Iroquois Franco War

1609 - 1701

21,500 COMMITTED (Estimate)

Number of DEAD IN SERVICE unknown.

Iroquois

HURONIA

Erie, Neutral, Ottawa, Ojibway, Mississaugas, Potawatomi, Algonquin, Shawnee, Wenrohronon, Mohicans, Innu, Abenaki, Miamis, Illinois

KINGDOM OF ENGLAND

UNITED PROVINCES

KINGDOM OF FRANCE

The main battles:

Sorel (1610) · Long Sault (1660) · Montreal (1660) · Montreal (1661) · Lachine (1689) · The Prairie (1691) · Mohawk Valley (1692)

In 1609 there was a clash on the shores of Lake Champlain. The Algonquins won the victory against the Iroquois, thanks to the French and their rifles, unknown to the Indian tribes. Champlain kills two Iroquois with rifle. During two other battles in 1611 and 1615, the French still defeated the Iroquois and seized an Iroquois fort, before a precarious peace was concluded between Champlain and the tribe of the five nations. This peace may allow the French colony to grow quietly during the 1620s, but hostilities between the settlers and the Iroquois resumed in the 1640s.

In 1641, the governor of Montmagny built a fort at the mouth of the Richelieu, a nascent river at Lake Champlain and flowing north, connecting the St. Lawrence and the Hudson. The movements of the Iroquois become more difficult, which only exacerbates the already tense situation between Iroquois and French settlers.

The first tensions began after May 17, 1642, day when about fifty French colonists under the direction of Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve land on the point where was the place Royale previously occupied by Champlain and named the site Ville-Marie, in the honor of the Virgin Mary. Beyond Montreal, the Lachine Rapids, believed to lead to China, constituted a natural barrier. But the founders of the city venture there and up the nearby Ottawa River. The Iroquois then decided to block this river in 1643.

From 1646 to 1653, the Iroquois attack the Hurons, the Algonquins and their French allies, make prisoners they torture to intimidate the arrivals. Military expeditions in response to the Iroquois incursions do not provide a glimpse of a lasting and beneficial peace for the crown. In order to restore calm and royal authority, the Carignan-Sallières Regiment was dispatched to New France in 1665 with the mission to subdue the Iroquois nations. At the price of a devastating campaign, they are forced to look for openings for peace. A period of prosperity opens for the colony.

This climate of stability does not last and hostilities resume quickly, encouraged by the settlers of New England, who engage their Iroquois allies to undertake new armed incursions in the St. Lawrence Valley. The year 1690 saw Governor Frontenac repel an English attack on Quebec. In retaliation, Iroquoisie is pacified by arms.

Despite the efforts undertaken and the talks begun in Montreal and Quebec, the achievement of a general peace with the five Iroquois nations fails.

In November 1688, the Glorious Revolution overthrew James II, the ally of Louis XIV. The Iroquois learn from the English of Albany that England and France are at war, and abandon any idea of ??peace. Jacques-Rene de Brisay was not yet aware of the reversal of alliance. As a result, while he was waiting for Iroquois delegates to ratify a peace treaty, they raised troops.

The massacre of Lachine took place on August 5, 1689: about 1500 Iroquois warriors, pushed in their actions by the English, fell down on the village of Lachine, at the gates of Montreal, near the rapids of the same name. Twenty-four settlers were killed, 70 to 90 taken prisoners, 42 of whom never returned. Of 77 houses, 56 were razed by the Iroquois and their allies in the Five Nations Confederacy. The Lachine massacre and its aftermath would have killed one in ten Quebecers.

In 1696, the Iroquois allied with the Ottawas, and the French trading empire was thus threatened. Senior officials from Montreal and Quebec City asked Frontenac to launch a major attack on the Iroquois villages. Frontenac only launched the campaign when he had received the express order of the Minister of the Navy. In July 1696, the army, made up of regular troops, militia and Indian allies, 2,150 strong, left Montreal for the final march to the village of Onontagués but found nothing but ashes: the The enemy had fled into the woods after burning everything. The army destroyed the corn in the fields and all the food it could find, hidden in the village and the surrounding area.

At the same time, Frontenac continues to encourage the establishment of new trading posts in the West. For example, forts were built in the Mississippi area and in the Prairies, allowing the coureurs des bois to trade with the Sioux and the Plains Indians. The first intercolonial conflict continued until 1697, when peace was signed between France and England by the Treaty of Ryswick. Negotiations were then undertaken between the French and Iroquois, who were almost no longer supported by their English allies in peace with France, and ended in 1701 with the Great Peace of Montreal.