American History - Louisiana

From the moment the French first managed to navigate the length of the Mississippi River in 1682, they recognized it as an important new opportunity for trade and control of the North American interior.  Unfortunately, their first attempt to capitalize on it by establishing a colony at the mouth of the river failed miserably, with them instead founding a colony on the Texas coast, because finding the same place from two different directions is hard, which was soon after wiped out by the Caddoan peoples in the area.  Though undoubtedly a bit of a failure, it did freak out the Spanish to such a degree that they decided it was probably in their best interested to lay a better claim to Texas by establishing a bunch of missions there.  These were about as successful as the French colony, being abandoned after a few years, but they did leave behind a fairly virulent strain of smallpox, which spread across the southern Plains, wiping out a significant percentage of the Caddoan.  So yeah, overall a pretty shitty start all the way around.

For their part, the French were becoming increasingly concerned over the British threat to the Saint Lawrence Seaway, their primary route into the interior, which led them to establish the colony of Louisiana in 1699, which included a few small trading posts, but not much else.  However, that all changed following the end of Queen Anne’s War in 1713, which reintroduced direct British competition in the fur trade via Hudson’s Bay, which only added to issues the French were already facing with the Ojibwe blocking direct French access to the tribes actually killing the beaver.  Altogether, this convinced the French that it was in their best interest to invest much more in Louisiana and the upriver Illinois Country, which they soon after did, sending expeditions into the interior to make trading alliances with the various natives they came upon, reaching what is today North Dakota on the Missouri River in 1714, founding a number of new and expanded trading posts up and down the Mississippi, and building a new port called New Orleans at the mouth of the river in 1718.

Now much like the first time around, this really freaked out the Spanish, who having been in de facto control of the area for over a century, at least as far as their maps were concerned, did not take kindly to the French encroachment.  In an attempt to contain the growing French influence, they founded a number of new missions in Texas and sent a large expedition north onto the central Plains.  For their part, the French convinced the Pawnee in what is today Nebraska to wipe out the Spanish expedition in 1720 and then began giving trade goods to the Comanche to encourage them to attack the Spanish.  Given the Comanche were going to do such a thing anyways, they were more than happy to oblige.  The French also forged a strong relationship with the Osage in Missouri, arming them with guns which allowed them to spill across the central Plains, beating the shit out of anyone they came upon, including the Pawnee.  By 1725, the French had a strong trade network up and down the river system, with European goods travelling up the river from New Orleans, and furs and grain coming downriver from the Illinois Country.

Of course, not all trade was so far afield.  By the start of the century, changing fashion trends in Europe were increasing demand for deer hides, which were in decidedly short supply in Europe.  Luckily, the French had direct access to a huge supply of deer in what is today the southeastern United States.  French traders, moving into the interior from various trading posts, traded with a number of groups before eventually settling into an alliance with a Muskogean people known as the Choctaw.  This was largely in reaction to the British allying themselves with a rival Muskogean group known as the Chickasaw.  Bolstered by firearms from their respective partners, these two groups began a proxy war on behalf of Britain and France which would last from 1721 until 1763, outlasting even the valuable supply of deer.

Though not that great for the natives, perhaps you see a pattern here, the deer hide trade did greatly benefit Louisiana.  With deer hides becoming more valuable then beaver fur, plus growing demand from the French colonies in the Caribbean for grains grown by natives and French colonists in the Illinois Country, New Orleans became a bustling port, which in turn led to the importation of a number of African slaves to work on the docks and handle other such jobs.  The importation of slaves only increased when sugar began to be planted in the area in 1750.  

American History - The Fur Trap

It should probably be stated right up front, the fur trade both revolutionized the world for the natives involved, and completely fucked it up.  The fur trade gave various native group access to European goods, such as wool blankets, metal tools, and firearms.  Tasks which once took hours, such as heating water in a stone pot, took only minutes in the European made alternative.  However, it was a double-edged sword.  Contact with the Europeans also brought disease, alcohol, and a loss of a way of life.  Europeans were careful to not share how the items they traded to the natives were made, making them entirely dependent upon trade to get them.  As a result, as the beaver population was depleted, and the trade moved further west, villages were left in limbo, no longer to buy European goods, but knowledge of the old ways forgotten after generations of trading furs.  Tribes either had to assimilate to a European way of doing things or move westward in an attempt to secure new sources of fur.  The devastating Beaver Wars of the late seventeenth century, carried out by the Iroquois in the Midwest, are perhaps the most destructive example of this phenomenon, but it was not the only one.

The Ojibwe of the northern Great Lakes were an Algonquian people who first made contact with the French in 1640, becoming first a trader of beaver pelts, and then as the trade moved further west, a middleman between the French and other tribes.  This arrangement at first worked well for both the Ojibwe and the French, especially when it came to fighting the Dutch, and later English, supported Iroquois.  However, as time went on, the French traders increasingly saw the Ojibwe as an encumbrance, preferring to trade directly with the tribes trapping the beaver, especially as an increasing number of independent traders hit the scene, willing to travel deep into what they considered the wilderness, establishing trading posts as far west as Lake Winnipeg.  The Ojibwe combated this in two ways.  One was to strongly encourage traders to take Ojibwe wives, resulting in a significant amount of intermixing and the creation of what became known as the Metis people.  The other was to move steadily westward, using their European firearms to kick the shit out of other tribes to guarantee the French had to work with the Ojibwe.  As a result of these tactics, but the end of the seventeenth century they controlled a wide territory covering present day Ontario, Manitoba, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. 

The Ojibwe were but one reason for the French losing their dominance in the North American fur trade.  Following the end of Queen Anne’s War in 1713, the British Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) regained from the French its Arctic trading posts which had been lost in 1697.  Similar to the French, the British largely traded deeper into the interior with a series of intermediaries, but unlike the French, they seemed little concerned with cutting out their middlemen given the beaver supply was more plentiful in the more northern latitudes and the more direct connection ocean shipping significantly cut down on shipping costs.  The primary trading partner of the English was the Cree, who similar to the Ojibwe were an Algonquian people who moved westward to better secure their role as middlemen, spilling out onto the Canadian prairies and using firearms to kick the shit out of any other native groups who got in their way. 

As can be expected, eventually the Cree and Ojibwe came into direct competition with each other.  However, rather than fighting, they instead joined with the Metis and various Iroquois speaking groups who had come west working with the French, creating what became known as the Iron Confederacy.  This rather fucked over the French, who suddenly found the northern areas dominated by this new power, but it rather delighted the British given it fucked over the French.  As a result, the French even more began to focus on areas further south.  The Iron Confederacy quickly became the most powerful group on the Canadian Prairies, dominating the trade in European goods, pushing groups like the Sioux further south, and establishing strong ties with the Blackfoot, a Algonquian speaking people further west, who thanks to trading furs for firearms, were able to pushback against the expanding Shoshone to the south.  However, that dominance came under threat in the second half of the eighteenth century.

By 1760, the heart of the beaver trade had begun to move north into the subarctic.  Though still plentiful further south, the supplies controlled by the Iron Confederacy and their Blackfoot allies were coming from the foothills of the Rocky Mountains at a not insignificant expense.  In comparison, supplies controlled by the Chipewyan were near the coast with a myriad of waterways to aid in their transport to Hudson’s Bay.  The Chipewyan, a Na-Dene people, lived in northern Manitoba, but as they enjoyed an influx of European goods, quickly spread westward along various rivers into the interior, eventually reaching the Great Slave Lake, assaulting other Na-Dene peoples as they went.

For their part, the Iron Confederacy did at times come into conflict with the Chipewyan, but largely dealt with the issue by diversifying their portfolio so to speak.  Given the difficulties of living in more northern latitudes, food was a popular trade item between the British and Chipewyan.  To take advantage of this demand, many of the Cree adjusted to a horse-based society, hunting buffalo and manufacturing pemmican, which they sold to the British.  Unfortunately, the combination of this trade and the increasing number of tribes adopting horses and a buffalo hunting lifestyle, led to a depletion in the number of buffalo on the Canadian Prairies, which increasingly put the Iron Confederacy in conflict with various Plains tribes, including their old ally the Blackfoot, who in 1790 formed the Blackfoot Confederacy specifically to combat the power of the Iron Confederacy.     

American History - Pirates

By the middle of the seventeenth century, the colonial ambitions of the Dutch, French, and English, had turned the Caribbean into a veritable hodge podge, with each group controlling various islands and colonies whose economies were based on producing sugar by treating imported slaves from Africa as grossly inhumanely as possible.  As you can probably imagine, this didn’t sit well with Spain, who were a-okay of treating non-Europeans like shit, but definitely didn’t want anyone stepping on their turf, but being perpetually broke during this period, there really wasn’t anything they could do about it.  Now for those who have been paying attention, for basically the entirety of the seventeenth century at least two of these powers were at war with each other at any given time, and it was not uncommon for said wars to spill out of the confines of Europe to the New World.  However, aside from the Spanish, who even when broke had a shit ton of silver coming in, none of the rivals could afford to maintain a professional navy so far from home.

To make up for this naval deficiency, all sides came to rely heavily on privateers, which is a different way of saying mercenaries.  Privateers were just random asshats who owned ships who were more than willing to attack other ships.  Basically, the way it worked was a country would give privateers permission to attack the ships of other nations, the spoils of which would be kept by the privateers.  To boil it down further, it was regulated piracy, which quickly became a cottage industry, with the French controlled Tortuga and English controlled Jamaica being specifically notorious privateer havens, their local governors more than happy to turn a blind eye for the good of king and country, not to mention a sweet share of the booty.  However, as often happens, things began to get out of hand.  Thanks to the almost constant state of war, a growing ship building industry in the New World, and growing trade through the region, the number of privateers began to grow exponentially.  At first this was bad luck for the Spanish, given it resulted in many of their towns and cities across the Spanish Main being sacked repeatedly, but once attacking Spanish towns became a bit like squeezing blood from a stone, the privateers began to increasingly attack anybody and everybody regardless of what peace treaties were signed back in Europe.  With the privateers making money and the local governors making money, it was no longer a matter of politics, but rather a business, and a booming one to boot.

Now strangely enough, for whatever reason, the people who worked as privateers began to develop their own unique culture.  Perhaps it was the quasi-legality of the whole thing, or perhaps it was the fact that the seemingly endless wars led to the development of a permanent population of privateers, or perhaps the fact that most privateers came from the shittier end of the social ladder, but for whatever reason as time went on, they formed an increasingly egalitarian society.  Over time, privateering vessels became increasingly democratic, with crew members voting for their leaders, codes of conduct, punishments, and who they should work for.  As well, things like racial divisions were largely unheard of, with people treated based upon their capabilities rather than their ancestry.  All of this at a time when European culture was still dominated by strict aristocratic hierarchies and deeply set prejudices. 

The golden age of privateers in the Caribbean came to an end with the end of Queen Anne’s War in 1713.  Over the course of the war both Britain and France had built up large professional navies, the result of which being they didn’t need privateers anymore, which put thousands of privateers out of work.  Not really being down with this turn of events, many of the formerly quasi-legal privateers decided to just go full pirate, attacking and raiding any ship they crossed paths with, regardless of who owned it, and even setting up a Republic of Pirates in the Bahamas.  This was decidedly not a great turn of events for the European powers who depended on the Caribbean for sugar and other such cash crops, who decided that the best way to deal with it was to stamp out the pirates via force.  The British royal navy was dispatched to the Caribbean to sink pirate vessels and hang their crews.  The Republic of Pirates came under British control in 1718, its inhabitants hanged, scattered, or given a pardon for surrendering.  By 1725, the majority of pirate vessels were sunk or fled to other less patrolled waters, such as the Indian Ocean.  Though piracy would continue to be an issue in the region into the early nineteenth century, it was never as prominent as it once had been.