Neutrals
The Neutral Confederacy (also Neutral Nation, Neutral people, or Attawandaron) was a tribal confederation of Iroquoian peoples. Its heartland was along the Grand River and the eastern end of Lake Ontario in what is now Ontario, Canada. At its height, its wider territory extended west along the shores of Erie to Huron, and east to the Niagara River. To the northwest were the neighbouring territories of the Wendat and Petun who called the Neutral the Attawandaron. East of the Neutral and south of Lake Ontario was the five-nation Haudenosaunee Confederacy.
Like other Iroquoian groups, the Neutral would raid neighbouring tribes. They were frequently at war Algonquian-speaking peoples who lived to the west such as the Mascouten who were known as the Fire Nation.
Iroquoian tribes are known to historians for the fierce ways in which they waged war. A largely agrarian society, the Neutral Confederacy developed farmsteads that were admired and marvelled over by European leaders writing reports to their sponsors.
The Neutral Confederacy were proficient hunters and traded furs and dressed deerskins to the Wendat in exchange for European goods which the Wendat had acquired from the French. The largest Neutral group was known as the Chonnonton ('keepers of the deer'), partly because of their practice of herding deer into pens, a strategy used while hunting. The Chonnonton territory also contained large deposits of flint, which was a valuable resource for sharp tools, fire-starting and, eventually, firearms, which, as a primary resource, allowed them to trade simultaneously with often-warring Wendat and Haudenosaunee tribes.Another group, the Onguiaahra whose name meant "near the big waters" or possibly "the strait," populated the Niagara Peninsula and allegedly account for the origin of the word "Niagara".
Since they were not at war with the Wendat or the Haudenosaunee in the early-1600s, 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. In 1616, the Neutral Confederacy had an estimated 40 villages and 4,000 warriors. In 1641, after a serious epidemic, the Jesuits counted 40 Neutral villages, with about 12,000 people.
The nation was unable to survive the changes. In 1651, after attacks by the Iroquois in the Beaver Wars, they dispersed. One source indicates that the reasons included "wars, diseases and famine". The remaining members became a part of various other Iroquoian nations. Historical records kept by the French do not discuss the Neutrals as a nation or confederacy after 1672.
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