Grand River Rafting Blogs and Legends

To understand what happen to the Neutral Attawandaron, a chronological time chart of their records reveals the narrow time window in which this powerful Nation fell. In southern Ontario one can do a floating classroom rafting trip on the Grand River to learn more. 1615 Etienne Brule was held captive and released by Five Nations to the Neutrals. He lived among the Neutrals a short time. 1616 Champlain states over 4,000 Neutral warriors came against the Mascoutens. 1623 Neutral attack a Huron village 1625 Etienne Brule returned among the Neutrals and had a wife within the Neutrals… his daughter may have been a medicine woman. 1626 Dallion lived among Neutrals for a couple of months, made a diction of the language, but was brought back under guard because Neutral were going to kill him 1629 Neutral population was equal to the combined population of Hurons & Five Nations combined. The Neutrals were twice as large as the Erie

The mourning for the dead among the Neutral Attawandarons fascinated the French priests of 1620’s. They commented on how the Neutrals would keep the body or bones as long as possible. If winter, the body was often kept in view within the longhouse until decomposition almost made them insupportable. Then the bodies were placed on drying racks outside. When most of the flesh was gone, the larger bones and skull were scraped clean and polished... kept on display in the longhouse until the “Feast of the Dead”. The mourning was done by the women on a daily bases. They would blacken their faces. Corpses were often tattooed, adorned with feathers and favored trinkets. Any food dropped on the floor of the longhouse was always left for the dead. For some there was a resurrection ceremony. If a prominent warrior was killed in battle, the personality of the dead one was assigned to another by a council. They would choose someone of similar age and character. At this resurrection

Lady Elizabeth Simcoe's 200 year old diary creates a "word-picture" of Southern Ontario, foreign to all of us. If wishing to experience that world contact us at Grand River Rafting . As Governor Simcoe's wife, she dwelt in a world of elite social evening parties... but by day explored and experienced the 1790 wilderness of Southern Ontario. From her entries, I know this is a woman I would have enjoyed meeting. One of her strange wishes was to have a forest deliberately set on fire, so that she could stroll through it. She talks about how she enjoys walking through local forests that are burning... she loves the smell of the fire, it keeps the mosquitoes away and delights in watching burning torches erupt from hollow trees. When was the last time we had a forest fire in this area? She is fascinated with seeing wildlife. She visits the homes of dignitaries with local collections of live or stuffed animals, reptiles and birds. She states that Indians use blunt arrows so

It is June 1868... and one of my great grandfathers is one minute away from death. This is the narrow escape as told by Paul Huffman of the Kelvin Northfield area. It was about 9 am. I tied my horse to a pair of bob sleighs and had just walked into the upper part of my brother-in-laws steam sawmill... when an explosion ripped through the building. In a daze I stumbled out into a smoke of human cries. My nephew was trying to get up, his one leg entirely torn off and the other broken. My niece Jane, laid limp, her neck snapped. Ferris, the steam engineer (fireman) was naked and totally scalded... trying to get himself out of the rubbish. Without waiting to see how many were dead, I jumped on my horse and galloped out. People were running in from the road. I ran the horse about 5 miles to a doctor. On getting off, my whole leg was covered in blood. I discovered the poor animal had three broken ribs and a deep foot long gash. It had bled a stream all the way to the doctor's house. Wh