trals,
like their kinsmen of the Huron, Tobacco and Iroquois Nations, were a
numerous and sedentary race living in villages and cultivating their
fields of maize, tobacco and pumpkins. They were on friendly terms with
the eastern and northern tribes, but at enmity with those of the west,
especially the Nation of Fire, against whom they were constantly sending
out war parties. By the western tribes it would appear that those west
of the Detroit River and Lake Huron are invariably meant.

Champlain refers to the Neutrals in 1616 as a powerful nation, holding a
large extent of country, and numbering 4,000 warriors. Already they were
in alliance with the Cheveux Releves (the Ottawas), whom he visited in
the Bruce Peninsula, against the Nation of Fire. He states that the
Neutrals lived two days' journey southward of the Cheveux Releves, and
the Nation of Fire ten days from the latter. The Nation of Fire occupied
part of what is now Michigan, probably as far east as the Detroit and
St. Clair Rivers.

Describing his visit to the Cheveux Releves, he adds:--"I had a great
desire to go and see that Nation (the Neutrals), had not the tribes
where we were dissuaded me from it, saying that the year before one of
ours had killed one of them, being at war with the Entouhoronons (the
Senecas), and that they were angry on account of it, representing to us
that they are very subject to vengeance, not looking to those who dealt
the blow, but the first whom they meet of the nation, or even their
friends, they make them bear the penalty, when they can catch any of
them unless beforehand peace had been made with them, and one had given
them some gifts and presents for the relatives of the deceased; which
prevented me for the time from going there, although some of that nation
assured us that they would do us no harm for that. This decided us, and
occasioned our returning by the same road as we had come, and continuing
my journey, I found the nation of the Pisierinij etc."

NOTE.--This is a literal translation, and shows the crudity of
Champlain's sailor style of composition.

Brebeuf, who reckoned the Hurons at more than 30,000, describes the
Neutrals in 1634 as much more numerous than the former. The Relation of
1641 gives them at least 12,000, but adds that notwithstanding the wars,
famine and disease (small pox), which since three years had prevailed in
an extraordinary degree, the country could still furnish 4,000 warriors,
t