xliv INTRODUCTION. 



Western tribes.^ In their original seats among the Blue 

 Mountains, they offered an example extremely rare 

 among Indians, of a tribe raising a crop for the market ; 

 for they traded in tobacco largely with other tribes. 

 Their Huron confederates, keen traders, would not suf- 

 fer them to pass through their country to traffic with 

 the French, preferring to secure for themselves the ad- 

 vantage of bartering with them in French goods at an 

 enormous profit.^ 



Journeying southward five days from the Tionnontate 

 towns, the forest traveller reached the border villages 

 of the Attiwandarons, or Neutral Nation.^ As early as 

 1626, they were visited by the Franciscan friar. La Roche 

 Dallion, who reports a numerous population in twenty- 

 eight towns, besides many small hamlets. Their country, 

 about forty leagues in extent, embraced wide and fertile 

 districts on the north shore of Lake Erie, and their fron- 

 tier extended eastward across the Niagara, where they 

 had three or four outlying towns.* Their name of Neu- 

 trals was due to their neutrality in the war between the 

 Hurons and the Iroquois proper. The hostile warriors, 

 meeting in a Neutral cabin, were forced to keep the peace, 

 though, once in the open air, the truce was at an end. 

 Yet this people were abundantly ferocious, and, while 



1 " L'ame de tous les Conseils." — Charlevoix, Voyage, 199. — In 1763 

 they were Pontiac's best warriors. 



^ On the Tionnontates, see Le Mercier, Relation, 1637, 163 ; Lalemant, 

 Relation, 1641, 69 ; Ragueneau, Relation, 1648, 61. An excellent summary 

 of their character and history, by Mr. Shea, wiU be found in Hist. Mag., 

 V. 262. 



3 Attiwandarons, Attiwendaronk, Atirhagenrenrets, Rhagenratka 

 {Jesuit Relations'), Attionidarons {Sagard). They, and not the Eries, were 

 the Kahkwas of Seneca tradition. 



^ Lalemant, Relation des Hurons, 1641, 71. — The Niagara was then 

 called the River of the Neutrals, or the Onguiaahra. Lalemant estimates 

 the Neutral population, in 1640, at twelve thousand, in forty villages. 



