is quoted by Dr. McKeough as stating
that the Neutrals were among the first tribes to leave the main body, but
the fact that they were found beyond the most westerly point of migration
of the Iroquois and the fact that they did not share in the Huron-Iroquois
feuds, points to an earlier and independent migration. Their language
varied but slightly from that of the Hurons (which there is no reason to
regard as the parent tongue) and the inference is that their separation
must have taken place long before the disruption compelled the other clans
to seek refuge on the Georgian Bay and elsewhere.
The Jesuits believed that the three
nations were originally one people, the language only differed
dialectically and their habits, ceremonials, food, clothing and form of
government were much the same.
Dr. McKeough states that the
Neutrals, while neutral as between Hurons and Iroquois, waged deadly
warfare on the Mascoutins or Nation of Fire, who inhabited what is now a
part of Michigan, and the Neutrals were more ruthless and cruel than the
other tribes, especially in their treatment of women prisoners, whom they
tortured and burned, a practice not recorded of the Hurons. Physically
they surpassed the Hurons and in summer wore no clothing but adorned their
bodies by tattooing from head to foot with charcoal pricked into the
flesh. Long immunity from attacks by the Hurons and Iroquois and the
superabundance of vegetables and animal food tempted the Neutrals to the
enjoyment of every savage luxury and animal appetite. Charred remains in
their ash heaps or kitchen middens indicate that cannibalism was practiced
by the Neutrals.
The first white man who records a
visit to the Neutrals was Father Joseph de la Roche Daillon, a Franciscan
Priest, who acknowledged that his desire for a visit was engendered by the
glowing accounts of Etienne Brule, Champlain’s adventurous interpreter who
mingled with the Neutrals in the summer of 1615 and was probably the first
white man to venture among them and recount to the French missionaries the
good climate, rich land and abundant game in that part of the country in
which the many villages of the Neutrals were located.
Daillon was of aristocratic birth.
He came to Canada in 1615 and took charge of the Huron mission, and in
October 1620 paid a visit to the Neutrals, a five days’ journey before the
first Neutral village was reached. He was accompanied by one or two guides
and two French traders. Although not knowing the language of the Neutrals
he spent four months among them, and visited four other villages. At first
he was well received and gifts were exchanged, but the Hurons, hearing of
the visit, and fearing that the French would open a direct trade with the
Neutrals, at once circulated untruths about the French, and from these the
Neutrals conceived the idea that the presence of the French would bring on
pestilence; and Daillon, who, having lost his interpreter, was endeavoring
to Christianize the Neutrals by signs, was subjected to much insult and
abuse and nearly lost his life at their hands.
The Hurons who acted as middlemen
between the Neutrals and the French, made big profits by exchanging French
goods for the furs of the Neutrals. It apparently never occurred to the
Neutrals that there was a direct road for them by way of Lake Ontario to
the French trading posts to which the Hurons could not go by reason of the
enmity of the Iroquois but which would have been open to the Neutrals. The
Hurons were too astute to kill Daillon for fear of the vengeance of the
French, but hoped the Neutrals could be stirred up to kill him.
On his return to Huronia, Father
Daillon wrote a report of his mission. Describing the country with
appreciation, he comments on the abundant vegetable life and game, and
concludes by stating that the life of the Neutrals was very impure and
their manners and customs the same.
Father Daillon left the country for
good in 1628 and sailed for France about a year later, and never returned
to Canada. He died in July 1656. There is nothing in his writings to
indicate that he visited the western portion of what is now Ontario.
Another mission to the Neutrals was
established in 1640 by John de Brebeuf and Joseph Chaumonet, Jesuit
Fathers, who had been in Huronia. They encountered opposition on their
arrival among the Neutrals as messages had been sent from Huronia that if
the pale face sorcerers’ were allowed to dwell among them, famine and
plague would desolate their villages, their women would be struck with
sterility and the nation itself would fade from the face of the earth.
These two Priests persisted in their mission and visited eighteen villages
or encampments, preaching the way of the Cross. According to Dr. McKeough
there is evidence that they visited Khioeta, or St. Michael, one of the
five villages shown on the early maps, and they therefore must have passed
through the Village of St. Joseph de Kent, and also the smaller
communities on the way. At St. Michael they received a partially friendly
reception, but after four months of strenuous self sacrifice, and barren
effort, they returned to Huronia. Dr. McKeough’s search among the Indian
collections in the County, for crucifixes, crosses, ink horns, communion
chalices, metallic thuribles for incense, etc., which would be tangible
evidence of the sojourn of the missionaries at certain villages, has
revealed none of these things.
For an account of the death of
Brebeuf and Lalemant another missionary, Dr. McKeough quotes Parkman as
follows:
"Brebeuf and Lalemant, during the
fierce attack of the Iroquois, were captured by them at St. Ignatius.
Brebeuf was led apart, stripped of his clothes, and bound to a stake. He
seemed more concerned for his captured converts than for himself, and
addressed them in a loud voice, exhorting them to suffer patiently,
promising heaven as their reward. The Iroquois, incensed, scorched him
from head to foot to silence him, whereupon, in the tone of a master he
threatened them with everlasting flames for persecuting the worshippers
of God. As he continued to speak with voice and countenance unchanged,
they cut away his lower lip, cut out his tongue and thrust a red hot
iron down his throat. He still held his tall form erect and defiant,
with no sound of pain, and they tried other means to overcome him. They
led out Lalemant, that Drebeuf might see him tortured. They had tied
strips of bark smeared with pitch around his naked body. When he saw the
condition of his superior, he could not hide his agitation and called
out to him in a broken voice in the words of St. Paul: ‘We are made a
spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men.’ Then he threw himself at
Brebeuf’s feet, upon which the Iroquois seized him, made him fast to a
stake and set fire to the bark that enveloped him. As the flames arose
he threw his arms upwards with a shriek of supplication to heaven. Next
they hung around Brebeuf’s neck a collar made of hatchets heated red
hot, but the indomitable Priest stood like a rock. A Huron in the crowd
who had been a convert of the mission but was now an Iroquois by
adoption, called out, with the malice of a renegade to pour hot water on
their heads, since they had poured so much cold water on those of
others. The kettle was accordingly slung, and the water boiled and
poured slowly on the heads of the two missionaries. 'We baptise you’
they cried, ‘that you may be happy in heaven, for nobody can be saved
without a good baptism.’ Brebeuf would not flinch, and in a rage they
tore out his finger nails, cut strips of flesh from his limbs, and
devoured them before his eyes. After a succession of other revolting
tortures they scalped him, and seeing him nearly dead they laid open his
breast, and came in a crowd to drink the blood of so valiant an enemy,
thinking to imbibe with it some portion of his courage. A chief then
tore out his heart and devoured it. To the last he refused to flinch,
and his fortitude was the astonishment of his murderers. The bodies of
the two missionaries were carried to St. Marie and buried in the
cemetery there, but the skull of Brebeuf was preserved as a relic. His
family sent from France a silver bust of their martyred kinsman, in the
base of which was a recess to contain the skull, and to this day the
bust and relic within are preserved with precious care by the Nuns of
the Hotel Dieu at Quebec."
Dr. McKeough quotes Parkman on the
extermination of the Neutral Indians as follows:
"No sooner were the Hurons broken
up and dispersed than the Iroquois, without waiting to take breath,
turned their fury on the Neutrals. At the end of the autumn of 1650 they
assaulted and took one of the most important Neutral towns, said to have
contained at the time more than 1600 men, besides women and children,
and early in the following spring they took another town. The slaughter
was prodigious and the victors drove back to their homes troops of
captives for butchery or adoption. It was the death blow of the
Neutrals. They abandoned their corn fields and villages in the wildest
terror, and dispersed themselves about the forests, which could not
yield sustenance for such a multitude. They perished by thousands, and
from that time forth the Neutral Nation ceased to exist."
Their extermination was pretty well
completed by the year 1653.
Dr. McKeough quotes from an article
by a Mr. Orr on the Neutral Indians that in a letter embodied in the
Jesuit Relations [The written reports of the Jesuit Missionaries to the
Head of that Order in France.] of 1670, Father Freners relates a visit he
made in 1669 to the Oneida village of Gandoge, peopled with the remnants
of three nations destroyed by the Iroquois. Among them were the
descendants of the slaughtered Neutrals, who had been adopted by the
Iroquois and incorporated into the Oneida Tribe to fill the places of
members of that tribe who had been killed in the war. This is the last
time the Neutral Indians are mentioned in the annals of New France.
The foregoing gives a brief
description of the Indian Tribe that inhabited that part of Canada in
which the County of Kent is located, the following is a resume of the
known sites of Indian Villages in and around Kent County.
Quoting from Dr. James H. Coyne’s
paper "Indian Occupation of Southern Ontario," Dr. McKeough states that
early maps show five Indian villages west of the Grand River, Our Lady of
the Angels, near Brantford; St. Alexis, which has been fairly well
identified to be the Southwold Earthworks; St. Joseph de Kent, location
problematical, but in all probability in Kent County; St. Francis,
somewhere in the vicinity of the Township of Bosanquet in Lambton County
or Williams in Middlesex County, and St. Michael, near Windsor.
In addition, Mr. E. B. Jones. in an
article in the Evening Banner of November 27, 1896, sets out the location
of two villages near Chatham, both on McGregor’s Creek. He says:
"The central villages near
Chatham, of which there were two, were situated on McGregor’s Creek. One
is partly on the Protestant and partly on the Catholic Cemetery and
partly on McGeachy’s land, and is divided by the creek into two parts,
the east and west village. The other village is about half a mile to the
north and is divided by the creek into the north and south village. The
south village near Wilson’s bridge appears to have been partly
surrounded with a palisade, beginning at the bank of the creek at the
west boundary of the village, and enclosing a semi-circular piece of
land of about three acres, and ending on the creek bank of the east.
There are still traces of the ditch and embankment upon which the
palisades were placed, but the plow has nearly finished the work of
demolition. There is no doubt but that these villages were protected by
walls or palisades. It is comparatively easy to locate the position of
several lodges within the enclosure, by the debris left on certain
spots, such as arrow points, fragments of flint, stone hammers and
fragments of broken bone. Every such place indicates the site of a
lodge. These lodges were arranged in the form of a semi-circle and
enclosed a space about one and a half acres.
This spot would appear to be the
forum where many a pow wow was held. In peaceful times it was used as a
playground. Games of ball were seemingly common if we are to judge by
the number of stone balls found on these village sites. Here also
captives were tortured to death at the stake."
Mr. Jones further states that when
the Sulpician Fathers, Dollier de Casson and Rene de Brehart de Galinee
and their party of voyageurs discovered Rond Eau in 1670 the remains of
another village were located at what is now Government Park. An ossuary
has also been located there. Early settlers in Harwich remember remains of
old Indian trails in that part of Kent.
Dr. McKeough quotes Mr. Herbert
Smith of Lot 132 Raleigh as stating that there were three sites of Indian
Camps on his land, charcoal plowed up on these sites, microscopically
examined showed cedar fibres, although the oldest inhabitants do not
recall any cedar growing on the farm. Many corn stones and pounders or
pestles have been found there, also a few pipes, and some clay pottery, a
part of which gives the appearance of having been molded in wicker or
basket work.
The south side of the Highbanks
ridge seems to have been favored by the Neutrals, as quantities of arrow
heads have been found, while comparatively few were located on the north
side.
Mr. E. B. Jones mentions another
Indian village in the extreme western portion of the County of Kent, near
Lake St. Clair. This was discovered by Governor Simcoe in 1793 when he
made a tour of inspection from Niagara—on—the— Lake to Detroit, then a
possession of the British. Near Baptiste Creek, where the Railway bridge
now stands. Major Littlehales, who accompanied the Governor, mentions in
his diary that ruins of wigwams and the bleached remains of human beings,
were found, (The editor ventures to suggest that this may have been the
site of the village of St. Michael.)
Dr. McKeough records the location of
the site of another Indian village, known as the Fort, about a mile north
of Clearville. Clear Creek passes through the land at this point and in
its flow southward makes a considerable detour around a low terraced
tableland, the slopes showing evidence of former higher level in what must
have been a much larger stream. The Indians had taken advantage of the
situation for strategic reasons and proximity to water. The debris usual
to the site of an Indian village was
found but not a vestige of any European presence
or influence. If this village ever had dealings with the whites some proof
should have come to light in the investigation of the site. There are two
village sites at this point on different levels but whether they were
occupied concurrently or by the same group is not known. At this location
Mr. Inspector Smith discovered a human skull with certain symbols carved
on the vertex. The characters represented some of the signs of the Zodiac.
(This skull is now in the Provincial Museum in Toronto.) Dr. McKeough,
commenting on the find states:
"It must be at all events a relic
of a remote civilization that occupied Canada in pre—historic ages."
