Beaver Wars
The Beaver Wars, also known as the Iroquois Wars or the French and Iroquois Wars, were a series of conflicts fought intermittently during the 17th century in North America throughout the Saint Lawrence River valley in Canada and the Great Lakes region which pitted the Iroquois — with the active support and arming by the Dutch and English — against the Wendat, northern Algonquians and their French allies.
As a result of this conflict, the Iroquois destroyed several confederacies and tribes through warfare: the Wendat or Hurons, Erie, Neutral, Wenro, Petun, Susquehannock, Mohican and northern Algonquins whom they defeated and dispersed, some fleeing to neighbouring peoples and others assimilated, routed, or killed. The extreme brutality and exterminatory nature of the mode of warfare practised by the Iroquois has led some historians to label these wars as acts of genocide committed by the Iroquois Confederacy.
The Iroquois sought to expand their territory to monopolize the fur trade with European markets. They originally were a confederacy of the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca tribes inhabiting the lands in what is now Upstate New York along the shores of Lake Ontario east to Lake Champlain and Lake George on the Hudson River, and the lower-estuary of the Saint Lawrence River. The Iroquois Confederation led by the Mohawks mobilized against the largely Algonquian-speaking tribes and Iroquoian-speaking Wendat and related tribes of the Great Lakes region. The Iroquois were supplied with arms by their Dutch and English trading partners; the Algonquians and Wendat were backed by the French, their chief trading partner. The Iroquois became dominant in the region and enlarged their territory as a result of the wars, realigning the American tribal geography. The Iroquois gained control of the New England frontier and Ohio River valley lands as hunting ground from about 1670 onward.
Both Algonquian and Iroquoian societies were greatly disrupted by these wars. The conflict subsided when the Iroquois lost their Dutch allies in the colony of New Netherland after the English took it over in 1664, along with Fort Amsterdam and the town of New Amsterdam on the island of Manhattan. The French then attempted to gain the Iroquois as an ally against the English, but the Iroquois refused to break their alliance, and frequently fought against the French in the 18th century. The Anglo-Iroquois alliance would reach its zenith during the French and Indian War of 1754, which saw the French being largely expelled from North America.
The wars and subsequent commercial trapping of beavers were devastating to the local beaver population. Trapping continued to spread across North America, extirpating or severely reducing populations across the continent. The natural ecosystems that came to rely on the beavers for dams, water and other vital needs were also devastated leading to ecological destruction, environmental change, and drought in certain areas. Beaver populations in North America would take centuries to recover in some areas, while others would never recover.
Background
French explorer Jacques Cartier in the 1540s made the first written records of the North-American Indigenous people in the region near the mouth of the Saint Lawrence River estuary, although French explorers and fishermen had traded there a decade before for valuable furs. Cartier wrote of encounters with the St. Lawrence Iroquoians, also known as the Stadaconan or Laurentian people who occupied several fortified villages, including Stadacona and Hochelaga. He recorded an on-going war between the Stadaconans and another tribe known as the Toudaman.Wars and politics in Europe distracted French efforts at colonization in the St. Lawrence Valley until the beginning of the 17th century, when the French explorer Samuel de Champlain founded Quebec in 1608. When the French returned to the area, they found both sites abandoned by the Stadacona and Hochelaga and completely destroyed, and they found no inhabitants in this part of the upper river valley—although the Iroquois and the Wendat used it as hunting ground. The causes remain unclear, although some anthropologists and historians have suggested that the Mohawk Nation of the Iroquois Confederacy destroyed or drove out the St. Lawrence Iroquoians.
File:Champlain-Deffaite-des-Yroquois-au-Lac-Champlain-couleur.png|thumb|In 1609, Algonquin, Wendat, and French forces under Samuel de Champlain attacked the Iroquois in New York.
Before 1603, Champlain had formed an alliance against the Iroquois, as he decided that the French would not trade firearms to them. The northern Indigenous provided the French with valuable furs, and the Iroquois interfered with that trade. The first battle with the Iroquois in 1609 was fought at Champlain's initiative. Champlain wrote, "I had come with no other intention than to make war". He and his Wendat and Algonkin allies fought a pitched battle against the Mohawks on the shores of Lake Champlain. Champlain single-handedly killed two chiefs with his arquebus despite the war chiefs' "arrowproof body armor made of plaited sticks", after which the Mohawk withdrew in disarray.
In 1610, Champlain and his French companions helped the Algonquins and the Wendat defeat a large Iroquois raiding party. In 1615, he joined a Wendat raiding party and took part in a siege on an Iroquois town, probably among the Onondaga south of Lake Ontario in New York. The attack ultimately failed, and Champlain was injured.
Dutch competition
In 1610–1614, the Dutch established a series of seasonal trading posts on the Hudson River and Delaware River, including one on Castle Island at the eastern edge of Mohawk territory near Albany. This gave the Iroquois direct access to European markets via the Mohawks. The Dutch trading efforts and eventual colonies in New Jersey and Delaware soon also established trade with the coastal Delaware tribe and the more southerly Susquehannock tribe. The Dutch founded Fort Nassau in 1614 and its 1624 replacement Fort Orange which removed the Iroquois' need to rely on the French and their allied tribes or to travel through southern tribal territories to reach European traders. The Dutch supplied the Mohawks and other Iroquois with guns. In addition, the new post offered valuable tools that the Iroquois could receive in exchange for animal pelts. They began large-scale hunting for furs to satisfy demand among their peoples for new products.At this time, conflict began to grow between the Iroquois Confederacy and the tribes supported by the French. The Iroquois inhabited the region of New York south of Lake Ontario and west of the Hudson River. Their lands were surrounded on all sides but the south by Algonquian-speaking tribes, all traditional enemies, including the Shawnee to the west in the Ohio Country, the Neutral Nation and Wendat confederacies on the western shore of Lake Ontario and southern shore of Lake Huron to the west, and the Susquehannock to their south. These tribes were historically competitive with and sometimes enemies of the Iroquois, who had Five Nations in their confederacy.
Beaver Wars begin
In 1628, the Mohawks defeated the Mohicans, pushing them east of the Hudson River and establishing a monopoly of trade with the Dutch at Fort Orange, New Netherland. The Susquehannocks were also well armed by Dutch traders, and they effectively reduced the strength of the Delawares and managed to win a protracted war with Maryland colonists. By the 1630s, the Iroquois had become fully armed with European weaponry through their trade with the Dutch.The Iroquois relied on the trade for firearms and other highly valued European goods for their livelihood and survival. They used their growing expertise with the arquebus to good effect in their continuing wars with the Algonquins and Wendat, and other traditional enemies. The French, meanwhile, outlawed the trading of firearms to their Indian allies, though they occasionally gave arquebuses as gifts to individuals who converted to Christianity. The Iroquois attacked their traditional enemies the Algonquins, Mahicans, Innu, and Wendat, and the alliance of these tribes with the French quickly brought the Iroquois into conflict directly with them.
The expansion of the fur trade with Europe brought a decline in the beaver population in the region, and the animal had largely disappeared from the Hudson Valley by 1640. American Heritage Magazine notes that the growing scarcity of the beaver in the lands controlled by the Iroquois in the middle 17th century accelerated the wars. The center of the fur trade shifted north to the colder regions of southern Ontario, an area controlled by the Neutral and Wendat tribes who were close trading partners with the French.
Course of war
With the decline of the beaver population, the Iroquois began to conquer their smaller neighbors. They attacked the Wenro in 1638 and took all of their territory, and survivors fled to the Wendat for refuge. The Wenro had served as a buffer between the Iroquois and the Neutral tribe and their Erie allies near Lake Erie and the Northeast. The Neutral and Erie tribes were considerably larger and more powerful than the Iroquois, so the Iroquois turned their attention to the north and the Dutch encouraged them in this strategy. At that time, the Dutch were the Iroquois' primary European trading partners, with their goods passing through Dutch trading posts down the Hudson River. As the Iroquois' sources of furs declined, however, so did the income of the trading posts.File:CharlesHuaultMontmagny.jpg|thumb|upright|New France's governor Charles de Montmagny rejected peace with the Mohawks in 1641 because it would imply abandonment of their Wendat allies.
In 1641, the Mohawks traveled to Trois-Rivières in New France to propose peace with the French and their allied tribes, and they asked the French to set up a trading post in Iroquoia. Governor Montmagny rejected this proposal because it would imply abandonment of their Wendat allies.
In the early 1640s, the war began in earnest with Iroquois attacks on frontier Wendat villages along the St. Lawrence River in order to disrupt the trade with the French. In 1645, the French called the tribes together to negotiate a treaty to end the conflict, and 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 80 canoes traveled through Iroquois territory carrying a large harvest of furs to be sold in New France. When they arrived, however, the French refused to purchase the furs and told the Iroquois to sell them to the Wendat, who would act as a middleman. The Iroquois were outraged and resumed the war.
The French decided to become directly involved in the conflict. The Wendat and the Iroquois had an estimated 25,000 to 30,000 members each. The Wendat and Susquehannocks formed an alliance to counter Iroquois aggression in 1647, and their warriors greatly outnumbered those of the Iroquois. The Wendat tried to break the Iroquois Confederacy by negotiating a separate peace with the Onondaga and Cayuga tribes, but the other tribes intercepted their messengers and ended the negotiations. During the summer of 1647, there were several small skirmishes between the tribes, but a more significant battle occurred in 1648 when the two Algonquin tribes passed a fur convoy through an Iroquois blockade. They succeeded and inflicted high casualties on the Iroquois. In the early 1650s, the Iroquois began attacking the French themselves, although some of the Iroquois tribes had peaceful relations with them, notably the Oneida and Onondaga tribes. They were under control of the Mohawks, however, who were the strongest tribe in the Confederation and had animosity towards the French presence. After a failed peace treaty negotiated by Chief Canaqueese, Iroquois moved north into New France along Lake Champlain and the Richelieu River, attacking and blockading Montreal. By 1650, they controlled the area from the Virginia Colony in the south up to the St. Lawrence. In the west, the Iroquois had driven the Algonquin-speaking Shawnee out of the Ohio Country and seized control of the Illinois Country as far west as the Mississippi River. In January 1666, the French invaded the Iroquois and took Chief Canaqueese prisoner. In September, they proceeded down the Richelieu but were unable to find an Iroquois army, so they burned their crops and homes. Many Iroquois died from starvation in the following winter. During the following years, the Iroquois strengthened their confederacy to work more closely and create an effective central leadership, and the five tribes ceased fighting among themselves by the 1660s. They also easily coordinated military and economic plans, and they increased their power as a result.
File:Battle of Long Sault 1660.jpg|thumb|upright|Depiction of Adam Dollard des Ormeaux during the Battle of Long Sault, May 1660
Indian raids were not constant, but they terrified the inhabitants of New France, and some of the heroes of French-Canadian folklore are individuals who stood up to such attacks. Dollard des Ormeaux, for example, died in May 1660 while resisting an Iroquois raiding force at the Battle of Long Sault, the confluence of the St. Lawrence and the Ottawa Rivers, but saved Montreal by his actions. In 1692, 14-year-old Marie-Madeleine Jarret successfully frustrated an Iroquois attack on Fort Verchères.