The Beaver Wars
A commercial comes on the television and it’s a man sitting in a bar drinking a Canadian beer. The American sitting next to him (we can only assume he’s American by the southern drawl and general ignorance of Canadian culture) begins to taunt him and asks, “Where’s your pet beaver eh?” Besides being the improper use of the colloquialism “eh” one thing can be established from this terse conversation between two men. Canadians have some association with the beaver. It’s on their nickel, and has a strong history with the building of the Canadian nation and the establishment of the colonies in New France.
We cannot have Americans taunting Canadians in a bar without Canada, and we cannot have Canada without New France. Furthermore, New France could not have survived its first winter and its men could not have learned to trap beaver or trade for beaver without Natives. Finally, Natives would never have traded something like fur to someone they saw as an enemy without it being tied to a war axe embedded into a French skull. This wasn’t however the case for several of the Native tribes as described in Your Fyre Shall Burn No More. Brandão explains:
The Iroquois had warred against the Hurons and the St. Lawrence and Ottawa Valley Algonquins before the establishment of the first French settlements in Canada. Their hostilities may even have predated France’s first contacts in the St. Lawrence interior. The arrival of the French and their alliances with the Hurons and Algonquins may have complicated matters for the Iroquois, but they did not alter Iroquois enmity towards their foes. The Hurons and Algonquins became New France’s most important allies in the first half of the seventeenth century, but they remained enemies of the Iroquois until their respective nations were defeated, driven from their lands, and incorporated into Iroquois villages. (Brandão 62)
Something important that Brandão fails to mention is that the aforementioned alliance between France and the Huron/Algonquin tribes is that this occurrence of interracial alliance was the first of its kind in history. Despite the colonialization of Canada being just as unique for the near modern world, interracial alliance is just as surprising.
Both sides had adequate reasons for forming alliances. The French were in a strange new world, something never before seen and as Northrop Frye succinctly puts it: “Where is here?” This was precisely the question New France and her people were dealing with at the turn of the first October. Not only did they require protection from Iroquois raids, but the tools and traditions to survive Canada’s harsh winter.
Later on, when it became more obvious that China was a long way from present day Lachine, Quebec, France needed to establish a profitable trade route for their new colony. Queue Native allies. The Huron and Algonquin were all too eager to trade furs to the French for new technologies. Despite being able to survive the harsh winters, the Natives saw the new technologies as first and foremost a defense against the Iroquois who had been warring with them for longer than any could remember. Beyond protection from Iroquois raids, European technology made for an easier way of life. They had better axes, better means of starting a fire and guns, which were generally followed closely by gunpowder and alcohol. Of particular interest was the Native demographic upon French arrival in the New World. Years of conflict with the Iroquois left the male population in severe deficit. The women greatly outnumbered the men in Native society while in the French colonies; there were barely any women to speak of and certainly not any who were eligible for wedlock. Facilitated by lonely French Canadian men and topless Native women who were seen as fantastic dancers by said French men (with the exception of Champlain who saw them as a sinful temptation) matchmaking was sure to occur and did so in large enough numbers that by as early as 1640 an entire nation was born from the interracial marriages.
Of further benefit to the French was that the interracial affinity between the Métis and New France made for a more permanent alliance, not unlike marrying off the daughter of a king to another nation to solidify friendship. Only, this was flesh and blood for generations. With such an effective and strong relationship New France was able to maintain a small garrison of soldiers and Natives in New France while the British patrolled the shores of present day Maine and New York. The difference in numbers was staggering. While the French had approximately 60-80 thousand people in the New World, the British had 8 million. This was not so much to the benefit of France in the New World, but for the British to be 8 million men and women short in Europe was of great benefit. This meant eight million people not carrying weapons, knitting socks or cooking dinners during a time when France and the British Empire were at war.
The benefits of Native alliances with the French were of no loss for centuries of trade. Later on less focused on the fur trade and more focused on the defense of New France as Brandão describes the beaver being driven out of Present day New York State:
“As early as 1671 we have a French memoir to the effect that hardly a single beaver could be found south of Lake Ontario. The Iroquois had to get their beaver from the Indians farther west or get none, and beaver they must have or lose the rum, the clothing, guns and ammunition which had become necessary to their happiness and even to their existence.” (Brandão 11)
These benefits continued on into the 19th century, long after control of Upper and Lower Canada belonged to the British when the Six Nations defended the geography of the land they held at peace with New France. “Their worst fears were soon dispelled, for the Grand River tribesmen informed the visiting Seneca that should the region be attacked they would not hesitate to co-operate with the British in its defense.” (Johnston 1xxii) Despite being relatively unrelated, French Canadian alliances paved the way for the British after control of the colony was taken.
W.J. Eccles in the Handbook of North American Indians describes the product of these early trade relations in reference to the willingness of natives to adapt in order to maintain the inflow of European goods they could not produce for themselves.
At this point [1643] French policy in North America underwent a radical change. Title to all existing and future possessions of France on the continent was vested in the Company of One Hundred Associates, whose aim was the conversion of Indians to Christianity. All the furs had to be sold to the Company’s agents and the profits from their sale were to be used to sustain the missionary drive, given over to the exclusivity of the Society of Jesus. […] For the Indians the change from mere trading posts to settlement colonies posed a serious, long term threat, but, as eager as they were for European goods-which included firearms for those of them that embraced Christianity-they had to maintain good relationships with the suppliers of those goods. (Eccles 326)
The French/Native alliance was so effective and ran so deeply that despite changes in European policies vis-à-vis religion and even changes in government in 1764 when the British took control of the Canadas, the Natives maintained the alliance. It can therefore be said that because the grass stayed green and the water ran Natives stayed true to their word and defended the geography of Canada until it could become a nation in 1867.
What about the man in the bar? He exclaims: “Pet beaver? He’s right here!” At which point a beaver, loyal to the blood, leaps from the shadows and bites the jugular of the American oppressor 6 Nations style.
Works Cited
Brandão, José António. Your Fyre Shall Burn No More: Iroquois Policy toward New France and Its Native Allies to 1701. Nebraska, USA: University of Nebraska Press, 1997.
Johnston, Charles M. The Valley of the Six Nations: A Collection of Documents on the Indian Lands of the Grand River. Toronto, Canada: The Champlain Society for the Government of Ontario University of Toronto Press, 1964.
Lincoln, Charles H. Narratives of the Indian Wars 1675-1699. New York, USA: Barnes and Noble, 1913.
Mc Gee, H.F., Eccles, W.J. Handbook of North American Indians: The Native Peoples of Atlantic Canada. Toronto, Canada: McClelland and Stewart Limited, 1974.
Vaughan, Alden T. New England Frontier: Puritans and Indians 1620 - 1675. Boston, USA: Little, Brown and Company, 1965.
Washburn, Wilcomb E. (Volume Editor). History of Indian-White Relations. Washington, USA: Smithsonian Institution, 1988.
Wright J.V. A history of the Native People of Canada. Gatineau, Canada: Canadian Museum of Civilization, 2004.