The Country of the Neutrals | Page 9

Brebeuf and Chaumonot never lacked the necessaries of life, lodging and food, and amidst difficulties and inconveniences better imagined than described they retained their health. Their food supply was bread baked under ashes after the fashion of the country, and which they kept for thirty and even forty days to use in case of need.
"In their journey, the fathers passed through eighteen villages (bourgs ou bourgades), to all of which they gave a Christian name, of which we shall make use hereafter on occasion. They stayed particularly in ten, to which they gave as much instruction as they could find hearers. They report about 500 Fires and 3,000 persons, which these ten bourgades may contain, to whom they set forth and published the Gospel." (Lalemant's Relation.)[4]
[4] In another place it is stated that there were 40 villages of the Neutrals in all.
Disheartened, the fathers decided to return to Kandoucho or All Saints to await the spring. Midway, however, at the village of Teotongniaton, or S. Guillaume, (perhaps in the vicinity of Woodstock) the snow fell in such quantities that further progress was impossible. They lodged here in the cabin of a squaw, who entertained them hospitably and instructed them in the language, dictating narratives syllable by syllable as to a school boy. Here they stayed twenty-five days, "adjusted the dictionary and rules of the Huron language to that of these tribes (the Neutrals), and accomplished a work which alone was worth a journey of several years in the country."
Hurons from the mission of La Conception volunteered to go to the relief of the daring travellers. After eight days of travel and fatigue in the woods the priests and the relief party arrived at Ste. Marie on the very day of St. Joseph, patron of the country, in time to say mass, which they had not been able to say since their departure.
Amongst the eighteen villages visited by them, only one, that of Khioetoa, called by the fathers Saint Michel, gave them the audience their embassy merited. In this village, years before, driven by fear of their enemies, had taken refuge a certain foreign nation, "which lived beyond Erie or the Cat Nation," named Aouenrehronon. It was in this nation that the fathers performed the first baptism of adults. These were probably a portion of the kindred Neutral tribe referred to above as having fled to the Huron country from the Iroquois. Their original home was in the State of New York. Sanson's map shows S. Michel a little east of where Sandwich now stands.
Owing to their scanty number and the calumnies circulated amongst the Indians respecting the Jesuits of the Huron Mission the latter resolved to concentrate their forces. The Neutral mission was abandoned, but Christian Indians visited the Neutrals in 1643 and spread the faith amongst them with a success which elicits Lalemant's enthusiastic praises. Towards the end of the following winter a band of about 500 Neutrals visited the Hurons. The fathers did not fail to avail themselves of their opportunity. The visitors were instructed in the faith and expressed their regret that their teachers could not return with them. A different reception from that experienced by Brebeuf and Chaumonot three years before was promised.
Lalemant relates that in the summer of 1643, 2,000 Neutrals invaded the country of the Nation of Fire and attacked a village strongly fortified with a palisade, and defended stoutly by 900 warriors. After a ten days' siege, they carried it by storm, killed a large number on the spot, and carried off 800 captives, men, women and children, after burning 70 of the most warlike and blinding the eyes and "girdling the mouths" of the old men, whom they left to drag out a miserable existence. He reports the Nation of Fire as more populous than the Neutrals, the Hurons and the Iroquois together. In a large number of these villages the Algonkin language was spoken. Farther away, it was the prevailing tongue. In remote Algonkin tribes, even at that early day, there were Christians who knelt, crossed their hands, turned their eyes heavenward, and prayed to God morning and evening, and before and after their meals; and the best mark of their faith was that they were no longer wicked nor dishonest as they were before. So it was reported to Lalemant by trustworthy Hurons who went every year to trade with Algonkin nations scattered over the whole northern part of the continent.
Ragueneau in the Relation of 1648 refers to Lake Erie as being almost 200 leagues in circuit, and precipitating itself by "a waterfall of a terrible height" into Lake Ontario, or Lake Saint Louys.
The Aondironnons a tribe of the Neutrals living nearest to the Hurons were treacherously attacked in their village by 300 Senecas, who after killing a number carried