The Iroquois and the Western Fur Trade: A Problem in Interpretation

Transcription

1 The Iroquois and the Western Fur Trade: A Problem in Interpretation BY ALLEN W. TRELEASE It is now forty-seven years since Charles H. Mcllwain published his seminal essay on the colonial fur trade and the part it played in early Indian-white relations. That essay, written as an introduction to his edition of Peter Wraxall's abridgment of the New York Indian records, set a new tone in historical interpretation of the Iroquois confederacy and especially its role in international politics before For a century and a half after 1600 the Iroquois managed gradually to dominate or intimidate other tribes as far away as Maine, South Carolina, Illinois, and Michigan. During this time they were generally at odds with the French of Canada, while maintaining a consistently close relationship with the Dutch and English of New York. They were a crucial factor in the colonial fur trade and in the Anglo-French rivalry for continental supremacy. All this was true despite the fact that they never numbered more than 15,000 souls and seldom fielded more than a few hundred warriors in a single engagement.' Several reasons have been advanced through the years to explain how and why the Iroquois attained this prominence. Here as elsewhere the sands of historical interpretation have shifted from time to time, and Iroquois historiography constitutes an interesting study in itself. Probably the most widely accepted theories before Mc- Ilwain entered the scene in 1915 were those of Francis Parkman 1 Charles H. Mcllwain (ed.), An Abridgment of the Indian Affairs... Transacted in the Colony of New York to , by Peter Wraxall (Cambridge, Mass., 1915), ix-lxxxv. 2 George S. Snyderman, "Behind the Tree of Peace: A Sociological Analysis of Iroquois Warfare," Pennsylvania Archaeologist (Aliquippa, Pa.), XVIII (1948),

2 THE IROQUOIS AND THE WESTERN FUR TRADE 33 and Lewis H. Morgan. Parkman believed that the Iroquois were inherently more ferocious and cunning than their neighbors, while Morgan found primary significance in their political unity. Their confederacy of five, and later six, tribes, Morgan felt, provided a strength in numbers which their divided adversaries could not match. A third factor commonly advanced to explain Iroquois ascendancy was their easy access to European firearms.' Their persistent hostility toward the French was even attributed by some persons to lasting resentment at Champlain's military intervention on the side of their Algonquian enemies in None of these theories, and certainly no one of them alone, seemed entirely satisfactory to later generations of historians who came back to the problem. Mcllwain's contribution was to apply the economic interpretation of history to explain both Iroquois motivation and success. Indeed he came perilously close to economic determinism: "Trade and policy were inseparable," he wrote in regard to New York Indian policy, "but trade was the ultimate end of all policy; it was also practically the sole means in all Indian relations."' His argument ran essentially as follows. The Iroquois, having developed a profitable fur trade with the Dutch, found by 1670 at the latest that the supply of fur-bearing animals in their own homeland was virtually depleted. They faced a parting of the ways; they must either reach out for new supplies of peltry farther afield, in the lands of their neighbors to the north and west, or resign themselves to a loss of power and status and submit helplessly to encroachment and conquest by the white man and more fortunate Indian tribes. Under the circumstances they saw no real choice and proceeded to aggrandize themselves both economically and militarily at the expense of the other tribes. One of their devices was to attack and rob the western. Indians as the latter carried their furs to the French on the St. Lawrence. Another policy, more important and long-lasting, according to Mcllwain, was to develop a trade of their own with these tribes, exchanging the European goods they procured at Albany for the western Indians' peltry. "The great role of the Iroquois," he said, "was that of middlemen between the 'Far Indians' and the English, 3 See Francis Parkman, The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century (31st ed., Boston, 1892), lxvi, 241; Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV (2 8th ed., Boston, 1893), 82, Lewis H. Morgan, League of the Ho-De-No-Sau-Nee or Iroquois (2 vols., New York, 1901), I, 3-4, 7-8, 11, 136; II, 107. Mcllwain (ed.), Wraxall's Abridgment, xl. Mcllwain's whole argument may be found on pp. xxxv ff.

3 34 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY HISTORICAL REVIEW a role which enabled them... to retain [a] position of superiority over the Indians of the eastern half of the United States." 5 This position required a harmonious relationship with the colonists who supplied the trading goods and bought the peltry. From the Iroquois standpoint any adjacent European colony which could fill this dual role would have been acceptable. For at least two reasons, however, the authorities on the Hudson, Dutch before 1664 and English afterward, were the ideal partners. They were the closest at hand, and furthermore both the Dutch and the English were consistently able to provide desirable trading goods in greater quantity and at lower prices than were the French.' The French, according to Mcllwain's explanation, became the natural rivals and hence traditional enemies of the Iroquois because they could not afford to see this policy succeed. The colony of New France itself subsisted very largely on the fur trade, drawing on the same territories and tribes as the Iroquois sought to tap. For about a century therefore a persistent contest took place between the French on the one side and the Iroquois with their Dutch and English allies on the other to attract the western fur trade to Montreal and Albany, respectively. The position of the western tribes, such as the Huron, Ottawa, Illinois, and Miami, was at once prosperous and hazardous, caught as they were between the contending parties. "To induce these other Indian tribes to take English goods," Mcllwain said, "often meant to induce them to take up the hatchet against the French. It was at times a part of Iroquois policy to bring this about, and the alternatives offered were usually trade or war."' Whether the Iroquois traded peacefully with the western tribes or reduced them to submission by conquest was all the same to the French, who repeatedly intervened to frustrate Indian peace talks and, in the seventeenth century, took the field themselves in an effort to humble the Iroquois militarily. Presumably the French made little headway in either regard, according to Mcilwain, since he attributed Iroquois power and prestige to their success in achieving a middleman status. Mcllwain by no means confined himself to the argument which Ibid., xlii. 6 The reasons for this fact are complex but it was well recognized at the time by all parties. See ibid., xlii, and Allen W. Trelease, Indian Affairs in Colonial New York: The Seventeenth Century (Ithaca, 1 960), Mcllwain (ed.), Wraxall' s Abridgment, xliii.

4 THE IROQUOIS AND THE WESTERN FUR TRADE 35 has been summarized above. His subj ect was the early fur trade in general, and he added much to our understanding of that subj ect in relation to the development of other colonies as well as New York. Taken as a whole, his essay was a remarkable contribution to early American history. It was not at all strange that such an interpretation should gain general acceptance after its appearance in At that time James Harvey Robinson was winning over many scholars to the "new history" and Charles A. Beard was staging his generally successful assault upon the sanctity of the Founding Fathers. The economic interpretation of history came like a fresh breeze to at least the younger generation of historians, dispelling the stale air of heroic and moralistic treatments which enveloped so much of the historical landscape during the nineteenth century. Accordingly most serious treatments of the Iroquois or of related subjects tended to adopt the Mcllwain thesis without question.' It remained for George T. Hunt to elaborate this interpretation more fully in his book, The Wars of the Iroquois, published in Although Hunt's work was limited in scope to the period before 1690, it constituted the first full dress treatment of the Iroquois in many years. It is no serious detraction from this book to point out that it was essentially a reiteration of Mcllwain's thesis, based on a greater body of source material and presented in much greater detail. Hunt himself characterized Mcllwain's Introduction as "the best historical writing yet done on the Iroquois." 9 Both men were on solid ground in questioning some of the earlier views concerning Iroquois activity and motivation. To assume that the Five Nations were more ferocious or brutal than most of their neighbors, including tribes so closely related to them by blood and proximity as the Erie, the Susquehanna, and the Huron, is unlikely on its face and is not borne out by the facts. Furthermore, as Hunt cogently points out, such ferocity could hardly have been an exclusively hereditary attribute of the Iroquois since their blood was well diluted by the adoption of other tribesmen, individually and in 5 See, for example, Harold A. Innis, The Fur Trade in Canada (Rev. ed., Toronto, 1956), 20, 35, 51, 53; Arthur H. Buffinton, "The Policy of Albany and English Westward Expansion," Mississippi Valley Historical Review (Cedar Rapids), 'VIII (March, 1922), 333, 343 Donald Creighton, 1I History of Canada (Rev. ed., Boston, 1958), 28, 66. George T. Hunt, The Wars of the Iroquois: A Study in Intertribal Trade Relations (Madison, 1940), 187.

5 36 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY HISTORICAL REVIEW groups, during and after their period of ascendancy if not before. Hunt was also correct in discounting Lewis H. Morgan's thesis that the Iroquois league was itself the major factor in their ascendancy. Morgan, he asserts, "was a true scholar in spirit, a conscientious observer, and a tireless worker, but he was not a historian, and he had access to few or none of the sources which could have informed him on the history of the League he so carefully observed in his own day." That Hunt himself exaggerated Iroquois internal differences in rej ecting Morgan's thesis does not destroy his own argument that the confederacy almost never acted as a unit either in war or peace. Although the league provided an institutional basis for joint action, its major contribution was the preservation of peace among the member tribes, thus freeing them to pursue their own obj ectives singly or in smaller combinations." On the other hand, the Mcllwain-Hunt thesis, too, is open to serious logical and factual criticism. In the first place it fails to take into account other well-established causes of Iroquois activity than the purely economic ones they rely on; moreover the middleman hypothesis itself rests upon a very shaky foundation. It seems to be true, as both men noted, that the supply of fur-bearing animals in the Iroquois country was nearing depletion at an early date, probably by the 1640's." They both erred, however, in assuming as a result that "the great role of the Iroquois was that of middlemen" after that date. In fairness to Mcllwain, he did not invent this concept, and both he and Hunt were able to find contemporary evidence most of it French which tended to support it as at least an occasional Iroquois aspiration. Their mistake arose from crediting this testimony to the exclusion of a much larger body of evidence which contradicted their thesis and rendered it dubious at the very least. They did this the more easily because it fitted so neatly into the economic-oriented preconceptions which dominated advanced historical thinking in their day. Hunt committed the greater error because his enthusiasm, coupled with the smaller scope and greater detail of his work, led him into the greater exaggerations, distorting 1 Ibid., 7-9, See for instance Reuben G. Thwaites (ed.), The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents (73 vols., Cleveland, ), XXVII, ; XXVIII, 287; XLVII, 111; LIV, 117; Edmund B. O'Callaghan and Berthold Fernow (eds.), Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York (15 vols., Albany, ), IX, 64, 65, 80; XIII, 185, 186.

6 THE IROQUOIS AND THE WESTERN FUR TRADE 37 the sources at many points and seeing clear-cut evidence where actually it was obscure or non-existent. As far as the contemporary sources are concerned, the number of clear and unambiguous references to Iroquois middleman activity, or even of a serious desire to attain it, is quite small. The present writer has found about twenty such references from the first contact with the white man until the outbreak of the French and Indian War. The first dates from 1659 and the last from 1742, but nearly a third of them are found in the years Many of these statements reflect only a desire on the part of the Iroquois for such a status, and others indicate at least by implication that the activity was exceptional. In addition, there is a slightly greater number of references, ranging from 1633 to 1727, which are ambiguous or obscure on the point. Hunt used some of these to support his argument, but they can often be interpreted as easily to mean something else." On the other hand, between the years 1634 and 1751 there are about four times as many references to Iroquois hunting where the object of the hunt was fur-bearing animals as to middleman activity. These statements emanate from the Dutch, English, French, and the Iroquois themselves. A few of them state explicitly and many assume implicitly that this was the normal source of the Iroquois peltry supply. There are many references, finally, to Iroquois hunting activity to the north and west of their homeland, but they do not indicate clearly whether peltry or game was being sought." The Mohawk, according to Hunt, were the first to reach out for peltry beyond their own territory, in the 1620's. At that time and again in 1633, he has said, they "tried to make a commercial treaty with the French Indians, particularly the Hurons, who held all the great trade of the north country and of the far Lakes." Both of these attempts failed, as did a third treaty which the Huron alleg- 12 For instance there is a remark of Kiliaen van Rensselaer in 1633 that the Mohawk refused to let the Indians of Canada pass through their territory to trade with the Dutch. Arnold J. F. Van Laer (ed.), Van Rensselaer Bowler Manuscripts (Albany, 1908), 248. Hunt, assuming that the Mohawk were or wanted to be middlemen between these tribes and the Dutch, attributed this refusal to an unwillingness to see themselves by-passed and a direct trade established. Wars of the Iroquois, 34. The more obvious assumption, however, would seem to be that the Mohawk, being at war with these tribes, simply did not wish to see hostile warriors passing at will through their country, exposing them to a constant danger of attack. 13 for example, Thwaites (ed.), Jesuit Relations, XLI, 79; XLV, ; O'Callaghan and Fernow (eds.), New York Colonial Documents, IX, 38.

7 38 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY HISTORICAL REVIEW edly promised them in Hunt's sole reference for the alleged commercial treaty of the 1620's is Charlevoix's History and General Description of New France, written in the eighteenth century, which indicates that Champlain in 1623 was apprehensive that the Huron would defect to the Iroquois. This danger was attested by Chretien Le Clercq, writing about 1690, but the economic objective is Hunt's own contribution." The authority for the peace attempt of 1633 is a garbled statement by an anonymous Dutchman of Fort Orange, who traveled with two companions to the Mohawk and Oneida country in the winter of The reason for this trip, he reported, was that these Indians often had come to Fort Orange saying "that there were French [Canadian] Indians in their land, and that they had made a truce with them so that they, namely, the Maquas [Mohawk], wished to trade for their skins, because the Maquas Indians wanted to receive just as much for their skins as the French Indians did." Hunt may have been justified in concluding from this that the Mohawk and Oneida sought a middleman position between the Dutch and the Canadian tribes; or the Iroquois may have made the truce in order to facilitate a direct trade of their own with the French so as to get "just as much for their skins as the French Indians did." Certainly the main burden of the Indians' complaint when talking to the Dutch envoys was the low price they received for their furs at Fort Orange. This was presumably the case regardless of the furs' origin, and the Dutch would hardly have come running as they did unless the Indians were threatening to divert their trade to Canada; a successful middleman position on the part of the Iroquois would have benefited the Dutch, of course, by diverting more furs to them. The exact meaning of this passage probably died with the man who wrote it, and it is inconclusive at best. Two other passages in the same journal, which Hunt adduced in support of his argument, indicate only that French traders had recently been in the Oneida country, paying presumably better prices than the Dutch, and that the Oneida were going to make peace with the French Indians, who kept them from good beaver hunting 14 Hunt, Wars of the Iroquois, 35, 78; Pierre Francois X. Charlevoix, History and General Description of New France, ed. by John Gilmary Shea (6 vols., New York, ), II, 34-35; Chretien Le Clercq, Etablissement de la Foy dans la Nouvelle France (2 vols., Paris, 1691), I, 247. Champlain himself makes no mention of any such defection, let alone a commercial agreement. See Henry P. Biggar (ed.), The Works of Samuel de Champlain (6 vols., Toronto, ), V, 81 ff.

8 THE IROQUOIS AND THE WESTERN FUR TRADE 39 lands." As for the third attempted Mohawk-Huron treaty, in 1640, Hunt's only source indicates merely that the Huron unexpectedly failed to appear in the Iroquois country to make peace at that time. It says nothing about trade." In addition to these alleged trade pacts which failed of consummation, Hunt asserted that in 1640 "the eastern Iroquois were coming west to trade with the western cantons for beaver," which presumably they would turn around and sell at a profit to the Dutch. His authority says nothing whatever to support this statement." There is possibly some support in the 1650's, however, for his view that the lower Iroquois profited by a middleman position between the Dutch and the western Iroquois. Jesuit missionaries mentioned on two or three occasions that the Mohawk's trade benefited by the necessity of the upper nations to pass through their country on the way to Fort Orange, and, what is more questionable in terms of power, that the Mohawk would not lightly suffer the western nations to trade with the French although it was easier for them to do so.' Actually the western nations probably continued to trade with the Dutch because the latter gave them better prices. Similarly, the evidence for the next several years continues to present difficulties for Hunt's thesis. Before 1670 there is no clear-cut statement whatever by a contemporary authority that the Iroquois were in fact enjoying a position as middlemen in the fur trade. That they hoped to attain such a role is possible, though hardly well established. In 1645, for instance, a Mohawk speaker told a group of Canadian Indians in a peace conference at Three Rivers that the country between them was full of beaver and other animals. "For my part," he said, "I am blind; I hunt at haphazard; when I have killed a Beaver, I think that I have secured a great prize. But you who are clear-sighted, you have but to throw a javelin, and the animal falls. This present," he concluded, "invites you to hunt, we shall benefit by your skill.' 19 Fourteen years later, at a similar con- 15 J. Franklin Jameson (ed.), Narratives of New Netherland, (New York, 1909), 139, 149, 150, Hunt, Wars of the Iroquois, 35, 78 n. A further reference cited by Hunt merely confirms the fact that Huron-Iroquois peace talks were afoot in Thwaites (ed.), Jesuit Relations, VI, Thwaites (ed.), Jesuit Relations, XXVII, Hunt, Wars of the Iroquois, 35 n.; Thwaites (ed.), Jesuit Relations, XXVII, 77. Thwaites (ed.), Jesuit Relations, XLI, , ; XLIII, /bid., XXVII, Hunt offers as further evidence of Iroquois desire to open trade with the Huron another statement of the same period in which an Iroquois speaker urged the Huron "to go to the Iroquois country, to pass by that of the Alguonquins [sic]

9 40 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY HISTORICAL REVIEW clave in Quebec, an Oneida orator bade the Huron not "to hoot at Iroquois Strangers who may Come on an embassy, or to trade in your country."" There is evidence that the Iroquois hoped to establish a trade with the Ottawa in the 1670's, but their efforts in this direction seem not to have gotten very far. The Sieur de Courcelle, governor of Canada, reported that some Iroquois went with a party of Frenchmen to the Ottawa country in the autumn of 1670 to conclude a peace. The Iroquois spent the winter there and let the Ottawa know of the prices they received for peltry at Albany. These reportedly were four times higher than what their hosts received from the French, and the Ottawa therefore registered considerable interest in opening a trade with New York. At their request the Iroquois promised to lead them to Albany (to the Dutch, Courcelle said) the following spring; but the French heard of these plans and managed to frustrate them, even to the point of turning the Iroquois against the idea. Nevertheless, Courcelle said, twenty-five Ottawa youths did go to the Iroquois country in the spring of 1671, where they traded for clothes and arms. On leaving they promised to return again, "not to trade with the Iroquois, but to accompany them to the Dutch." Again, however, the French managed to forestall this action, threatening to prevent it by force if necessary." The initiative in these proceedings seems to have lain with the Ottawa, although the Iroquois were perfectly willing to co-operate. The emphasis throughout was apparently on opening a trade with Albany rather than with the Iroquois, and the latter may have favored the plan as a means of cementing peace between the tribes. It is unlikely that they would have favored this course if they were determined to act as middlemen. A letter the following year from Count Frontenac, Courcelle's successor, implies that the Iroquois depended on both hunting and trading for western peltry. Courcelle, he said, was proposing that a French fort be constructed on Lake Ontario "to prevent the Iroquois carrying to the Dutch the peltries for which they go to the Ottawas, and to oblige them... to bring their furs to us, since they hunt on our lands." A little later Frontenac stated clearly that in and of the French." Hunt, Wars of the Iroquois, 78, 82, citing Thwaites (ed.), Jesuit Relations, XXVII, 263. The source makes no mention of trade, however, the purpose of such a trip being to ratify the peace treaty they were then negotiating. ' Thwaites (ed.), Jesuit Relations, XLV, O'Callaghan and Fernow (eds.), New York Colonial Documents, IX,

10 THE IROQUOIS AND THE WESTERN FUR TRADE the Iroquois had "offered to supply [the] Outaotiaes with all the goods they required, and the latter were to carry to them generally all their peltries, and the exchange was to take place on Lake Ontario." His information seems to have been correct, for the Iroquois assured him in 1674 that they would not prosecute this trade any further.' During this same period both Duchesneau, the French intendant, and Father Nouvel, a Jesuit missionary at Sault Ste Marie, mentioned hunting and trade as twin sources of the Iroquois peltry supply.' There is no other sure reference to middleman activity for several years. Hunt quoted with approval from a memoir of Duchesneau in 1681, categorizing the Iroquois' renewal of hostilities with the Illinois tribes at that time as an effort to coerce the latter into trading with them. But according to the Frenchman's own statement the Iroquois themselves attributed the war to the fact that the Illinois "had killed nearly forty of their people who were on their way to hunt beaver in the Illinois country." Duchesneau gave no reason for substituting his own explanation, and it does not seem especially compelling. 24 On the other hand the Seneca reported at Albany in 1687 that one of their sachems had been murdered about three years before in an Ottawa village, to which he had gone to trade." By contrast there are many statements prior to 1690 which attest the importance of the Iroquois' own fur gathering activities. Father Jerome Lalement, a Jesuit missionary among the Huron, stated in 1645 that "as they [the Iroquois] are hunters, and as most of the animals are on the marshes of the Algonquins, they have a great desire to shoot these at their ease and without fear."" In 1660 the Seneca asked and were given gunpowder from Governor Peter Stuyvesant at Fort Orange on the ground that they "must work hard to fetch the beavers through the enemy's country.... If the enemies overpower us," they demanded, "where shall we then catch the beavers [? ]" The Jesuit Relation of referred to the Seneca's peltry supply as "the spoils of their chase captured above Montreal.' 27 "Ibid., 91, 95, (ed.), Jesuit Relations, LVII, Innis, Fur Trade in Canada, New York Colonial Documents, IX, Hunt, Wars of the Iroquois, New York Colonial Documents, III, Thwaites (ed.), Jesuit Relations, XXVIII, New York Colonial Documents, XIII, 185, 186; Thwaites (ed.), Jesuit Relations, XLVII, 111. See also Louise P. Kellogg (ed.), Early Narratives of the Northwest, (New York, 1917), 197.

11 42 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY HISTORICAL REVIEW The customary activity of the Iroquois undoubtedly was well summed up by three French accounts of The first, by a Jesuit missionary stationed among the Seneca, stated that in the fall all of the able-bodied men in that tribe set out either for a military expedition or the beaver hunt. About five hundred of them, he said, would take the former course, while four to five hundred others were departing for the beaver hunt, which they would carry on in the direction of the Huron country, north of Lake Erie. The same division, he said, was made among the Cayuga." In 1670 Jean Talon, the intendant of Canada, wrote home that the Iroquois were ruining the French fur trade by robbing peltry from Indians allied with the French and by hunting beaver on the lands of these tribes. The Iroquois and other Indians, he said, helped divert over 1,200,000 livres of beaver to the English, and "all this Beaver is trapped by the Iroquois in countries subject to the King [of France]."" Courcelle reported to the same effect in "It is well known," he declared, "that the Iroquois nations, especially the four upper ones, do not hunt any Beaver or Elk." That he meant this to apply only to their own homeland is indicated by the rest of the passage: they had "absolutely exhausted" their own side of Lake Ontario "a long time ago, so that they experience the greatest difficulty in finding a single beaver there; but to get any they are obliged to cross to the North of the same lake, formerly inhabited by the Hurons, our allies, whom they defeated or drove off; so that it may be said the Iroquois do all their hunting, at present, on our allies' lands, which belong in some sort to the French." The Iroquois, he continued, "trade scarcely any with us, but carry all their peltries to New Netherland [i.e., New York], depriving us thereby of the fruits of our land; that is to say, of the peltries which they take from us on the lands belonging to us."" By 1682 the situation was even worse from the French point of view. Governor Lefebvre de la Barre told an assemblage of Canadian notables in Quebec that year that the Iroquois' intention was to destroy all the tribes allied with the French, one by one, and thus deprive Canada of its fur trade. Only if Canada received help from France, he believed, would the Iroquois "let our allies be in peace, and consent not to hunt on their grounds."" Is Thwaites (ed.), Jesuit Relations, LIV, New York Colonial Documents, IX, 64, Ibid., al Ibid.,

12 THE IROQUOIS AND THE WESTERN FUR TRADE 43 It seems clear that while hunting was the normal source of Iroquois fur supply it was a hazardous undertaking, and apprehension for the future was by no means confined to the Canadian side. The danger arose from the fact that nearly all of the hunting took place at a great distance from home, in territory the Five Nations had wrested or were trying to wrest from other tribes, and in the face of increasingly stiff Canadian opposition. Iroquois anxiety was voiced in an appeal at Albany in 1684 by representatives of the Onondaga and Cayuga: if the English did not protect them from the French "we shall lose all our hunting and Bevers. The French will have all the Bevers, and are angry with us for bringing any to you." A few days later the Seneca declared in the same connection that "we cannot live without free Bever Hunting." The dispute over control of the western hunting lands was further illustrated that year in the course of the Iroquois' famous confrontation of La Barre on the shores of Lake Ontario. They had gone to war with the Miami and Illinois, they told him, because these tribes had "cut down the trees of Peace that serv'd for limits or boundaries to our Frontiers. They came to hunt Beavers upon our Lands" and took both male and female animals contrary to the custom of all Indians." And by the same token the sachems informed Governor Thomas Dongan of New York in 1687 that "wee warr with the Farr Nations of Indians, because they kill our people, & take them prisoners when wee goe a Bever hunting.'" 3 This was the Iroquois position during the period with which Hunt was concerned; and it remained essentially unchanged in the years following. References to middleman activity continue to be exceptional. A party of Iroquois reportedly spent the winter of hunting in the vicinity of Detroit. They had brought a large quantity of English trading goods with them (at whose instigation "Ibid., III, 417; Cadwallader Colden, The History of the Five Indian Nations of Canada (2 vols., New York, 1902), I, 58; Louis Armand, Baron de Lahontan, New Voyages to North America, ed. by Reuben G. Thwaites (2 vols., Chicago, 1905), I, 82. " New York Colonial Documents, III, Further evidence of the Iroquois' lack of concern to become middlemen was their willingness to sanction Dongan's efforts to send New York traders to the Ottawa country in See Trelease, Indian Affairs in Colonial New York, For other references stating or implying Iroquois dependence on hunting in the 1680's, see Arnold J. F. Van Laer (ed.), Minutes of the Court of Albany, Rensselaerswyck, and Schenectady, (3 vols., Albany, ), III, 143; New York Colonial Documents, III, 347, 474, 510, 535, 536, 558, 570, 722; IX, 196, 274, 289, 292, 295, 399, 419; Lawrence H. Leder (ed.), The Livingston Indian Records, (Gettysburg, Pa., 1956), 77, 91, 92, 94, , 113, 121.

13 44 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY HISTORICAL REVIEW is not clear) in order to exchange them for peltry with the tribes nearby. Other Indians, more firmly attached to the French or merely seeing an opportunity for plunder, attacked and routed the Iroquois and seized four or five hundred beaver skins as well as the remaining trade goods. The Frenchman who reported this incident fully recognized its danger to Canada and called for a continuing effort to forestall a repetition. He indicated that the experience was an extraordinary one, however, referring to Canada's good fortune in having "this trade so successfully interrupted in its inception."" There is almost no evidence to suggest that it was repeated. In 1700 there is a curiously isolated statement by Robert Livingston, the Albany potentate, fur trader, and sometime provincial secretary for Indian affairs, to the effect that the Iroquois hindered the French fur trade with the western Indians by "trucking with them themselves and bringing the bevers hither [to Albany]." On the other hand Livingston urged in the same dispatch that the English build a fort at Detroit, "the only place of bever hunting, for which our Indians have fought so long, and at last forc'd the natives to fly.' 35 That the Iroquois had failed to open a sizable trade with the western tribes was not the fault of the English. Like Dongan before him in the 1680's, the Earl of Bellomont, governor at the turn of the century, was eager to establish trade relations with the far Indians, and he was not overly concerned whether this was done directly or through Iroquois middlemen. In August, 1700, he urged the Five Nations "to fix a trade and correspondence" with those tribes, enabling the Iroquois "at all times without any sort of hazard [to] goe a hunting into their country, which I understand is much the best for Beaver hunting. " 36 Presumably the Iroquois had no obj ection to serving as middlemen, but what is more important, they seemed ready to undermine this position by inviting the western tribes to trade at Albany on equal terms with themselves. Indeed the latter objective appears at least as often as the former among Iroquois policies. The western Indians were enthusiastic, for their part. "I have often heard the Ottawawas express a longing desire to trade with the English in these plantations," said Samuel Yorke at New York Colonial Documents, IX, ' Also, and paradoxically in view of his statement that the Detroit region was the only hunting place for beaver, he referred to the French Fort Frontenac, at the eastern end of Lake Ontario, as located "where our Indians must pass when they come from hunting." New York Colonial Documents, IV, Ibid.,

14 THE IROQUOIS AND THE WESTERN FUR TRADE 45 Albany, after having spent ten years in captivity in Canada and the Ottawa country. This desire, he continued, arose from the inability of the French to supply those Indians with goods, or at least goods to their liking." In 1710 the Seneca reported having proposed to one of the Ottawa tribes that "we may Sojourn & Trade with one another without Hatred or Malice." But at the same time they invited these western Indians to trade at Albany and promised not to molest them on their way." In 1722 they informed Governor William Burnet that they had not only permitted the far Indians to pass through their territory to trade at Albany, but had sent envoys inviting them to do so. The Iroquois now asked that these tribesmen be given good prices, even "rather cheaper than we of the 5 Nations have it ourselves, which will be the only means to draw them and to induce them to come hither.' 39 The Iroquois were probably trying to win these Indians away from their traditional French alliance and into the Anglo-Iroquois orbit, but, whatever their object, their proposal was not conducive to the establishment of a significant middleman position. In so far as the Iroquois did trade with the western tribes after 1690, it seems to have taken place chiefly in their own country, perhaps as an incidental accompaniment to the western tribes' direct trade with the English." The latter took place at Albany, in the Seneca country, and after 1722 at Oswego, which was established on Lake Ontario specifically to facilitate such a commerce. The Iroquois were so little concerned about acting as middlemen that they put up no resistance to this intrusion of traders into their country or the erection of a fortified trading house at Oswego." In 1720 English agents told the Iroquois that the passage of western Indians through their territory to trade at Albany would "prove profitable to you in Commerce with them in passing and Repassing through Your Nations" an argument which the sachems found agreeable. A decade later the Albany interpreter, Laurence Claesen, reported " Ibid., 693, 749. Mcllwain (ed.), Wraxall's Abridgment, 72. " New York Colonial Documents, V, 659. They had also made this request in Ibid., Charlevoix seems to have felt that this was the case even earlier. At the same time he underestimated the Iroquois' own hunting activity. See his History and General Description of New France (Shea, ed.), IV, New York Colonial Documents, V, 632, 712, , 818; VI, 870; IX, 1063.

15 46 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY HISTORICAL REVIEW that the far Indians often stopped at Irondequoit Bay and then went inland to the Seneca country "to furnish themselves with provisions.' 42 This incidental trade for provisions may also help to explain Iroquois willingness to have the western tribes pass through their country to deal with the English." But it hardly assumes the magnitude or importance conceived by Mcllwain and Hunt. Evidence of Iroquois hunting continues to predominate after 1690, although the intercolonial and intertribal wars which broke out anew in 1689 drastically curtailed this activity, and with it the fur trade as a whole, for some years. In 1699 Robert Livingston attributed the pronounced decline in the Albany fur traffic during the previous decade to French instigation of the western tribes "to be in a continuall war with our Five Nations of Indians and threatfling them that if they should hunt on the other side of the Lake [Ontario] they would be destroyed by the French Indians." A year later Bellomont wrote that the only good beaver hunting lay in and around the Ottawa country, "and thither our 5 Nations are forc'd to goe a beaver-hunting, which is one reason of that perpetual war between those Nations and ours.' 44 He also warned the Lords of Trade in London against any idea that might be afoot to disarm the Five Nations and other tribes. " 'Tis by their Guns," he said, that "they maintain their Families with food, and provide the several sorts of Peltry which is their only Trade." Furthermore they take an "extream delight... in hunting... with their guns to kill Beavers and other Beasts," as evidenced by "the vast range they take," frequently going "7 or 800 miles on the stretch in their hunting season.'" 5 42 Ibid., V, , further references (the only ones I have seen) to Iroquois middleman activity after 1690, see Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society, Historical Collections (Lansing), XXXIII (1904), , 441, 445 (all in 1708) ; State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Collections (Madison), XVI (1902), (1715) ; New York Colonial Documents, IX, 874 (1716) ; V, 580 (1720) ; IX, 1082, 1088, 1092 ( ). The reference of 1716 is to far Indians trading in the Iroquois country; those of 1708 mention this as well as Iroquois trading in the west, and the others refer only to the latter activity. None of these goes into much detail or sheds much light on the activities involved, their scale, or their importance. There are also several ambiguous statements which may or may not reflect middleman activity between 1702 and See Thwaites (ed.), Jesuit Relations, LXV, ; New York Colonial Documents, V, 792; IX, 774, 823, 997, 999. "New York Colonial Documents, IV, 500, Ibid., 608. For other references to Iroquois hunting, , see ibid., III, 799, 8435 IV, 123, 170, 499, 597, 691, 6935 IX, 591, 599, 6415 Colden, History of the Five Nations, I, 225, 227.

16 THE IROQUOIS AND THE WESTERN FUR TRADE 47 In the summer of 1701 the Five Nations took the unprecedented step of deeding their vast but controversial western hunting lands to the King of England. They made no secret of their hope that the King would now help defend these lands against the French and their Indian allies should the necessity arise. The French were making plans soon to be carried out to build a fort at Detroit, which was located in the disputed territory and controlled one of the routes by which the Iroquois reached it. Moreover, there were rumors that the French planned a similar fortification on the northwest shore of Lake Ontario, which would enable them to control another point of entry. "What will become of us att this rate," the sachems demanded of Governor John Nanfan at Albany. "Where shall wee hunt a beaver if the French of Canada take possession of our beaver country [? " In desperation, therefore, they ceded to the King "all that land where the Beaver hunting is which wee won with the sword eighty years ago... and pray that he may be our protector and defender there." These lands, as the Iroquois described them, lay in the triangle between Lakes Ontario, Erie, and Huron, and also included the bulk of Michigan's lower peninsula. The Iroquois' dubious claim to have conquered all this territory from the Huron and Ottawa eighty years before is less pertinent here than the nature of their interest and concern for it. They claimed in 1701 to have had "peaceable and quiet possession of the same to hunt beavers (which was the motive [that] caused us to war for the same)... it being the only chief place for hunting in this parte of the world that ever wee heard of." After sixty years of peaceful possession and hunting, they claimed, a remnant of one of the Ottawa tribes which had earlier been driven off, returned. This action twenty years ago "disturbed our beaver hunting," said the Iroquois, and they had warred against them ever since." At the same time the Five Nations took pains to inform the French of their position. Dekannisora, the great Onondaga speaker and diplomat, told the governor of Canada in 1701 that "the Wagannes [Ottawa] take our land from us, where wee hunt beaver, lett them hunt upon " New York Colonial Documents, IV, Much of the Iroquois argument is found in the deed itself, which of course was drafted by one of the officials at Albany. Some of the phraseology follows that of Nanfan's speech to the Indians the day before. Ibid., 900. It fits perfectly well, however, with the sachems' own statements, and it is highly unlikely that the English would have included such a circumstantial account if it had not accorded with their own and the Indians' understanding.

17 48 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY HISTORICAL REVIEW their own land els wee shall kill one another for the beavers when wee meet together." Through the French he asked that the Ottawa "make a little room"; "let us have no controversie for that place where the beaver keep."" Speaking to the Iroquois at a conference in 1709, Acting Governor Richard Ingoldsby referred to their hunting as their "only Support." 48 The next year the Indians themselves complained of poverty owing to hostilities with Canada which had kept them from hunting, "and so [we] have caught no Bevers or Peltry." They asked further that "goods may be cheaper and bever dearer for ye traders give so little that it is not worth ye while to go a hunting for them." In 1726 the Iroquois, in confirming the land cession of 1701, still referred to that territory as "all their Land where the Beaver Hunting is." Cadwallader Colden wrote the next year in his History of the Five Indian Nations that the Iroquois "have few or no Bever in their own Country, and for that Reason are obliged to hunt at a great Distance, which often occasions Disputes with their Neighbours about the Property of the Bever." In 1748 the Iroquois complained to William Johnson of the poverty they suffered as a result of not going out hunting, and as late as the summer of 1751 it could be said in New York that if the French were not prevented from fortifying the Great Lakes they would "Deprive the five nations of their bever hunting Country."" Taking the evidence as a whole, there is no question that the Iroquois occasionally served or aspired to serve as middlemen in the western fur trade; but such activity was sporadic and of slight importance. Their economic mainstay continued to be their own hunting activity. Moreover, the major exception to this rule probably lay not in middleman activity but in the robbery of other tribesmen Ibid., 891. " Leder (ed.), Livingston Indian Records, 207. " New York Colonial Documents, V, 220, 2255 Mcllwain (ed.), Wraxall's A bridgment, New York Colonial Documents, V, 8005 Colden, History of the Five Nations, I, 72. al Papers of Sir William Johnson (12 vols., Albany, ), I, 156; "The Letters and Papers of Cadwallader Colden," Vol. IV ( ), New-York Historical Society, Collections (New York), LIII (1920), p For further references to Iroquois hunting activity in this period, see New York Colonial Documents, IV, 888, 920, V, 543, 545, 571, 803, 909, 9115 X, 233; Leder (ed.), Livingston Indian Records, 193, 195, 227, 230; Mcllwain (ed.), Wraxall's Abridgment, 50, 54, 118, 125, 164; William Smith, The History of the Province of New York (2 vols. [New-York Historical Society, Collections, Vols. IV-V] New York, ), I, 1765 Papers of Sir William Johnson, IX, 117, 132.

18 THE IROQUOIS AND THE WESTERN FUR TRADE 49 on their way to the fur mart at Montreal during the intertribal wars of the seventeenth century. In so far as the Iroquois sought to acquire or retain a middleman position they repeatedly undercut this objective in the 1680's and afterward by making it easier for the far Indians and the English to make direct contact with each other. They permitted English traders to reach the Ottawa country in Dongan's time, they approved the establishment of English traders at Oswego and elsewhere in their country, and they encouraged western tribesmen to come and trade at Albany and Oswego, even asking the English to make this as profitable for them as possible. Both Mcllwain and Hunt refer to Iroquois reluctance to see European forts established in their territory, "because such posts would eliminate them as middlemen." This reluctance was often real and deeply felt, though less consistently than Mcllwain and Hunt imply. To explain it we need only point to the effect which such establishments would have upon Iroquois independence and territorial integrity. They were not prepared to accept domination by English or other European garrisons, let alone to see a bridgehead established for white settlers in their midst." Even if the contemporary evidence were less conclusive than it is, logic alone would cast doubt on the authenticity of the middleman thesis as a constant factor in Iroquois policy and as a source of Iroquois wealth and power. If peaceful trade with the western tribes were the continuing objective, let alone an established fact, the persistent warfare which the Iroquois waged against these tribes, especially in the seventeenth century, seems a poor way either of attaining it or reflecting its existence. The Iroquois were hunters to begin with, and it was only natural that they should meet the problem of depletion at home by extending their customary activity in adj acent territories. In so doing they clearly poached on the lands of other tribes and provoked the latter to resistance. Thus while the economic interpretation of Iroquois policy has real merit, it is not in the form advanced by Mcllwain and Hunt. Undoubtedly the most seductive and hence universal temptation in historical interpretation is the search for single causes. Mcllwain and Hunt were both guilty on this score in ascribing virtually all Iroquois policy to economic motivation. This is true regardless of 62 Wars of the Iroquois, 2 8 n.; Mcllwain (ed.), Wraxall's Abridgment, xlivxlvi. See also Trelease, Indian ffairs in Colonial New York, ,

19 50 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY HISTORICAL REVIEW the accuracy of their own particular economic argument. The Iroquois, too, did not live by bread alone. Among Indians, who lacked the European conception of public law as well as the institutions to maintain it, private or kinship revenge was a primary form of social control. Ethnologists concerned with the sources of Indian warfare have emphasized repeatedly the quest for vengeance or atonement arising from former injuries. Among the Iroquois and their neighbors intertribal warfare was usually private rather than public in character, with war parties being organized by individual warriors, not by the tribal authorities as such. These conflicts were to a large degree exemplifications of the blood feud and tended to perpetuate themselves as injury followed injury. It was perhaps for this reason that the Iroquois considered themselves to be technically at war with all tribes who were not in alliance with them that is, with tribes who had not agreed at least officially to consider all past injuries as forgiven and forgotten." When hostilities had dragged on so long as to become almost traditional it took a maj or effort to bury the hatchet so deeply that it would not be exhumed again within a few years. Thus a Frenchman writing about 1670 feared that the Iroquois might violate a peace lately concluded with Canada; this might be done "all the more easily," he said, "as there are no authorities amongst them, everyone being perfectly free in his actions, so that all that is necessary is for a young ruffian, to whom the peace is not acceptable, or who remembers that one of his relations was killed in the preceding wars, to come and commit some act of hostility, and so break the treaty that has been made by the old men."" Coupled with the revenge motivation was the great premium Indians placed upon personal valor and bravery, particularly in warfare. The young braves were usually the prime instigators of hostilities, and if they had no injury to avenge there was always the personal prestige accruing from the acquisition of scalps and other trophies of victory. Furthermore, the Iroquois commonly sought to make up their population losses arising from war or disease by adopting members of other tribes. When families tried to replace departed relatives by kidnaping from other tribes, as they frequently 53 Morgan, League of the Iroquois, I, 68-69; Snyderman, "Behind the Tree of Peace," Pennsylvania Archaeologist, XVIII, 3-93; Wendell S. Hadlock, "War among the Northeastern Woodland Indians," American Anthropologist (Menasha, Wis.), XLIX (April-June, 1947), Kellogg (ed.), Early Narratives of the Northwest3176.

20 THE IROQUOIS AND THE WESTERN FUR TRADE 51 did, they contributed further to provoking or perpetuating hostilities. These factors were all significant contributors to Indian warfare before the arrival of the white man, and the Iroquois seem to have had an impressive list of enemies before the Dutch arrived on the Hudson or the French on the St. Lawrence. The Europeans brought rivalries of their own and, with the fur trade, added further incentives for intertribal warfare which were superimposed upon the preexisting ones. To assume that the older motivations and patterns of activity were superseded by the newer ones is both illogical and unhistorical, for the evidence is clear that revenge and prestige continued to be important in Indian thinking. Indeed these are virtually the only reasons to be assigned for the persistent Iroquois warfare with tribes to the eastward and southward, where economic motives could not have been important. It is possible that even the western wars were primarily attributable to these factors rather than to economic motives, although they were probably so closely intertwined that it is impossible completely to separate them. 55 Iroquois power or success, as differentiated from motivation, was attributable to several factors, no one of which alone could explain the phenomenon. It was pure chance which put them athwart one of the few passes in the Appalachian mountain chain, giving equal access to the western fur supply and the eastern market. This in turn conferred an economic power and a strategic importance which enabled them to acquire more and better armaments than most of their Indian rivals. The Iroquois' superior political organization enabled them to use this strength more effectively, and the stronger they became the more willing the English were to propitiate them with additional armaments. This willingness was further intensified by the increasing imperialist rivalry with France after 1 680, when the Iroquois emerged as useful auxiliaries. Two of the links in this chain, the fur trade and firearms, are largely economic in character and of vital importance in explaining Iroquois history, but they are not the whole chain. In Iroquois studies, as elsewhere, the economic interpretation of history has provided useful insights and laid open a panorama which had been largely hidden to view. But also, as we are continuing to learn, it should be applied with discrimination and in moderation. The best discussion of the causes of Iroquois warfare is Snyderman, "Behind the Tree of Peace," Pennsylvania Archaeologist, XVIII, especially pp See also Hadlock, "War among the Northeastern Woodland Indians," American Anthropologist, XLIX,