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The Beaver Wars—also known as the Iroquois Wars or the French and Iroquois Wars—encompass a series of conflicts fought in the mid-17th century in eastern North America. The Iroquois sought to expand their territory and monopolize the fur trade and the trade between European markets and the tribes of the western Great Lakes region. The Iroquois Confederation, led by the dominant Mohawk, mobilized against the largely Algonquian-speaking tribes of the Great Lakes region. The Iroquois were armed by their Dutch and English trading partners; the Algonquian were backed by the French, their chief trading partner. The wars were brutal and are considered one of the bloodiest series of conflicts in the history of North America. As the Iroquois destroyed several large tribal confederacies—including the Huron, Neutral, Erie, Susquehannock, and Shawnee, they became dominant in the region and enlarged their territory, realigning the tribal geography of North America. They pushed some eastern tribes to the west of the Mississippi River, or southward into the Carolinas. The Iroquois gained control of the Ohio Valley lands as hunting ground, from about 1670 onward. The Ohio Country and the Lower Peninsula of Michigan had become virtually empty of Native people as refugees fled westward to escape the Iroquois warriors. (Much of this region was later repopulated by Native peoples nominally subjected to the Six Nations; see Mingo.) Both Algonquian and Iroquoian societies were greatly disrupted by these wars. The conflict subsided with the loss by the Iroquois of their Dutch allies in the New Netherland colony after England took it over, and with French objective of gaining the Iroquois as an ally against English encroachment. After the Iroquois became trading partners with the English, their alliance was a crucial component of the later English expansion. The English used the Iroquois conquests as a claim to the old Northwest Territory. ==Origins== The expeditions of French explorer Jacques Cartier in the 1540s made the first written records of the Native Americans in North America. French explorers and fishermen had traded in the region near the mouth of the St. Lawrence River estuary a decade before then for valuable furs. Cartier wrote of encounters with a people later classified as the St. Lawrence Iroquoians,〔(James F. Pendergast. (1998). "The Confusing Identities Attributed to Stadacona and Hochelaga" ), ''Journal of Canadian Studies'', Volume 32, p. 149, accessed 3 Feb 2010 〕 also known as the ''Stadaconan'' or ''Laurentian'' people, who occupied several fortified villages, including ''Stadacona'' and ''Hochelaga''. Cartier recorded an ongoing war between the Stadaconans and another tribe known as the ''Toudaman'', who had destroyed one of their forts the previous year, resulting in 200 deaths. Wars and politics in Europe distracted French efforts at colonization in the St. Lawrence Valley until the beginning of the 17th century, when they founded Quebec in 1608. When the French returned to the area, they found the sites of both Stadacona and Hochelaga abandoned, completely destroyed by an unknown enemy.〔 Editors of the ''American Heritage Book of Indians'' (AMBoI) note that, based on analysis of political and economic conditions at the time, some anthropologists and historians have suggested that the Mohawk Nation of the Iroquois Confederacy destroyed and drove out the St. Lawrence Iroquoians.〔 When the French returned, they found no inhabitants in this part of the upper river valley. The Iroquois and the Iroquoian-speaking Huron〔 used it as hunting ground.〔〔 (Bruce G. Trigger, "The Disappearance of the St. Lawrence Iroquoians" ), in ''The Children of Aataenstic: A History of the Huron People to 1660'', vol. 2, Montreal and London: Mcgill-Queen's University Press, 1976, pp. 214-218, 220-224, accessed 2 Feb 2010 〕 The causes remain unclear. (Iroquois oral tradition, as recorded in the ''Jesuit Relations'', speaks of a draining war between the Mohawk and an alliance of the Susquehannock and Algonquin sometime between 1580 and 1600). This was perhaps in response to the formation of the League of the Iroquois (NABoI puts this as taking place about 1570〔). When the French returned in 1601, the St. Lawrence Valley had already been the site of generations of blood-feud-style warfare, as characterized the relations of the Iroquois with virtually all neighboring peoples.〔 When Samuel de Champlain landed at ''Tadoussac'' near the St. Lawrence, the ''Montagnais'', Algonquin, and Huron almost immediately recruited him and his small company of French adventurers to assist in attacking their Iroquois enemies upriver. Before 1603, Champlain had formed an offensive alliance against the Iroquois. He decided that the French would not trade firearms to the Iroquois.〔 He had a commercial rationale: the northern Natives provided the French with valuable furs and the Iroquois, based in present-day New York, interfered with that trade. The first deliberate battle with the Iroquois in 1609 was fought at Champlain's initiative.〔''American Heritage Book of Indians,'' page 187; Narrative makes it plain Champlain deliberately went along with a war party down Lake Champlain, and further, this battle created 150 years of mistrust that poisoned any chances that French-Iroquois alliances would be durable and long lived.〕 Champlain wrote, "I had come with no other intention than to make war".〔Jennings, p. 42〕 In the company of his Huron〔 and Algonkin〔 allies, Champlain and his forces fought a pitched battle with the Mohawk〔 on the shores of Lake Champlain. Champlain singlehandedly〔 killed three chiefs with an ''arquebus'' despite the war chiefs having worn "arrowproof body armor made of plaited sticks".〔 In 1610, Champlain and his armed French companions helped the Algonquin and the Huron defeat a large Iroquois raiding party. In 1615, Champlain joined a Huron raiding party and took part in a siege on an Iroquois town, probably among the Onondaga south of Lake Ontario (in present-day New York State). The attack ultimately failed, and Champlain was injured.〔Bruce G. Trigger: ''The Children of Aataentsic: A History of the Huron People to 1660'' (McGill-Queen's University Press; Kingston and Montreal; 1987; ISBN 0-7735-0626-8 pp.312-315)〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Beaver Wars」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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