American History - Beaver Wars

At the end of the fifteenth century, European traders began regularly arriving at the shores of North America to trade for beaver pelts.  Thanks to a ridiculously high demand, they were eager to buy, and luckily the locals were just as eager to sell.  In return for killing an animal that was literally everywhere, they could get metal tools and weapons, wool blankets and clothing, and glass beads and other such exotic goods.  Relatively cheap in Europe, for the tribes of North America, they were immeasurable luxuries, so much so that the coastal tribes quickly killed every beaver in the territories they controlled.  However, they just as quickly figured out that controlling the trade for beaver was just as lucrative as actually having beaver.  By acting as middlemen, they could not only make a bundle playing both sides of the trade, they could also ensure their rivals remained weaker and non-threatening.  Of course, once these coastal tribes started jacking up the prices, partly because they had to in order to bring in pelts from the interior and partly just because they could, it didn’t take long for some enterprising Europeans to figure out ways to trade with the more interior tribes, effectively cutting out the coastal middlemen.  If any of the coastal tribes had a problem with it they really didn’t have a chance to complain, given 90 percent of them died during an epidemic between 1616 and 1619.

By the 1620s, each of the European powers had formed close trading ties with one of the major Iroquois alliances.  In the north along the Great Lakes, the Huron Confederacy traded with the French, in the middle the Iroquois Confederacy traded with the Dutch, and in the south the English and Swedes traded with the Susquehannock Confederacy.  The rivalry between these European powers exacerbated rivalries two centuries old between the alliances, creating a new excuse for violence.  In order to give their allies an advantage, both the French and Dutch armed their respective allies.  The French sold metal axes to the Huron, allowing them to completely dominate the northern beaver trade and their stone axe carrying brethren.  The Dutch kicked it up a notch, selling the Iroquois guns.  As far as strategies go, it was super effective, the Iroquois quickly wiping out all of their rivals in the immediate vicinity. 

Unfortunately, by the 1630s, the Iroquois were facing a bit of a problem in that the number of beavers in their immediate vicinity was rapidly declining.  The Huron, while facing a similar issue, solved it by becoming the primary middlemen of the Great Lakes trade, buying pelts from the powerful Ojibwe and Cree tribes further west.  The Iroquois couldn’t do the same, what with the Huron to the north and the Susquehannock to the south, threatening their access to European goods.  However, this became somewhat of a secondary concern for a time, since an epidemic of measles swept westward from the Atlantic Coast between 1634 and 1640, killing around half the native population in its path, which pretty obviously really fucked things up.  By the end of the epidemic, the Iroquois found themselves not only in need of pelts, but also numbers.  The best solution to both problems they decided was to start attacking their neighbors, not only giving them access to pelts, but also creating opportunities to capture and assimilate new members for the allied tribe. 

The first victims of the Iroquois in what became known as the Beaver Wars were the various unaffiliated Iroquoian tribes along the shores of the Great Lakes.  Once they were violently subdued, the Iroquois next focused in on the Huron, who were at a bit of a disadvantage given the French refused to sell them guns.  The attacks by both sides were brutal, and things looked pretty bad for the Huron, at least until they allied themselves with the Susquehannock, who were buying guns from the Swedes.  Originally the Susquehannock had been forced to trade through the Lenape, but during the epidemic they forcefully subdued the more coastal Algonquian tribe, giving them direct access to the Swedes who were more than happy to do anything to knock the Dutch down a peg or two, including selling guns to the eager Susquehannock.  However, this new alliance had an unintended consequence, in that it made the Iroquois desperate enough that they launched an all out attack in 1649, scattering the Huron along the Great Lakes and east to the French colony of Quebec City. 

Following the defeat of the Huron, the Iroquois began a trade embargo against the French, blocking their trade with the Ojibwe and Cree and attacking their trading posts and colonies.  Without the Huron, French traders themselves were forced to make the dangerous journey westwards, but these traders were unreliable, often selling furs to the Iroquois for elevated prices instead of bringing them back to New France.  Things were only beginning to get fucked up.

American History - Iroquois

To understand the next part of this thing we call American history, one first has to understand the Iroquois.  Unlike many of the other groups of peoples in pre-Columbus North America, tied together by common origins of language, the Iroquoian peoples were relatively new on the scene, not really emerging as distinct culture and language along the Saint Lawrence River until around the twelfth century.  Exactly how this took place is unknown, though some stories suggest they were originally slaves of the Algonquian peoples in the area who broke free, creating their own culture.  Like many of the Algonquian peoples along the eastern seaboard, the Iroquoian were a much more matrilineal culture, meaning things like property and lineage were passed down via mothers rather than fathers, an arrangement that gave women a significant amount of power, though men still tended to dominate leadership and religious roles.  However, the Iroquoian languages are more closely related to Siouan languages than Algonquian languages.  As well, the Iroquoian differed in that they had a much more fluid concept of what it meant to be part of a group.  While the Algonquian tended to view themselves in terms of specific tribes and villages, the Iroquoian saw themselves more in terms of shared collectives with shared beliefs. 

This penchant for collectivism not only made it easier for the various Iroquoian peoples to form complex alliances with each other, it also allowed them to grow in strength rapidly.  One did not have to be born Iroquoian to become Iroquoian, and those captured in raids or through other means quickly found themselves able to assimilate and become full members of the group.  Thanks to this, over the next several centuries the Iroquoian peoples grew greatly in numbers, soon dominating the entirety of the shores of the Saint Lawrence River.

The decline of the Mississippi culture in what is today the Southeast and Midwest coincided with a rapid Iroquoian expansion in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.  Pushing south and west from their ancestral homelands, they moved into the eastern Great Lakes and upstate New York and Pennsylvania.  This of course did not sit well with the Algonquian tribes living in those areas.  Being too divided to put up a strong enough resistance, they instead moved westward into the Midwest, in turn displacing many of the Siouan peoples and hastening the end of the northern half of the Mississippi culture.  Some of the more aggressive Iroquoian groups even pushed their way significantly more southward, becoming several scattered groups in the southeast, the most dominant being the Cherokee. 

Due to such a rapid expansion, the Iroquoian peoples begin to lose much of their cohesion, leading to conflict amongst themselves even as they pushed deeper into the interior.  This loss of cohesion and increase in conflict was somewhat reversed starting in the mid-fifteenth century via the creation of several complex alliances amongst various tribes.  The most powerful of these were the Iroquois Confederacy in upper New York, the Huron Confederacy to the north along the eastern Great Lakes, and the Susquehannock Confederacy in upstate Pennsylvania.  Though these alliances became dominant political powers in the interior, the greater number of Algonquian peoples along the Atlantic Seaboard limited the influence of that power towards the coast. 

The arrival of Europeans to the New World at first had little affect on the Iroquois, at least until some schmuck named Hernando de Soto wandered across the southeast between 1539 and 1542, sparking a horrifying pandemic which spread north into the Midwest, devastating the Siouan peoples there.  As a result, the Algonquian living in the interior began to quickly spread south from the Great Lakes and west from the Appalachians, which in turn made it easier for the Iroquoian to spread westward into the Great Lakes region, which in turn drove more Algonquians to move into the Midwest, pushing the surviving Siouan peoples out onto the Great Plains, where they in turn beat the shit out of the local Numic peoples, who were just doing their best to survive in barren lands historically nobody else wanted.  It was a real cluster fuck, one that only got worst when the English, Dutch, and French began to arrive in North America at the start of the sixteenth century.               

American History - New France

In 1608, Samuel de Champlain laid claim to the St. Lawrence River for France via the construction of the colony of Quebec, giving his homeland control over the most accessible route into the North American continent.  Champlain’s goal was to effectively bypass the more coastal Algonquian speaking natives by buying directly from their more inland cousins.  However, in less than a decade Champlain was shifting his focus further west.  There was a variety of reasons for this.  One, the area was quickly becoming depleted of beaver.  Two, the beaver further west were proving to be of better quality.  And three, a pandemic swept through the area around 1616, killing over 75 percent of the natives who formerly inhabited the regions east of Quebec.  As a result, a new colony named Montreal was founded in 1616 further up the St. Lawrence.  From here, French traders purchased pelts from the Huron Confederacy, an alliance of Iroquois speaking tribes that controlled the region between the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River.  Though the Huron loved to trade for all sorts of items manufactured in Europe, but their favorite was metal axes, mostly because it gave them a decided edge over their long-standing rivals, the  Iroquois Confederacy to the south.  The French also became part of this conflict, under the assumption that if one group must be good, then the other must be bad, and certainly the first group they met must be good, so why not just shoot a bunch of the second group to show what good friends they could be. 

Anyways, Quebec and Montreal were less colonies and more glorified trading posts, home to at best a few hundred French traders who were more than happy to let the Huron do all of the work.  This was largely okay with the Huron, since it allowed them to dominate the trade, first by selling pelts from their own territory, then by acting as middlemen between the French and the various tribes further west, the largest two being the Algonquian speaking Ojibwe along the north shore of the Great Lakes and the Cree further north.  Though most of the French preferred to stay near their settlements, some of the more enterprising, known as the coureurs des bois, made their way inland to explore, trap, and trade.  By 1634, these coureurs had reached as far as what is today Green Bay on Lake Michigan.  The primary trade good of the coureurs was alcohol.  Though technically it was illegal to sell booze to the natives, rules don’t really apply when you’re hundreds of miles from any type of authority.  However, the one rule that the coureurs did not break was the French prohibition of selling firearms to the natives, because some things are just that obvious.  Aside from the coureurs, French missionaries were also important early explorers, travelling far and wide to make contact with new peoples to convert to Catholicism.  Though many met at times rather grisly demises, they managed to explore the full expanse of the Great Lakes by the early 1640s, giving the French a much better understanding of the North American interior than their main rivals, the English and Dutch.

Compared to the English and Dutch, the French formed a much tighter bond with their native allies, sending men to Huron villages to learn the local language and customs, and taking native women as wives to help cement strong relationships.  The much higher quality furs coming from the lands of the Ojibwe and Cree made building these relationships more than worth the time and effort.  Unfortunately this trade was disrupted by two major events, namely a pandemic in the late 1630s killing off half of the Huron, followed closely by a decade long war with the Iroquois Confederacy, who being armed with guns sold to them by the Dutch, had a decided advantage in the conflict.  By 1650, the Huron were broken and scattered, their former territories held by the Iroquois Confederacy, who had not forgotten which side the French decided to back some thirty years earlier.  Though trade via the coureurs continued, it wasn’t what it had been before, the Iroquois not only blockading the most direct routes, but also attacking the French trading posts along the St. Lawrence.

The loss of revenues from New France did not sit well with the investors in the various French fur trading companies, nor the king of France who enjoyed taxing them.  As a result, various incentives were created to draw would be settlers across the Atlantic, most of which involved giving away free land, by which I mean some land was given to rich asshats who then paid to ship poor people across the Atlantic to farm it.  As a result, the population of New France grew from 500 in 1650, to 3,000 by 1660.  These would be farmers helped better secure the territory from not just the Iroquois, but also the growing populations of English and Dutch settlers further south.  Given not many women wanted to emigrate for some reason, these would be farmers were strongly encouraged to marry the local natives.  Despite things improving, it was not enough for the king of France, who fully seized control of New France in 1663.  He soon after sent a regiment of professionally trained soldiers, who not only beat defeated the Iroquois so handily that they sued for peace, but also got the coureurs under control, who in recent years had begun selling pelts to the Dutch traders as much as to the French.  Under the newly imposed rules, only licensed traders were to trade beaver pelts, these traders licensed traders being called voyageurs.   

The combination of a secure frontier, a stable fur trade, and a better standard of living than being back in France resulted in the population reaching 10,000 by 1680.  Though limited by rules which only allowed Catholics to immigrate, more than enough people were willing to take a risk travelling to a land full of clean water, abundant fish and meat, and exotic women.  Even if doing so meant either rowing canoes for months on end or working your ass off to farm land technically owned by some asshat noble back home.  The influx fully secured the St. Lawrence River region for France.  By the 1670s, not only were French missionaries using the peace with the Iroquois as an opportunity to explore south into the Ohio River valley, but voyageurs also began establishing trading posts along the shores of the Great Lakes, establishing more direct trading ties with the Ojibwe and other various other tribes.