BUFFALO SOCIETY OF NATURAL SCIENCES 273 



In the thirty years following Champlain's visit to the 

 Hurons, events culminated rapidly on the Niagara Frontier. 

 Missionaries came, preached vainly the Word of God and de- 

 parted. A great epidemic thinned the villages. Eastward the 

 frontier nation of the Wenroes abandoned their villages through 

 fear of the Iroquois and passed through the Neutral villages on 

 their painful journey to their new homes amongst the Hurons. 

 Northward the Tionontates also, fearful of the Iroquois, had 

 joined the Hurons in a league against their common foe. As 

 the years went by the Iroquois war- parties passed more and 

 more frequently along the Neutral trails on raids to the Huron 

 country; and year by year the feud between the Hurons and 

 the Iroquois became more rancorous and the sanctuary of the 

 Neutral towns more difficult to maintain. 



It was a generation of transition for the Neutrals. The 

 warrior still pointed his arrows with flint points; but his javelin 

 he armed with a French sword- blade. His stone axe he had 

 discarded; in its place he bore the cross marked French axe. 

 His sagamite simmered in a brass kettle; and his brawny chest 

 displayed, not only the rudely carved pendant of conch shell, 

 but the gay glitter of the trader's glass beads. The Gospel was 

 being preached, at first and in vain, by Jesuits, later and suc- 

 cessfully by their Huron neophytes. 



It was in 1647 that, in spite of their strength and bravery the 

 Neutrals found it impossible longer to preserve their neutrality. 

 The five years previous had been years of terror for the Niagara 

 Frontier. Every year Iroquois war-parties had swarmed in 

 Huronia and in the Petun country. Huron trading parties 

 were waylaid and massacred on the road to Quebec. Villages 

 were raided, and Huron captives died in the fires of Iroquois 

 towns. In 1646 a Seneca warrior, one of a war- party, killed a 

 man of the Tobacco Nation on the frontiers of that nation. He 

 was hotly pursued by a party of Hurons. He crossed the 

 frontier and attempted to reach the safety of the Neutral town 

 of Aondironnon but before he could enter a Neutral cabin he 

 was captured and killed by his pursuers. Since he had not 

 entered a cabin, neither the Hurons nor the Neutrals considered 

 this a breach of neutrality. The Senecas resolved secretly on 

 revenge, ( 1). 



1. Father Ragueneau, Jes. Rel. 1647-48, Vol. 18, P. 260, Burrows ed. 



