King William's War Read online

  I recur, My Lord, to what relates to the disobedience of the Coureurs de bois, and I must not conceal from you that it has at length reached such a point that everybody boldly contravenes the King’s interdictions; that there is no longer any concealment, and that even parties are collected with astonishing insolence to go and trade in the Indian country. I have done all in my power to prevent this misfortune, which may be productive of the ruin of the Colony. I have enacted ordinances against the Coureurs de bois; against the merchants who furnish them with goods; against the gentlemen and others who harbor them, and even against those who have any knowledge of them and will not inform the justices nearest the spot. All that has been in vain, inasmuch as several of the most considerable families in this country are interested therein, so that the Governor lets them go on, and even shares in their profits.5

  Whether anyone liked it or not, the genie was out of the bottle and New France was expanding west.

  The 1667 peace treaty with New France and the disruption of trade through Albany brought on by the Second Anglo-Dutch War also brought about a shift in the Iroquois’s state of affairs. Coupled to this, and perhaps more important from the perspective of the Iroquois, was their ongoing conflict with the Susquehannock, the Mahican, and the Western Abenaki. The new pro-French policy was merely practical in nature and not based on a sudden realization that long-term harmony with New France would be in the best interest of the confederacy. With the powerful Susquehannock to their south and the Mahican and Abenaki poised on their eastern flank it made little sense to continue to provoke the French and their allies to the north. The matter was exacerbated by the English seizure of New Netherland in 1664. The new English governor of New York, Colonel Richard Nicolls, wished to continue good relations with the Iroquois, but finding himself with too few troops to watch over a newly conquered territory, fearing an attack by a Dutch fleet, and perhaps suspecting an attachment to the Dutch on the part of the Five Nations, it was next to impossible if not questionable to maintain the flow of firearms and trade goods that the Iroquois sought.

  The necessity to secure a supply of firearms and trade goods while minimizing their military commitments pushed Iroquois policy toward the French, but such an arrangement was always viewed as temporary. French failure to militarily support the Iroquois when asked only solidified this outlook in the minds of the Five Nations. Clearly, if the French wanted a lasting relationship they would be willing to come to the aid of the confederacy, but this was not the case. As the years passed and French influence, primarily via the activities of the coureurs de bois, spread to the tribes farther west it became apparent that all the French wanted was the Iroquois out of the way so that they could reach other markets. By the mid-1670s the sachems of the longhouses eyed French movements with concern. Coupled with the military post at Fort Frontenac and a newly erected post at Niagara, the colony’s contact with the Miami and Illinois tribes had now erected a northern arch about the Five Nations, threatening to flank them with an alliance of unfriendly nations. What the Iroquois required was an end to their current conflicts so that they could address this matter before it became too late.6

  In 1676 the opportunity came. First, the Third Anglo-Dutch War had secured New York for the English, stabilizing the uncertain status of Albany and bringing forth a new English governor by the name of Edmund Andros who sought closer ties with the Five Nations. More importantly, Andros’s first step toward this goal was to provide the Iroquois with a steady supply of firearms. Second, the Susquehannock conflict came to a sudden end, not by the hand of the Iroquois but when a number of English traders launched a surprise attack on their one-time allies and scattered them. Third, King Philip’s War, a native rebellion that started in New England in 1675 and raged throughout these northern colonies for the next three years also created another opportunity. At Andros’s request Mohawk war parties aided the New England colonists by attacking Philip’s forces. This move was to pay dividends when the treaty that ended the war also included a lasting peace treaty between the Iroquois and the New England allied Mahican. At the same time the Abenaki, who had also proved a threat to the eastern boundaries of the confederacy, became embroiled in a conflict with the New England colonies, which removed yet another potential enemy.7

  The change of Iroquois fortune was soon reflected in the confederacy’s attitude toward New France and her allies. With their enemies gone and a secure supply of English firearms behind them, the Five Nations returned to their original plan of redirecting the fur trade toward Albany and establishing themselves as the gatekeepers of this trade. Of first concern were French penetrations into the west, particularly among the Illinois and Miami tribes. Led by La Salle and his companions the French had established trading relations with these nations, but the construction of a few trading posts did not concern the Iroquois as much as the appearance of the Griffon, a small bark La Salle had built on Lake Erie during the summer of 1679. Until now one of the most effective and efficient methods the Iroquois had employed to divert the fur trade from the French had been to intercept the native fur fleets on their way to Montreal and Fort Frontenac. The work of the coureurs de bois had complicated this approach but not to the point that they couldn’t be overcome with a concerted effort. However, the sight of the forty-five-ton vessel armed with seven small cannons plying the lakes below Niagara Falls threatened this strategy. It clearly demonstrated that the French were willing to go to the source of the furs and handle the transportation themselves. Several vessels of this type were already on Lake Ontario, and armed like the Griffon they had little to fear on the open waters. If left unchecked, the French could build fleets of these ships to transport their furs east. Coupled with well-manned fortifications at key staging points such as Niagara and Fort Frontenac, they would seriously undermine any Iroquois threat to their transport and communications lines.

  The implications were clear. The Iroquois would have to strike at the tribes who provided the furs before it was too late. The Illinois would be first. Occupying an area along the Illinois River to the confluence of the Mississippi, the Illinois were a confederation of twelve tribes, with contemporary estimates placing their numbers at nearly twenty thousand in some sixty or so villages. A war with this tribe would be a major undertaking on the part of the Iroquois and particularly the Seneca, who would bear the brunt of the effort due to their westward location. The thought of a prolonged conflict, after having borne so many, instilled hesitation in the Iroquois. In September 1680, an Iroquois force of five hundred warriors moved against the main Illinois villages along the Illinois River. Although their effort was well timed in the sense that most of the Illinois warriors were away hunting, the Iroquois were reluctant to attack and instead sent emissaries to the Illinois requesting a parley. The Illinois used the time to send their women and children down river while La Salle’s friend Henri Tonty met with the Iroquois. When an agreement could not be reached the Illinois warriors on hand and a few Frenchmen, a force roughly equal to the Iroquois but armed primarily with bows and arrows, crossed the Illinois River and launched an attack on the Iroquois. The ferocity of the attack, coupled with Tonty’s embellishment as to the size of the Illinois force, led to a truce, which allowed the Illinois to withdraw from the area. The Iroquois crossed the river the next day and followed the Illinois’s slow withdrawal south. Peace negotiations continued for the next few days until the Iroquois launched an attack on one of the lagging Illinois columns. The skirmish was brief and the Iroquois, after having captured several hundred women and children, contented themselves with burning an Illinois village and venting their frustrations on the most helpless elements of their enemies before retreating east.8

  The half-hearted Iroquois effort accomplished little. In fact, it caused more harm than good. The Illinois were roused, and the French-Illinois relationship solidified. To make matters worse, on their way back the war party attacked and burnt a Miami village. The plan had been to take advantage of the Miami-Illinois rival
ry by using the Miami to help destroy the Illinois before then turning on the Miami, but now this plan was in ruins. Instead the Illinois and the Miami were both pushed toward the French and toward an alliance against the Iroquois. Through the efforts of La Salle and the leaders of several displaced New England tribes who had fought against the English in King Philip’s War, a grand council was convened in Miami territory during the spring of 1681 which sealed an Illinois-Miami alliance and incorporated other tribes with grievances against the Iroquois, including the previously mentioned New England ones.

  All that remained was to bind this confederation to New France. La Salle did this by calling for a French fort to be built in the heart of Miami country. Construction began on Fort St. Louis of the Illinois in the winter of 1682. “The Rock,” as the fort became known, was built on a two hundred-foot stone outcropping along the south bank of the Illinois River, not far from the Illinois village of Kaskaskia, which had been destroyed by the Iroquois a few years before. With two-hundred-foot cliffs covered by the river on three sides Fort St. Louis was in a position of natural strength. The land side, which was the only means to access the fort, was covered by a twenty-two-foot palisade, which incorporated a cheval de frise along its length to discourage any attempt to scale the wall. An earthen redoubt backed this wall for additional protection. The rest of the fort’s perimeter, which was some six hundred feet in circumference, was covered by a shorter fifteen-foot palisade. Completed in the spring of 1683 Fort St. Louis immediately attracted a large number of natives to the site, and by early 1684 there were some 3,500 natives living near the foot of the fort, most of whom were Illinois, Miami, and Shawnee. As La Salle had hoped, the new stronghold quickly became the nerve center for his anti-Iroquois alliance, while representing French commercial and military commitments to this effort.9

  The Iroquois turned to diplomacy in an attempt to reverse the consequences of the foolish attack on the Miami. Emissaries were dispatched to the Miami to lure them away from involvement in any alliance against the Five Nations. These ambassadors preyed on the Miami’s commercial rivalry with the Illinois and called La Salle’s motives into question. This was not the first time such a message had been presented to the Miami, and although it had made some headway in the past, this time the Miami were not interested, and when La Salle arrived, the frightened Iroquois ambassadors departed in the middle of the night, which only bolstered La Salle’s reputation among the Miami. It was an unfortunate turn of events for the leadership of the Iroquois Confederacy. Together the Illinois and Miami could muster some three thousand warriors. Added to some five hundred additional warriors from the other contingents of La Salle’s new confederation and led by the French, such a force posed a powerful obstacle to Iroquois westward expansion.

  From 1681 to 1682 Iroquois raids into Illinois territory continued, albeit at a reduced scale. In part this was because the Iroquois had turned their attention north toward the Ottawa and Potawatomi, who alone provided New France with two-thirds of its fur trade. The death of a Seneca chief in an Ottawa village was all the pretense the Five Nations needed to turn their focus toward two of New France’s vulnerable allies. Soon peace overtures and implied threats, punctuated by an occasional raid, seemed to be making inroads toward detaching these tribes from the French interest. For Frontenac and New France the turn of events was alarming. If something wasn’t done to check the Iroquois, the Illinois would be dispersed and the Ottawa and Potawatomi involved in a war that would severely disrupt the fur trade.10

  The colony could not sit idly by while the Iroquois threatened such economic ruin. Even with the evidence before him Frontenac responded in a cautious manner and did not take the matter as seriously as might be thought. This was in part because for almost ten years the governor had kept the peace between the western nations, making him believe that all it required was a little diplomacy. His response to the exploits of the Five Nations was to reassure his western native allies and then summon the Iroquois to a conference in Montreal. Here he could smooth over the problem with a liberal number of gifts and a few trade concessions. If this did not work, “Five or six hundred soldiers,” he wrote the king, “would very soon dispel all these different ideas, and it would be necessary only to show them, and promenade them through their lakes, without any other hostile act, to ensure ten years’ peace.”11

  It was a reasonable initial approach to the problem, but it failed to capture the clear change in Iroquois attitudes after their victory over the Susquehannock. The Five Nations listened to Frontenac’s request for a conference and then balked at its location. They would meet with the French and their allies but in Iroquois territory at La Famine on Lake Ontario. Of course, Frontenac, needing to reassure his allies of French strength, refused. By early fall it was finally agreed that the meeting would take place at Fort Frontenac, but because of the lateness in the year, it would not be until the next spring.12

  With the recall of Frontenac in 1682 on charges that he had abused his authority, the problems of New France fell to newly appointed governor Joseph Antoine le Febvre de La Barre. La Barre had spent the bulk of his career in the French navy. In 1664 he commanded a French squadron that carried the Marquis de Tracy to the West Indies and was instrumental in helping the marquis fulfill his task of securing French possessions in the Caribbean. With Tracy’s departure for Canada, La Barre was appointed governor of Guiana and a few years later was promoted to the rank of lieutenant general. During the Second Anglo-Dutch War La Barre commanded the French West Indies squadron with questionable results. When news of the declaration of war reached La Barre in 1666, he seized the initiative and quickly captured the English-controlled islands of St. Kitts, Antigua, and Montserrat. La Barre then joined forces with a Dutch squadron, which had likewise been successful in securing a number of English-held islands, and attacked an English fleet commanded by Captain John Berry near Nevis. Superior numbers did not help La Barre, who was accused of showing a lack of courage and having taken flight at a crucial stage. The Dutch and French fleets parted ways shortly after the dismal defeat, and not long after La Barre found himself trapped in St. Pierre’s Bay, Martinique, by a newly arrived English force under Sir John Harman. Harman besieged the French forts and La Barre’s squadron for over a week, ultimately ending in La Barre’s decision to scuttle his ships, which all but handed control of the Caribbean back over to the English. The disaster did not seem to affect La Barre’s reputation, in part because the Treaty of Breda, signed a few months later, returned the state of the West Indies to prewar status. During the Third Anglo-Dutch War La Barre was once again at sea in command of French warships. He was cited for his bravery on several occasions and served with distinction in both the French Atlantic and Mediterranean fleets. Thus, although La Barre had served in administrative posts in the French West Indies for a brief time, his appointment as governor general of Canada in early 1682 came as something of a surprise, given his primarily naval background.13

  La Barre had little time to acclimate himself to Canada before the matter of Iroquois expansion and the threat it posed to the colony came before him. In October 1682 he called together the leading civilian, military, and religious leaders of the colony to discuss the issue. First, it was clear that the situation was more pressing than the new governor had thought. Frontenac’s peace initiative with the Iroquois was a dismal failure. The Iroquois had simply used these diplomatic efforts as subterfuge to cover their real aims. One participant after another testified to the Iroquois efforts to destroy the Illinois. Once the Illinois were conquered the Five Nations would turn on the Miami and the Ottawa with the aim of expelling the French from the region west of Lake Ontario, while at the same time inducing the French to believe that a negotiated settlement was just within reach. There was more, but the governor had heard enough. “The object of their enterprise,” he later informed the French court, “is to destroy all the Nations in alliance with us, one after the other, whilst they keep us in uncertainty and with fold
ed arms; so that, after having deprived us of the entire fur trade, which they wish to carry on alone with the English and Dutch established at Manate [Manhattan] and Orange, they may attack us isolated, and ruin the Colony.”14

  The matter seemed clear enough, but the question as to how to respond now hung in the air. There were only two paths before the colony: a lasting peace treaty or military action. Although the Iroquois could be enticed into a peace treaty via French trade concessions and annual gifts, such an arrangement was almost certain to fail. The Five Nations had signed numerous treaties in the past and had broken each as soon as it was in their interest to do so. These treaties had been nothing more than maneuvering room for them to resolve side issues before returning to their ultimate goal of becoming masters of the fur trade. Just as important, there was another element working against a lasting peace treaty: the English. Under the guidance of New York governor Edmund Andros, efforts had been made to lure the coureurs de bois to Albany, an action Frontenac had considered a major threat. More importantly, under the New York governor a steady supply of firearms and powder was available to the Iroquois. Although there had been no overt action on the part of the English that would trigger a direct confrontation between the two colonies, the council was in unanimous agreement “that the English have omitted nothing for four years to induce the Iroquois, either by a great number of presents or by the cheapness of provisions, and especially of guns, powder and lead, to declare war against us.”15