“A woman lives with the constant fear that her husband, who has left that morning to work, will be killed or captured and that she will never see him again,” wrote Pierre Boucher, who governed the small settlement of Trois-Rivières. Trade suffered as colonists tried to defend themselves. Thousands of miles away, the French government decided its investment in New France was not paying off and did not step in to protect colonists. War parties would unexpectedly storm isolated settlements or farms, massacring residents and sometimes taking prisoners. New France’s inhabitants were deeply shaken by Iroquois raids. The tragic combination created what historian Daniel Richter has called a dangerous spiral: “Epidemics led to deadlier mourning-wars fought with firearms the need for guns increased the demand for pelts to trade for them the quest for furs provoked war with other nations and deaths in those conflicts began the mourning-war anew.” This led to a series of what historians have called “mourning wars”: guerrilla raids prompted by deep grief. They believed that family members who had been lost at the hands of their rivals or through deadly diseases brought by colonists had to be replaced by captives, and that carrying out retaliatory attacks was a way of honoring their dead. Hunting territory wasn’t the only thing at stake for the Iroquois. Throughout the 1630s and 1640s, they also began to attack their indigenous rivals-and anyone who allied with them, which in some cases included French colonists. In response to that demand, indigenous people hunted more, traveled longer distances than usual, and shifted toward individualism.Īs overhunting depleted the number of beaver and deer in Iroquois territory, the Iroquois attempted to wrest control of more territory for trapping and hunting. But the colonists demanded many more furs than indigenous groups usually hunted. The Iroquois and other indigenous people traditionally shared their hunting grounds with members of their tribe and their allies, only hunted as much as was necessary, and respected the land and animals as part of their spiritual beliefs. But it also stoked decades of rivalries, violence, and all-out war as the fur trade transformed the landscape, the economy, and indigenous groups’ traditional ways of life. The fur trade benefited both the French and their indigenous trading partners. At first, indigenous trappers collected, processed, and transported almost all of the furs the colony produced. They also helped French settlers navigate waterways and forests. They traded their pelts for the European settlers’ goods, such as guns, cloth, and metal. Indigenous people knew how to trap and skin beaver and other animals, prized for their use in hats and other products. As European settlement picked up, League nations and their rivals became increasingly interdependent with the settlers. By the time European settlers arrived in 1608, five Iroquois nations, the Seneca, Oneida, Mohawk, Cayuga, and Onondaga, had joined together into the Haudenosaunee, or Iroquois, League. Haudenosaunee people, also known as Iroquois people, had inhabited what is now the country of Canada for thousands of years, developing complex societies and establishing trade routes throughout the area. Barkskins premieres Memorial Day, May 25 at 9/8c. Canada was largely dependent on agriculture and the fur trade, which brought colonists in conflict with the people whose land they had claimed for France.Ī disparate group of outcasts must navigate the brutal hardships, competing interests, and tangled loyalties at the crossroads of civilization-1600’s New France. French colonists struggled with the region’s harsh winters and uncleared land. But the colony floundered at first due to a lack of settlers, difficulties accessing the riches Champlain had boasted about, and conflict with the Iroquois. The French crown’s plan was to let trading companies run New France and draw settlers there in exchange for the right to take advantage of the colonies’ natural bounties, the most lucrative of which were the large population of native animals.Ĭhamplain envisioned building a profitable fur trade in Canada. It became the largest city in the colony of Canada. Four years later, explorer Samuel de Champlain established the city of Québec farther inland. In 1604, French settlers established the colony of Acadia on the land surrounding the Gulf of St. It was another half-century before France tried again.
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