former made excellent profit by exchanging French goods at high rates for
the valuable furs of the Neutrals.

[ The Hurons became very jealous, when La Roche Dallion visited the
Neutrals, lest a direct trade should be opened between the latter and the
French, against whom they at once put in circulation a variety of
slanders: that they were a people who lived on snakes and venom; that
they were furnished with tails; and that French women, though having but
one breast, bore six children at a birth. The missionary nearly lost his
life in consequence, the Neutrals conceiving the idea that he would
infect their country with a pestilence.--La Roche Dallion, in Le Clerc,
I. 346. ]

Southward and eastward of Lake Erie dwelt a kindred people, the Eries,
or Nation of the Cat. Little besides their existence is known of them.
They seem to have occupied Southwestern New York as far east as the
Genesee, the frontier of the Senecas, and in habits and language to have
resembled the Hurons. [ Ragueneau, Relation des Hurons, 1648, 46. ]
They were noted warriors, fought with poisoned arrows, and were long a
terror to the neighboring Iroquois.

[ Le Mercier, Relation, 1654, 10.--"Nous les appellons la Nation Chat,
a cause qu'il y a dans leur pais vne quantite prodigieuse de Chats
sauuages."--Ibid.--The Iroquois are said to have given the same name,
Jegosasa, Cat Nation, to the Neutrals.--Morgan, League of the Iroquois,
41.

Synonymes: Eries, Erigas, Eriehronon, Riguehronon. The Jesuits never
had a mission among them, though they seem to have been visited by
Champlain's adventurous interpreter, Etienne Brule, in the summer of