CHAPTER 4Confronting Imperial Expansion

French-led military invasions, massive environmental destruction, and climate challenges made the period of 1687 to 1700 an incredibly difficult and challenging time for The People of the Longhouse. The peace negotiations that produced the Grand Settlement of 1701, however, integrated decades of Haudenosaunee spatial relations with Indigenous and imperial neighbors to strengthen the Covenant Chain alliance with the English, maintain access to critical subsistence and market resources, and develop multiple economic partnerships beyond the geographic spaces of the Hudson and Saint Lawrence River Valleys. A closer look at Haudenosaunee mobility and sovereignty over their homelands before and after the Grand Settlement, therefore, highlights the creative adaptability and innovative responses of Haudenosaunee leaders and communities to project power over Indigenous and imperial neighbors and to control the scale and scope of European intrusion into homelands.

In the summer of 1684, as Joseph-Antoine Le Febvre de la Barre, governor of New France, led a large military expedition into Haudenosaunee territory, he hoped to humiliate the Seneca people for their attacks on New France's western Indigenous allies, specifically Illinois and Miami communities as well as French traders. La Barre's army included nearly 1,000 French soldiers and several hundred Indigenous fighters, many of them Saint Lawrence River Valley Haudenosaunee allies. An additional military force of between six hundred and seven hundred men, with Indigenous men outnumbering Frenchmen, marched from the west to join La Barre. As La Barre slowly made his way from Québec up the Saint Lawrence River to Fort Frontenac and then along the eastern shore of Lake Ontario, Haudenosaunee leaders met with New York Governor Thomas Dongan. They reminded him, “Wee have putt all our land and our selfs under the Protection of the great Duke of York … [and] the Great Sachim Charles that lives over the Great Lake.” Onondaga and Cayuga speakers embellished the strength of their Covenant Chain allies, claiming “Your Sachim is a great Sachim and we are but a small people.” Yet, they also emphasized the threat the French posed to New York's fur-trade ambitions. “You will protect us from the French, which if you do not,” they warned, “we shall loose (sic) all our hunting and Bevers, The French will have all the Bevers, and are angry with us for bringing any to you.” From the European perspective, these Haudenosaunee statements described a weakened fighting force unable to defend their homeland and in need of English protection. This weakness, New York officials concluded, prompted Haudenosaunee leaders to transfer their lands to their Covenant Chain allies.¹

As La Barre marched toward Haudenosaunee villages, Governor Dongan explicitly prohibited Haudenosaunee leaders from negotiating with the French. Arnout Viele, the Albany interpreter, reminded Onondaga leaders and young men that the New York governor was the “complete master of their country … that they belonged to the King of England.” La Barre made a similar claim of French ownership to Indigenous homelands when he accused Haudenosaunee hunters of introducing English fur traders into the “Lakes, belonging to the [French] King my Master.” Although Otreouti, an Onondaga headman, cooled the tempers of angry young men and fellow leaders with his recommendation to ignore Viele's statements as the “proposals of a man who seemed to be drunk,” this did little to change the tone and threat that competing imperial neighbors posed to Haudenosaunee sovereignty.²

Despite Onondaga and Cayuga statements that “we are but a small people,” these communities did not require English diplomatic protection or military assistance against La Barre's troops. La Barre encountered numerous difficulties along his path from Québec to Lake Ontario that reflected his lack of geographic and environmental knowledge of the route and complicated his military goals. Troops, for example, exhausted their provisions during lengthy setbacks as strong winds slowed canoe travel and ascending the many rapids of the Saint Lawrence River presented delays. In addition, camp illness spread before the French reached Fort Frontenac and only worsened in the swampy terrain of Lake Ontario's eastern shore. As La Barre's debilitated and hungry army undermined a successful military expedition, he canceled western reinforcements and returned to Fort Frontenac after a short conference with Haudenosaunee representatives at the mouth of the Salmon River. Despite aborting the two-pronged invasion, La Barre believed his show of diplomatic and military force would compel Onondaga, Oneida, and Cayuga diplomats to reign in Seneca fighting men. If violence in the west did not end, La Barre threatened a coordinated French and English attack on all Five Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy. La Barre, however, revealed his unfamiliarity with League alliances when he expected Onondaga, Oneida, and Cayuga men and women to abandon their Seneca confederates. Jesuit Father Jean de Lamberville, who resided at the main Onondaga village, confessed to La Barre, “I am surprised that [Father] Le Moyne or some other persons have not told you that all these villages were confederated, and that one could not be attacked without becoming embroiled with the others.”³

Otreouti delivered the Haudenosaunee response to French demands for peace in the west. His statements outlined Haudenosaunee spatial relations with Indigenous and European neighbors and marked a vivid awareness of imperial attempts to lay claim to Haudenosaunee homelands. “I must tell you,” Otreouti began, “I am not asleep, my Eyes are open.” Although La Barre professed to come into Haudenosaunee homelands on a mission of peace, Otreouti discerned the French goal to “knock ‘em on the Head” had not camp illness rendered La Barre's men and weapons useless. Otreouti ridiculed La Barre for raving in a camp of sick people but insisted this saved the French from eminent death at the hands of Haudenosaunee defenders.⁴

After mocking La Barre's failed expedition, Otreouti provided a brief history of French and English economic expansion into Haudenosaunee territory. “We have conducted the English to our Lakes,” Otreouti reminded La Barre, “in order to traffick with the Outaouas [Ottawas], and the Hurons; just as the Algonkins conducted the French to our five Cantons, in order to carry on a Commerce that the English lay claim as their Right.” In highlighting Haudenosaunee control over specific geographic spaces and access to more distant Indigenous peoples, Otreouti stressed Haudenosaunee freedom of movement and sovereignty. “We are born Freemen, and have no dependance either upon the Onnontio [governor of New France] or the Corlar [governor of New York]. We have a power to go where we please, to conduct who we will to the places we resort to, and to buy and sell where we think fit.” Otreouti recommended the French only use Fort Frontenac for commercial purposes to ensure peaceful relations. But, if the French, separately or in coordination with the English, invaded “the Country, that the great Spirit has dispos’d of in the favour of our Ancestors,” Otreouti warned that Haudenosaunee warriors would “dig up the Axe to cut down the Tree of Peace” once planted at Fort Frontenac. Otreouti underscored the collective nature of his response by telling La Barre that “My Voice is the Voice of the five Iroquese Cantons.”⁵

Otreouti's statements reflected a growing and vocal movement in Haudenosaunee villages to retain multiple avenues to European trade goods, but on Haudenosaunee terms. After a few generations of contact and exchange, Haudenosaunee men and women had incorporated European manufactured goods to complement and fulfill aspects of everyday life and to protect and defend their communities. Women, for example, purchased European blankets and cloth to reduce the labor demands of processing and sewing hides for clothing and warmth. Young men used new weapons, especially guns, to wage destructive mourning war campaigns that dispersed, destroyed, or absorbed enemy nations. Village leaders developed personal connections to Europeans to gain and maintain access to needed trade goods and to restrict or deny trade access to more distant Indigenous communities. The distance of French and English colonial trade centers, often hundreds of miles from Haudenosaunee communities, as well as uneasy diplomatic relations with Indigenous or European neighbors, often complicated or limited access to desired goods. Consequently, Haudenosaunee leaders and individuals worked to reduce the burdens of distant travel and to shift the points of exchange closer to their villages. The goal of maintaining open access to manufactured goods through multiple trade partners, however, remained a priority.

The Grand Settlement of 1701 embodied the positions that Otreouti outlined on Haudenosaunee sovereignty, freedom of movement, and liberty to trade with competing imperial neighbors. The treaty not only ushered in more than forty years of relative peace between the People of the Longhouse, Native nations to the west, the French, and the English but also allowed Haudenosaunee men and women to rebuild their shattered communities and return to long-standing mixed-subsistence economies. During this long period of peace, the French and English worked to expand their imperial project by competing aggressively for Indigenous trade partners and working tirelessly to gain control of the territory between their settlements with permanent trade posts and forts. Haudenosaunee leaders creatively adapted to this imperial competition with diplomatic and political maneuvering. To monopolize the economic benefits of global trade, village leaders and communities encouraged former Indigenous enemies to travel through their territory to English markets in Albany. Later, village leaders invited Europeans and their trade posts into Haudenosaunee homelands. As European manufactured goods and Indigenous customers flowed into and through the figurative longhouse of Haudenosaunee homelands, Haudenosaunee communities, not colonial towns, became the final destination for European traders and Indigenous customers. By shifting the locus of economic and diplomatic exchange to Haudenosaunee communities, village leaders hoped to become the primary beneficiaries.⁶

The quest for European trade goods, however, sharpened the economic and diplomatic competition between Haudenosaunee nations as leaders jockeyed to bring desired and necessary items to their villages. Leaders needed dependable and consistent access to trade goods for redistribution. Without a steady supply of goods, they could not maintain community prestige. In addition, no nation wanted to be subservient to another: economic and diplomatic success for one nation threatened humiliation for others. As European trade posts brought personal, economic, military, and political benefits to hereditary village leaders and communities, leaders jealously guarded access to important colonial allies and trade centers. Headmen, for example, often exaggerated the violence and alcohol consumption in neighboring villages to warn traders and diplomats of the dangers of more distant travel. Community leaders also sabotaged the efforts of fellow confederate nations to gain similar benefits.⁷

As Haudenosaunee villages recovered from the devastating French-led military invasions of the 1680s and 1690s, many men and women reconfigured their settlement patterns by changing village locations, adopting smaller housing templates, and foregoing defensive structures. New France's superior weaponry, as well as their ability to amass hundreds of troops and Indigenous allies, had rendered extensive palisades obsolete and had made rebuilding them pointless and even counterproductive. European defensive structures and design had also offered little protection against New France and her allies. In addition, population losses increased community vulnerability to enemy attacks, made it increasingly difficult for some matrilineages to fill extensive longhouses, and hindered efforts to block settler expansion into critical subsistence spaces. As a result, when residents rebuilt their smoldering communities, some adopted new settlement templates, whereas others removed to distant subsistence environments. Regardless of community size, location, or density, Haudenosaunee men did not invest significant labor into protecting their new communities with perimeter defenses or forts.

In rebuilding communities, residents considered the normal factors of access to productive agricultural land, fresh water sources, and hunting and fishing spaces. Security concerns and the size of the population determined longhouse size and village layout. Additional factors that influenced early eighteenth-century settlement patterns included access to European trade goods, preference for French or English economic and diplomatic partners, and proximity to colonial settlements. The degree and pace of settlement pattern changes often increased with proximity to European traders and colonial expansion. Located nearest to Albany, many Mohawk men and women had economic, military, and personal relationships with colonial officials and neighbors. Close ties with powerful colonial patrons ensured access to European cloth and clothing, tools, and weapons as well as protection in case of enemy attack. In addition, colonial patrons heard Mohawk complaints and served as cultural mediators between Mohawk residents and Albany officials. Personal diplomatic and military connections also facilitated the flow of presents and prestige to village leaders and fighting men.

As recently as 1693, the eastern Mohawk community at Caughnawaga included twelve extensive longhouses that ranged from seventy feet to one hundred feet in length in a compact village. Between six and eight families filled these large longhouses. As the decade progressed, however, repeated population losses from disease, warfare, and out-migration made that pattern too difficult to sustain. Consequently, when Mohawk men rebuilt their community after the 1693 French invasion, they constructed smaller and more numerous dwellings. By 1698, the easternmost village, known as the Lower Castle, contained thirty-nine houses with each structure sheltering between one and four families.⁸

Settler expansion up the Mohawk River began to restrict the movement of The People of the Flint within their homeland. Mohawk men and women, however, responded to these demographic shifts in the Mohawk Valley by adopting a more dispersed settlement pattern. In 1700, New York's chief military engineer, Colonel Wolfgang Römer, counted four Mohawk communities, including two near the mouth of Schoharie Creek. Mohawk men, in fact, had constructed numerous communities up and down the north and south side of the Mohawk River. They also settled along both banks of Schoharie Creek, especially near its confluence with the Mohawk River. More western Mohawk families clustered around two new villages; one at the mouth of Otsquago Creek, and a second village about nine miles farther upriver at Dekanohage, located opposite the mouth of East Canada Creek. The dispersal of Mohawk settlements along the Mohawk River, particularly at the forks of rivers and creeks, reflected a strategy to retain control and use of these critical environmental spaces for subsistence practices. Mohawk occupation of critical landscapes also blocked settler expansion up the river.⁹

After the French destroyed their castle in 1696, The People of the Standing Stone remained in the highlands above Lake Ontario and built a new village between two small streams southeast of Oneida Creek. After dating the Upper Hogan archaeological site with a 1690s occupation, a long gap exists in the Oneida sequence until archaeological evidence at the Primes Hill site reflected a 1730s occupation. The documentary record refers to but one Oneida community until the mid-eighteenth century, when several families established a second village, Kanonwalohale, in the valley closer to Oneida Lake. For the first decade of the 1700s, Oneida men and women escaped the immediate pressures of settler expansion and European forts because their Mohawk neighbors to the east insulated them from colonists moving up the Mohawk River and the trade community at Albany reduced interest in establishing another post to the west.¹⁰

Frontenac's 1696 invasion also brought significant changes to the settlement pattern of Onondaga families. Many survivors transported provisions to established longhouses and hunting territories farther south. When they returned north, The People of the Hills rebuilt their town on the east side of Butternut Creek. As evidence that they had returned to familiar spaces, exhausted firewood soon forced residents to relocate yet again by 1700. For their next village site, the Onondaga community shifted westward about five miles and settled along Onondaga Creek. Although men adopted a more dispersed settlement pattern composed of smaller family households and women tended to personal gardens, large groups of Onondaga women continued to work together to cultivate extensive agricultural fields.¹¹

Unlike their Haudenosaunee neighbors, The People of the Marshy Area escaped the French invasions intended to humble the Five Nations. In 1687, Denonville desperately wanted to destroy Cayuga villages, but the extremely swampy terrain and several large rivers along the route to their communities made access too difficult. Frontenac also avoided Cayuga country in 1696, satisfied with the destruction of Onondaga and Oneida villages and crops to the east. Cayuga men and women, however, fulfilled their reciprocal responsibilities of the Dish with One Spoon. As homeless and hungry confederates brought their hardships to Cayuga communities, displaced men, women, and children quickly depleted the stored and harvested provisions of Cayuga women's labor. Long-standing settlement patterns and subsistence strategies resumed, however, as people rebuilt their communities and animals and crops slowly recovered from the environmental destruction. Until the 1720s, Cayuga families maintained compact villages in the defensible high hills east of Cayuga Lake. The environmental conditions that had provided protection against French military invasions also insulated Cayuga communities from the incursions of imperial trade posts and forts. Europeans, especially French traders, stopped at Cayuga villages during the early decades of the 1700s while visiting their more populous Seneca neighbors, but these trips were infrequent.¹²

After spending the winter of 1687–1688 at resource acquisition camps or with their Cayuga neighbors, Seneca men constructed new communities fifteen to twenty miles east of their former sites. According to the archaeological evidence, for the previous 150 years, both the eastern and western Seneca lineages had migrated in a northward direction. The dramatic eastward relocation of both lineages removed Senecas from an ecosystem long altered by their intervention and manipulation and placed them in a new subsistence environment. Seneca women needed to study this eastern landscape for its agricultural potential, access to fresh water, and proximity to woodlot for housing and heating. The significant shift to the east, however, also reflected Seneca security concerns about French military weaponry and massive armies, and a desire to create greater distance from western enemies. Relocating to the base of Canandaigua and Seneca Lakes provided a swampier environment to insulate against future European-led invasions, while the construction of oval-shaped defensive palisades protected against small-scale enemy raids. Nearby uplands met the agricultural needs of women, and Seneca men already knew the hunting and fishing potential of the area well. The relocation to the foot of Canandaigua Lake, near where The People of the Great Hills emerged from the earth, represented a return to a place of significant spiritual power and connection to the land and offered strength and guidance as Seneca men and women rebuilt their lives and communities.¹³

Seneca men built the main western village along the east side of the foot of Canandaigua Lake. In the early 1700s, the documentary record refers to this community as Oksarant, Sjaunt, or Saront. When residents removed to a new location around the 1720s, the community took on the name Onahee, which denoted the smaller of the two lineages. The Seneca community continued the practice of retaining village names, and Onahee transferred to new villages into the 1750s. The eastern capital moved to the west side of the foot of Seneca Lake. Catholic articles found at the relocated eastern village support the migration of the smaller community of emplaced Wendat families along with its larger neighbor. In the early 1700s, the Albany trader Evert Wendell recorded this eastern-sequence village as Canosedaken, which was similar in spelling and pronunciation to Ganundasaga, meaning “new settlement” or “new town.” As eastern Seneca families removed to new locations, they carried the “new settlement” name that evolved into Ganechstage, or New Ganechstage. Throughout these village relocations, the eastern and western Seneca lineages maintained the practice of a larger community complex with an affiliated smaller community of adopted and emplaced families nearby.¹⁴

In addition to ending the warfare that had devastated Haudenosaunee villages and food stores and threatened village security, the Grand Settlement of 1701 also included imperial obligations to ensure Haudenosaunee access to hunting territory north and west of Lake Ontario. Confederacy leaders relied on the French to maintain peace in the west and expected the English to defend their expanded homeland gained through successful mourning war campaigns in previous decades. Confederacy leaders explained to their Covenant Chain allies that they had enjoyed generations of uncontested access to a “great plenty” of fur-bearing animals, particularly beaver, in their expanded homeland. Confederacy leaders made clear, and Albany officials understood, the economic value of this expansive territory of approximately eight hundred miles east to west and four hundred miles south to north. The beaver-hunting lands extended to the north and west of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, south of Georgian Bay, and encompassed the lower peninsula of Michigan. The territory also included the important passes through the lakes at Niagara Falls and Detroit. But imperial competition in the fur trade made hunting in these distant spaces more dangerous. Confederacy leaders, therefore, transferred this land to the English and articulated their understanding of the agreement. They informed the English, “It is thereby expected that wee are to have free hunting for us and the heires and descendants from us the Five Nations for ever and that free of all disturbances expecting to be protected therein by the Crown of England.” As with earlier land transfers, Confederacy leaders did not relinquish control of the land. Rather, they expected the English to help protect the unimpeded access of Haudenosaunee men and women to these valuable hunting environments, both for subsistence and for trade.¹⁵

European maps from the early 1700s depict the greatly expanded Haudenosaunee beaver-hunting territory according to imperial interests and needs. In 1727, for example, Cadwallader Colden emphasized Great Britain's imperial claims to the Great Lakes region with a map that he reproduced from French cartographer Guillaume De’Lisle's 1718 map of New France and the Course of the Mississippi. De’Lisle highlighted the former Indigenous inhabitants of the northern Great Lakes environment to underscore French geographic knowledge of the region and their economic and military connections to the people, whereas Colden altogether erased this Indigenous occupation, instead marking it only as “The Countrys Conquer’d by the Five Nations” (figure 4.1). This expansive area represented the lands Confederacy leaders transferred to the English for protection. Once Colden identified this space as territory conquered by Haudenosaunee warriors, his map greatly circumscribed New France's geographic territory and area of control in North America to the small region north of Québec and the confluence of the Saint Lawrence River and Trois Rivières. In addition, by maximizing the expansive military power of the Five Nations, Colden projected English imperial control over the entire eastern and northern Great Lakes environment.¹⁶

FIGURE 4.1. Cadwallader Colden, “A Map of the Country of the Five Nations, belonging to the Province of New York; and of the Lakes near which the Nations of Far Indians live, with part of Canada” (1727; repr., 1747). Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.

When Confederacy leaders transferred lands to the governor of New York and requested protection, as in 1684 and 1701, their actions reflected an extension of the Great Law of Peace and Unity and adhered to the long-standing Haudenosaunee cultural framework of reciprocity and balance. The Covenant Chain alliance between the Iroquois Confederacy and the colony of New York embodied these features because it included reciprocal economic, diplomatic, and military obligations. Member links in the Covenant Chain engaged in peaceful trade with each other, but they also expected mutual protection against external threats. While an enemy invasion directly challenged the efficacy of the English and Haudenosaunee military alliance, the loss of beaver threatened New York's fur-trade economy and the place of The People of the Longhouse within it. Confederacy leaders astutely exploited the economic anxieties of their Covenant Chain allies and expected help in safeguarding both their homelands and access to prized hunting spaces. The transfer of territory to the protection of New York also embodied the kaswentha ideology embedded in the Two Row Belt first negotiated in 1613. Just as the English inherited the Covenant Chain alliance when they assumed control of the Dutch colony, the English also inherited previous trading and spatial agreements. But these were agreements between equal partners, rather than indicative of a hierarchical relationship.¹⁷

Village leaders and communities maximized the economic and diplomatic opportunities of peace by inviting former Indigenous enemies to travel through their territory to colonial markets in Albany. They emphasized the trade differences between the French and the English to entice western Native nations to forego their economic connections to New France. English manufacturing, for example, outpaced that of the French and allowed the English to produce more goods of higher quality at a lower cost. In addition, the environmental factors of long and cold winters in New France made water routes impassable for several months every year and complicated efforts to stock trade posts. Finally, in times of imperial conflict when European wars threatened to embroil their colonies, the ability of the English navy to blockade the mouth of the Saint Lawrence River, the only access point into northern New France, complicated French efforts to equip their Indigenous allies and trade partners. As a result, the English could provide more products at cheaper prices and with greater reliability than their French counterparts. Western travelers paid for shelter, provisions, and safe passage through Haudenosaunee homelands with furs and peltry, diplomatic tribute, and peace.

Haudenosaunee diplomatic envoys worked to end warfare in the west and to pull western Natives into the Haudenosaunee-English fur-trade orbit in the decade before and after the Grand Settlement of 1701. Diplomatic negotiations throughout the 1690s precipitated a June 1700 conference, during which Seneca men escorted several Dowaganhaes (Odawa) to the Central Fire of the Iroquois Confederacy in Onondaga territory to make peace with the Five Nations. The Odawa diplomats, along with speakers from three other nations, also sought permission to settle on prized Haudenosaunee hunting lands north of Lake Ontario and to enter fur-trade exchanges with the English at Albany. Seneca and Odawa envoys continued discussions and reached a formal peace agreement, military alliance, and economic partnership by June 1710, ending the long-standing mourning war campaigns, and both nations promised to defend one another if attacked. Peaceful trade and mobility were at the root of this agreement. As Odawa and Haudenosaunee leaders discussed their goals, the Seneca speaker made clear that “We desire that we may Sojourn & Trade with one another without Hatred or Malice …. We give you a Road from your Dwellings to Albany wherein you shall meet with us no Molestation. You have free Liberty to walk or Trade therein & no Body shall Molest you.” To encourage the development of this economic relationship, Seneca leaders urged Albany officials to sell goods at cheaper rates so the “Waganhaes [Odawa] may see that wee gett much for a bever, especially great baggs of powder; then the Waganhaes will love and esteem Corlaer.” But, if prices remained too high, they warned, Odawa traders would be unimpressed with the alternative options at Albany and would continue their economic exchanges with the French.¹⁸

Throughout the first decade of the 1700s, Governor Philippe de Rigaud, marquis de Vaudreuil, and François Clairambault d’Aigremont, who assessed trading activities at interior posts, witnessed the decline in trade activity throughout the Saint Lawrence Valley. Multiple factors contributed to fluctuating trade patterns, such as renewed warfare in the west that limited Indigenous hunting and trapping, large diplomatic gatherings that brought convoys of men and women to Montréal, fears of epidemic outbreaks that kept visitors away from the Saint Lawrence Valley, and new posts in the western Great Lakes that offered alternative trade options closer to western Indigenous communities. As the first decade of the 1700s progressed, D’Aigremont observed, “Experience sufficiently proves that it is not to be expected that these [western] nations will come in quest of them [trade goods] to Montreal.” As evidence of this trend, he noted that the sixty canoes that arrived in Montréal during 1708 represented an exception to the norm of very few canoes coming in the years since the 1701 treaty. Furthermore, D’Aigremont argued, “When these Indians will be obliged to go to a great distance to get their necessaries, they will always go to the cheapest market.” The French accepted that the English offered the “cheapest market” and concluded there was little they could do to draw western travelers away from the more favorable rates of English products.¹⁹

Guillaume De’Lisle's 1718 Map of Louisiana and the Course of the Mississippi illustrated the logistical challenges New France faced as they courted Indigenous traders from distant western lands (figure 4.2). De’Lisle fulfilled the imperial aims of New France when he employed large text and word placement to represent the upper Great Lakes as “Canada ou Novelle France” and restricted Haudenosaunee spatial control to south of Lake Ontario and east of Lake Erie. Although De’Lisle specifically noted that the Erie (Chat) and Neutral Nations were “detruite par les Iroquois” (destroyed by the Iroquois), he provided no attribution for the fate of Huron and Petun peoples. As De’Lisle ignored years of successful Haudenosaunee mourning war campaigns that destroyed, displaced, and absorbed Indigenous nations within prized beaver-hunting lands, his map denied Haudenosaunee hunters any claim to these northern spaces. In addition, De’Lisle noted several Indigenous communities along the north shore of Lake Ontario that traced the circuitous route and economic connections from western Indigenous villages to French markets at Montréal. De’Lisle's placement of Native nations, the large text, and the history of specific events memorialized in the map allowed New France to extend its imperial claims while restricting those of Haudenosaunee hunters and their English allies.²⁰

FIGURE 4.2. Guillaume DeLisle, Carte de la Louisiane et du cours du Mississipi i.e. Mississippi: dressée sur un grand nombre de mémoires entrautres sur ceux de Mr. le Maire (Map of Louisiana and the course of the Mississipi i.e. Mississippi: drawn from a large number of memoirs including those of Mr. le Maire) (Paris: Chez l’auteur le Sr. Delisle sur le quay de l’horloge avec privilege du roy, 1718). Used with permission, Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division, https://www.loc.gov/item/2001624908/.

The water routes and village locations south of Lake Ontario offer visual evidence for the decline in trade activity at Montréal. The southern route to Albany through Haudenosaunee homelands highlights the ease of water travel along a nearly uninterrupted water artery with frequent stops at villages for shelter and food. Consequently, the map underscores the connections of rivers to important environmental spaces, the land, and communities. To intercept travelers along this southern route, De’Lisle continued to represent French trade activity at the mouth of the Niagara River with the long-abandoned Fort Denonville, as well as the portage around the falls. Both representations reflected French ambitions to control this strategic space and the trade trafficking through the area. Most important, De’Lisle's map summarized the growing body of environmental and geographic knowledge surrounding the specific location of Indigenous villages and important water routes used for subsistence, transportation, and trade, particularly around Lake Ontario and into Haudenosaunee homelands.²¹

One solution to New France's economic woes involved building a new trade post at the key pass from the western Great Lakes into the western door of the figurative Haudenosaunee longhouse below Niagara Falls. Denonville had constructed a post at the strategic location near the mouth of the Niagara River in 1687 as a base to resupply western fighters in their military campaigns against Seneca enemies and to curtail Seneca mobility west and north of Lake Ontario. The post, named Fort Denonville, failed to fulfill both expectations because Seneca hunting and raiding parties frequently traversed the area unchecked. In addition, French troops stationed at the fort suffered from malnutrition and disease after their August arrival prevented agricultural planting, and fears of roaming Seneca warriors foiled the efforts of soldiers to hunt and fish. As a result, the French soon abandoned the fort in spring 1688.²²

As Albany's fur-trade orbit expanded in the early 1700s, New France reconsidered constructing a post at the critical pass. Governor Vaudreuil, however, rejected those efforts, explaining, “It is certain that the nearer we bring the savages of the lakes to the Iroquois, the fewer furs we shall get, seeing that the Iroquois will trade with them … all with English goods.” Vaudreuil also dismissed efforts to build posts closer to Seneca communities, arguing that village leaders would oppose any European trade posts within their homeland because western travelers would then have direct access to European goods, thereby ending diplomatic and material benefits to Seneca hosts. Concluding that any post would transfer benefits to the English or to Haudenosaunee villages and leaders, the French did not press for new forts near Seneca homelands.²³

Seneca leaders and village residents, however, pursued their own interests in gaining and retaining access to European trade goods. Village leaders needed access to manufactured goods for redistribution, and residents wanted the trade items they had incorporated into their daily lives. Seneca headmen continued to improve economic and diplomatic relations with former French and Indigenous enemies while also strengthening ties to Albany. In the spring of 1716, for example, New York Indian Affairs agent Captain Harmen Van Slyck traveled to Seneca country seeking permission to establish a small trading post along Lake Ontario. Van Slyck targeted Irondequoit Bay, a favored landing place and the point where he hoped to intercept western travelers heading inland to Seneca villages for food and shelter. But to Van Slyck's surprise, he and his associates found five French traders and a smith already operating at the landing. At the Irondequoit trade house, the French provided Indigenous men with weapons and ammunition to hunt and to carry out mourning war raids against southern enemies, tools for preparing skins and furs for the market, and clothing. Smiths, always in high demand, repaired weapons and tools needed for hunting, warfare, and daily subsistence labor. Despite the French presence, Seneca leaders granted Van Slyck's request and promised to extend the same privilege to any other Christians who wanted to trade at Irondequoit Bay. By the end of the summer, several Seneca men asked Governor Vaudreuil to send them another smith and a priest and requested that the French build a garrison with thirty men to defend it. The Seneca deputies promised the French exclusive trade relations if they received consistent and favorable terms, such as a blanket for two elk skins and a gun for three elk skins. The specific mention of elk in the exchange rate highlighted the difficulty of Seneca hunters to find beavers in large supply and the willingness of the French to accommodate new fur resources.²⁴

Seneca men also shifted their attention west to the strategic portage around Niagara Falls. Trade activity in the area attracted the men, who by 1718 had constructed a small village of about ten cabins. Women also joined the small community, as evident in the agricultural production of corn, beans, watermelon, pumpkins, and peas. The environment fulfilled hunting and fishing needs as deer and buffalo abounded in the region, as well as a wide array of fish. Seneca men relocated west to capitalize on the year-round European trade presence and the increase in fur-trade traffic into their homelands to become laborers in the expanding market. The men carried manufactured goods west and furs east over the Niagara portage two or three times a year. The French described the portage trail as “very fine, with very beautiful and open woods through which a person is visible for a distance of six hundred paces,” reflecting the heavy use of the portage and the human intervention to smooth the path. The French, however, were not alone in employing Seneca men to extend trade networks far to the west. Vaudreuil claimed the English also “carried on … a considerable trade” for several years at the pass. In exchange for their labor, Seneca men earned wages, clothing, weapons, ammunition, furs, and alcohol.²⁵ As fur-trade activity developed along the Niagara portage, Vaudreuil softened his objections to a larger, fortified French structure at the strategic pass that would intercept western traders along their path to English markets in Albany and reroute western furs to Fort Frontenac. By the autumn of 1720, the French had built a strong blockhouse at the Niagara River outlet, about eight miles below Niagara Falls. Over the next several years, they strengthened the trade house with additional fortifications, rendering Fort Niagara the strongest European base on the Great Lakes. To exploit the economic and material benefits of the post more fully, Seneca families of the western lineage shifted into the Genesee River Valley, about a one-day journey from the fort. Seneca men and their families also developed new communities in the upper Ohio River Valley, where seasonal hunting flourished, and channeled that area's trade to Fort Niagara.²⁶

Seneca leaders were not alone in courting French and English economic partners and inviting their imperial neighbors into their homelands for trade. Rather, leaders in multiple Haudenosaunee communities hoped to turn aggressive imperial competition to their advantage. During Queen Anne's War (1702–1713), for example, the French and the English renewed their imperial efforts to gain a foothold in Onondaga country, through the chimney of the figurative Longhouse. In the spring of 1711, after receiving a very large present of weapons and ammunition, some Onondaga leaders granted the French permission to construct a trading house and chapel near their village. A few weeks later, in May 1711, residents who opposed this French intrusion welcomed an armed party led by Peter Schuyler. Schuyler upbraided Onondaga leaders for allowing the French “not only Liberty to come into yr Castles but to build a Fort even in the midst of you” and questioned how the community did not “see or deflect on the fatal consequences of what they have been doing!” Onondaga leaders who courted the French professed their innocence and discussed the French fort, which Schuyler described as a “blockhouse with loop holes,” within the context of village security needs against western raids, rather than as a symbol of a new military alliance or French control of their territory. Onondaga leaders also shifted the conversation to the exorbitant rates the English charged for powder. “If pouder & Lead keeps so dear with you,” they asked, “how shall we defend ourselves if attacked, with bows and arrows?” Without sufficient powder, Onondaga men could not protect their communities nor prevent the French from building in their homeland. After Schuyler gave his own present of weapons and clothing, other headmen allowed Schuyler and his associates to pull down the French structure. By letting the English deal with the French intrusion, the Onondaga community avoided further internal division or French reprisals. In addition, this diplomatic jockeying within the community provided competing Onondaga leaders with valuable presents of trade goods to redistribute to loyal followers and hopes for cheaper prices in the future.²⁷

Although some Onondaga leaders encouraged the English to destroy the French post, they balked at replacing one European intruder with another. In October 1712, when New York Governor Robert Hunter proposed building an English fort near the Onondaga village, leaders who resisted this effort reasserted their policy of open trade with both the French and the English and refused any permanent structures within their territory. Governor Hunter correctly suspected his proposal would “meet with some oppositions,” but he incorrectly blamed them on French intrigue, for he underestimated the strength of the neutralist strategy of Teganissorens, an Onondaga headman. Until the mid-1720s, this strategy prevented any European forts within Onondaga homelands and thereby forestalled the entangling economic and military alliances that a fort represented.²⁸

Although Onondaga leaders worked to keep European structures out of their homeland and maximize benefits from the imperial competition, the proximity of Mohawk communities to Albany and the close relationships between Mohawk headmen and powerful colonials led The People of the Flint down a different path. In addition, their dramatic population losses exposed the vulnerability of their villages to attack and complicated efforts to prevent settler expansion. By the early 1710s, these two factors brought an English fort and settlers into the heart of the Mohawk Valley. Mohawk men and women, however, hoped to turn colonial expansion to their advantage. An English fort provided security at colonial expense and with colonial labor, and colonists brought trade goods to Mohawk villages. Mohawk men and women also developed close ties with powerful colonial patrons who ensured access to clothes, tools, and weapons. Moreover, personal and diplomatic relationships with powerful colonial neighbors provided an outlet for complaints and direct access to Albany officials.²⁹

These close, and often, personal ties swayed Mohawk men to ignore their 1701 promises of neutrality in imperial warfare. Consequently, many Mohawk men joined their New York colonial neighbors in two failed invasion attempts against Canada. Camp diseases and rotting provisions halted a 1709 expedition at the south end of Lake Champlain. Many men reenlisted for a 1711 expedition after colonial officials offered them gifts. Colonel Francis Nicholson, however, aborted the second invasion after his naval support ran aground in the lower Saint Lawrence River. Fearing French reprisals for their repeated broken neutrality, Mohawk leaders pressed their New York allies to fulfill promises to build forts to protect their communities. Governor Hunter promptly began work on Fort Hunter and Queen Anne's chapel near Tiononderoge (Lower Castle), the predominantly Protestant settlement near the mouth of Schoharie Creek.³⁰

The construction of Fort Hunter in 1712 provided immediate protection for Mohawk men, women, and children and reduced fears of enemy attacks along the exposed colonial frontier. The added security the fort provided, however, also enticed colonists to expand their settlements deep within eastern Haudenosaunee homelands and up the Mohawk River Valley. Land quickly became the commodity that colonists most desired from Mohawk people. Lacking essential furs to acquire necessary European trade goods, Mohawk leaders hoped to turn their abundance of land into a valuable commodity and began to open their homeland to colonial settlement. When colonists cleared large tracts of woodland for their expansive agricultural fields, however, their terraforming eliminated the natural environment that was attractive to the animals and resources that were vital to Mohawk subsistence economies. Colonists also brought their domesticated animals, such as cattle, oxen, horses, sheep, goats, pigs, and chickens, and let many of them roam freely. Furthermore, expanding colonial farmsteads constrained Mohawk movement and prevented relocation to more resource-rich environments. To survive in this less abundant and more restrictive space, many Mohawk men and women adapted to the challenges of colonial subsistence practices. Women, for example, incorporated new European crop varieties to fill out their diet when subsistence gathering became more restricted. Mohawk men and women also adopted domestic animals to substitute when hunting proved to be less successful. Domestic animals provided protein, labor, and market opportunities in the sale of beef and pork.³¹

In the post–Fort Hunter era, most Mohawk residents who remained in the Valley continued the shift toward dispersed family households rather than extensive longhouses in compact villages. When Reverend William Andrews described the eastern Mohawk community in 1713, he noted: “Their Chief Town or Castle as it is called, stands by the fort [Fort Hunter], consisting of 40 or 50 Wigwams or houses …. They have several other little Towns 7 or 8 houses in a Town, and single houses up and Down pretty near their Castle next to the fort.” Andrews estimated about 360 residents in the Fort Hunter area, primarily in single-family dwellings. By 1720, Tiononderoge, the eastern Mohawk community, consisted of many more family farms south of Fort Hunter. At the same time, the two western Mohawk communities, more than twenty miles upriver, contained about twenty-five houses and 180 residents, a ratio that reflected one- and two-family households.³²

The People of the Flint shifted to more nuclear-family houses as continued population losses made it increasingly difficult for smaller matrilineages to fill large structures. The departure of residents to Saint Lawrence Valley communities further broke up family lineages. For those who remained in the Mohawk Valley, men constructed smaller houses intended to shelter fewer residents. In addition, as settler expansion pushed westward up the Mohawk River, Mohawk communities reflected aspects of the colonial settlement template, including scattered farmsteads that combined agriculture with the raising of domesticated animals. Pastoral farming required more dispersed settlements because the domesticated animals often roamed the neighborhood for subsistence. Pastoral farming also made use of agricultural lands no longer productive for subsistence farming. Mohawk men and women, however, used their smaller houses, more dispersed settlement pattern, and new land use practices to block colonial trespasses into specific Indigenous spaces, particularly along the Mohawk River and its subsidiary creeks. The move away from the extensive longhouse also shifted the emphasis to provide the household subsistence needs for individual family members. Family members working on their own farmsteads replaced groups of women performing communal labor in community fields. Mohawk men and women, however, retained their long-standing gendered division of labor when fulfilling subsistence responsibilities. Men continued to hunt and fish in communal territory, and women continued to tend the crops and gather nuts and fruits near their homes and farther afield.

When consolidated villages disbanded in favor of smaller homes, this also altered the normal pattern of village relocation every ten to twenty years. Whereas previous villages had relocated when local fuel supplies declined and pests infested the houses, the smaller and more dispersed villages of single-family dwellings placed fewer demands on the local environment. Residents, for example, no longer needed a large supply of nearby wood to build and repair extensive longhouses and palisades. Men and women also used horses to transport fuel from distant sources, and colonial plows aided agricultural field preparation. In the short term, horses and plows solved transportation and soil productivity problems. But in the long term, both contributed to compacted soils, erosion, and soil exhaustion. Most important, settler expansion constrained available Mohawk homelands, making it more difficult to remove to a new environment. As a result, the dispersed homes of Mohawk communities remained in the same location until the American Revolution, giving these sites an occupation of nearly seventy years.³³

Although Mohawk residents remaining in the Mohawk Valley shifted to smaller and more dispersed settlements to retain access to critical subsistence resources and environmental spaces and control settler expansion, other Mohawk men and women adopted a different strategy to achieve these same goals. By 1713, nearly forty Mohawk men, women, and children had moved about a one-day canoe trip up the Schoharie Creek. Known as “Schoharie” Mohawks, they sought to exploit a natural environment beyond the reach of settler competition and turned a seasonal hunting territory into a permanent community. Located about twenty-four miles up the waterway, Schoharie residents also intercepted southern Indigenous travelers enroute to Albany and redirected them to the new post in the Mohawk homeland. Schoharie Mohawk families, however, did not escape settler expansion for long. By 1715, the 580 German Palatines living along Schoharie Creek not only exceeded those living in the neighboring Schoharie Mohawk community, but they also matched the total Valley Mohawk population of 580.³⁴

The Confederacy watched the growing colonial population and settler expansion of New York with increasing concern. Haudenosaunee leaders, however, did not rely on peaceful diplomatic alliances with Albany officials or organize attacks on migrating colonists. Instead, Haudenosaunee leaders responded to the imminent threat of settler expansion up the Mohawk River by encouraging displaced Indigenous nations who faced similar colonial settlement pressures and settler violence in eastern and southern colonies to relocate to Haudenosaunee homelands. The Confederacy implemented this new strategy in the 1710s with the arrival of displaced Tuscarora peoples. Following a devastating war with their colonial neighbors in North Carolina between 1711 and 1713, some Tuscarora survivors fled their Virginia-North Carolina piedmont homeland and sought refuge among their distant Iroquoian kin. Governor Hunter objected to Haudenosaunee leaders offering Tuscarora refugees a safe haven because he distrusted the newcomers and feared his colony would be drawn into their warfare. Instead, Hunter wanted displaced Tuscarora families, especially their men, left to the mercy of Carolina colonists.³⁵

Haudenosaunee leaders ignored Hunter's request, opened their Longhouse, and emplaced the Tuscarora refugees just west of the Oneida village, between Oneida Lake and the hills south of the lake, and between Oneida and Chittenango Creeks. By 1712, repeated epidemics and warfare had caused the population in Oneida villages to fall below six hundred residents. Living in one dispersed community, The People of the Standing Stone provided only a minimal deterrent to encroaching settlers. As German Palatines pushed up the Mohawk River, the arrival of several hundred Tuscarora survivors within Oneida homelands strengthened the eastern end of the Longhouse and provided a stronger barrier to settler expansion. In 1722, the Iroquois Confederacy accepted the Tuscarora Nation as an official sixth member of their Confederacy, thus making them the Six Nations. As survivors who fled warfare, displaced Tuscarora peoples never replicated their population or power in their adoptive homeland and remained guests in a territory to which they had no ancient claim. Nonetheless, their leaders would play an important role in diplomatic relations with Indigenous nations to the south and their population required three communities by the early 1750s. These villages extended from Ganistigoa in the east, near Canastota Creek, to Ganochserage (Canaseraga), a few miles west near Chittenango Creek. In between these villages, a few scattered houses in the valley represented the community of Tiochrungwe.³⁶

The expansion of the global market into Haudenosaunee villages and the pursuit of European trade goods increased economic and diplomatic competition among The People of the Longhouse. Located at the western door of Haudenosaunee homelands, the Seneca Nation opened their territory to competing European traders at the Irondequoit landing and allowed the French to build a large fort at their western door: the critical Niagara pass. This strategy enhanced the diplomatic and economic power of The People of the Great Hills among western Native nations looking to do business with both European groups. The actions of Seneca leaders, however, weakened the power of Mohawk leaders who previously held a monopoly on access to European traders and their manufactured goods. More important, when Seneca headmen negotiated independently with the French and English to bring traders into their territory and to construct posts within their homelands, they challenged the diplomatic hegemony of the Onondaga Nation to host all Confederacy economic, diplomatic, and military business.

When Seneca leaders invited the French to build posts within their territory in the 1710s, their more eastern Onondaga and Mohawk confederates quickly informed the British of the French economic competition and territorial intrusion. Teganissorens asked the Albany Commissioners of Indian Affairs to divide presents to Seneca villages into two parts to reflect their efforts to court multiple and competing imperial trade partners. Teganissorens wanted the Albany Commissioners to judge the political sympathies of Seneca leaders and to deny trade goods and diplomatic favor to headmen who courted stronger alliances with the French. Informants also hoped the British would reward their loyal behavior with gifts and cheaper trade goods, while eliminating those same privileges to less faithful neighbors.³⁷

During the summer of 1719, Teganissorens complained again to the Albany Commissioners of Indian Affairs of French encroachment into western Haudenosaunee homelands and informed them of French plans to erect a fort near the great falls without first negotiating approval from the Confederacy at Onondaga. He stressed the economic threat that the French fort posed to the British because it would intercept western traders who might otherwise proceed to Albany. Teganissorens hoped the British would intervene and halt the construction of the fort, as they had done at his Onondaga village a few years earlier. British action would spare Haudenosaunee leaders and villages from French reprisals. To his dismay, however, the British lacked the soldiers to carry out such a military expedition during peacetime and declined to evict the French intruders. In addition, village headmen were not in agreement on the threat a European fort posed. Leaders in western Seneca communities, for example, refused to oust the French traders, smiths, missionaries, and interpreters who benefited them. The competition among the Five Nations reflected the reality that village leaders often acted in the best interests of themselves and their immediate community, and not always for the common benefit of the Confederacy.³⁸

Teganissorens had his own motives for sabotaging a French fort among his fellow Confederates. Once the French operated a permanent trading post in Seneca homelands, Onondaga leaders and villages would no longer host western travelers along their route to Albany. With a French post among their western neighbors and a British post among their eastern neighbors, Onondaga leaders would lose diplomatic influence and economic benefits in the imperial contest between the French and British, as well as between fellow Confederates. This was unacceptable to Teganissorens as an advocate of open trade with multiple partners, as a village leader in need of goods for redistribution, and as an Onondaga headman charged with maintaining his Nation's primacy as the Central Council Fire for the Iroquois Confederacy. With Mohawk leaders controlling access to Fort Hunter and Albany to the east and western Seneca leaders controlling access to the French post at Niagara in the west, the centrally located Onondaga residents were increasingly shut out of the new trade benefits. Although Teganissorens wanted open trade and communication with both European powers, his refusal to permit trading posts in Onondaga territory transferred all the benefits to his eastern and western neighbors. The economic and diplomatic success of Mohawk and Seneca leaders threatened humiliation for the Onondaga leader. This new economic and diplomatic reality compelled Onondaga headmen to request their own trading posts.

During the mid-1720s, Onondaga leaders tried to dictate the location of a British trade post and fort to maximize the benefits for their community. The better quality, more reliable availability, and lower cost of British products might even permit them to supplant their fellow confederates. Instead of traveling to Albany, western traders would find shelter, provisions, and British trade goods in the Onondaga homeland. But New York Governor William Burnet ignored Onondaga suggestions to build the fort near their village. Instead, Burnet insisted on the mouth of the Oswego River, the landing place, and a two-day canoe trip north of the main Onondaga village. The British also constructed numerous cabins to shelter Indigenous travelers, thus eliminating that role for the main Onondaga village about forty miles to the south. Located on Lake Ontario's southern shore, Fort Oswego would primarily benefit the British as they intercepted, traded with, and sheltered western travelers.³⁹

Europeans constructed trade posts to protect and expand their market interests, as well as to occupy and control geographic space. After building Fort Oswego, New York Governor John Montgomerie requested and received from Onondaga leaders and women a grant of land near the fort so his men could raise provisions and set their cattle to pasture. The French grew increasingly concerned about British occupation and control of territory within Haudenosaunee homelands. By 1731, British colonial farms and settlements dotted Mohawk territory along the Mohawk River, encroached upon Oneida communities, and a small town of British settlers emerged in Onondaga country near Fort Oswego. Expanding British economic interests and settlements along key water arteries to Lake Ontario had given the British a foothold into specific geographic and environments spaces of eastern Haudenosaunee homelands.⁴⁰

The French and Indigenous invasion between 1687 and 1696 ravaged Haudenosaunee communities on a massive scale and significantly altered long-standing land-use practices. In addition, irreversible population losses and westward-expanding colonial settlements made it impossible to sustain normal settlement patterns. Many of the rebuilt Haudenosaunee communities reflected a new template. Mohawk and Onondaga men and women, for example, discarded the model of extensive longhouses arranged in compact villages in favor of much smaller, one- or two-family dwellings and farmsteads, dispersed across the landscape. Seneca men and women pursued change in a different way. Although they continued to live in extensive longhouses, they migrated east for greater security and to an environment of spiritual significance near the foot of Seneca and Canandaigua Lakes. Insulated by their more populous Confederacy neighbors to the east and west, Oneida and Cayuga families sustained their settlement patterns.⁴¹

As Haudenosaunee communities recovered from decades of warfare in the aftermath of the Grand Settlement of 1701, the expansion of the global market and the pursuit of European trade goods increased economic and diplomatic competition within the Confederacy. Located at the western door of Haudenosaunee homelands, western Seneca leaders allowed the French to build a trade post within their territory, to the dissatisfaction of Mohawk leaders in the east who were more closely allied with their nearby English neighbors, and Onondaga leaders who tried to forestall European occupation of their lands. The strategy of Seneca leaders enhanced their economic and diplomatic power among western nations looking to do business with Europeans. The posts in Seneca territory, however, directly challenged the power of Mohawk leaders who previously held a monopoly on access to European markets. Moreover, when western Seneca leaders negotiated independently with the French, they challenged the diplomatic hegemony of the Onondaga Nation as the host to all Confederacy economic, diplomatic, and military business. By 1730, this economic and diplomatic competition resulted in British forts and trade posts at the eastern Mohawk community of Tiononderoge with Fort Hunter, in Onondaga territory at Fort Oswego, and some short-lived trade houses at Irondequoit Bay north of Seneca and Cayuga villages. The French also increased their trade activity at Irondequoit Bay and enhanced their trade activity with Fort Niagara during the early 1720s.⁴²