their enemies, but were now at peace with them, and about the year 1640
became their close confederates. Indeed, in the ruin which befell that
hapless people, the Tionnontates alone retained a tribal organization;
and their descendants, with a trifling exception, are to this day the
sole inheritors of the Huron or Wyandot name. Expatriated and wandering,
they held for generations a paramount influence among the Western tribes.
[ "L'ame de tous les Conseils."--Charlevoix, Voyage, 199.--In 1763 they
were Pontiac's best warriors. ] In their original seats among the Blue
Mountains, they offered an example extremely rare among Indians, of a
tribe raising a crop for the market; for they traded in tobacco largely
with other tribes. Their Huron confederates, keen traders, would not
suffer them to pass through their country to traffic with the French,
preferring to secure for themselves the advantage of bartering with them
in French goods at an enormous profit.

[ On the Tionnontates, see Le Mercier, Relation, 1637, 163; Lalemant,
Relation, 1641, 69; Ragueneau, Relation, 1648, 61. An excellent summary
of their character and history, by Mr. Shea, will be found in Hist. Mag.,
V. 262. ]

Journeying southward five days from the Tionnontate towns, the forest
traveller reached the border villages of the Attiwandarons, or Neutral
Nation. [ Attiwandarons, Attiwendaronk, Atirhagenrenrets, Rhagenratka
(Jesuit Relations), Attionidarons (Sagard). They, and not the Eries,
were the Kahkwas of Seneca tradition. ] As early as 1626, they were
visited by the Franciscan friar, La Roche Dallion, who reports a numerous
population in twenty-eight towns, besides many small hamlets. Their
country, about forty leagues in extent, embraced wide and fertile
districts on the north shore of Lake Erie, and their frontier extended
eastward across the Niagara, where they had three or four outlying towns.