Neutral Confederacy
To the northeast were the neighbouring territories of Huronia and the Petun Country, which were inhabited by other Iroquoian confederacies from which the term Neutrals Attawandaron was derived.
[2] A largely agrarian society, the Neutral Confederacy developed farmsteads that were admired and marveled over by European leaders writing reports to their sponsors.
Since they were not at war with the Huron or the Iroquois in 1600, Jesuits travelling in the area of what is now Hamilton, the lower Grand Valley and Niagara, called them the Neutrals.
However, the confederacy had feuds with an Algonkian people called the Mascouten or "Fire Nation", who were believed to live in what is present-day Michigan.
[9] 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.
[11] 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 west of the Wenro people.
Daillon visited 28 Neutral villages, including the capital, which the French referred to as Nôtre Dame des Anges.
The fertile flats of the various oxbows that Big Creek makes three miles from its mouth at Grand River, were ideal for long-term settlement.
F. Douglas Reville's The History of the County of Brant (1920) said that the hunting grounds of the Attawandaron ranged from Genesee Falls and Sarnia and south of a line drawn from Toronto to Goderich.
[9] During their travels, Jean de Brébeuf and Pierre Joseph Marie Chaumonot gave each Neutral village 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 (near what is now Windsor, Ontario).
"Elk, caribou, and black bear; deer, wolves, foxes, martens and wild cats filled the woods.
"[14] According to the City of Waterloo, Ontario, the indigenous people who lived in the area in the precontact era included the Neutral Confederacy.
The Neutral territory marked the furthest northern and western extent of useable chert deposits, even though the Onondaga Limestone runs further.
[20] The Neutrals had an alliance with the Wenrohronon, also Iroquoian-language people, to defend against the powerful Iroquois Five Nations Confederacy, who were also Iroquoian speakers.
[21] Traveling south from Midland, Ontario, Étienne Brûlé passed through the Attawandaron territory circa 1615 and spent a winter among the Nation, during 1625–1626.
Anthropologist Jackes discussed the year 1651 as particularly significant: "during the final Iroquois onslaught...the Neutral fled into the woods and dispersed for the last time ...
"[33] The Museum of Ontario Archeology describes the society as "semi-nomadic", living in villages for about 20 years before abandoning a site after depleting the game and the soil of the area.
[36] The chief of 28 villages, villas, and towns in the last years of the Neutral confederacy was named Tsouharissen or Souharissen[8] ("Child of the Sun") who led several raids against the Mascouten (or "The Fire Nation"), who lived in territory in present-day Michigan and Ohio.
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.
[38] Their neighbours, the Wendat (Wyandot, or Huron) Nation referred to the Neutrals (Chonnonton) impolitely as "Attawandaron," meaning "Those whose speech is awry" because their dialect was different.
The Southwold Earthworks, near St. Thomas, Ontario, contains the remains of a precontact Neutral village and is a National Historic Site of Canada.
[45] 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.
Reports from those and other Southern Ontario sites near Milton (Crawford Lake) and Oakville have indicated that the Neutral Confederacy hunted not only deer but also elk, moose, beaver, raccoons, squirrels, black bear, fox and muskrat.
One of the largest Attawandaron villages, the location covered 13 acres of the Badenoch section of Puslinch, on the east side of Morriston, Ontario.
[5] When grounds were prepared for a new housing development in Grimsby, Ontario, in 1976, a Neutral Confederacy burial site was uncovered in sheltered embayment of the Niagara Escarpment.
