From 1688-1815 Europe was convulsed in a series of never-ending wars that also impacted the colonies in North America and the various First Nations. At the same time, there were a series of First Nation wars that in some cases overlapped and in other cases were completely separate from the European conflicts. Sometimes First Nations were allies of one settler group against another, sometimes they formed their own alliances against other First Nations alliances and other times they were in direct conflict with North American settlers. Some of the principal wars included the 1775 American War of Independance, the British American War of 1812, the 1861 American Civil War, and the ongoing Northwest Indian wars. But there were many others that kept conflict going continuously for over 300 years in North America from the start of the Beaver Wars in 1610 until the end of the Apache Wars in 1924.
In North America the First Indian War was called King Philip's War or Metacom's War, and was an armed conflict from 1675–1678 between Indigenous inhabitants of New England and the colonists. The war is named for Metacom, the Wampanoag chief who adopted the name Philip because of the friendly relations between his father and the Mayflower Pilgrims.
The original alliance between the Puritans and Wampanoags had disintegrated in the face of colonial arrogance and the enslavement of Natives. Endless land grabs, clearing of land for crops, and building of fences, which kept livestock out of colonists fields but not out of Native fields, and persecution of the Indians for killing colonists cows and pigs that grazed on Indigenous lands infuriated the Wampanoags.
Raids by the Wampanoag, and their allies the Narragansetts, on the colonists led, in turn, to retaliation by the colony’s militia and war broke out. By the end of the war, the Wampanoags and their Narragansett allies were almost completely destroyed with at least three thousand Native men, women, and children killed. Hundreds of Wampanoags and their allies were publicly executed or enslaved, and the Wampanoags were left effectively landless.
In the space of little more than a year, 24 of the region's towns were either completely destroyed or severely damaged, over a thousand homes were burned to the ground, and 600 soldiers were killed. The economies of the Plymouth and Rhode Island colonies were all but ruined and their populations were decimated. The war was the greatest calamity in seventeenth-century New England and is considered by many to be the deadliest war in Colonial American history.
In North America the Second Indian War was called King William's War and lasted from 1688-1697. The war was largely caused by the fact that the treaties and agreements that were reached at the end of King Philip's War were not adhered to.
There were ongoing tensions on the border between the English in New England and the French in Acadia. New France had defined the Kennebec River in southern Maine as the border but English settlers from Massachusetts (whose charter included the Maine area) had expanded their settlements into Acadia. To secure New France's claim to present-day Maine, New France established Catholic missions among the three largest native villages in the region; one on the Kennebec River, one further north on the Penobscot River, and one on the Saint John River.
The northern English colonies, which in 1686 had united themselves as the Dominion of New England, allied themselves with the Iroquois Confederacy, while the French aligned themselves with the Wabanaki Confederacy, a confederation of four Algonquin nations (Mi'kmaq, Maliseet, Passamaquoddy, and Penobscot) to attack English settlements that had expanded into Acadia. The Iroquois had been in conflict with New France since the start of the Beaver Wars, and at the urging of the Dominion of New England, they continued to disrupt trade between New France and the western tribes. In retaliation, New France raided the Seneca lands of western New York.
The English settlers were more than 154,000 at the beginning of the war, outnumbering the French 12 to 1. However, they were divided in multiple colonies along the Atlantic coast, and were unable to cooperate efficiently. New France with a population of only 14,000 was divided into just three entities, Acadia on the Atlantic coast, Canada along the Saint Lawrence River and up to the Great Lakes, and Louisiana from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, along the Mississippi River.
Although the French were vastly outnumbered, they were more politically unified and contained a disproportionate number of adult males with military backgrounds. Realizing their numerical inferiority, they developed good relationships with the Indigenous peoples in order to multiply their forces and make effective use of hit-and-run tactics.
During the war the French and their allies, the Wabanaki Confederacy, managed to wipe out most of the significant establishments in Maine, and destroyed every English settlementin Newfoundland. The British retaliated by destroying Port Royal. However, the Treaty of Ryswick temporarily ended the war in 1697 with all territories restored to their pre-war boundaries.
No sooner had the Great Peace of Montreal been signed in 1701, and the Third Indian War broke out, also known as Queen Anne’s War, from 1702-1713. This was primarily a conflict among French, Spanish and English colonists for control of the North American continent while the War of the Spanish Succession was being fought in Europe. It was fought on four fronts and each side was allied with various Native American tribes, though this time the Iroquois stayed out of the conflict.
In
the south English colonists fought with both Spanish and French colonists and,
while little territory changed hands, it resulted in the decimation of the
Apalachee and Timucua people.
In
New England the battle continued between Maine and Acadia with the Wabanaki
Confederacy trying to stop British settler expansion into Acadia. Once again,
the British captured Port Royal.
In
Newfoundland the French and British communities continued to raid each other’s
settlements and French privateers based in Placentia and Acadia captured many
ships from New England’s fishing and shipping industries.
The Treaty of Utrecht ended the war in 1713 and settled the War of Spanish Succession which had been going on in Europe at the same time.The terms included France having to cede Nova Scotia (but not Cape Breton or Acadia), the HBC forts, and Newfoundland to the British.
While Britain now controlled most of the Eastern seaboard, France still possessed a vast swath of the North American continent from the St. Lawrence through the Great Lakes, and down through the Mississippi, Missouri, and Ohio rivers. Unlike the more densely populated British colonies, France had only small forts and trading posts with few settlers but, in 1718, they founded New Orleans and in 1719 completed the building of the Louisbourg fortress on Cape Breton. Unfortunately for the Indigenous peoples no account was taken of their demands and settlers continued to move into their lands.
As a result
of French exploration and expansion westward through the Great Lakes, France was gaining more alliances and, after the
Anishinaabe Confederacy, it
now wanted to connect directly with the Sioux. After the Peace Conference of
1701 the French set up a fort at Detroit and settled the surrounding area with
various allies near the Fox nation territory. This location was strategic, as it allowed access
to the water trade routes of the Mississippi, which were more accessible than Montreal, and away
from the warpaths of the Great Lakes region.
Despite enabling access to this region by
establishing a fort, the French could not survive without the help of the
aboriginal people so the Governor invited numerous allied tribes to settle in the
area. Ottawa and Huron peoples established villages in the area and were soon joined by
the Potawatomi, Miami, and Ojibwa.
Historically the Fox people (Meskwaki) lived along the Saint Lawrence River in present-day Ontario, northeast of Lake Ontario. The tribe may have numbered as many as 10,000, but years of war with the Huron, with whom the French supplied with arms, and exposure to new European infectious diseases, greatly reduced their numbers. In response to these pressures, the Fox migrated west, to present-day eastern Michigan in the area between Saginaw Bay and Detroit, west of Lake Huron.
The Fox controlled
the Fox River system. This river was vital for the fur trade between French Canada and
the North American interior, because it allowed river travel from Green Bay in Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River and from there to New Orleans and the French ports
on the Gulf of Mexico. The French wanted the rights to use the river system to
gain access to both the Mississippi and to tribes like the Sioux to the west.
Usually Indigenous groups that were enemies lived fairly far apart from one another but, in Detroit, they lived side by side competing for a relationship with the French and this would prove fatal for the Fox people. At this time, French imperial policy had aligned with certain aboriginal tribes, in particular the Anishinaabe Confederacy, and the Sioux were now seen as the next potentially profitable alliance. However, the Wisconsin tribes (Fox, Sauk, Mascouten, Kickapoo and Winnebago) were determined to prevent the French from having direct trade access to the Sioux.
The First Fox War
(1712–1716) began with inter-alliance violence and ended with the surrender of
a large group of Fox and a subsequent peace deal. Hundreds of Fox people who
had been taken captive by the French and their allies were supposed to be
returned.
Instead, the
captives were enslaved and this was the cause of the second war. The Second Fox
War (1728–1733) was far more destructive than the first, and ended with the
near annihilation of the Fox population after they tried to unite with the
Iroquois.
Both wars were over French wanting rights to use the Fox and Wolf Rivers system to gain access to the Mississippi. The wars claimed thousands of lives and initiated a slave trade whereby Fox Indians were captured by native allies of New France and then sold as slaves to the French colonial population.
In 1756 Europe was again at war and this time it was called the
Seven Years War. In North America it started two years earlier and was known as
the French & Indian War (1754-1763). The French & Indian War once again pitted the
North American colonies of the British Empire against
those of the French,
with each side being supported by various Native American tribes.
At the start of the war, the French colonies had a population of roughly 60,000 settlers, compared with 2 million in the British colonies. With a 33 to 1 disadvantage the outnumbered French were particularly dependant on their First Nation allies. The British colonists were supported at various times by the Iroquois Confederacy, Catawba, and Cherokee tribes, and the French colonists were supported the Wabanaki Confederacy, Algonquin, Lenape, Ojibwa, Ottawa, Shawnee, and Huron tribes.
Fighting took place primarily along the frontiers between New France and the British colonies, from the Province of Virginia in the south to Newfoundland in the north. At its origins were disputes between the British and French and their Indian allies over territory in the western regions of New York and Pennsylvania and in the Ohio River Valley where British colonists were expanding and clashing with French forts and various First Nations.
At the start of the
war the results for Britain were a disaster but, once William Pitt was put in
charge, things changed. With a fleet of 150 transport ships, 40 warships, 12,000
sailors and 14,000 soldiers they first seized Louisbourg in 1758, Quebec in
1759 (Plains of Abraham), Montreal in 1760 and then all of the strategic French
forts south of Montreal, along the Ohio River, and in eastern Canada and the
Great Lakes region.
The Treaty of Paris, signed in 1763, concluded the war between Britain, France, and Spain. France ceded Acadia and New France to Britain. France also ceded to Britain all her territory east of the Mississippi River and all territory west of the Mississippi to Spain. France was now out of North America. Spain in turn ceded Florida to Britain which now left North America in the hands of just two European empires, the Spanish and the British. As always the concerns of the First Nations were completely ignored.
Chief Pontiac
