In 1608 Samuel de Champlain established a trade and military post at Quebec. In 1610 French soldiers and their Indian allies defeated Iroquois Mohawk at Lake Champlain, marking the first use of firearms in the American Northeast. France quickly realised the size and extent of the Hurons and their trade connections and so pressed home an attack on the Iroquois Oneida in 1615.
Beaver Pelt Exports
By 1630 Huron hunters had exhausted the beaver population in their own land. Huron men exchanged French goods and Huron corn for furs from the Ottowas, Neutrals and others in present day Ontario and as far north as Hudson Bay and as far west as Lake Superior. The arrival of the French enhanced Huron power and identity.
French Interference in Huron Society
In 1632 the French insisted the Hurons accept Jesuit missionaries in their villages. The missionaries arrival coincided with a smallpox epidemic that afflicted New England Indians and the Iroquois during 1631. During the next six years smallpox, measles, influenza and other diseases reduced the Huron population from 20,000 to about 10,000. The Hurons initially blamed evil spirits then inevitably blamed the Jesuits. The French threatened to halt trading and cease protecting the Huron from the Iroquois. Consequently the Hurons renounced Christianity in 1639-1640. The Jesuits adopted a new approach, in 1643, allowing baptised Hurons to pay lower prices for European goods. By 1646 five hundred Hurons converted to Catholicism, they had better guns and ammunition and refused to fight with their non-Christian Huron brothers against Iroquois attacks. By the late 1640s the Hurons were in crisis.
Iroquois Ascendancy
The Huron- French alliance encouraged their Iroquois rivals to establish an Iroquois-Dutch alliance. Henry Hudson led a Dutch expedition up the Hudson River in 1609 and found friendly Mahican Indians. In 1614 the Dutch East India Company established a trading post allowing the Iroquois Mohawk to trade with the colony of New Netherlands. The Iroquois Mohawk-Mahican war (1624-1628) over the trade in pelts ended with only the two tribes free to trade with the Dutch.
The Iroquois lost half their people to a smallpox epidemic between 1633 and 1640 thereby reducing their numbers to less than 10,000. Iroquois mourning raids obtained captives from other tribes to rebuild their population. The Five Nations (Iroquois Mohawk, Iroquois Oneida, Iroquois Onondaga, Iroquois Cayuga and Iroquois Seneca) agreed the Dutch/Iroquois Treaty of 1643.
The Iroquois launched as series of raids on Huron settlements who were divided between Christian and Traditionalist factions. The Hurons opposed their Jesuit missionaries but they opposed the Iroquois even more resolutely. This rejection was a major victory for the Jesuits with 50% of Hurons converted to Christianity by 1649 because they expected the priests' magic would protect them from the Iroquois. In March 1649 the Iroquois attacked the Ossossane Huron settlement killing 390 and a further 310 in other Huron settlements. The Huron Confederacy was destroyed and the Iroquois proceeded to disperse the Petuns, Neutrals, Nipissings and Eries during the Beaver Wars (1648-1657). The Iroquois could now hunt beaver in the lands north of Lakes Erie and Ontario. An agreement followed in 1656/7 to allow Jesuits establish missions in two of their nations - the Iroquois Onondaga and Iroquois Mohawk.
Iroquois French Tensions
The Upper Great Lakes tribes - Ottowa, Potawatomi and Ojibwa were raided by the Iroquois seeking to dominate the fur trade on the Hudson and in Canada. The French rearmed the Huron enemies of the Iroquois. Expansion minded Europeans challenged the power of the Five Nations Iroquois. The Susquehannocks and English of Maryland seized 25 Iroquois peace delegates and burned them alive. The Iroquois were further challenged by the Algonquain-speaking southern New England Indians as a deadly fued followed in 1663 and 1664. In 1664 the Dutch were defeated by the English and New Amsterdam was renamed New York. The Iroquois Mohawk made peace with the Mahicans. New England Indians remained hostile to the Iroquois Mohawk.
The Iroquois Treaty with New York
The Beaver Wars created thousands of Indian refugees who created inter-ethnic refugee communities from Mesquakies, Ojibwes, Potawatomis, Kickapoos, Miamis, Ottawes, Illinois, Hurons, Petuns and Winnebagos in the Upper Great Lakes. These new communities attracted traders and missionaries from New France. The French could not impose their authority on these communities. England and France were commercial rivals for thirty years with England competing for furs with the establishment of the Hudson Bay Company commencing 1670. Western Crees and Assiniboines allied to the English and used new firearms to attack the French allied Ojibwes and Sioux, Gros Ventres and Blackfeet in the upper Great Lakes.
The Five Nations Iroquois sought a defence against French allied Indians and signed the Covenant Chain Treaty with the English, New York Governor in 1680.
The Iroquois at War and Eventual Peace
The Iroquois, well armed with English guns attacked their rivals in a series of mourning wars. In 1682, 700 captives were assimilated by the Iroquois Onondaga nation alone. Iroquois military power and effectiveness were extraordinary. The French attacked the Five Nations Confederacy invading the Iroquois Seneca country burning winter food stocks.The Iroquois, in retaliation, destroyed French fortified posts in the Great Lakes.
In 1689, England and France began a new European war, the War of the League of Augsburg (1689-1697), known in the English colonies as King William's War. This war was devastating for the Five Nations. The English in New York ignored the Iroquois whereas the French armed the Abenakis and other Indians. The Five Nations suffered a series of French and Ojibwe led assaults driving them from the territory gained during the Beaver Wars. War with the French continued.
The Canadian Iroquois reached a peace accord with the Five Nations and sought a French Iroquois accord. Negotiations followed with both the English and French ending with the Grand Settlement of 1701.
In Conclusion
The Iroquois, on the brink of destruction, had devised a means of surviving in a new imperial world. Whereas the Huron suffered as the French won victories, the Iroquois, by attacking the Huron and their Indian allies, gained hunting grounds. Iroquois military strategy and mourning wars maintained their population as a strong 5 Nation Confederacy from 1600-1700. A century of warfare with other Indian tribes and the French found the Iroquois determined to remain neutral in the event of a French/English imperial war.
Sources
- The People, A History of Native America by R Edmunds, F Howie and N Salisbury Wadsworth Cengage Learning 2007
- The Ordeal of the Longhouses, The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European Colonization. Richter D. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1992
- Natives and Newcomers, Canada's Heroic Age Reconsidered. Trigger B. Kingston, Ontario and Montreal McGill Queen's University Press, 1985
Michael Manning - ' The best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity' W.B.Yeats
