It Happened Here -- The Other French and Indian Wars --Part I Champlain
Americans, by tradition, have long called the wars for the colonial domination of North America, collectively, The French and Indian Wars--named for the French and their Indian allies arrayed against the British and American colonial forces. But the title "French and Indian Wars" might be equally applied to the series of conflicts of the Iroquois Indians (Haudenosaunee) against the government and citizens of New France*. Though these conflicts often ran concurrent with periods of British conflict with the French, the Iroquois usually fought independently of their sometimes allies; they often declined to support the British, and occasionally they acted contrary to the interests of their erstwhile allies. Also. because the Iroquois were a loose confederation of nations, while one nation was at peace with the French, another might be continuing to send out war parties. In duration, if not in scale, these French and Indian Wars dwarf all of the other wars of France excepting the Anglo-French "Hundred Years Wars".
The conflict began almost inadvertently when French explorer Samuel de Champlain agreed to join a war party of Huron, Ottawa and Montagnais Indians in a raid into Iroquois territory in 1609. Champlain hoped by participation in the raid he might strengthen his friendship with the tribes nearest his tiny outpost of Quebec and with the large tribes to the west, and that that relationship would aid him in one of his expedition's primary objectives, finding a route to China. He knew, also, that a dramatic demonstration of french arms would go a long way toward securing their alliance. With eleven of his countrymen in a small sailing vessel Champlain joined the party of some two hundred and forty Indians, but before they had gotten very far a quarrel broke out among the native Americans and some three quarters of them quit the expedition. At what would become the village of St. John's, rapids prevented the boat from continuing so Champlain sent it back with all but two of his soldiers. The three Frenchmen continued on with the Indians, by canoe, to the head of Riviere des Iroquois (Richelieu River) to where it opened up into the lake that came to bear his name.
On a point along the western shore (probably Crown Point or Ticonderoga) Champlain and his hosts ran into an Iroquois war party late in the day. Through an exchange of insults and challenges the two war parties agreed to meet in battle the next day. The following morning the Hurons and Montagnais faced off against the Iroquois with Champlain in the middle of his allies' line across from a group of Iroquois war chiefs. On the flank were a smaller group Indians with his two soldiers. Champlain had loaded his arquebus with four balls. As the chiefs moved to attack at close range, Champlain shouldered his weapon and fired. Two chiefs dropped dead and a third fell mortally wounded. The explorer was engulfed in a hailstorm of arrows but good luck and his light armor and helmet preserved him from injury. As he reloaded, his soldiers discharged their arquebuses into the line of Haudenosaunee warriors. In a moment it was over. A few more Iroquois fell in the panicked flight that followed but though the casualties were few that day, the Iroquois would never forgive the French.
The following year, near the mouth of the Richelieu, Champlain and several of his men confirmed their hostility to the Iroquois by joining an attack on an Iroquois war party that had holed up in a barricade of downed trees and branches. With their overwhelming firepower they, and a small group of traders who apparently joined the fray for the fun of it, slaughtered their cornered foe and only fifteen of some one hundred warriors escaped.
Then in 1615 Champlain while exploring in Huron territory was invited to joined in a raid into Iroquoia itself. With some 500 native warriors Champlain and his men crossed the Lake Ontario, intending to meet up with an equally large party of allies, (probably Susquehannocks).
At the head of Henderson Bay, Lake Ontario
(County Rte 178)
Some miles inland, a small fishing party of eleven Onondaga Iroquois
were captured, then outside of a large well pallisaded town, south of
Lake Oneida, the younger warriors, surging
ahead came upon a large group of Iroquois tending their fields of maize and pumpkins. Attacking wildly they were driven back when the Onondagas grabbed their weapons, counter-attacked, then successfully retreated into their town.
The "Indian Castle," as the Dutch and English called such places was heavily fortified with four rows of 30 foot tree trunk pickets surrounding it, inclined outward; galleries or shooting platforms along its top; magazines of stones; and water-filled troughs to counter any attempts to set fire to the walls. In the face of such defenses Champlain built a siege-tower with a platform that allowed four or five of his arquebusers to fire across at the defenders on the shooting platforms. The tower was brought forward and the battle commenced. But to his dismay Champlain realized his Indian allies were unprepared or unwilling to support him. Though he shouted until he was voiceless, among the cacophony of war-hoops and sounds of battle, they refused to follow him. Instead, rushing forward as individuals or small groups the Hurons spent their fury in futile attacks, shooting up against the defenders or in useless displays of bravado in front of the palisade.
At one point a fire was kindled against the wall, but on the leeward side and was quickly extinguished from above by the defenders. As casualties mounted, Huron enthusiasm waned, and a spontaneous withdrawal occurred. In the following days Champlain, though wounded, tried to rally his troops for another assault but they refused to budge until the arrival of reinforcements that never materialized. After several days the war party returned to their canoes hidden on the shore of Lake Ontario.
For the next couple of decades an uneasy peace prevailed between the French and the cowed Iroquois as the Haudenosaunee focused their aggression against the Mahicans and other (Hudson) River tribes. By 1628, they had driven them east of the river and gained direct access to the other "tribe" of newcomers on the scene, the Dutch. With the Dutch they established a fabulously profitable trade, acquiring all manner of, to them, unimaginable, marvelously wonderful things-- iron axes and tomahawks, iron, copper and brass kettles, steel knives, wool strouds (blankets) and woven cloth shirts, beads and wampum, vermilion warpaint, brandy and rum; and most importantly, arquebuses, and soon, flintlock muskets. The Dutch, for their part, had no compunctions against selling the Iroquois firearms, especially since one arquebus could command a price of twenty beaver skins. By 1643 the French were receiving alarming reports from their missionaries that the Mohawks alone had in their possession over 300 muskets!
Meanwhile the Hurons had become the principal Indian beneficiaries of the French fur trade. With their land lying astride the trade routes between the French trading centers along the St. Lawrence and the rich beaver territories around the Great Lakes, on up into the far reaches of Hudson's Bay, the Hurons established themselves as middlemen.
While populations of beaver were soon decimated in Iroquois hunting grounds, the warriors of the Five Nations became excellent marksmen, developing new strategies for warfare from ancient hunting tactics. Gone forever were the bands of massed warriors sending up clouds of arrows and protecting themselves with wooden shields and wooden slat-armour, that Champlain encountered. Instead the Iroquois developed tactics of stealth and ambush and coordinated movement to surround their human prey. And they would use these tactics to intercept and attack Huron hunters in their territory or on their way to Montreal burdened with pelts. To the increasing consternation of French authorities, French traders and isolated French farmers. too, became targets of such attacks.
Around 1645 Iroquois strategy changed from preying on Huron fur trappers and raiding their canoe convoys of furs heading for Montreal, to direct attacks on Huron villages themselves with the purpose of destroying the Huron nation and supplanting it as middlemen in the fur trade. Organizationally the Iroquois Confederacy changed as well, though how it changed and what leaders may have sparked these changes may never be known. War parties increased in size from scores of warriors based in a single village or clan members from a couple villages to Confederacy-wide armies of 1500 or more warriors, from all five tribes. And raids became coordinated with war parties heading out and returning continuously to keep up a constant pressure on their targets, not just in good weather but all year long.
In the summer of 1649 the Haudenosaunee launched attacks against the Huron towns of St. Ignace and St. Louis, mission towns on the shore of Georgian Bay of Lake Huron. The towns were overrun. Their French Jesuit missions were destroyed and their missionaries killed. Hundreds of Huron warrior captives were marched back to Iroquois towns across what would become New York State to be ritually tortured and killed and hundreds more Huron women and children would be marched back to become slaves or to be adopted into Iroquois families. The stunned Hurons abandoned fifteen other towns. By the winter of 1649 the Huron nation was no more, its people all captives or refugees starving in the wilderness, and hunted down like game by Iroquois war parties or throwing themselves on the mercy of neighboring tribes.
For the next couple of years the juggernaut of the Iroquois war machine continued to roll on. In the winter of 1649-1650 they attacked and destroyed two small tribes, the Nipissing and the Petun or "Tobacco Nation", living north west, and south of the Hurons. In 1651 the Neutral Nation, living west of Lake Ontario was destroyed for its role in giving shelter to refugee Hurons.
Next week -- Part II The Jesuits and the Ordeals of Father Jogues
*In recent decades historians have begun referring to these conflicts, depending on whether their treatment of them has concentrated more on the Iroquois' conflict with the French or their struggle to dominate the fur trade, as the "French and Iroquois Wars" or the "Beaver Wars".
The conflict began almost inadvertently when French explorer Samuel de Champlain agreed to join a war party of Huron, Ottawa and Montagnais Indians in a raid into Iroquois territory in 1609. Champlain hoped by participation in the raid he might strengthen his friendship with the tribes nearest his tiny outpost of Quebec and with the large tribes to the west, and that that relationship would aid him in one of his expedition's primary objectives, finding a route to China. He knew, also, that a dramatic demonstration of french arms would go a long way toward securing their alliance. With eleven of his countrymen in a small sailing vessel Champlain joined the party of some two hundred and forty Indians, but before they had gotten very far a quarrel broke out among the native Americans and some three quarters of them quit the expedition. At what would become the village of St. John's, rapids prevented the boat from continuing so Champlain sent it back with all but two of his soldiers. The three Frenchmen continued on with the Indians, by canoe, to the head of Riviere des Iroquois (Richelieu River) to where it opened up into the lake that came to bear his name.
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| Tercentenary Lighthouse at Crown Pt. |
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| Champlain Bronze at the Lighthouse |
 |
| Marker at Ticonderoga showing Champlain's sketch of the Battle |
The following year, near the mouth of the Richelieu, Champlain and several of his men confirmed their hostility to the Iroquois by joining an attack on an Iroquois war party that had holed up in a barricade of downed trees and branches. With their overwhelming firepower they, and a small group of traders who apparently joined the fray for the fun of it, slaughtered their cornered foe and only fifteen of some one hundred warriors escaped.
Then in 1615 Champlain while exploring in Huron territory was invited to joined in a raid into Iroquoia itself. With some 500 native warriors Champlain and his men crossed the Lake Ontario, intending to meet up with an equally large party of allies, (probably Susquehannocks).
At the head of Henderson Bay, Lake Ontario
(County Rte 178)
 |
| US 11 Pulaski |
 |
| US 11 Brewerton |
 |
| County Rte. 57, Phoenix |
For the next couple of decades an uneasy peace prevailed between the French and the cowed Iroquois as the Haudenosaunee focused their aggression against the Mahicans and other (Hudson) River tribes. By 1628, they had driven them east of the river and gained direct access to the other "tribe" of newcomers on the scene, the Dutch. With the Dutch they established a fabulously profitable trade, acquiring all manner of, to them, unimaginable, marvelously wonderful things-- iron axes and tomahawks, iron, copper and brass kettles, steel knives, wool strouds (blankets) and woven cloth shirts, beads and wampum, vermilion warpaint, brandy and rum; and most importantly, arquebuses, and soon, flintlock muskets. The Dutch, for their part, had no compunctions against selling the Iroquois firearms, especially since one arquebus could command a price of twenty beaver skins. By 1643 the French were receiving alarming reports from their missionaries that the Mohawks alone had in their possession over 300 muskets!
Meanwhile the Hurons had become the principal Indian beneficiaries of the French fur trade. With their land lying astride the trade routes between the French trading centers along the St. Lawrence and the rich beaver territories around the Great Lakes, on up into the far reaches of Hudson's Bay, the Hurons established themselves as middlemen.
While populations of beaver were soon decimated in Iroquois hunting grounds, the warriors of the Five Nations became excellent marksmen, developing new strategies for warfare from ancient hunting tactics. Gone forever were the bands of massed warriors sending up clouds of arrows and protecting themselves with wooden shields and wooden slat-armour, that Champlain encountered. Instead the Iroquois developed tactics of stealth and ambush and coordinated movement to surround their human prey. And they would use these tactics to intercept and attack Huron hunters in their territory or on their way to Montreal burdened with pelts. To the increasing consternation of French authorities, French traders and isolated French farmers. too, became targets of such attacks.
Around 1645 Iroquois strategy changed from preying on Huron fur trappers and raiding their canoe convoys of furs heading for Montreal, to direct attacks on Huron villages themselves with the purpose of destroying the Huron nation and supplanting it as middlemen in the fur trade. Organizationally the Iroquois Confederacy changed as well, though how it changed and what leaders may have sparked these changes may never be known. War parties increased in size from scores of warriors based in a single village or clan members from a couple villages to Confederacy-wide armies of 1500 or more warriors, from all five tribes. And raids became coordinated with war parties heading out and returning continuously to keep up a constant pressure on their targets, not just in good weather but all year long.
In the summer of 1649 the Haudenosaunee launched attacks against the Huron towns of St. Ignace and St. Louis, mission towns on the shore of Georgian Bay of Lake Huron. The towns were overrun. Their French Jesuit missions were destroyed and their missionaries killed. Hundreds of Huron warrior captives were marched back to Iroquois towns across what would become New York State to be ritually tortured and killed and hundreds more Huron women and children would be marched back to become slaves or to be adopted into Iroquois families. The stunned Hurons abandoned fifteen other towns. By the winter of 1649 the Huron nation was no more, its people all captives or refugees starving in the wilderness, and hunted down like game by Iroquois war parties or throwing themselves on the mercy of neighboring tribes.
For the next couple of years the juggernaut of the Iroquois war machine continued to roll on. In the winter of 1649-1650 they attacked and destroyed two small tribes, the Nipissing and the Petun or "Tobacco Nation", living north west, and south of the Hurons. In 1651 the Neutral Nation, living west of Lake Ontario was destroyed for its role in giving shelter to refugee Hurons.
Next week -- Part II The Jesuits and the Ordeals of Father Jogues
*In recent decades historians have begun referring to these conflicts, depending on whether their treatment of them has concentrated more on the Iroquois' conflict with the French or their struggle to dominate the fur trade, as the "French and Iroquois Wars" or the "Beaver Wars".
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