This group was called the Attawandaron by the Hurons, meaning "people of a slightly different language".
Their territory was almost entirely in southern Ontario, save for three or four villages to the east, across the Niagara River in New York State; their western border was about Lake St. Clair and the St. Clair River, their southern the north shore of Lake Erie, and the northern approximately a line drawn between modern Oakville, Ontario and Hillsboro, Ontario.
They possessed about forty villages.
The name Niagara comes from the Neutral word Onghiar (pronounced on-ge-ara), meaning "thunder of waters"
They were called Neutrals because they were neutral between the warring Huron and Iroquois peoples. During the Beaver Wars, the Iroquois exterminated the Neutral tribe in the year 1651.
Like those of the Hurons, the lodges of the Neutrals were formed like arbours or bowers, covered with the bark of trees, 25 to 30 fathoms long and 6 to 8 in breadth, and had a passage running through the middle, 10 or 12 feet wide, from one end to the other.
This seeming rupture of the traditional neutrality existing between the Iroquois and the Neutrals caused the latter to prepare for war, and for a time both sides were on the alert and stood defiant.
The entire conquest of the Neutrals in 1650-51 was the result of this war, and some remnants of the Neutral tribes were incorporated chiefly with the Seneca villages in New York.
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