Thus it would seem that this was a mere title of convenience used to indicate a certain fact, namely, a difference of language. The other substitute by which the nation was best known among their white brethren will be understood by an extract from a letter contained in the same "Relations," and written from St. Mary's Mission on the river Severn, by Father Lalement. In it he gives an account of a journey made by the Fathers Jean de Brebeuf and Joseph Marie Chaumont to the country of the _Neuter Nation_, as the Niagaras were called by the Hurons on the north and the Iroquois on the south of them, learning it, as they did, from the French. The letter says: "Our French, who first discovered this people, named them the _Neuter Nation_, and not without reason, for their country being the ordinary passage by land, between some of the Iroquois nations and the Hurons, who are sworn enemies, they remained at peace with both; so that in times past the Hurons and the Iroquois, meeting in the same wigwam or village of that nation, were both in safety while they remained. There are some things in which they differ from our Hurons. They are larger, stronger, and better formed. They also entertain a great affection for the dead. * * * The Sonontonheronons [Senecas], one of the Iroquois nations the nearest to and most dreaded by the Hurons, are not more than a day's journey distant from the easternmost village of the Neuter Nation, named Onguiaahra [Niagara], of the same name as the river." It would seem, then, that this name, Neuter Nation, as applied to this tribe, was an appellation used merely to indicate a peculiarity of its location, or of the relation in which it stood to the hostile tribes living to the north and south of it. The Indians, it is needless to say, were not philologists, and seem not to have objected to the names applied to them, nor to have criticised the erroneous pronunciation of words of their own dialects. In the extract given above, the name of our river first appears in type. Its orthography will be noted as peculiar. It is one of forty different ways of spelling the name, thirty-nine of which are given in the index volume of the Colonial History of New York, and the fortieth, the most pertinent to our present purpose, in Drake's "Book of the Indians," seventh edition. Prefixed to "Book First" is a "Table of the Principal Tribes," in which we find the following: "Nicariagas, once about Michilimakinak; joined the Iroquois in 1723."