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History of the Mohawk Palatines Relating to the Christman Family

The Beaver Wars

The Beaver Wars - sometimes called the Iroquoian Beaver Wars - were a series of conflicts fought by member tribes of the Iroquois Confederation, the so-called Five Nations, against the Hurons, Tobaccos (also called the Petuns or Tionantati), Neutrals, Eries (or Cat People), Ottawas, Mahicans, Illinois, Miamis, Susquehannocks, Nipissings, Potawatomis, Delawares, and Sokokis during 1638-84. Even though whites did not participate in them as combatants, the Beaver Wars were an important passage in the complex development of white-Indian alliances and enmities and the means through which the Iroquois Confederation consolidated the power and influence that would make it a pivotal force in two great conflicts, the French and Indian War and the American Revolution.

The Iroquois Confederation is one of the few examples of an effective intertribal political confederation. Consisting of the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca tribes, whose territory extended from the Hudson Valley in the east to the shores of Lake Ontario in the west (much of present-day western New York State), the Confederation was founded some time between 1400 and 1600 (probably circa 1560-70) by the semilengendary Huron mystic Deganawida and his Mohawk disciple Hiawatha (no relation to the Longfellow character). The Five Nations became known as the Six Nations when the Tuscaroras, having suffered defeat in the Tuscarora War of 1712-13, left North Carolina, migrated northward, were adopted by the Oneidas, and, in 1722, joined the Iroquois Confederation.

The Iroquois Confederation figuratively occupied a "Longhouse," stretching from the Hudson Valley to Lake Ontario; the Mohawks were the Keepers of the Eastern Door, the Seneca were the Keepers of the Western Door. The body's guiding principles were codified in "The Great Law of Peace of the Longhouse People." Chief among the Confederation's tenets was a policy of conquest: "When the council of the League has for its object the establishment of the Great Peace among the people of an outside nation and that nation refuses to accept the Great Peace, then by such refusal they bring a declaration of war upon themselves from the Five Nations. Then shall the Five Nations seek to establish the Great Peace by a conquest of the rebellious nation." The early New York historian Cadwallader Colden was among those who observed that the Iroquois frequently adopted the tribes they vanquished.

The Confederation ethic of conquest was not bom entirely of an abstract vision of destiny but, in large measure, was the result of competition for trade with European colonists. In the early seventeenth century, the Iroquois tribes aligned themselves with the Dutch as trading partners. When the English displaced the Dutch in New Amsterdam in 1664, they inherited the alliance. To the west, the Hurons (and several other western tribes) cleaved to the French. As the century progressed, the western hunting grounds remained rich in beaver - the Indians' chief article of trade - and Huron-French commerce flourished. The peltries of the eastern hunting grounds, however, were diminishing during this period, and the Iroquois trade with the Dutch and, later, the English suffered as a consequence.

Throughout the 1640s and as early as 1638, Huron and Iroquois war parties came to blows in raiding and guerrilla actions ranging from apparently random scalpings to the invasion and burning of villages.

An episode in 1638 illustrates the ferocious spirit of these peoples. A war party of 100 Iroquois met some 300 Hurons and Algonquins. It is a commonplace observation on Indian warfare that one party rarely attacks another unless the attacker enjoys substantial superiority of numbers.

Nevertheless, Ononkwaya, an Oneida chief, refused to back down. "Look!" he is reported to have said, "the sky is clear; the Sun beholds us. If there were clouds to hide our shame from his sight, we might fly; but, as it is, we must fight while we can." All but four or five of the Iroquois warriors were killed or captured- and consigned to death by torture. The execution of Ononkwaya was related by a Jesuit missionary. The chief, unflinching, was roasted on a scaffold. When the Hurons thought him nearly dead, one of his tormentors scalped him - whereupon Ononkwaya leaped up, grabbed some burning brands, and drove the crowd back from the scaffold. They threw sticks, stones, and live coals at him until he finally stumbled. The Hurons seized him and threw him into the fire. But, again, he leaped out, a blazing brand in each hand, and ran toward the town, as if to set it ablaze. His captors tripped him with a long pole and then fell upon him, cutting off his hands and feet. Again, they threw him into the fire, and again he rolled off the pyre, crawling toward the crowd on elbows and knees. His gaze was fearsome enough that, even in his hopeless state, the crowd recoiled -- only to rush forward upon him and, at last, cut off his head.

The fortified and palisaded Huron trading town of Saint Joseph was the focus of an attack in the summer of 1645. The Iroquois approached in force, and all through the night, the Huron defenders sang war songs intended to discourage the attackers. Two Iroquois crept up to the palisade and lay in wait until just before dawn. By that time, the Hurons, having vigilantly sung all night, had fallen asleep. One of the Iroquois climbed to the top of a Huron watchtower, sunk his hatchet into the slumbering head of one of the watchmen and tossed the other man down to his colleague, who scalped him. No general attack followed this two-man sortie. Twenty days later, three Hurons entered the Senecas' principal town. There was no night guard, but the doors to the houses were tied fast. The infiltrators cut a hole in the bark wall of one dwelling, tomahawked three Senecas, and slipped away.

By the spring of 1647, Huron harassment must have intensified, for on April 13, the Hurons dispatched an embassy on a two-month journey to the Susquehannocks, who lived along the Susquehanna River in New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. "We come from the Land of Souls," the ambassadors declared, "where all is gloom, dismay, and desolation. Our fields are covered with blood; our houses are filled only with the dead; and we ourselves have but life enough to beg our friends to take pity on a people who are drawing near their end." The Susquehannocks attempted to intervene diplomati- cally by negotiating treaties and establishing a fur-trading cartel (meant to counter Mohawk commercial dominance) with the central Iroquois tribes and the Senecas. An involved series of abortive embassies and negotiations ensued among the Susquehannocks, Hurons, Oneidas, Cayugas, Onondagas, and Senecas.

As the Susquehannock ambassadors discovered, however, the tribes of the Iroquois Confederation were hardly acting in concert. The Mohawks were by far the most aggressive (their tradition of warriorhood was perhaps strongest and their hunting grounds were the most seriously depleted); the central tribes had begun to resent the Mohawks' control over access to the Dutch trading post at Fort Orange; and the westemmost Senecas, still amply supplied with peltry and having no quarrel with the Hurons, were disinclined to war. It was the Europeans who forced the crisis. The directors of the Dutch West India Company, seeing a chance to usurp trade from the French, decided on April 7, 1648, to reverse their policy against trading arms to the Indians and sold the Mohawks about 400 rifles. In effect, the Dutch were arming their Indian allies against the French-backed Hurons.

Alliances between the French and Indians were based on trade and the work of Jesuit missionaries, who were based throughout Huronia. While the Indians derived important benefits from the missionaries, they also created dependence and dissension and brought disease, particularly devastating epidemics of smallpox. (See box on page 16) Indeed, during the 40 years of sporadic warfare between the Iroquois and Hurons, some Hurons were so embittered against the "Black Robes" that they willingly sided with the Iroquois to take revenge against the French.

One of the most important of the Jesuit Huron missions was Saint Joseph, in the Indian town of Teanaustaya6 at the southeastern frontier of Huron country. Fortified with wooden palisades, it sheltered some 2,000 Indians and Father Antoine Daniel's mission. On July 4, 1648, after Daniel had just concluded mass, the alarm was sounded: "The Iroquois! The Iroquois!" Father Daniel seized the opportunity for saving souls. No one, it seemed, was reluctant to receive baptism now. Hurons crowded around him, and, immersing his handkerchief in a bowl of water, he shook it out over them, baptizing the throng by aspersion. "Brothers," he declared, "today we shall be in Heaven."

Daniel urged his flock to make their escape as best they could, pledging himself to remain behind in order to rescue-from unsanctified death-whomever he could. He confronted the onrushing Iroquois attackers, who shot him with arrows and with musket balls from their Dutch weapons, hacking his body apart before throwing it on the flames that were even then consuming the town. The Iroquois marched off with about 700 prisoners and attacked a neighboring village.

At nine o'clock on the morning of March 16, 1649, priests at the Jesuit headquarters of Sainte Marie saw smoke to the southeast. It was, they knew, the froquois-a combination of Seneca and Mohawks-buming the outermost Huron settlements. They had descended first on Saint lgnace, a town surrounded on three sides by a deep ravine and further defended on all four sides by 16-fbot-high palisades erected under the supervision of the missionaries. The town sheltered chiefly women, children, and old men, who were trapped by their own defensive measures when as many as 1,000 warriors burst through the palisade on the side without a ravine. Within a few minutes, the raid was over, and the attackers moved on to Saint Louis, about three miles distant.

Three Hurons who escaped from Saint lgnace warned the inhabitants of Saint Louis, about 700 in number. All fled, except 80 warriors and those too old, sick, or infirm to move. The town's two Jesuit missionaries, Fathers Brdbeuf and Laternant, remained behind to offer encouragement and baptism. Twice the small band of Huron warriors managed to turn back the Iroquois onslaught, killing about 30, but large numbers of warriors swan-ned about the foot of the palisades, hacking through them with hatchets. The surviving Huron defenders-and the two Jesuits-were captured and the town set ablaze. The prisoners were sent back to Saint lgnace, where the Jesu- its in particular were tortured and beaten.

The Iroquois divided themselves and launched further raids on smaller neighboring villages. Before them, the Huron fugitives fled toward the Tobacco (Tionantati) Indians west of Lake Ontario. On March 17, the Iroquois unleashed an assault on Sainte Marie, palisaded and defended by 40 well-armed Frenchmen augmented by per- haps 300 Huron warriors. A detachment of these warriors ambushed the Iroquois advance guard outside of Sainte Marie but were soundly defeated. The main body of Hurons came to the rescue, however, routing the Iroquois, who retreated to Saint Ignace before joining the main body of invaders at Saint Louis for a renewed assault against Sainte Marie. Cut in half by death and casualty, the defending Hurons fought fiercely, killing perhaps 100 of the Iroquois at a cost of all but 20 of themselves. Yet, the Iroquois were too badly shaken by the resistance they had met to capitalize on their victory. By the morning after the assault on Sainte Marie, they were in retreat (word was that they feared a Huron counterattack) though as a parting gesture, they bound a number of their prisoners-men, women, and children-to stakes at Saint Ig- nace and put the town to the torch.

A force of about 700 Hurons was gathering at Saint Michel, a short distance from Saint Joseph. They pursued the retreating Iroquois but, with no heart left for a fight, failed to engage them. Although the Iroquois had not taken Sainte Marie, the destruction they had wrought upon the other Huron towns was sufficient to send the survivors into flight. By the end of March, 15 Huron towns were abandoned. Some refugees fled to the Tobac- cos, some to the Neutrals, who lived on the northern shores of Lake Erie. Others voluntarily sought adoption into the Iroquois tribes. A small body took refuge with missionaries on Isle Saint Joseph off the shore of Lake Huron, but essentially, the Huron nation had been extinguished. As for the French Jesuit missions, without Indians to convert, many were abandoned. As the Dutch had hoped, the French had suffered defeat alongside their Huron allies.

In November and December 1649, Mohawks and Senecas moved against the Tobaccos. When word of an impending attack came to the mission town of Saint Jean, the warriors there girded for combat with an enemy who, day after day, failed to appear. At length, the Tobacco warriors decided to take the offensive and ventured out in search of the Iroquois.

The attackers were, indeed, nearby; but they were approaching Saint Jean from an unexpected direction and with a degree of caution that belies the myth of Iroquois-particularly Mohawk-invincibility. They happened to capture a straggling Tobacco and his squaw, who revealed that Saint Jean was at present without its warriors. At two o'clock on the afternoon of December 17, 1649, the Iroquois descended on the defenseless town. Father Charles Gamier, one of the missionaries there, hastily performed the requisite baptisms and absolutions, until he was cut down by three musket balls and brained with a hatchet. The surviving Tobaccos emigrated westward. During the opening years of the eighteenth century, they mingled with surviving Hurons to become the Wyandots of Detroit and Sandusky, Ohio country.

By the early spring of 1650, the party of Hurons who had escaped to Isle Saint Joseph was starving. In March, with the lake still frozen, they began to abandon the island, making their way to shore across the softening ice. Some fell through and drowned; others made it and survived by fishing. Their salvation was short-lived, however, as Iroquois bands fell upon them, pursuing small parties of refugees with a cruel persistence that stunned Jesuit observers. "My pen," wrote Father Superior Ragueneau, "has no ink black enough to describe the fury of the Iroquois. . . . Our starving Hurons were driven out of a town which had become an abode of horror. . . . These poor people fell into ambuscades of our Iroquois enemies. Some were killed on the spot; some were dragged into captivity; women and children were burned. . . . Go where they would, they met with slaughter on all sides. Famine pursued them, or they encountered an enemy more cruel than cruelty itself."

In late autumn of 1650, the Iroquois launched a furious campaign against the Neutral Nation, who, as their name (bestowed by the French) implies, had attempted to re- main unallied in the ongoing combat between Iroquois and Hurons. In the initial attack, a large town of some 3,000 to 4,000 people was destroyed. In the spring of 1651, a second town was attacked with such savagery that the Neutrals abandoned all of their settlements and dispersed. It is likely that the Senecas, who made up a large part of the attacking force, adopted significant numbers of the defeated tribe-perhaps virtually all of the survivors. Whatever the details of their fate, the Neutrals had numbered about 10,000 at the beginning of the seventeenth century; in 1653, a mere 800 could be accounted for.

Between 1651 and 1653, the Iroquois habitually harassed the French and their Indian allies before four of the five nations, apparently in an effort to circumvent Mohawk domination of the Dutch trade, concluded a series of peace treaties at Montreal late in 1653. However, the following May an Onondagan delegate to the governor in Montreal declared: "Our young men will no more fight the French; but they are too warlike to stay at home, and this summer we shall invade the country of the Eries. The earth trembles and quakes in that quarter; but here all remains calm. "

War was provoked when an Erie, who was a member of a treaty delegation visiting a Seneca town, quarreled with a Seneca and killed him. Enraged, the Senecas killed all 30 members of the delegation, touching off a series of reprisals and counterreprisals, until the Eries captured an Onondaga chief. They were on the verge of burning him, when he convinced them that to do so would provoke a war with all of the Iroquois. Following tribal custom, the Eries offered the Onondaga to the sister of a member of the slain delegation, expecting that she would adopt him as a surrogate for her dead brother. Instead, she bitterly rejected him, and he was put to death after all. This motive for war dovetailed neatly with the Iroquois grand strategy of conquest and usurpation of hunting and trapping grounds. The war was brief and costly to both sides, but like the Hurons, Tobaccos, and Neutrals before them, the Eries emerged from it no longer a nation.

The fall of the Eries in 1656 consolidated the power of the Five Nations, making them dominant from the Ottawa River in the north and the Cumberland in the south, into Maine in the east, and as far as Lake Ontario in the west. The Beaver Wars, however, did not end with the destruction of the Eries. During 1651-52, the Mohawks attacked a people known as the Atrakwaeronons. Information in Jesuit "relations"-firsthand mis- sionary accounts-suggests that this may have been another name for the Susquehannocks; it is also possible that it referred to a tribe closely allied with the Susquehannocks. In either case, the Mohawk raid yielded 500 to 600 captives and brought the Susquehannocks into a quarter-century of sporadic warfare with the Five Nations.

In the spring of 1663, 800 Senecas, Cayugas, and Onondagas moved against the Susquehannocks' principal fort, only to find that the colonists of New Sweden had armed the Susquehannocks, whose well-palisaded stockade was defended not only by the Susquehannocks, but by Delaware Indian allies. The siege was lifted after a week. Similarly, Iroquois forces failed to displace the Mahicans of the upper Hudson Valley and the Sokokis of the upper Connecticut Valley. Like the Susquehannocks, these tribes had European guns and, unlike the Hurons, Tobaccos, Neutrals, and Eries, had not suffered the divi- sions and diseases brought by missionaries.

The Iroquois tribes were also unsuccessful in establishing hunting and trade monopolies in the west. In 1680, the Iroquois launched a major war against the French- allied Indian bands living along the Illinois and Mississippi rivers. After some initial victories, the Iroquois were defeated. They fared no better against the Miamis (in the present states of Wisconsin and Michigan) a few years later, during the final phase of the Beaver Wars. Thirty years of warfare established the Indian-Eurpoean alliances that would be active well into the eighteenth century and that would be crucial during the French and Indian War. For a time, 1649-55, the Beaver Wars consolidated the Iroquois' power, but ultimately, the wars gained much for the Europeans at the expense of the Indians, who were weakened by decades of ruinous combat.

History of the Mohawk Palatines Relating to the Christman Family

Last updated 13.3.2009