Beaver Wars

The Beaver Wars (Mohawk: Tsianì kayonkwere, pronounced [d͡ʒanî gajũgwere]), also known as the Iroquois Wars or the French and Iroquois Wars (French: Guerres franco-iroquoises), were a series of conflicts fought intermittently during the 17th century in North America throughout the Great Lakes region and the St. Lawrence River valley which pitted the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) – who were supported by the Dutch and later the English – against neighbouring Indigenous nations such as the Wendat (Huron), who were supported by the French. The Haudenosaunee were a confederacy of the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca nations inhabiting the lands in what is now Upstate New York south of Lake Ontario and east to Lake Champlain, Lake George and the Hudson River. They initially mobilized against the Wendat and other Iroquoian-speaking peoples of the Great Lakes region and later moved against the French and their Algonquian allies. While the traditional view is that the Haudenosaunee sought to expand their territory in order to monopolize the fur trade with European markets, two other theories have gained acceptance: a need for the Haudenosaunee to replenish their population after suffering catastrophic epidemics in the 1630s, and a desire to impose the Great Law of Peace on other Iroquoian-speaking people. The Haudenosaunee were supplied with arms by their Dutch and English trading partners, while the Algonquians and Wendat were backed by the French, their chief trading partner. The Haudenosaunee became dominant in the region and enlarged their territory as a result of the wars, realigning the North American tribal geography south of the Great Lakes. They gained control of the Ohio River watershed as their hunting grounds from about 1670 onward. Both Algonquian and Iroquoian societies were greatly disrupted by these wars. Several confederacies and nations, including the Wendat, Erie, Neutral, Petun, Susquehannock, and Mahican, were...