Iroquois Wars

Continues the chronicle of the phenomenal rise of the Iroquois Confederacy during the "Beaver Wars" of the 17th century, using primary source extracts from the Jesuit Relations.

This volume chronicles the phenomenal rise of the Iroquois Confederacy during the "Beaver Wars" of the 17th century. In what were perhaps the greatest series of military conquests in Native American history, the Five Nations of the Iroquois subjugated and destroyed enemy tribes stretching over a vast area from eastern Canada to Virginia to Illinois, forever changing the cultural map of Eastern North America. The accounts included in this volume cover the underpinnings of the wars and the initial conflicts which led to a century of hostilities as the Iroquois emerged as the dominant force that was both respected and dreaded by neighboring tribes and the European colonial powers alike. Additional extracts will touch upon the evolution of Native American fighting techniques, strategy and tactics, treatment of prisoners, and the influence of the various European colonies.

Back in print. George T. Hunt’s classic 1940 study of the Iroquois during the middle and late seventeenth century presents warfare as a result of depletion of natural resources in the Iroquois homeland and tribal efforts to assume the role of middlemen in the fur trade between the Indians to the west and the Europeans.

Why were the Iroquois unrelentingly hostile toward the French colonists and their Native allies? The longstanding "Beaver War" interpretation of seventeenth-century Iroquois-French hostilities holds that the Iroquois? motives were primarily economic, aimed at controlling the profitable fur trade. Josä Ant¢nio Brand?o argues persuasively against this view. Drawing from the original French and English sources, Brand?o has compiled a vast array of quantitative data about Iroquois raids and mortality rates. He offers a penetrating examination of seventeenth-century Iroquoian attitudes toward foreign policy and warfare, contending that the Iroquois fought New France not primarily to secure their position in a new market economy but for reasons that traditionally fueled Native warfare: to replenish their populations, safeguard hunting territories, protect their homes, gain honor, and seek revenge.

The participation of the Iroquois of Akwasasne, Kanesetake (Oka), Kahnawake and Oswegatchie in the Seven Years’ War is a long neglected topic. The consequences of this struggle still shape Canadian history. The book looks at the social and economic impact of the war on both men and women in Canadian Iroquois communities. The Canadian Iroquois provides an enhanced appreciation both of the role of Amerindians in the war itself and of their difficult struggle to lead their lives within the unstable geopolitical environment created by European invasion and settlement.

Describes how the Six Nations got involved in the War of 1812, the role they played in the defense of Canada, and the war's effects on their society