The Country of the Neutrals | Page 2

within the southern part of the enclosure. In the mounds
themselves trees are abundant, and there are many in the moat or ditch
between. The stumps of those which have been cut down are so many
chronological facts, from which the age of the fort may be conjectured
with some approach to accuracy. A maple within the enclosure exhibits
242 rings of annual growth. It was probably the oldest tree within the
walls. A maple in the outer embankment shows 197 rings; between the
inner and outer walls a beech stump shows 219 rings, and an elm 266.
Many of the trees were cut down a good many years ago. Judging from
these stumps, it would be safe to calculate the age of the forest at about
two hundred years, with here and there a tree a little older. The area
enclosed is level. In the field south there are numerous hummocks
formed by the decayed stumps of fallen trees. The walls were
manifestly thrown up from the outside. There is an exception on the
south-east. Here the ground outside was higher, and to get the requisite
elevation the earth was thrown up on both walls from the intervening
space, as well as on the exterior wall from the outside. Each of the
walls runs completely round the enclosure, except where the steep bank
of the little stream was utilized to eke out the inner wall for five or six
rods on the west side, as shewn on the plan. Opposite the south end of
this gap was the original entrance through the outer wall. The walls
have been cut through in one or two other places, doubtless by settlers
hauling timber across them.
The writer accompanied Mr. Campbell on his visits in the spring and
fall of 1891. The members of the Elgin Historical and Scientific
Institute made a pretty thorough examination of a large ash-heap
south-east of the fort. It had, however, been frequently dug into during
the last score or two of years, with ample results, it is said, in the way
of stone implements of various kinds. There still remained, however,
arrow-heads and chippings of flint, stones partially disintegrated from
the action of heat, fragments of pottery whose markings showed a very
low stage of artistic development, fish scales, charred maize and bones

of small animals, the remains of aboriginal banquets. Within the
enclosure, corn-cobs were found by digging down though the mould,
and a good specimen of a bone needle, well smoothed, but without any
decoration, was turned up in the bed of the stream where it passes
through the fort.
The original occupants were manifestly hunters, fishermen and
agriculturists, as well as warriors. Nothing appears to have been found
in the neighborhood, pointing to any intercourse between them and any
European race.
It would seem that the earth-work was constructed in the midst of a
large clearing, and that the forest grew up after the disappearance of the
occupants. A few saplings, however, may have been permitted to spring
up during their occupancy for the sake of the shelter they might afford.
These are represented by the oldest stumps above mentioned.
The question, who were the builders, is an interesting one. To answer it
we need not go back to a remoter period than the middle of the
seventeenth century, when the Iroquois after destroying the Huron
Settlements turned their attention to the southwest, and the Neutral
Nation ceased to exist. The enclosure was, we may reasonably believe,
a fortified village of the Neutrals at the time of their evacuation of this
province, nearly a quarter of a millennium ago.
Substantially all that is known of the Neutrals is to be found in
Champlain's works, Sagard's History, the Relations and Journal of the
Jesuits, and Sanson's map of 1656. A digest of the information
contained therein is given in the following pages. The writer has
availed himself of one or two other works for some of the facts
mentioned. Mr. Benjamin Sulte's interesting and learned articles on "Le
pays des grands lacs au XVIIe Siecle" in that excellent magazine, "Le
Canada Francais," have been most valuable in this connection.
The first recorded visit to the Neutrals was in the winter of 1626, by a
Recollet father, De Laroche-Daillon. His experiences are narrated by
himself, and Sagard, who includes the narrative in his history,
supplements it with one or two additional facts.

In company with the Jesuit Fathers Brebeuf and De Noue, Daillon left
Quebec with the purpose of visiting and converting the Hurons, who
were settled in villages between the Georgian Bay and Lake Simcoe.
After the usual hardships, journeying by canoe and portage, by way of
the Ottawa and French Rivers, they arrived at their destination. The
ill-fated Brule told wonderful stories of a nation,