they would lose the profits that accrued to them by exchanging
French goods at high rates for the valuable furs of the Neutrals,
became seriously alarmed. They hastily despatched runners into
the Neutral country, whose extraordinary reports almost para-
lyzed the people with fear. The Neutrals with horror learned
that the priest was a great sorcerer, that by his incantations the
very air in Huronia was poisoned; and that the people withered
away and rotted into their graves; and if they allowed him to
remain among them, their villages would fall to ruin and their
children sicken and die. The Neutrals took alarm, treated the
priest with withering contempt, refused to listen to him, and
intimated that unless he left the country, they would be com-
pelled for their own safety to kill him. The priest deemed it
prudent to return to Tonchain, in Huronia, from which place,
on the 18th of July, 1627, he dates his most interesting letter.THE FLINT WORKERS,
235
In his report of the mission, he speaks of the climate with appre-
ciation, notes the incredible number of deer, moose, beaver, wild
cats and squirrels that filled the forest; “ the rivers,’’ he adds,
“ furnish excellent fish and the earth gives more grain than is
needed. They have squashes, beans and other vegetables in
abundance and very good oil. Their real business is hunting and
war. Their life, like that of the Hurons, is very impure, and
their manners and customs quite the same.”
The priest was probably the first white man who ever entered
the Niagara Peninsula, for the traders and coureurs-de-bois had
not yet ascended the Ottawa River. Etienne Brule, the daunt-
less woodsman and interpreter to Champlain, when he left
Huronia with twelve Wyandots on an embassy to the allied Eries,
crossed Lake Ontario to the east of the Senecas, but there is no
record to show that he ever entered the Neutral country. Four-
teen years after Daillon’s return, the Jesuit Fathers of the
Georgian Bay region, who had established permanent missions
among the Hurons, began to cast wistful glances on the neigh-
boring nations, and to open missions among the Petuns or
Tobacco Indians, the Ottawas and the Nipissings. Fathers
Brebeuf and Chaumonot were selected for the mission to the
Neutrals.
Jean de Brebeuf was the descendant of a noble French family,
who abandoned the honors and pleasures of the world for the
hardships and perils of missionary life. He arrived at Quebec
in 1625, passed the autumn and winter with a roving band of
Montagnais Indians, enduring for five months the hardships of
their wandering life, and all the penalties of filth, vermin and
smoke, abominations inseparable from a savage camp. In July,
1626, he embarked with a band of swarthy companions, who
were returning from Quebec to Georgian Bay, after bartering to
advantage canoe loads of furs and peltries. Brebeuf was a man
of splendid physique, of broad frame and commanding mien,
and endowed with a giant’s strength and a tireless endurance.
Bravery was hereditary in his family, and it is said that he never
knew what the sensation of fear was. He was a man of extra-
ordinary piety, kindly sympathies and an asceticism of character
that to the “ natural man,” mentioned by St. Paul, is a foolish-236
A FOR G O TTEN PE OPLE :
ness beyond his understanding. He wrote a treatise on the
Huron language, which was published in Champlain’s edition of
1632, and republished in the “ Transactions of the American
Antiquarian Society,” as a most precious contribution to learning.
His companion, Joseph Marie Chaumonot, or as he is styled
in the archives of his order, Josephus Maria Calmonotius, was
his very antithesis. He was born on March 9, 1611, and in the
fall of 1639 reached the Huron country. He was timid even to
fear, his nature was impressionable, and while in his studies he
scored some success in literature, he failed as a theologian.
“ Prof ectus in Uteris et theol. parvus ” is written after his name
in the archives of his order. He was credulous almost to
superstition, and shrank from his loathsome surroundings, as
from the approach of a dangerous reptile; yet under the
mysterious influence of Divine Grace, and by an indomitable
and unsuspected force of will he conquered human infirmity, and
became one of the most conspicuous figures and admirable
characters of the early church of Canada. He had a prodigious
memory and thoroughly mastered every dialectical and idiomatic
alteration of the Huron language and its linguistic affinities. He
drew up a grammar and dictionary which continued for years to
be an authority, not only for the Huron language, but for all the
kindred Iroquois tongues. His grammar was published twenty-
five years ago in the “ Collections of the Quebec Literary and
Historical Society,” and is one of the most important of the
linguistic treasures which American ethnology owes to the early
missionaries. On November 2, 1640, the two priests left the
Huron village of St. Joseph to bear the message of the gospel
anew to the great nation of the Attiwandaron. The task they
had set themselves was one fraught with serious difficulties, for
the path lay through a country reposing in the desolation of
solitude, and its end might be a grave. Winding through the
primeval forest, the trail crossed streams, though which they
waded knee-deep. Wind-swept and uprooted trees lay every-
where around them, and when night with its eternal silence
shrouded the forest they sought a few hours of rest under the
shadow of some friendly pine. After a journey of five days the
travelers on the 7th of November entered the Neutral villageTHE FLINT WORKERS.
237
Kandoucho. To this bourg they gave the name of All Saints,
placed the whole country under the protection of the angels, and
referred to it afterwards as the Mission of the Holy Angels. To
their surprise they learned that an evil reputation had already
preceded them, and no hospitable welcome awaited them. The
Hurons, fearing their influence would divert the trade and
custom of the Neutrals from themselves to the French, resolved
that at all hazards this great misfortune must be averted.
Messengers bearing gifts of hatchets and wampum belts went
from village to village proclaiming that they were commissioned
by their cousins and kinsmen of Huronia to inform the Neutrals
that if they allowed the pale-faced sorcerers to dwell among them,
famine and plague would desolate their villages, their women
would be struck with sterility and the nation itself fade from off
the face of the earth.
Brebeuf, who was known by his Indian name of “Echon,”
was looked upon with horror, as a dangerous sorcerer, whose
incantations were dreadful in their effects. A thousand nameless
fears took possession of the Indians, they avoided the men of God
as they would poisonous reptiles, and retired from their approach
as from that of a ravenous beast. Their very footsteps were
shunned, the paths upon which they walked were infected, and
streams from which they drank were poisoned. No one dared
to touch a single object belonging to them, and the gifts which
they offered were rejected with horror. In fact the specters of
fear and consternation were everywhere, and in the presence of
this universal terror, the chiefs summoned a council to determine
the fate of the priests. Three times the Fathers were doomed
to death, and three times the uplifted tomahawk was lowered by
the force of arguments advanced by some of the elders. The
missionaries visited eighteen towns, crossed the Niagara River
near Black Rock Ferry, and went as far as Onguiara, a village on
the eastern limits of the Neutral possessions. In the forty
towns of the nation, they estimated a population of twelve
thousand, but claimed that three years before their visit, there
were twenty-five thousand souls in the country. This extraor-
dinary reduction in their numbers was occasioned by repeated
wars, but principally by a pestilence which had ravaged the238
A FORGOTTEN PEOPLE :
country. Along the winding paths through the forest, that
interlaced and crossed and crossed again, the Fathers went from
town to town, suffering from cold and hunger, and bearing a
charmed life. But the black-robed sorcerers, with their instru-
ments of necromancy, their crucifixes, crosses and rosary ; their
ink-horns and strange hieroglyphics, the complete outfit of the
black art, were held in horror and detestation. Despairing of
accomplishing any good for the tribe, or of overcoming their
inveterate prejudices, the Fathers resolved to bid them good-
bye, and retrace the path to the Huron villages. In the second
week of February, 1641, they began their homeward journey.
They crossed the Niagara River at Lewiston, and reaching its
western banks, disappeared in the shrouding forest. On their
return journey they were snowbound at a town which they
christened St. William, when outward bound. Here Chaumonot
traced his rough map of the Neutral country, and Brebeuf added
to the Huron dictionary many idiomatic words of the Neutral
language.
On the 19th of March, 1641, the feast of St. Joseph, patron
of the Huron missions, Brebeuf and Chaumonot, after an absence
of almost five months, reached the village of St. Mary on the
Wye. Among the eighteen villages visited only one, that of
Khioetoa, called by the Fathers, St. Michael, extended to them a
partially friendly greeting. Chaumonot, at the request of
Father Lalemant, now wrote his report of their visit to the
Neutrals, which is to be found in the Relations of the Jesuits,
1641. This remarkable and interesting letter practically fur-
nishes all the information bearing on this mysterious tribe. As
the Neutrals were of the parent stock of the Huron-Iroquois,
their government, criminal code, marriages and religious con-
ception were alike. Their dances and feasts, methods of carrying
on war, their treatment of prisoners, cultivation of the soil, the
division of labor between men and women, their love for gam-
bling and manner of trapping and hunting, were also similar to
those of the Iroquois and Hurons, with which we are all now so
familiar. The missionaries draw particular attention to their
treatment of the dead which they kept in their lodges,^ till the
odor of decaying flesh became insupportable. They then re-THE FLINT WORKERS.
239
moved them to elevated scaffolds, and after the flesh had been
devoured by carrion birds or rotted away, they piously collected
the bones and retained them in their houses, till the great com-
munal feast of the dead, or tribal burial. “ Their reason,’’
writes Father Chaumonot, “ for preserving the bones in their
cabins, is to continually remind them of the dead, at least they
so state. ’ ’ This tribe carried to an insane excess, the Indian
idea, that madness was the result of some superhuman or mys-
terious power, acting on the individual, and that any interfer-
ence with the freedom or license of a fool would be visited with
the wrath of his guardian spirit or oki. Pretended maniacs
were found in every village, who, anxious to acquire the mystic
virtue attributed to madness, abandoned themselves to idiotic
folly. “On one occasion,” writes the Father, “three pre-
tended maniacs, as naked as one’s hand, entered the lodge
where we were, and after performing a series of foolish antics,
disappeared. On another occasion some of them rushed in, and
seating themselves beside us, began to examine our bags, and
after having taken away some of our property they retired, still
conducting themselves as fools.” In summer the men went
stark naked, figures tatooed with burnt charcoal on their bodies
from head to foot, serving for the conventional civilized gar-
ments. The genealogy of the English nobleman is shown in
“Burke’s Peerage,” but the Neutral warrior improved on* this,
by tracing his descent in fixed pigments on his naked body.
It is hardly necessary in this paper to state why the Neutrals
were so called by the French, but it will be interesting to
inquire, how for ages they were able to hold aloof from the
interminable wars that from remote times were waged between
the Hurons and Iroquois ? There is no other instance in abor-
iginal history where a tribe occupying middle or neutral lands
was not sooner or later compelled to take sides with one or the
other of the nations lying on its opposite frontiers, if these
nations were engaged in never-ending strife. There is but one
solution of this problem, and that is to be found in the immense
quantities of flint along the east end of Lake Erie. Without
flint arrow and spear heads the Iroquois could not cope with the
Hurons, nor the Hurons with the Iroquois; and as the Neutrals240
A FORGOTTEN PEOPLE :
controlled the chert beds, neither nation could afford to make
the Neutrals its enemy. The Neutral tribe had easy access to an
unlimited supply of material for spear arrow heads and scalping
knives. Extensive beds of flakings and immense quantities of
flint were found along the Erie shore, near Point Abino, where
the chert-bearing rock is most abundant. Even today, after the
beds have been worked for centuries, many of the nodules
picked up are large enough to furnish material for twenty or
thirty spear heads or arrow tips. For miles along the beach,
heaps of flakes may be seen, and flint relics are found in all parts
of Ontario and Central and Western New York, corresponding
in appearance with the Lake Erie material.
The Iroquois were too shrewd and the Hurons too far-seeing
to make an enemy of a people who manufactured the material of
war, and controlled the source of supply. To those who take a
deep interest in all that concerns primitive life in America, the
excellence of the workmanship manifested in the flint instru-
ments found on the Niagara Peninsula and in the neighborhood
of Chatham and Amherstburgh, must convince them that the
Neutral excelled all other tribes in splitting, polishing and fitting
flakes of. chert-bearing rock.
Independent of its general value as an ethnological factor on
the study of the Indian progress to civilization, it is also a con-
clusive proof that among savage peoples, that which they
possess, and is eagerly sought after by others, is cultivated or
manufactured with considerable skill. Primitive methods of
manipulating raw material, and of handling tools, must ever
prove attractive to the student of ethnology, for in these
methods we observe the dawn of ideas, which are actualized in
their daily lives. The Neutrals when discovered by Father
Daillon, in 1626, were like the Britons when conquered by
Caesar, many degrees advanced beyond a low degree of savagery.
Chaumonot states, that the Neutrals were physically the finest
body of men that he had anywhere seen, but that in cruelty to
their prisoners, and in licentiousness, they surpassed any tribe
known to the Jesuits. It would appear that as a rule there was a
communal understanding among the Indians of North America,
that among the prisoners who were taken and tortured to death,THE FLINT WORKERS.
241
women were not to be subjected to the agony of fire. At times
this compact was broken by the Iroquois and the Illinois, but
the Neutrals were, it would seem, the only tribe that habitually
violated this understanding, for they subjected their female
prisoners to the atrocious torture of fire, and with a fiendish
delight revelled in their cries of agony. I have already stated
on the authority of Chaumonot, that the tribe was given over
to licentiousness,, and I may add that in point of cruelty and
superstition, it was not surpassed by any native American people
of whom we have any record.
Had it been in the nature of the Attiwandarons to live a
reasonably clean life, they might have become the most powerful
branch of the great Huron-Iroquois family. Long immunity
from attacks from without, the richness and fertility of their
soil, and the abundance of vegetable and animal food, permitted
them to devote their leisure to the enjoyment of every animal
luxury their savage nature could indulge in; and they suffered
the consequences that follow from riotous living the world over.
Gibbon, in his “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire/9
states that the descendants of the all-conquering Romans became
wasted by dissipation, and that when the Scandinavian hordes
poured from their northern forests into the plains of Italy, the
effeminate Romans had but the strength of children to oppose
them. The licentiousness of the Neutrals, their freedom from
national and domestic cares, destroyed their warlike courage,
and to all but their inferiors in number they were regarded as
women. They quailed before the face of the Five Nations, and
stood in awe of the Hurons, who refused them the right of way
to the Ottawa, but as a bloody pastime they carried on cowardly
and ferocious wars against the weak western Algonquin tribes.
Father Ragueneau relates that in the summer of 1643 they threw
2,000 of their warriors into the prairie of the Nation of Fire,
and invested one of their fortified towns, which they stormed
after a ten days* siege. The slaughter that followed was appall-
ing. They burned seventy of the enemy at the stake, torturing
them in the meanwhile with a ferociousness satanic in its
prolongation and ingenuity. They tore out the eyes and girdled
the mouths of the old men and women over 60 years of age,
16242
A FORGOTTEN PEOPLE:
and scorning their appeal for death, left them to drag out a
woeful and pitiable existence. They carried off 800 captives,
men, women and children, many of whom were distributed
among the Neutral villages, and by a refinement of cruelty sur-
passing belief, were subjected to atrocious mutilations and
frightful burnings, prolonged from sunset to sunrise. There is a
mysterious law of retribution, that in the accuracy of its appli-
cation, is reduced to a mathematical certainty. The Neutrals,
who had filled up the measure of their iniquity, had by their
ruthless cruelty and unbridled licentiousness, invoked their
doom. From the distant forests of the Senecas, there came a
prophetic warning, and its message was, the Iroquois are begin-
ning to open a grave for the great Neutral nation, and the war
cry of the Senecas will be the requiem for their dead. After the
Mohawks and Senecas, the war-hawks of the wilderness, had
scattered and destroyed their enemies, the Hurons, they sought
excuses to issue a declaration of war against the Attiwandarons.
Father Lafiteau states on the authority of the Jesuit Gamier,
that when the Iroquois had destroyed their enemies, and were in
danger of losing from want of practice, their warlike dexterity
and skill, Shonnonkeritoin, an Onondaga, proposed to the war
chief of the Neutrals that their young men should meet in
occasional combats in order to keep alive among them a warlike
spirit. The Neutral, after repeated refusals, at last with much
hesitation reluctantly consented. In a skirmish that took place
soon after the agreement, a nephew of the Iroquois chief was
captured and burned at the stake. The Onondagas, to avenge
his death, attacked the Neutrals, and the Mohawks and Senecas
marched to the assistance of their countrymen. Father Bressani
says that the friendly reception and hospitality extended to a
fugitive band of Hurons, after the ruin and dispersion of that
unhappy people, excited the wrath of the Iroquois, who for
some time were patiently awaiting a pretext to declare war.
I have somewhere seen it stated that the emphatic refusal of
the Neutrals to surrender a Huron girl, who escaped from the
Senecas, was the cause of the war; but whatever imay have been
the reasons, it is certain from the Relations of the Jesuits, that
in 1650, the war between the Iroquois and the Neutrals began,THE FLINT WORKERS.
243
and was carried on with a ruthlessness and savagery, from the
very perusal of which we recoil with horror. In this year the
Iroquois attacked a frontier village of the enemy within whose
palisaded walls were 1,600 warriors. After a short siege, the
attacking party carried the fortified town, and made it a slaughter-
house. The ensuing spring they followed up their victory,
stormed another town, and after butchering the old men and
children, carried off a number of prisoners, among them all the
young women, who were portioned out as wives among the
Iroquois towns. The Neutral warriors, in retaliation, captured a
frontier village of the enemy, killed and scalped 200, and
wreaked their vengeance on fifty captives, whom they burned at
the stake. When the Iroquois heard of the death of their
braves, they met to the number of 1,500, crossed the Niagara
River, and in rapid succession, entered village after village,
tomahawked large numbers of the inhabitants, and returned to
their own country, dragging with them troops of prisoners,
reserved for adoption or fire.
This campaign led to the ruin of the Neutral nation. The
inland and remote towns were struck with panic, people mad
with the instinct of self-preservation fled from their forests and
hunting grounds, preferring the horrors of retreat and exile to
the rage and cruelty of their ruthless conquerors. The unfor-
tunate fugitives were devoured with famine, and scattered in bands
wandered through the forests, through marshes and along banks
of distant streams, in search of,anything that would stay the de-
vouring pangs of hunger. From the mouth of the French River
to the junction of the Ottawa, and from the fringe of the Geor-
gian Bay to the Genesee the land was a vast graveyard, a forest
of horror and desolation, over which there hovered the specter of
death, and on which there brooded the silence of a starless night.
In April, 1652, it was reported at Quebec that a remnant of this
tribe had joined forces with the Andastes and made an attack
upon the Senecas. The Mohawks had rushed to the help of their
countrymen, but the issue of the war was unknown. In July,
1653, word was brought to the same city that several Algonquin
tribes, with eight hundred Neutrals and the remnant of the
Tobacco Nation, were assembled in council near Mackinac.244
A FORGOTTEN PEOPLE :
They are mentioned for the last time as a separate people in the
“ Journal of the Jesuits,” July, 1653. Henceforth the nation
loses its tribal identity, and merging into the Hurons is known
on the pages of history as the Wyandots. Father Fremin, in a
letter embodied in the Jesuit Relations of 1670, states that on
the 27th of September, 1669, he visited the village of Gan-
dougarae,* peopled with the fragments of three nations con-
quered by the Iroquois. These were members of the Onnon-
tiogas, Neutral and Huron nations. The first two, he adds,
scarcely ever saw a white man, and never had the gospel
preached to them. These were the sons of the slaughtered Neu-
trals, who were adopted by the Senecas and incorporated into
the tribe to fill the places of those they lost in their ruthless
forays. This is the last time that the Neutrals are ever men-
tioned in the annals of New France.
*Gandougarae was four miles southeast of Victor station, in Ontario County, N. Y.
It is also spelled “Gannagaroe” and “Gannongarae.” See Beauchamp’s “Indian
Names in New York.”—Ed.