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Beaver Wars
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The Beaver Wars, also called the Iroquois Wars or the French and Iroquois Wars, commonly refer to a brutal series of conflicts fought in the mid-17th century in eastern North America. Encouraged and armed by their Dutch and English trading partners, the Iroquois sought to expand their territory and monopolize the fur trade and the trade between European markets and the tribes of the western Great Lakes region.
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The Beaver Wars, also called the Iroquois Wars or the French and Iroquois Wars, commonly refer to a brutal series of conflicts fought in the mid-17th century in eastern North America. Encouraged and armed by their Dutch and English trading partners, the Iroquois sought to expand their territory and monopolize the fur trade and the trade between European markets and the tribes of the western Great Lakes region. The conflict pitted the nations of the Iroquois Confederation, led by the dominant Mohawk, against the French backed and largely Algonquian-speaking tribes of the Great Lakes region.
The wars were extremely brutal and are considered one of the bloodiest series of conflicts in the history of North America. The resultant enlargement of Iroquois territory realigned the tribal geography of North America, destroying several large tribal confederacies—including the Hurons, Neutrals, Eries, and Susquehannocks—and pushing some eastern tribes west of the Mississippi River. The Ohio country and the Lower Peninsula of Michigan were virtually emptied of Native people, as refugees fled west to escape Iroquois warriors. (This region would be repopulated by these same Ohio people not long after, although generally in multi-ethnic indigenous "republics" rather than homogeneous, discrete "tribes".)
Both Algonquian and Iroquoian societies were greatly disturbed by these wars. The conflict subsided with the loss by the Iroquois of their Dutch allies in the New Netherland colony, and with a growing French desire to seek the Iroquois as an ally against English encroachment. Subsequently, the Iroquois became trading partners with the English, which became a crucial component of their later expansion using the Iroquois conquests as a claim to the old Northwest.
Origins
Written records for the St. Lawrence valley begin with the voyages of Jacques Cartier in the 1540s. Cartier tells of encounters with the St. Lawrence Iroquoians, also known as the Stadaconans or Laurentians, occupying several fortified villages, including Stadacona and Hochelaga. Cartier records that the Stadaconans were at war with another tribe known as the Toudamans who had destroyed one of their forts the previous year, resulting in 200 deaths. Continental wars and politics distracted further French efforts at colonization in the St. Lawrence Valley until the beginning of the 17th century. When the French returned, they were surprised to find that the sites of both Stadacona and Hochelaga were abandoned—completely destroyed by an unknown enemy.
Some historians have attempted to implicate the Iroquois Confederacy in the destruction of Stadacona and Hochelaga, but there is little evidence to support that claim. Iroquois oral tradition, as recorded in the Jesuit Relations, speaks of a draining war between the Mohawk Iroquois and an alliance of the Susquehannocks and Algonquins sometime between 1580 and 1600. Thus, when the French reappeared on the scene in 1601, the St. Lawrence Valley had already witnessed generations of blood-feud-style warfare. Indeed, when Samuel de Champlain landed at Tadoussac on the St. Lawrence, he and his small company of French adventurers were almost immediately recruited by the Montagnais, Algonquins and Hurons to assist them in attacking their enemies.
Before 1603, Champlain had formed an offensive alliance against the Iroquois. Its rational was commercial, the Canadian Indians were the French source of peltry and the Iroquois interfered with that trade. The first encounter was a battle in 1609 fought on Champlain's initiative. He wrote "I had come with no other intention than to make war". Champlain fought in the company of his Algonquin allies a pitched battle with the Iroquois on the shores of Lake Champlain. Champlain himself killed three Iroquois chiefs with an arquebus. In 1610, Champlain and his arquebus-wielding French companions helped the Algonquins and Hurons defeat a large Iroquois raiding party. In 1615, Champlain joined a Huron raiding party and took part in a siege on an Iroquois town, probably among the Onondagas. The extended attack ultimately failed, and Champlain was injured in the attempt.
In 1610 the Dutch established a trading post on the edge of Iroquois territory giving them direct access to European markets and removing their need for reliance on the French and the tribes who functioned as middlemen in the trading of goods. The new post offered valuable tools that the Iroqouis could receive in exchange for animal pelts. This began the Iroquois' large scale hunting for furs.
At this time of the conflict began to quickly grow between the Iroquois and the Indians who were supported by the French. The Iroquois inhabited a region of present-day New York south of Lake Ontario and west of the Hudson River. The Iroquois lands comprised an ethnic island, surrounded on all sides by Algonquian-speaking Nations, including the Shawnee to the west in the Ohio Country, as well as by the Iroquoian-speaking Huron and Neutral Confederacies who lived on the southern shore of Lake Huron and the western shore of Lake Ontario respectively, who were not part of the Iroquois Confederation.
In 1628, after the Mohawks defeated the Mahicans and had established a monopoly of trade with the Dutch at Fort Orange,New Netherland, the Iroquois, and in particular the Mohawk, had come to rely on the trade for the purchase of firearms and other European goods for their lively hood and survival. By the 1630s, the Iroquois had become fully armed with European weaponry through their trade with the Dutch, and they began to use their growing expertise with the arquebus to good effect in their continuing wars with the Algonquins, Hurons, and other traditional enemies. The French, meanwhile, had outlawed the trading of firearms to their native allies, though arquebuses were occasionally given as gifts to individuals who converted to Christianity. Although the initial focus of the Iroquois attacks were their traditional enemies (the Algonquins, Mahicans, Montagnais, and Hurons), the alliance of these tribes with the French quickly brought the Iroquois into fierce and bloody conflict with the European colonists themselves.
The introduction of firearms, however, had accelerated the decline of the beaver population such that by 1640 the animal had largely disappeared from the Hudson Valley. Some historians have argued that the wars were accelerated by the growing scarcity of the beaver in the lands controlled by the Iroquois in the middle 17th century. The center of the fur trade thus shifted northward to the colder regions of present day southern Ontario, which was controlled amongst others by the Neutrals; as well as by the Hurons, who were the close trading partners of the French in New France. The Iroquois found themselves displaced in the fur trade by other nations in the region. Threatened by disease and with a declining population, the Iroquois began an aggressive campaign to expand their area of control.
Conflict
The Iroquois source of furs began to decline in the late 1630s leading to several conquests of their smaller neighbors. The Wenro were attacked in 1638 and all of their territory taken by the Iroquois. The remnants of their tribe fled to the Hurons for refuge. The Wenro had served as a buffer between the Iroquois and the Neutral tribe and their Erie allies. The two tribes were considerably larger and more powerful than the Iroquois, making further expansion to the west impossible at that time, so the Iroquois turned their attention to the north. The Iroquois were encouraged by the Dutch in New Netherlands to follow this course of action. At that time, the Dutch were the Iroquois' primary European trading partners, with their good passing through Dutch trading posts down the Hudson River and from there sent to back to Europe. As the Iroquois' sources of furs declined, so did the income of the trading posts.
In 1641, the Mohawks traveled to Trois Rivieres in New France to propose peace with the French and their allied tribes and requested that the French set up a trading post in Iroquoia. Governor Montmagny rejected this proposal because it would imply abandonment of their Huron allies. The war began in earnest in the early 1640s with Iroquois attacks on frontier Huron villages along the St. Lawrence River, with the intent of disrupting the Huron trade with the French. The disruption reached such a level that in 1645 the French called the tribes together to negotiate a treaty to end the conflict. Two Iroquois leaders, Deganaweida and Koiseaton, traveled to New France to take part in the negotiations. The French agreed to most of the Iroquois demands, granting them trading rights in New France. The next summer a fleet of eighty canoes carrying a large harvest of furs traveled through Iroquois territory to be sold in New France. Upon arriving, the French refused to purchase the furs and instead told the Iroquois they must sell them to Huron, who would act as a middleman. The Iroquois were outraged and the war resumed.
The French were disturbed by the return to warfare and decided to become directly involved in the conflict. The Huron and the Iroquois had similar access to manpower, each tribe having and estimated 25,000–30,000 members. To gain the upper hand the Huron and the Susqehannocks formed an alliance to counter the Iroquois aggression in 1647. The new combination had the Iroquois greatly outnumbered. The Huron tried to break the Iroquois Confederacy by negotiating separate peaces with the Onondaga and the Cayuga, but the other tribes intercepted their messengers, putting an end to the negotiations. The summer of 1647 saw several small skirmishes between the tribes. In 1648 a more significant battle occurred when the two Algonquin tribes attempted to pass a fur convoy through an Iroquois blockade. Their attempt succeeded and the Iroquois suffered high casualties.
The Iroquois used the immediate years that followed to strengthen their confederacy to work more closely together and put together an effective central leadership. Although the workings of their government remain largely unknown, by the 1660s the five Iroquois ceased fighting among themselves. They also came to be able to easily coordinate military and economic plans between all five tribes, further strengthening themselves and in so doing achieving a level of government more advanced than the surrounding tribes' more decentralized forms of control.
Although such raids were by no means constant, when they occurred they were terrifying to the inhabitants of New France, and the colonists initially felt helpless to prevent them. Some of the heroes of French-Canadian folk memory are of individuals who stood up to such attacks, such as Dollard des Ormeaux, who died in May 1660 while resisting an Iroquois raiding force at the Long Sault at the confluence of the St. Lawrence and the Ottawa Rivers. According to legend he succeeded in saving Montreal by his actions. Another such hero was Madeleine de Verchères, who in 1692 at age 14, led the defense of her family farm against Iroquois attack. The French refused to make peace with the Iroquois, as they came increasingly to see them as pawns of the Dutch and English.
Defeat of the Huron
In 1648, the Dutch authorized the direct sale of guns to the Mohawks rather than through traders, after which four hundred guns were promptly sold. Using the new arms the Iroquois sent one thousand warriors secretly through the woods to the Huron territory. Once winter came, the warriors came together and launched a devastating attack into the heart of Huron territory, destroying several key villages killing and assimilating thousands. Among the casualties were the Jesuit missionaries Jean Brebeuf, Charles Garnier, and Gabriel Lallemant—all of whom are considered martyrs of the Roman Catholic Church. Following these attacks, the remaining Huron fled their territory to seek assistance from the Anishinaabeg Confederacy in the northern Great Lakes, leaving the Odaawaa Nation (Ottawa) who were able to at least temporarily halt Iroquois expansion further north-west. With the Huron dealt with, there was no longer any native tribes between the Iroquois and the French settlements in Canada, and the Iroquois now controlled a fur rich region.
European diseases had taken their toll on the Iroquois and their neighbors in the years preceding the war, and their populations had drastically declined. To remedy the problem, and to replace lost warriors, the Iroquois worked to integrate many of their captured enemy into their own tribes. They worked diligently to keep their captured enemies happy, including inviting Jesuits into their territory to teach those who had converted to Christianity. On priest recorded, "As far as I can divine, It is the design of the Iroquois to capture all the Huron...put the Chiefs to death...and with the rest to form one nation and country." The Jesuits made quick work among the Iroquois, and many converted to Catholicism, their role would play an important part in the years to come.
In the early 1650s, the Iroquois began to attack the French. Some of the Iroquois Nations, notably the Oneida and Onondaga, had peaceful relations with the French but were under control of the Mohawk, who were the strongest nation in the Confederation and were hostile to the French presence. After a failed peace treaty negotiated by Chief Canaqueese, Iroquois war parties moved north into New France along the Lake Champlain and the Richelieu River, attacking and blockading Montreal. Typically a raid on an isolated farm or settlement consisted of a war party moving swiftly and silently through the woods, swooping down suddenly, and wielding a tomahawk and a scalping knife to attack the inhabitants. In many cases, prisoners were brought back to the Iroquois homelands and were incorporated into the nations.
Defeat of the Erie and Neutral
Using a strategy of stealth attacks similar to those that had such success against the Huron, the Iroquois launched an attack on the Neutral in 1650 and by the end of 1651 they had completely driven the tribe out of their territory, killing and assimilating thousands. At the time, the Neutrals inhabited a territory on the present day Niagara Peninsula. In 1654 a similar attack was launched against the Erie, but with less success. The war between the Erie and the Iroquois lasted for two years, but by the 1656 the Iroquois had almost completely destroyed the Erie confederacy who refused to flee to the west. The Erie territory was located on the southeastern shore of Lake Erie and was estimated to have 12,000 members in 1650. The Iroquois where greatly outnumbered by the tribes they had subdued and it was only through the firearms they had been able to purchase from the Dutch that they had been able to so easily overcome their neighbors.
Defeat of the Susqehannocks
With the tribes to the north and west destroyed, the Iroquois turned their attention southward to the Susqehannocks. 1660 marked the zenith of Iroquois military power, and they were able to use that to their advantage in the decades to follow. The Susqehannocks had become allied with the English in the Maryland colony in 1661. The English had grown fearful of the Iroquois and hoped an alliance with Susqehannocks would help block their advance on the English colonies. In 1663 the Iroquois sent an army of eight hundred warriors into the Susqehannock territory, the army was easily repulsed, but the aggression caused Maryland to declare war on the Iroquois. The English supplied artillery for Susqehannock forts, making it impossible for the Iroquois to triumph by superior arms. The Susqehannocks easily took the upper hand and began a series of incursions into the Iroquois territory causing significant damage. This continued until 1674 when the English changed their Indian Policy, negotiated peace with the Iroquois, and terminated their alliance with the Susqehannocks. In 1675 the militias of Virginia and Maryland captured and executed the chiefs of the Susqehannocks who's growing power they had come to fear. The Iroquois made quick work of the rest of the nation, quickly driving them out of their territory.
French counterattack
The Iroquois continued to control the countryside of New France, raiding right up to the edge of the walled settlements of Quebec and Montreal. In May of 1660 an Iroquois force of 160 warriors attacked Montreal capturing 17 colonists. A second attack on the city by 250 warriors the following year captured another 10. They led several raids in 1661 and 1662 against the Abenakis who were allied with the French. This danger in the heart of New France was a major factor in the French Crown ordering a change to the governing of Canada. A small military force was put together to counter the Iroquois raids made up of Frenchman, Huron, and Algonquins. They moved out into the countryside were they attacked by the Iroquois. Only 29 of the French survived and escaped. Five were captured and tortured to death by the Iroquois in retaliation for the attack. Despite their victory, the battle caused a significant number of causalities on the Iroquois leading some of their leader to begin to consider peace with the French.
The tide of war in New France began to turn in the mid 1660s with the arrival of a small contingent of regular troops from France, the brown-uniformed Carignan-Salières Regiment—the first group of uniformed professional soldiers to set foot on what is today Canadian soil. The administration of New France changed in that period and so did their policy toward their Indian allies, mainly through the direct sale of arms and other forms of direct military support. In 1664, the Dutch allies of the Iroquois lost control of the New Netherland colony to the English in the south. The Iroquois' European support waned in the immediate years after the Dutch defeat.
In January 1666, the French invaded the Iroquois homeland. The first invasion force was led by Danielde Remy, Sueir de Courcelle. His men found themselves greatly outnumber by the Iroquois and were forced to withdraw before any significant action could take place. The second invasion force was led by the aristocrat Alexandre de Prouville the "Marquis de Tracy" and viceroy of New France, they encountered little resistance while invading Iroquoia as many of their warriors were engaged fighting the Susqehannocks. Although the invasion was abortive, they took Chief Canaqueese prisoner. With their immediate European support cut off, the Iroquois sued for peace to which France agreed.
Ohio and Illinois Country
Once peace was established with the French, the Iroquois returned to their westward conquest in their continued attempt to take control of all the land between the Algonquins and the French. As a result of Iroquois expansion and war with the Anishinaabeg Confederacy, eastern Nations such as the Lakota were pushed across the Mississippi onto the Great Plains, adopting the nomadic lifestyle for which they later became well known. Other refugees flooded the Great Lakes area, resulting in a conflict with existing nations in the region. In the Ohio Country the Shawnee and Miami tribes were the dominate tribes. The Iroquois quickly overran Shawnee holdings in central Ohio forcing them to flee into Miami territory. The Miami were a powerful tribe and brought together a confederacy of their neighboring allies including the Pottawatomie who inhabited modern Michigan and the Illinois tribe who inhabited the modern Illinois. The vast majority of the fighting was between this Anishininaabeg Confederacy and the Iroquois Confederacy.
The Iroquois improved on their stealth attack techniques as they continued to attack even farther from their home. They would man a large fleet of canoes and speed down river in the darkness, they would sink their canoes and hold them to the bottom with rock to conceal them and proceed into the woods around their target. Then at the appointed time they would burst from the wood in all directions to cause the greatest panic among their enemy. They could then return quickly to their boats and return from where they came before any significant resistance could be put together. Without firearms the Algonquin tribes were at a severe disadvantage. Despite their larger numbers, they were unable to withstand the Iroquois. Several tribes ultimately fled west beyond the Mississippi River leaving much of Indiana, Ohio, southern Michigan, and southern Ontario depopulated, although leaving in place several large Anishinaabe military forces, numbering in the thousands to the north of Lakes Huron and Superior, which would later prove to be decisive in rolling back the Iroquois advance. From west of the Mississippi, displaced groups continued to arm war parties and attempt to retake their homeland.
Beginning in the 1670s the French began to explore the Ohio and Illinois Country. There they discovered the Algonquin tribes of that region where locked in warfare with the Iroquois. The French established the post of Tassinong to trade with the western tribes, but it was destroyed by the Iroquois who insisted on controlling trade between the tribes and the Europeans. In 1681 René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle negotiated a treaty with the Miami and Illinois tribes. The same year France lifted the ban on the sale of firearms to the native tribes. They were able to quickly arm the Algonquin tribes, evening the odds between the Iroquois and their enemies.
During a raid into the Illinois Country in 1689, the Iroquois took a large number of prisoners and destroyed a sizable Miami settlement. The Miami were able to quickly call for help from others in the Anishinaabeg Confederacy and a large force was put together to track down the Iroquois. Using their new firearms the Confederacy laid an ambush near modern South Bend, Indiana where they attacked and destroyed most of the Iroquois army. Although a large part of the region was left depopulated, the Iroquois were unable to establish a permanent presence. Their own tribe lacked the manpower to colonize the large area. After their setbacks, and after the local tribes gained firearms, the Iroquois' brief control over the region was lost and the former inhabitants of the territory began to return.
Resumption of war with France
As the English began to move into the former Dutch territory they began to form close ties with the Iroquois and sought to use them in much the same way the Dutch had, as a buffer and force to hinder the French colonial expansion. They soon began to supply the Iroquois with firearms much as the Dutch had and encouraged them to disrupt French interests. With the renewal of hostilities the local militia of New France was stiffened after 1683 by a small force of regular troops of the French navy, the Compagnies Franches de la Marine. The latter were to constitute the longest-serving unit of French regular force troops in New France. The men came to identify themselves with the colony over the years, while the officer corps became completely Canadianized. Thus in a sense these troops can be identified as Canada's first standing professional armed force. Officers' commissions both in the militia and in the Compagnie Franches became much coveted positions amongst the socially eminent of the colony. The militia together with members of the Compagnie Franches, dressed in the manner of their Algonquin Indian allies, came to specialize in that swift and mobile brand of warfare termed la petite guerre, that was characterized by long and silent expeditions through the forests and sudden and violent descents upon enemy encampments and settlements—the same kind of warfare that was practiced against them by the Iroquois.
In September 1687 another invasion was launched with three thousand militia and regulars. They proceeded down the Richelieu River and marched through Iroquois territory a second time. Unable to find an Iroquois army, they resorted to burning their crops and homes, destroying an estimated 1.2 million bushels of corn. Many Iroquois died from starvation in the following winter In 1689 the Iroquois moved into New France to launch a series of reprisal attacks, including what became known as the Massacre of Lachine. The Iroquois where able to breach the gates of Montreal and killed several colonists and burned large stores of goods before escaping into the countryside. The war between the French and Iroquois resumed in 1683 after the Governor Louis de Buade, Comte de Frontenac, attempted to enrich his own fortune by pursuing the western fur-trade with a new aggressiveness, which adversely affected the growing activities of the Iroquois in this area. This time the war lasted ten years and was as bloody as the first.
During King William's War, the French urged the Indians to attack the English colonial settlements in the same way that the English had been encouraging the Iroquois. Some of the most notable of these raids in 1690 were the Schenectady massacre in the Province of New York, Salmon Falls, New Hampshire, and Portland, Maine. As in the Iroquois raids, the inhabitants were either indiscriminately slaughtered or carried away captive.
Great Peace of Montreal
Finally in 1698, the Iroquois began to see the English as becoming a greater threat than the French. The English had begun colonizing Pennsylvania in 1681, the continued colonial growth there began to encroach on the southern border of the Iroquois territory. The French policy began to change towards the Iroquois. After nearly 50 years of warfare, they began to believe that it would be impossible to ever destroy them. They decided that befriending the Iroquois would be the easiest way to ensure their monopoly on the northern fur trade and help stop English expansion. As soon as the English heard of the treaty they immediately set about to prevent it from being agreed to. It would result in the loss of Albany's monopoly on the fur trade with the Iroquois and without their protection the northern flank, of the English colonies were be open to French attack. Despite English interference the treaty was agreed to.
The peace treaty, Great Peace of Montreal was signed in 1701 in Montreal by 39 Indian chiefs, the French and the English. In the treaty, the Iroquois agreed to stop marauding and to allow refugees from the Great Lakes to return east. The Shawnee eventually regained control of the Ohio Country and the lower Allegheny River. The Miami tribe returned to take control of modern Indiana and north-west Ohio. The Pottawatomie to Michigan, and the Illinois tribe to Illinois. With the Dutch long removed from North America, the English had become just as powerful as the French. The Iroquois came to see that they held the balance of power between the two European powers and they used that position to their benefit for the decades to come. Their society began to quickly change as the tribes began to focus on building up a strong nation, improving their farming technology, and educating their population. The peace was lasting and it would not be until the 1720s that their territory would again be threatened by the Europeans.
Aftermath
Through various European treaties, the English control over the Iroquois and their territory had been recognized before the war had ended. Because of this, the English exaggerated the extent of Iroquois control in the west as a means to dispute French control of the Illinois and Ohio country. In 1768 several colonies officially purchased the "Iroquois claim" to the Ohio and Illinois Country. The colonies created the Indiana Land Company to hold the claim to all of the Northwest, and it maintained a claim to the region using the Iroquois right of conquest until the company was dissolved by the United States Supreme Court in 1798.
Because a large part of the conflict between the native tribes took place far beyond the frontier and in locations that had yet to have European contact, the full extent and impact of the war is unknown. Most knowledge of the western parts of the conflict comes through the accounts of French explorers and the tribes they encountered during the early years of exploration. Even the effects in the eastern regions are not fully known as large parts of the region there still remained unexplored and the tribes who inhabited the regions did not have direct contact with Europeans.
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