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Trade beads made in Venice in the 1600s and traded in North America

Later Iroquois history: Trade beads made in Venice in the 1600s and traded in North America

Iroquois trade for beads and knives

When the first European traders came to the north Atlantic coast, about 1600 AD, the Iroquois were very interested in trading with them.

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People sold the Dutch traders lots and lots of beaver furs to make hats with, and in exchange they got glass beads and wool blankets, steel knivessewing needles, and lots of other cool stuff. But people also caught European diseases. Only a few years later, in 1609, the first Iroquois people died from measles that they caught from the Dutch traders.

History of steel
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Southern Iroquois village (modern North Carolina), 1500s AD

Southern Iroquois village (modern North Carolina), 1500s AD

War with the Algonquin

Soon the Iroquois found themselves involved in a war with the Algonquins to their north. Using steel weapons they got from the French leader Richelieu, the Algonquins took over a lot of Iroquois land (in modern New York State) and drove the Iroquois to the south, and even forced the Iroquois to pay tribute to the Algonquins.

Who are the Algonquin?
Richelieu and France

But by 1629 the Iroquois were running out of beaver in their own land, and they wanted to get the northern land back again so they could hunt there. The Iroquois got steel knives and spears from the Dutch, so they could fight the Algonquins, and they took back a lot of their land.

The Dutch settlement at Fort Orange (modern Albany) in 1624

The Dutch settlement at Fort Orange (modern Albany) in 1624

When the Dutch built Fort Orange (which is Albany today), the Iroquois lost control of the Hudson River. They couldn’t run their own trade anymore. They had to sell to Dutch traders instead. That was much less profitable.

Iroquois empire

At first, this didn’t seem to matter so much. By the 1630s, thanks to their unified confederacy and guns they got from the Dutch, the Iroquois had become very strong, and not only the Algonquins but also the French (now under Anne of Austria) were afraid of them and went out of their way not to annoy them.

Who was Anne of Austria?
The Shawnee and Tecumseh
Who are the Cherokee?

The Iroquois pushed the Shawnee to their south off their land, and the Iroquois took it over, while the Shawnee had to move into Cherokee land.

Smallpox kills many Iroquois

But in the 1660s, smallpox epidemics killed more than half of the Iroquois people and made them much weaker. By 1667, the Iroquois were so weak that the new young French king Louis XIV attacked them, and forced them to accept French traders on their land.

Who was Louis XIV?
What was smallpox?

An Iroquois village in the 1720s

An Iroquois village in the 1720s

French and Indian war

The Iroquois were still not getting along with the French king Louis XV in the 1700s, so they took the British prime minister Walpole’s side in the wars between the British and the French, while the Algonquin took the French side.

Louis XV of France
Walpole in Britain

After the war, in 1763, the British governors and the new British Prime Minister, William Pitt, promised that no British or French settlers would move into Iroquois land, but nobody really paid any attention to this, and people just kept moving in anyway.

The Mohawk chief Tiyonaga in 1740

The Mohawk chief Tiyonaga in 1740

American Revolution

During the American Revolutionary War a few years later, therefore, some of the Iroquois under their leader Joseph Brant stayed on the side of the British, while others (the Tuscarora and the Oneida) sided with the Americans and their French ally Louis XVI. So the unity of the Iroquois Confederacy broke down.

The American Revolution
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Many Iroquois move to Canada

After the war, a lot of Iroquois who had fought on the British side left the United States of America and settled in Canada. The Iroquois who stayed in New York State soon lost most of their land to angry settlers who resented their having fought on the side of the British. Some Iroquois still live in New York State; others, like some Cayuga, Oneida, and Seneca, moved west to Oklahoma or Wisconsin.

Learn by doing: consider the parallels between this and modern Israeli settlements on the West Bank
More about the Algonquin
More about the Cherokee

Bibliography and further reading about the Iroquois:

Weetamoo: Heart of the Pocassets, Massachusetts, 1653 (Royal Diaries), by Patricia Clark Smith (2003). Part of the Royal Diaries series. The writing isn’t good, but it’s an exciting story, and a true one, about a powerful woman (She’s actually Wampanoag, not Iroquois, but there’s no page on the Wampanoag yet).

The Iroquois: The Six Nations Confederacy, by Mary Englar (2006). Includes chapters on modern Iroquois.

Early Iroquois history
Algonquin history
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