sted the dictionary
and rules of the Huron language to that of these tribes (the Neutrals),
and accomplished a work which alone was worth a journey of several years
in the country."

Hurons from the mission of La Conception volunteered to go to the
relief of the daring travellers. After eight days of travel and
fatigue in the woods the priests and the relief party arrived at Ste.
Marie on the very day of St. Joseph, patron of the country, in time to
say mass, which they had not been able to say since their departure.

Amongst the eighteen villages visited by them, only one, that of
Khioetoa, called by the fathers Saint Michel, gave them the audience
their embassy merited. In this village, years before, driven by fear of
their enemies, had taken refuge a certain foreign nation, "which lived
beyond Erie or the Cat Nation," named Aouenrehronon. It was in this
nation that the fathers performed the first baptism of adults. These
were probably a portion of the kindred Neutral tribe referred to above
as having fled to the Huron country from the Iroquois. Their original
home was in the State of New York. Sanson's map shows S. Michel a
little east of where Sandwich now stands.

Owing to their scanty number and the calumnies circulated amongst the
Indians respecting the Jesuits of the Huron Mission the latter resolved
to concentrate their forces. The Neutral mission was abandoned, but
Christian Indians visited the Neutrals in 1643 and spread the faith
amongst them with a success which elicits Lalemant's enthusiastic
praises. Towards the end of the following winter a band of about 500
Neutrals visited the Hurons. The fathers did not fail to avail
themselves of their opportunity. The visitors were instructed in the
faith and expressed their regret that their teachers could not return
with them. A different reception from that experienced by Brebeuf and
Chaumonot three years before was promised.

Lalemant relates that in the summer of 1643, 2,000 Neutrals invaded the
country of the Nation of Fire and attacked a village strongly fortified
with a palisade, and defended stoutly by 900 warriors. After a ten
days' siege, they carried it by storm, killed a large number on the
spot, and carried off 800 captives, men, women and children, after
burning 70 of the most warlike and blinding the eyes and "girdling the
mouths" of the old men, whom they left to drag out a miserable
existence. He reports the Nation of Fire as more populous than