Beaver Wars

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Beaver Wars
Part of the American Indian Wars

Champlain's Battle with the Iroquois, Ticonderoga, July, 1609, an 1898 illustration by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris
DateJuly 1609 – August 4, 1701
Location
Great Lakes region
Result

Indecisive

Belligerents

Iroquois League

Supported by:
 England
Dutch Republic
Strength
~4,500[1] ~20,000
Casualties and losses
Unknown Unknown

The Beaver Wars (

Hurons, northern Algonquians
and their French allies. As a result of this conflict, the Iroquois destroyed several confederacies and tribes through warfare: the Hurons or Wendat,
Algonquins
whom they defeated and dispersed, some fleeing to neighbouring peoples and others assimilated, routed, or killed.

The Iroquois sought to expand their territory to monopolize the

Iroquois Confederation led by the Mohawks mobilized against the largely Algonquian-speaking tribes and Iroquoian-speaking Huron
and related tribes of the Great Lakes region. The Iroquois were supplied with arms by their Dutch and English trading partners; the Algonquians and Hurons were backed by the French, their chief trading partner.

The Iroquois effectively destroyed several large tribal confederacies, including the Mohicans, Huron (Wyandot), Neutral, Erie, Susquehannock (Conestoga), and northern Algonquins, with the extreme brutality and exterminatory nature of the mode of warfare practised by the Iroquois causing some historians to label these wars as acts of genocide committed by the Iroquois Confederacy.[2] They became dominant in the region and enlarged their territory, 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 was devastating to the local

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.[3][4][5]

Background

Further information: France–Americas relations

French explorer Jacques Cartier in the 1540s made the first written records of the Indians in America, although French explorers and fishermen had traded in the region near the mouth of the Saint Lawrence River estuary a decade before then for valuable furs. Cartier wrote of encounters with the St. Lawrence Iroquoians,[6] 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 they founded Quebec in 1608. When the French returned to the area, they found both sites abandoned by the Stadacona and Hochelaga and completely destroyed,

Iroquois Confederacy destroyed or drove out the St. Lawrence Iroquoians.[7]

In 1609, Algonquin, Huron, 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.[7] 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.[7] Champlain wrote, "I had come with no other intention than to make war".[9] He and his Huron and Algonkin allies fought a pitched battle against the Mohawks on the shores of Lake Champlain.[7] Champlain single-handedly[7] killed two chiefs with his arquebus despite the war chiefs' "arrowproof body armor made of plaited sticks", after which the Mohawk withdrew in disarray.[7]

In 1610, Champlain and his French companions helped the

Onondaga south of Lake Ontario in New York. The attack ultimately failed, and Champlain was injured.[10]

Dutch competition

The Dutch established Fort Orange in Albany, New York, in 1624. The fort removed the Iroquois' reliance on French traders and on their Indian allies for European goods.

In 1610–1614, the Dutch established a series of seasonal trading posts on the Hudson and Delaware rivers, including one on

Delaware tribe (Lenape) and the more southerly Susquehannock tribe. The Dutch founded Fort Nassau in 1614 and its 1624 replacement Fort Orange (both at Albany) 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.[7] In addition, the new post offered valuable tools that the Iroquois could receive in exchange for animal pelts.[7] they began large-scale hunting for furs to satisfy demand among their peoples for new products.[7][11]

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

Neutral Nation and Huron
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

Firearms from Dutch traders allowed the Iroquois to wage effective campaigns against the Algonquin and the Huron.

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.[7]
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

Hurons
, 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.[7]
The center of the fur trade shifted north to the colder regions of southern Ontario, an area controlled by the Neutral and Huron 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 Hurons for refuge. The Wenro had served as a buffer between the Iroquois and the Neutral tribe and their Erie allies. The Neutral and Erie tribes were considerably larger and more powerful than the Iroquois, so the Iroquois turned their attention to the north[12] 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.[13]

New France's governor Charles de Montmagny rejected peace with the Mohawks in 1641 because it would imply abandonment of their Huron allies.

In 1641, the Mohawks traveled to

Montmagny
rejected this proposal because it would imply abandonment of their Huron allies.

In the early 1640s, the war began in earnest with Iroquois attacks on frontier Huron 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.[14] 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 Hurons, who would act as a middleman. The Iroquois were outraged and resumed the war.[14]

The French decided to become directly involved in the conflict. The Huron and the Iroquois had an estimated 25,000 to 30,000 members each.

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.[17]

Depiction of Adam Dollard des Ormeaux (standing, center) 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.

Defeat of the Huron

In 1648, the Dutch authorized selling guns directly to the Mohawks rather than through traders, and promptly sold 400 to the Iroquois. The Confederacy sent 1,000 newly armed warriors through the woods to Huron territory with the onset of winter, and they launched a devastating attack into the heart of Huron territory, destroying several key villages, killing many warriors, and taking thousands of people captive for later adoption into the tribe. Among those killed were Jesuit missionaries

Ottawa tribe temporarily halted Iroquois expansion further northwest, but the Iroquois controlled a fur-rich region and had no more tribes blocking them from the French settlements in Canada.[18]

Jean Brebeuf
was one of several Jesuits killed during the Iroquois attack into the heart of Huron territory.

Diseases had taken their toll on the Iroquois and neighbors in the years preceding the war, however, and their populations had drastically declined. To replace lost warriors, they worked to integrate many of their captured enemies by adoption into their own tribes. They invited Jesuits into their territory to teach those who had converted to Christianity. The Jesuits also reached out to the Iroquois, many of whom converted to Roman Catholicism or intermingled its teachings with their own traditional beliefs.[19]

Defeat of the Erie and Neutral

The Iroquois attacked the

Neutrals in 1650, and they completely drove the tribe from traditional territory by the end of 1651, killing or assimilating thousands.[18] The Neutrals had inhabited a territory ranging from the Niagara Peninsula westward to the Grand River valley.[20]

In 1654, the Iroquois attacked the

Erie tribe, but with less success. The war lasted for two years, and the Iroquois destroyed the Erie confederacy by 1656, whose members 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.[21] The Iroquois were greatly outnumbered by the tribes that they subdued, but they achieved their victories through the use of firearms purchased from the Dutch.[18]

French counterattack

The Iroquois continued to control the countryside of New France, raiding to the edges of the walled settlements of Quebec and Montreal. In May 1660, an Iroquois force of 160 warriors attacked Montreal and captured 17 French colonists. The following year, 250 warriors attacked and took ten captives.

Abenakis who were allied with the French. The French Crown ordered a change to the governing of Canada. They put together a small military force made up of Frenchmen, Hurons, and Algonquins to counter the Iroquois raids, but the Iroquois attacked them when they ventured into the countryside. Only 29 of the French survived and escaped; five were captured and tortured to death by the Iroquois.[citation needed] Despite their victory, the Iroquois also suffered a significant number of casualties, and their leaders began to consider negotiating for peace with the French.[23]

The tide of war began to turn in the mid-1660s with the arrival of the Carignan-Salières Regiment, a unit of roughly 1000 regular troops from France and the first group of uniformed professional soldiers in Canada.[24] A change in administration led the government of New France to authorize direct sale of arms and other military support to their Indian allies. In 1664, the Dutch allies of the Iroquois lost control of their colony of New Netherland to the English. In the immediate years after the Dutch defeat, European support waned for the Iroquois.[22] The Onondaga, Seneca and Cayuga reached a peace settlement with the French, however, the Mohawk and Oneida remained unwilling.

In 1666, Alexandre de Prouville de Tracy led a French force of 1,300 men to attack Mohawk villages in New York.

In January 1666, Governor Daniel de Rémy de Courcelle attempted to invade the Mohawk homeland. The invasion force of 400 to 500 men briefly skirmished with the Mohawk but failed to reach their villages as the French soldiers were ill-equipped to operate in the cold and deep snow.[25]

The second invasion force was led by Alexandre de Prouville de Tracy whom Louis XIV had appointed as Lieutenant Général of the Americas. The invasion force of about 1,300 men set out September 1666 and reached the Mohawk villages in mid-October. The villages had been hastily abandoned. Tracy ordered the longhouses and fields of crops destroyed, and the expedition returned to New France. A peace settlement was reached with the Mohawk and Oneida in July 1667.[25]

Peace with France and Iroquois expansion

Once peace was achieved 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. Eastern tribes such as the

Illini confederation who inhabited Michigan and Illinois. The majority of the fighting was between the Anishinaabeg Confederacy and the Iroquois Confederacy.[26]

A map of Iroquois expansion during the war. Peace was re-established with the French in 1666, and the Iroquois returned to their westward conquest of all the land between the French and Algonquin territory.

The Iroquois improved on their warfare as they continued to attack even farther from their home. War parties often traveled by canoes at night, and they would sink their canoes and fill them with rocks to hold them on the river bottom. They would then move through the woods to a target and burst from the wood to cause the greatest panic. After the attack, they returned to their boats and left before any significant resistance could be put together.[27] The lack of firearms caused the Algonquin tribes the greatest disadvantage. Despite their larger numbers, they were not centralized enough to mount a united defense and were unable to withstand the Iroquois. Several tribes ultimately moved west beyond the Mississippi River, leaving much of the Ohio Valley, southern Michigan, and southern Ontario depopulated. Several Anishinaabe forces numbering in the thousands remained to the north of Lakes Huron and Superior, and they were later decisive in rolling back the Iroquois advance.[28] From west of the Mississippi, displaced groups continued to arm war parties and attempt to retake their land.

Beginning in the 1670s, the French began to explore and settle the

Virginia Piedmont
region in 1670, and they claimed the land by right of conquest as a hunting ground. The English acknowledged this claim in 1674 and again in 1684, but they acquired the land from the Iroquois by a 1722 treaty.

During a raid into the Illinois Country in 1689, the Iroquois captured numerous prisoners and destroyed a sizable Miami settlement. The Miami asked for aid from others in the Anishinaabeg Confederacy, and a large force gathered to track down the Iroquois. Using their new firearms, the Confederacy laid an ambush near South Bend, Indiana, and they attacked and destroyed most of the Iroquois party,[29] and a large part of the region was left depopulated. The Iroquois were unable to establish a permanent presence, as their tribe was unable to colonize the large area,[30] and the Iroquois' brief control over the region was lost. Many of the former inhabitants of the territory began to return.[31]

Defeat of the Susquehannocks

With the tribes destroyed to the north and west, the Iroquois turned their attention southward to the Susquehannock. The Susquehannock attained the peak of their influence in the 1650s, and they were able to use that to their advantage in the following decades.[32] In the winter of 1652, the Susquehannock were attacked by the Mohawk, and although the attack was repulsed, it led to the Susquehannock negotiating Articles of Peace and Friendship with Maryland.[33]

An Oneida raid on the Piscataway in 1660 led Maryland to expand its treaty with the Susquehannock into an alliance. The Maryland assembly authorized armed assistance, and described the Susquehannock as "a Bullwarke and Security of the Northern Parts of this Province." 50 men were sent to help defend the Susquehannock village. Muskets, lead and powder were acquired from both Maryland and New Netherland. Despite suffering a smallpox epidemic in 1661, the Susquehannock easily withstood a siege by 800 Seneca, Cayuga and Onondaga in May 1663, and destroyed an Onondaga war party in 1666.[33]

War between the Iroquois and Susquehannock continued intermittently until 1674 when the Maryland colonists changed their Indian policy, negotiated peace with the Iroquois, and terminated their alliance with the Susquehannocks. Most historians believe that the Haudenosaunee inflicted a major defeat on the Susquehannock c. 1674 since the Jesuit Relations for 1675 reports that the Seneca "utterly defeated ... their ancient and redoubtable foes."[34]

In 1675, the Susquehannock moved south into Maryland. Later that year the militias of Virginia and Maryland besieged the Susquehannock fort, and executed the Susquehannock chiefs during a parley. The survivors of the siege were eventually absorbed by the Iroquois.[35]

Resumption of war with France

English settlers began to move into the former Dutch territory of upper New York State, and the colonists began to form close ties with the Iroquois as an alliance in the face of French colonial expansion. They began to supply the Iroquois with firearms as the Dutch had. At the same time, New France's governor

Louis de Buade tried to revive the western fur trade. His efforts competed with those of the Iroquois to control the traffic and they started attacking the French again. The war lasted ten years.

De Tonty suing for peace in the Iroquois village. January 2, 1680
New France's Governor General Louis de Buade de Frontenac with Indian allies; his attempts to revive the fur-trade in the frontier led to renewed hostilities with the Iroquois

In 1681, René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, negotiated a treaty with the Miami and Illinois tribes.[36] France lifted the ban on the sale of firearms to the Indians, and colonists quickly armed the Algonquin tribes, evening the odds between the Iroquois and their enemies.

With the renewal of hostilities, the militia of New France was strengthened after 1683 by a small force of regular French navy troops in the

Frontenac
replaced Denonville as governor for the next nine years (1689–1698), and he recognized the danger created by the imprisonment of the sachems. He located the 13 surviving leaders and returned with them to New France in October 1698.

During

Treaty of Ryswick
that brought peace between France and England, ending English participation in that conflict.

Peace

Main article: Great Peace of Montreal
A copy of the peace treaty that ended hostilities between New France and 39 First Nations

The Iroquois eventually began to see the emerging Thirteen Colonies as a greater threat than the French in 1698. The colony of Pennsylvania was founded in 1681, and the continued growth there began to encroach on the southern border of the Iroquois.[13] The French policy began to change towards the Iroquois after nearly fifty years of warfare, and they decided that befriending them would be the easiest way to ensure their monopoly on the northern fur trade. The Thirteen Colonies heard of the treaty and immediately set about to prevent it from being agreed upon. These conflicts would result in the loss of Albany's fur trade with the Iroquois and, without their protection, the northern flank of the Thirteen Colonies would be open to French attack. Nevertheless, the French and Indians signed the treaty.[38]

The French and 39 Indian chiefs signed the Great Peace of Montreal in 1701. 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 Indiana and northwest Ohio. The Pottawatomie went to Michigan, and the Illinois tribe to Illinois.[38] The peace lasted into the 1720s.[39]

Aftermath

In 1768, several of the Thirteen Colonies purchased the "Iroquois claim" to the Ohio and Illinois Country and created the

Indiana Land Company to hold the claim to all of the Northwest. It maintained a claim to the region using the Iroquois right of conquest until the company was dissolved in 1798 by the United States Supreme Court.[40]

Many of the Iroquois people allied with the British during the American Revolutionary War, particularly warriors from the Mohawk, Cayuga, Onondaga and Seneca nations. These nations had longstanding trade relations with the British and hoped they might stop American encroachment on their lands. After the Americans emerged triumphant, the British parliament agreed to cede control over much of its territory in North America to the newly formed United States and worked to resettle American loyalists in Canada and provide some compensation for lands the Loyalists and Native Americans had lost to the United States. Mohawk Chief Joseph Brant led a large group of Iroquois out of New York to what became the reserve of the Six Nations of the Grand River in Ontario. The new lands granted to Six Nations reserves were all near Canadian military outposts and placed along the border to prevent any American incursions.[41]

The coalition of Native American tribes, known as the

Western Confederacy, was forced to cede extensive territory, including much of present-day Ohio, in the Treaty of Greenville
in 1795.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Morgan (1922), pp. 22.
  2. S2CID 71358963
    . Retrieved 9 March 2022.
  3. ^ Riparian Research and Management, Chapter 7. Euro-American Beaver Trapping and Its long-term Impact on Drainage Network Form and Function, Water Abundance, Delivery, and System Stability via U. S. Department of Agriculture
  4. ^ Julie, van den Hout (2015-04-01). "The Omnipotent Beaver in Van der Donck's A Description of New Netherland: A Natural Symbol of Promise in the New World" (PDF). California Digital Library.
  5. PMID 8367476
    .
  6. ^
    S2CID 141363427
    .
  7. ^
    ISBN 9780070012745
    .
  8. ^ Trigger (1987), pp. 214–218, 220–224, "The Disappearance of the St. Lawrence Iroquoians".
  9. ^ Jennings (1984), p. 42.
  10. ^ Trigger (1987), pp. 312–315, "Sealing the Alliance".
  11. ^ Hine & Faragher (2000), p. 67.
  12. ^ Wallace (2007), p. 100.
  13. ^ a b Jennings (1984), p. 9.
  14. ^ a b Wallace (2007), p. 101.
  15. ^ Johansen (2006), p. 147.
  16. ^ Wallace (2007), p. 102.
  17. ^ Jennings (1984), p. 8.
  18. ^ a b c Wallace (2007), p. 103.
  19. ^ Hine & Faragher (2000), p. 68.
  20. ISBN 0-919350-13-5
    .
  21. ^ Lupold & Haddad (1988), p. 11.
  22. ^ a b Barr (2006), p. 60.
  23. ^ Barr (2006), p. 59.
  24. ISBN 978-0773518186
    .
  25. ^ a b Lamontagne, Léopold (1979) [1966]. "Prouville de Tracy, Alexandre de". In Brown, George Williams (ed.). Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Vol. I (1000–1700) (online ed.). University of Toronto Press. Retrieved 2011-12-08.
  26. ^ Funk (1964), p. 12.
  27. ^ Barr (2006), p. 16.
  28. ISBN 0-8020-2736-9
  29. ^ Thompson (1898), pp. 38–40.
  30. ^ Jennings (1984), p. 11.
  31. ^ Jennings (1984), pp. 12–13.
  32. ^ Barr (2006), p. 58.
  33. ^
    JSTOR 986100
    .
  34. ISBN 9780892710249
    .
  35. ^ Wallace (2007), p. 104.
  36. ^ "The Road from Detroit to the Illinois 1774.". Michigan Pioneer and History Collections. Vol. 10. p. 248.
  37. ^ Eccles, W.J. (1979) [1969]. "Brisay de Denonville, Jacques-René de". In Hayne, David (ed.). Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Vol. II (1701–1740) (online ed.). University of Toronto Press. Retrieved 2011-12-08.
  38. ^ a b Wallace (2007), p. 106.
  39. ^ Jennings (1984), p. 23.
  40. ^ "The naming of Indiana". in.gov. Indiana Historical Bureau, State of Indiana. Archived from the original on 6 October 2008. Retrieved 2008-09-29.
  41. ^ "Thayendanegea". www.biographi.ca. University of Toronto/Université Laval.

Sources

External links
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