This was the name given to several tribes by the early French voyageurs because they took no part in the known wars between the Iroquois and the Huron. They dwelt in prehistoric times in southern Ontario, far western New York State, northeastern Ohio, and southeastern Michigan. Although connected to the Iroquoian linguistic family, their speech differed greatly from that language. Other tribes of the region called them Attiwandaronk, signifying "those whose speech is awry."
One of the first authentic accounts of the Neutrals came from Champlain, who encountered them in 1616. He reported that they were a powerful people and could muster a formidable force of four thousand warriors. They raised a "great quantity of good tobacco, the surplus of which was traded for furs and porcupine quillwork to northern Algonquian peoples. . . they cleared the land with great pains, though they had no proper instruments to do this. They trimmed all the limbs from the trees, which they burned at the foot of the trees to cause them to die. Then they thoroughly prepared the ground between the trees and planted their grain from step to step, putting in each hill about ten grains, and so continued planting until they had enough for three our fours years' provision. lest a bad year, sterile and fruitless, befall them."
One of the first missionaries to reach the Neutrals, Father Daillon, related that their country contained an incredible number of deer which they slaughtered in large numbers by driving them into enclosures made of hedges. The Neutrals, he declared, believed they must kill all animals "they might find, whether required or not, lest those which were not taken would tell the other beasts that they themselves had been pursued, and that these latter in time of need would not permit themselves to be taken." In addition to the great numbers of deer, the country swarmed with elk, beaver, wildcats, black squirrels, bustards, turkeys, cranes, and other birds and animals, ". . . most of which were there all winter; the rivers and lakes were abundantly supplied with fish, and the land produced good maize, much more than the people required; there we also squashes, beans, and other vegetables in season. They made oil from the seeds of the sunflower, which the girls reduced to meal and then placed i boiling water which c aused the oil to float; it was then skimmed with wooden spoons. The mush was afterward made into cakes and formed a very palatable food."
If the Neutrals were sedentary, enterprising, and refused to participate in the conflicts between the Iroquois and Huron, they were far from being a peaceful people. Their head chief at the time of their discovery had won his position and political power as a result of his bravery in seventeen wars between the Neutrals and other tribes. He had returned from each conflict with numerous scalps and prisoners, attesting to his prowess as a warrior. In the early sixteen hundreds the Neutrals were waging vigorous warfare against tribes to the west. In 1643 they sent a force of two thousand warriors against a strongly palisaded town of the Mascouten (prairie band of Potawatomi), took it after a ten-day siege, killed several hundred defenders who had surrendered, and took nearly a thousand men, women, and children captives. After torturing to death several score of Mascouten warriors, they put out the eyes of the old men and abandoned them to starve to death.
It was not so much their "neutrality" as it was their numerical strength and their fighting ability that for years kept the Iroquois from launching a full-scale attack on the Neutrals. This situation was reversed after the Iroquois had destroyed the Huron in the 1648-49. Aware that the Iroquois no longer feared them or any other tribe, the Neutrals sought to prevent a major conflict with their relatives by themselves turning on the helpless Huron. Many desperate Huron sought asylum among the Neutrals in the belief that their policy of neutrality would afford them protection. Instead of protecting them, the Neutrals seized them as prisoners, and also took other Huron hiding in their own country as captives, thereby sealing the doom of all refugees encountered.
The strategy did them no good. Within a year after their successful conquest of the Huron the Iroquois swept down upon the Neutrals. It took them less than two summers of fighting to destroy them. A few hundred managed to flee to the west and were reported living in the vicinity of Detroit in the winter of 1653, but after that date nothing more is known of them. All others were either slain or absorbed by the Iroquois.
The Neutrals lost their identity as an independent people, but they are commemorated in a magnificent natural monument. The name of one of their divisions was Ongniaahra, pronounced Niagra by white men.
Source: The American Indian Almanac by John Upton Terrell, Barnes & Noble, 1971.
Brother, Brother . . .You have taken a number of our young men to your schools. You have educated them and taught them your religion. You have returned to their kindred and color neither white men nor Indians. The arts they have learned are incompatible with the chase, and ill adapted to our customs. They have been taught that which is useless to us. They have been made to feel artificial wants, which never entered the minds of their brothers. They have imbibed, in your great towns, the seeds of vices which were unknown in the forest. They become discouraged and dissipated - despised by the Indians, neglected by the whites, and without value to either - less honest than the former, and PERHAPS more knavish than the latter. . .
The Great Spirit is angry - for you see he does not bless or crown your exertions. But, Brother, on the other hand, we know that the Great Spirit is plesaed that we follow the traditions and customs of our forefathers - for in so doing we receive his blessing. . .when we are hungry we find the forest filled with game - when thirsty, we slake our thirst in the pure streams and springs that spread around us.
When weary, the leaves of the trees are our bed - we retire with contentment to rest - we rise, and bounding joy in our hearts, we feel blessed and happy. No luxuries, no vices, no disputed titles, no avaricious desires shake the foundations of our society, or distrub our peace and happiness.
. . .perhaps, Brother, you are right in your religion - it may be peculiarly adapted to your condition. You say that you destroyed the Son of the Great Spirit. Perhaps this is the merited cause of all your troubles and misfortunes. But Brothers, bear in mind that we had no participation in this murder. We disclaim it - we love the Great Spirit - and as we never had any agency in so unjust, so merciless an outrage, he threfore continues to smile upon us, and to give us peace, joy, and plenty.
Brothers, in compassion toward you . . .we are willing to send you missionaries to teach you our religion, habits and customs. . . .we cannot embrace yur religion. It renders us divided and unhappy - but by yur embracing ours, we believe that you would be more happy and more acceptable to the Great Spirit. . .
Perhaps you think we are ignorant and uninformed. Go, then and teach the whites. . .improve their morals and refine their habits - make them less disposed to cheat Indians . . .less inclined to make Indians drunk, and to take them from their lands. Let us know the tree by the blossoms, and the blossoms by the fruit. When this shall be made clear to our minds we may be more willing to listen to you. But until then we must be allowed to follow the religion of our ancestors.
We first knew you a feeble plant which wanted a little earth whereon to grow. We gave it to you - and afterward, when we could have trod you under our feet, we watered and protected you - and now you have grown to be a mighty tree, whose top reaches the clouds, and whose branches overspread the whole land; whilst we, who were then the tall pine of the forest, have become the feeble plant, and need your protection. . .
You tell us of your claim to our land and that you have purchased it from your State. We know nothing of your claim, and we care nothing for it. Even the whites have a law, by which they cannot sell what they do not own. How, then, has your state, which never owned our land, sold it to you? We have a title to it, and we know that our title is good; for it came direct from the Great Spirit, who gave it to us, his red children. When you can ascend to where He is (pointing toward the skies) and will get His deed, and show it to us, then, and never till then, will we acknowledge your title.
You say that you came not to cheat us of our lands, but to buy them. . . Did I not tell you, the last time we met, that whilst Red Jacket lived, you would get no more lands of the Indians? How then, while you see him alive and strong (striking his hand violently on his breast) do you think to make him a liar?
Editor's Note: Red Jacket (Sagoyewatha) was a Seneca chief born around 1779. While he was often called a coward in war, he was respected as a great speaker and for his refusal to adopt white ways. Following the way of many before him, he would eventually become an alcoholic. He died on January 20, 1830.
Source: Red Jacket's speeches from The Life and Times of SA-GO-Ye-WAT-HA by William Stone, New York, 1866. Quoted in Velie, Alan R., American Indian Literature, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Oklahoma, 1979, 1991.
