From Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America, by Pekka Hämäläinen (Liveright, 2022), Kindle pp. 123-125:
AROUND 1680, ABOUT FIFTY YEARS after the terrible smallpox epidemic that cut their numbers by half, the Five Nations were at the height of their power; they were now the domineering nation in the great interior. The French feared them, the English respected them as allies, and the Dutch no longer had a colony in North America. The Iroquois seemed to be everywhere. Their fleet-footed war parties ranged across the Great Lakes, seeking captives, pelts, and spiritual and emotional healing. Their world had expanded explosively, covering a massive domain. They seized pelts and captives from the Ottawa Valley to the western limits of the pays d’en haut, which the French still claimed—feebly now—as part of their empire.
With most English colonies now in their orbit, the Five Nations moved to draw their Native neighbors within their sphere of influence. Weakened Susquehannocks, Piscataways, and others sought refuge in Iroquoia against Maryland and Virginia, and soon Iroquois-Susquehannock war parties set out to “scour the heads” of the Potomac, James, and Roanoke Rivers to bring their Native tributaries into Iroquoia. The Iroquois also took in “Christian Indians” from Massachusetts and refused to return them—now their “flesh and blood”—to New England when asked. In the West, the Iroquois raided the French-allied Illinis, Miamis, and Odawas, taking hundreds of captives and shattering France’s commercial networks in the interior. When the Miamis offered three thousand beaver pelts in exchange for their relatives, the Iroquois took the furs but refused to release the captives. Iroquois sachems thought it politic to inform the governor of New France—Louis de Buade, comte de Frontenac—that “they would not eat his children.”
As Iroquois ambitions swelled, the confederacy became entangled in complex foreign political arrangements with the surrounding colonial powers. Since the mid-seventeenth century, New France had posed the most serious challenge to the Five Nations’ ambitions and sovereignty. Tracy’s invasion of Iroquoia in 1666 appeared to have locked the Iroquois into the French orbit by opening their towns to Jesuit black robes. The Five Nations had suffered enormous losses in their relentless beaver and mourning wars, leaving them uncertain of their spiritual virtue and political primacy. Many seemed to have become stout Francophiles who embraced the Christian god, accepted Onontio as their father, and opened their settlements to French merchants.
Against this backdrop, the Five Nations’ Covenant Chain with New York in the 1670s might appear to signal a splintering of the Iroquois League into rival factions. The sudden Jesuit ascendancy among the Saint Lawrence Iroquois seemed like a capitulation to a colonial power, and it fueled virulent anti-French sentiments within the league. The pro-English bloc of the Iroquois was emboldened to steer the league into a tighter alliance with the increasingly powerful New York. All this did not mean, however, that the Five Nations were divided or in conflict. On the contrary, the Francophile and Anglophile blocs together enabled the Iroquois League to keep North America’s two most powerful empires in a state of uncertainty, nurture commercial and political relations with both, and draw major concessions from each.
Suddenly, New France was besieged by a newly ascending Five Nations. France’s North American empire did not exist outside of its web of Indian alliances, and the Five Nations were at once usurping that web and tearing it apart. Captives poured into Iroquoia—a single raid yielded eight hundred Illini captives—and the number of Iroquois villages increased from fifteen in 1666 to twenty-four in 1680, while the area covered by their settlements increased from roughly seven thousand square miles to forty-five thousand. Iroquois war parties looted French vessels and demanded tributary goods at Fort Frontenac, while selling the bulk of their pelts to Albany. New France suffered a twenty-five percent drop in its fur revenue. Governor Frontenac kept postponing direct talks with the Iroquois. He had a good reason: they had threatened to boil and eat him.
There had never been anything like the Five Nations League in North America. No other Indigenous nation or confederacy had ever reached so far, conducted such an ambitious foreign policy, or commanded such fear and respect. The Five Nations blended diplomacy, intimidation, and violence as the circumstances dictated, creating a measured instability that only they could navigate. Their guiding principle was to avoid becoming attached to any single colony, which would restrict their options and risk exposure to external manipulation. French officials believed that the Iroquois strove to become “the sole masters of commerce." Such an idea was not far-fetched. Having observed how the Five Nations “completely ruined” several Native nations, the French knew they were defenseless. An Iroquois empire was consolidating in the interior.
No comments:
Post a Comment