---
title: "When the Neutral fell, the hunting ground opened"
slug: "when-the-neutral-fell-the-hunting-ground-opened"
url: "https://kyhistorydrive.com/stories/when-the-neutral-fell-the-hunting-ground-opened/"
era: "Native nations"
years: "1651–1750"
license: "CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)"
---

# When the Neutral fell, the hunting ground opened

> In the winter of 1650–51 Haudenosaunee war parties destroyed the Neutral Confederacy in Ontario, a shift that left Kentucky a contested hunting ground.

## At a glance

- **When:** 1651–1750

## The story

In the winter of 1650–51, after destroying the Huron towns, Haudenosaunee war parties overran the country of the Neutral (Attawandaron) in what is now southern Ontario. They burned villages and ended the Neutral Confederacy as a separate nation. Estimates put the Neutral population at roughly 12,000 before the attacks; epidemics in the 1640s had already cut their numbers. The campaign was one piece of the longer [Beaver Wars](https://grokipedia.com/page/Beaver_Wars), covered more broadly in the [Iroquois Beaver Wars](https://kyhistorydrive.com/stories/iroquois-beaver-wars/) story on this site.

The Neutral had lived between the Huron to the north and the Iroquois to the southeast, and had tried to stay out of the worst of the fighting—hence the French name. Once the Huron confederacy collapsed in 1648–50, that buffer was gone. Iroquois forces, armed with Dutch firearms and driven by both mourning-war captive-taking and the need for new beaver hunting grounds, turned on the Neutral and then on the [Erie](https://kyhistorydrive.com/stories/erie-the-cat-nation/).

By the mid-1650s both peoples had been broken as independent confederacies. Survivors were killed, scattered, or adopted into Iroquois towns.

With the Neutral and Erie gone, Iroquois power reached over the hunting ranges of former rivals. The upper Ohio Valley was left without large resident confederacies. In the following decades it was used as contested hunting ground—first by the Iroquois, later by the Shawnee, Cherokee, and others who moved into the gap. That is one reason maps of Kentucky from the mid-1600s to the early 1700s read as hunting territory rather than a land of large permanent towns.

Hunting parties still used those ranges after 1651; the change was who could claim them after the Neutral and Erie confederacies were broken, not whether the country stood empty.

This story is not a Kentucky battle and has no Kentucky map pin. The events took place in southern Ontario. Their consequence for Kentucky was indirect but lasting: the opening of the Ohio Valley hunting ground that later Native nations and, after them, colonial hunters and settlers moved through. The [Iroquois Beaver Wars](https://kyhistorydrive.com/stories/iroquois-beaver-wars/) story carries the wider arc through the Great Peace of Montreal in 1701 and the Iroquois claim sold at Fort Stanwix in 1768. This page stays on the Neutral collapse and the hunting-ground years that followed.

The Neutral fall was military and demographic at once. Epidemics in the 1640s had already thinned Neutral towns before the winter campaign of 1650–51; the attacks then killed many and carried survivors into Iroquois communities. French observers had called the Attawandaron “Neutral” because they tried to stay clear of the Huron–Iroquois fight; once that fight ended in Huron defeat, neutrality offered no protection.

## Kentucky today

These events took place in Ontario, so this story has no Kentucky map pin. Readers who want the Kentucky end of the Beaver Wars story—the Iroquois claim, the Shawnee dispute, and the Treaty of Fort Stanwix—should start with [Iroquois Beaver Wars](https://kyhistorydrive.com/stories/iroquois-beaver-wars/) and [Treaty of Fort Stanwix, 1768](https://kyhistorydrive.com/stories/treaty-of-fort-stanwix-1768/).

## Sources & research notes

### Sources

1. Grokipedia: Beaver Wars on Grokipedia [web] — https://grokipedia.com/page/Beaver_Wars

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Cite as: "When the Neutral fell, the hunting ground opened." Kentucky History Drive. https://kyhistorydrive.com/stories/when-the-neutral-fell-the-hunting-ground-opened/ Text licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.