In 1616, the Neutral Nation was estimated to have 40 villages and 4,000 warriors. In 1641, after a serious epidemic, the Jesuits counted 40 Neutral villages, with about 12,000 people. During the late 16th and the early 17th centuries, the territory of the "Attawandaron", as they were called by the Huron Nation, was mostly within the limits of present-day southern Ontario. The Museum of Ontario Archaeology summarizes that territory as follows: they "inhabited dozens of villages in Southwestern Ontario stretching along the north shore of Lake Erie from the Niagara Peninsula to the Detroit River, perhaps as far north as Toronto in the east and Goderich in the west." They had population concentrations on the Niagara Peninsula and in the vicinity of the present-day communities of Hamilton and Milton, Ontario. In addition to this main territory there was a single population cluster to the east, across the Niagara River, near modern-day Buffalo, New York, which was just west of the Wenro people. Souharissen was the warrior chief who lived in a village called Ounontisatan, which was visited by the French in 1625-1626, and reached a trade agreement with the Neutral people, who then received protection from Souharissen. The "principal headman" took on and defeated the "Fire" Nation in what is now Michigan. The Recollect priest Joseph de la Roche Daillon lived with him for five months in the winter of 1626–1627. Daillon visited 28 Neutral villages, including the capital, which came to be known as Notre Dame de Angels. The fertile flats of the various oxbows that Big Creek, three miles from its mouth at Grand River make, are ideal for a long-term settlement pattern. Noble even uses the term "Neutralia" to designate th e concentration of Iroquoian-speaking natives. Douglas Reville's "The History of the County of Brant" (1920) stated that the hunting grounds of the Attawandaron ranged from Genesee Falls and Sarnia and south of a line drawn from Toronto to Goderich.  Étienne Brûlé passed through the Attawandaron territory in 1615.but left no documentation of his presence. Daillon conducted a missionary journey in Neutral territory in 1626. Jean de Brébeuf and Pierre-Joseph-Marie Chaumonot visited eighteen villages of the Neutrals in 1640–1641 and gave each of them a Christian name.