made use of hamlets, agricultural field cabins, specialized camps ... and cemeteries. Another source describes the Neutrals as a "hunter-gatherer society who lived in longhouses that sheltered multiple families". Research conducted by anthropologist Mary Jackes states that they remained neutral "in the conflicts between the Iroquois from south of the Great Lakes and the Ontario Iroquoians who lived to the north" and thrived through active trading instead of war, although the Huron nation aggressively worked to prevent trade between the Neutrals and the French. The chief of 28 villages, villas, and towns in the last years of the Neutral confederacy was named Tsouharissen or Souharissen ("Child of the Sun") who led several raids against the Mascouten (or "The Fire Nation"), who lived in territory in present-day Michigan and Ohio. A 1627 report called him the chief of all of the nation (Neutrals). Tsouharissen died around 1646. Within a generation (by the early 1670s), all of the nearby first nations, the Erie, the Huron, Neutrals, Tobacco tribes, and even the fierce Susquehannocks would all fall between rampaging epidemic diseases or in the bloody Beaver Wars between themselves and/or to the last tribe standing with any significant military power, the Iroquois. Flintworking and trade The Neutrals were able to access Onondaga chert due to the presence of the Onondaga Limestone formation in their lands. In prehistory, it was used as tool stone for arrowheads, bifaces, and other weapons and tools. This extended into the protohistoric and historic periods, and has been documented at sites associated with the Onondaga, Oneida, and St. Lawrence Iroquoians. It was superior for toolmaking to other local chert varieties around the St. Lawrence Lowlands. That important resource was used to make spearheads and arrowheads and so gave the Neutrals the power to maintain their neutrality. Once the neighbours began receiving firearms through trade with the Europeans, however, the possession of the flint grounds was much less of an advantage. Flints were still used in trade for the flintlocks on guns. The Neutral continued to trade commodities such as maize, tobacco, and black squirrel and other high-grade furs for steel axes, glass beads, cloaks, conch shells, gourd containers, and firearms. Language Records left by Jesuit priests in the 1600s indicate that the Neutral language was similar to Huron and so was a dialect of Iroquoian. They believed that all three groups had once been a part of a single