Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 7.djvu/644

 HURON

578

HURON

and of not a few Mohawks (Rels. In^ds, I, 158; Clev. ed., LVII, 25, 52; LX, 69). The Tohontaenrat, of the old village of Scanonaenrat, or St-Michel, and a considerable part of the Rock Clan had, as early as 1650 or 1651, gone over bodily to the Seneeas (Journ. desJfe., 161; Clev. ed., XXXVI, 141, 143. Kel. 1651: Queb. ed., 4-5; Clev. ed., XXXVI, 179), while the remainder of the Rock Clan cast, their lot in with the Onondagas, and the Bear Clan with the Mohawks (Rel. 16.57: Queb. ed., 20, 2; Clev. ed., XLIII, 189- 191), immediately after the massacre of a number of Hurons by the Iroquois on the Island of Orleans. 20 May, 1656 (Rel. 1657: Queb. ed., 5, 6; Clev. ed., XLIII, 115-117). This accounts for all the clans of Huronia proper save the Ataronchronons, who need not be con- sidered, as they were but a congeries of other clans who, in the later years of Huronia's existence, had moved in small detachments nearer to Fort 8te-Marie

XXXVI, 118), under the date of 22 April, 1651, epit- omizes the rumours afloat in (Quebec relative to wliat was then happening in the West. It was said that 1500 Irotjuois had invaded the Neutral country and had captured a village; that the Neutrals, headed by the Hurons of old St-Michel, had fallen upon the retir- ing Iroquois and had captured or slain two hundred; but that a second Iroquois force of 1200 braves had re-entered the Neutral country to avenge this loss. A second entry in the "Journal" of 26 .\pril (151; Clev. ed., Id. 120) reduces the number given of the first Iro- quois expedition to 600 warriors, who apparently had not been entirely successful, since 100 had returned during the summer to seek revenge. The arrival of four Neutrals at Montreal, on 27 May, with their budget of news, was deemed of sufficient importance to find a place in the Journal under date of 30 July (157; Clev. ed.. XXXVI, 133). A still later entry, of

II. Stations

OF Missionaries in IIukonia, 1615

-29

Mission

1615

1616

1622

1623

1624

1625

1626-27

1627-28

1629 1

Carhatrouha* St-Joseoh

2

2

. .2.

2, 4, 5

...5..

1

. ... .1

.1,7,25.

. . .3

1

. ..2..

1

St-Gabriel, La Rochelle t

. . .4

.1,7,25.

Toanch^ I. St-Nicolas. ..

. . .5..

. . .7

the name of St- Joseph at the time when the Jesuits alone had charge of the Huron missions.
 * Carhagouha was the Arontaen of the Relations. It must not be confounded with any of the Huron villages which bore

+ La Rochelle, the French name for the village of St- Gabriel, serves to identify it with the Ossossouil, or La Conception, of a later period.

A. stands for Algonquins; N.. for Neutral Nation.

X From the capitulation of Quebec to the English. July 19, 1629, until the retrocession of Canada to the I'rench by toe treaty of St-Germain-en-Laye, in 16;i2, the Huron Missions were necessarily suspended, as the Fathcrs_ had been sent back to France. In 1634, however, the missionaries returned to Huronia and resumed their work of evangelization.

on the Wye, and had occupied the country mainly to the north-east of Mud Lake, whence they derived their name of "People who dwelt Ijeyond the Fens". The group now residing in the vicinity of Sandwich, On- tario, are the remnants of the Petun, or Tobacco Nation, with possibly a slight intermi.xture of Neut- rals who, after many vicissitudes, had been induced to leave Michilimakinac when Detroit was founded. The third group, now settled on the Wyandot Reser- vation, Oklahoma, are the descendants of that portion of the Detroit Petuns who, under the war-chief Nicolas, had broken away from those of the .Assump- tion Mission, between 1744 and 1747, and made San- dusky and other parts of Ohio and north-eastern Indiana their home. The once powerful Neutrals no longer exist as a distinct tribe. They have been com- pletely merged in other Indian tribes, cither Huron or Iroquois. The Relations and other contemporaneous documents refer to them seldom and liut briefly in the years following the great dispersion. Nor must this seem strange, for the Relation 16(i0 ((^ueb. ed.. 14, 1; Clev. ed., XLV, 241—43) makes the sweeping a.ssertion: that the Iroquois, on a flimsy pretext, "seized upon the whole nation, and led it off in a body into dire captivity to their own country". Without taking this too literally, we find in it an explanation of the little said of them, and, precisely on account of these rare references, it seems advisable to treat them first.

1. Kxtinction of the Aitirrdrularnnk, or NeutriilK, during thn Great IHsjKrsion. — John CJilmary Shea de- voted a few pages to this vanished tribe in a paper contributed to Schoolcrafts' "History and Progress of the Indian Tribes" (IV, 204). Some of his references are not easily verified, while on the whole the paper is incomplete. What follows compri.ses nearly every reference to the nation in the records of the time.

1651.— The "Journal des J^suites" (150; Clev. ed..

22 September (161; Clev. ed. Id., 141, 143), records the fall of the Neutral town of Teotoniliaton, the Teo- tongniaton, or St-Guillaume, of the Relations, and the devastation of the Neutral territory, while it further modifies the previous announcement concerning the Hurons of St-Michel. stating that both they and the Rock Clan remnants had gone over to the Seneeas.

1652. — Rumours more or less conflicting continued to find their echo in Quebec. On 19 ,\pril, 1652, an entry in the "Journal" optimistically rehearses the news brought on 10 March, by an escaped Huron cap- tive, to the effect that the Neutrals had formed an alliance with the Andastes against the Iroquois; that the Seneeas, who had gone on the warpath against the Neutrals, had suffered so serious a defeat that the families of the Seneeas were constrained to flee from Sonnontouan, and betake themselves to Onionen, otherwise Goioguen, a Cayuga town (Journ. des J(''s.. 166-67; Clev. ed., XXXVlI, 97). The general dis- persion of the Neutrals, following close on their dis- asters at the hands of the Iroquois, is described in Relation 1651 (Queb. ed., 4, 2; Clev. ed., XXX\I, 177); but the direction of their flight is not indicated, save by the words: "They flecl still further from the rage and cruelty of the conquerors" — which means, no doubt, that the general trend of their precipitous retreat was towards the West. The great number of prisoners carried off by the Iroquois is mentioned [)ar- ticularly, and especially the young women led into captivity to become the wives of their captors.

1653. — There is mention made of a solitary Neutral lioy of fifteen or sixteen, captive among the Onon- dagas, baptized bv Father Simon Le Movne (Rel. 1654: Queb. ed., 14, 1; Clev. ed., XLI, 103). But the "Journal" this year has a most important entry concerning the Neutrals, which would go to show that they were still as numerous as the remnants of the