Beaver Wars - Origins

Origins

Further information: France-Americas relations

Written records for the St. Lawrence valley begin with the voyages of Jacques Cartier in the 1540s. Cartier wrote of encounters with a people later classified as the St. Lawrence Iroquoians, also known as the Stadaconan or Laurentian, who occupied several fortified villages, including Stadacona and Hochelaga. Cartier recorded that the Stadaconans were at war with another tribe known as the Toudaman, who had destroyed one of their forts the previous year, resulting in 200 deaths. Continental wars and politics distracted 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 anthropologists and historians have suggested the Mohawk of the Iroquois Confederacy destroyed and drove out the St. Lawrence Iroquoians, based on analysis of political and economic conditions at the time. When the French returned, there were no inhabitants in this part of the upper river valley. The Iroquois and Huron used it as hunting ground. The issue has not been fully settled. (Iroquois oral tradition, as recorded in the Jesuit Relations, speaks of a draining war between the Mohawk Iroquois and an alliance of the Susquehannock and Algonquin sometime between 1580 and 1600.)

When the French returned in 1601, the St. Lawrence Valley had already been the site of generations of blood-feud-style warfare. 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, Algonquin, and Huron to assist in attacking their Iroquois enemies upriver.

Before 1603, Champlain had formed an offensive alliance against the Iroquois. His rationale was commercial; the northern Natives were the French source of valuable fur and the Iroquois, based in present-day New York, interfered with that trade. The first battle in 1609 was fought at Champlain's initiative. He wrote, "I had come with no other intention than to make war". In the company of his Algonquin allies, Champlain and his forces fought a pitched battle with the Iroquois on the shores of Lake Champlain. Champlain killed three Iroquois chiefs with an arquebus. In 1610, Champlain and his arquebus-wielding French companions helped the Algonquin and Huron 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 Onondaga south of Lake Ontario in present-day New York. The attack ultimately failed, and Champlain was injured.

In 1610 the Dutch established a trading post on the edge of Iroquois territory, giving them direct access to European markets. This removed the Iroquois need to rely on the French and the tribes who had functioned as middlemen in the trading of goods. The new post offered valuable tools that the Iroquois could receive in exchange for animal pelts. This began the Iroquois' large-scale hunting for furs.

At this time, the conflict began to quickly grow between the Iroquois and Indians supported by the French. The Iroquois inhabited the 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. Their enemies included the Iroquoian-speaking Huron and Neutral Nation Confederacies, who lived on the southern shore of Lake Huron and the western shore of Lake Ontario, respectively, but who were not part of the Iroquois Confederation.

In 1628 the Mohawk defeated the Mahican and established a monopoly of trade with the Dutch at Fort Orange, New Netherland. The Iroquois, particularly the Mohawk, had come to rely on the trade for the purchase of firearms and other European goods for their livelihood and survival. By the 1630s, the Iroquois had become fully armed with European weaponry through their trade with the Dutch. They used their growing expertise with the arquebus to good effect in their continuing wars with the Algonquin, Huron, and other traditional enemies. The French, meanwhile, outlawed the trading of firearms to their native allies, though they occasionally gave arquebuses as gifts to individuals who converted to Christianity. Although the Iroquois first attacked 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 directly with the European colonists.

The use of firearms enabled overhunting and accelerated the decline of the beaver population. 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 shifted northward to the colder regions of present-day southern Ontario, which was controlled by the Neutrals; as well as by the Hurons, who were the close trading partners of the French. The Iroquois were 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.