Beaver Wars

Beaver Wars
Part of the American Indian Wars
Champlain's Battle with the Iroquois, Ticonderoga, July 1609, an 1898 illustration by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris
Date July 1609 – August 4, 1701 Location Great Lakes region Result Indecisive Great Peace of Montreal Wendat, Petun, Neutral, Erie, and Susquehannock defeated and dispersed
Belligerents
Haudenosaunee Confederacy Mohawks Oneida Seneca Onondaga Cayuga Supported by: Dutch Republic England	Wendat (Huron) Algonquin Susquehannock Erie Neutral Petun Odawa Ojibwe Mahican Innu (Montagnais) Abenaki Miami Illinois Supported by: France

The Beaver Wars (Mohawk: Tsianì kayonkwere, pronounced [d͡ʒanî gajũgwere]), also known as the Iroquois Wars or the French and Iroquois Wars (French: Guerres franco-iroquoises), were a series of conflicts fought intermittently during the 17th century in North America throughout the Great Lakes region and the St. Lawrence River valley which pitted the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) – who were supported by the Dutch and later the English – against neighbouring Indigenous nations such as the Wendat (Huron), who were supported by the French.

The Haudenosaunee were a confederacy of the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca nations inhabiting the lands in what is now Upstate New York south of Lake Ontario and east to Lake Champlain, Lake George and the Hudson River. They initially mobilized against the Wendat and other Iroquoian-speaking peoples of the Great Lakes region and later moved against the French and their Algonquian allies.

While the traditional view is that the Haudenosaunee sought to expand their territory in order to monopolize the fur trade with European markets, two other theories have gained acceptance: a need for the Haudenosaunee to replenish their population after suffering catastrophic epidemics in the 1630s, and a desire to impose the Great Law of Peace on other Iroquoian-speaking people.

The Haudenosaunee were supplied with arms by their Dutch and English trading partners, while the Algonquians and Wendat were backed by the French, their chief trading partner. The Haudenosaunee became dominant in the region and enlarged their territory as a result of the wars, realigning the North American tribal geography south of the Great Lakes. They gained control of the Ohio River watershed as their hunting grounds from about 1670 onward.

Haudenosaunee conquests during the Beaver Wars, overlaid over modern United States boundaries for reference.

Both Algonquian and Iroquoian societies were greatly disrupted by these wars. Several confederacies and nations, including the Wendat, Erie, Neutral, Petun, Susquehannock, and Mahican, were defeated and dispersed. Survivors fled to neighbouring tribes or were adopted into the Haudenosaunee. A number of Algonquian nations were also directly attacked. The conflict abated when the Haudenosaunee lost their Dutch allies in New Netherland after the English seized the colony. The Haudenosaunee soon established a trading alliance with the English, and periodically fought against the French until the Great Peace of Montreal was signed in 1701.

The brutal nature of Haudenosaunee warfare has led some scholars to classify the Beaver Wars as acts of genocide. Others disagree, suggesting that Haudenosaunee actions during the Beaver Wars "do not easily conform to definitions of genocide that suggest complete extermination."