" Lelawala "

A woman's name to represent the First Nations women that populated this area before European contact.

This region has been a place of human habitation for millennia. Queenston itself has been defined by its relationship to the Niagara River for millenia. Indigenous peoples identified the Queenston waterfront and the Willowbank ravine specifically as an important terminus on the river. The mouth of the ravine was the logical starting point for a portage route that would bypass the falls. Archaeological remnants on the Willowbank site, have been found dating to the Archaic period, over 9000 years ago.

The Neutral Confederacy was a political and cultural union of Iroquoian nations. What the Neutral called themselves is not known, but the French named them “la nation neutre” because of their refusal to become involved in the longstanding hostilities between the Huron and the Iroquois. Their descendants are believed to reside in the present-day Six Nations or Haudenosaunee Confederacy.

(Note the difference between the terms "Iroquois," denoting the Six Nations, and "Iroquoian," denoting the broader linguistic family.)_1

For more information on Lelawala visit;

http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/neutral/

_1 Allen Hughes, "On the meaning of Niagara"