War and Peace: European Rivalries and the Great Peace of 1701

Let's start with a question

Imagine two big neighbours are always arguing. Each one wants you on their team. Whatever you choose, you might get pulled into their fight.

That is a bit like what happened to Indigenous nations. France, England and the Netherlands were rivals in Europe, and their rivalry spread to North America. But Indigenous nations were not just pulled along. They made their own choices to protect their people.

Two trading alliances

By the early 1600s there were two big trading and military alliances:

• The French traded with the Wendat, Algonquin, Innu and other nations.
• The Haudenosaunee traded with the Dutch at Fort Orange (today Albany, New York), and later with the English. The Dutch traded them guns.

The alliances competed for furs and hunting lands. As beavers became scarce, fighting increased.

The Wendat dispersal

The Wendat had already lost more than half their people to disease. In 1648 and 1649, the Haudenosaunee attacked their villages. Many Wendat were killed or taken in to live among the Haudenosaunee, which was a custom after war. Others scattered:

• Some went to Christian Island in Georgian Bay, and later to Québec. Their descendants are the Huron-Wendat Nation at Wendake, near Québec City, today.
• Some joined other nations to the west. Their descendants include the Wyandot nations in the United States today.

For the French, losing their main trading partners was a disaster too.

The Great Peace of Montreal, 1701

After almost a century of war, people on all sides wanted peace. In the summer of 1701, about 1300 delegates from 39 Indigenous nations came to Montréal. That was a huge crowd for the small town of Montréal!

• They met with the governor of New France, Louis-Hector de Callière.
• For days there were speeches, gifts, wampum and the sharing of the pipe.
• Kondiaronk, a Wendat leader from Michilimackinac, worked hard for the peace. He fell ill and died during the meeting, and was honoured with a great funeral.
• On 4 August 1701, the treaty was signed. Many nations signed with a drawing of their clan animal or symbol.

The treaty ended the long war between the French and their allies and the Haudenosaunee. The Haudenosaunee agreed to stay neutral in future wars between France and England. Disagreements would be settled by talking, with the governor's help, instead of by war.

The Treaty of Utrecht, 1713

In 1713, France and Britain signed the Treaty of Utrecht in Europe, to end a war that had spread across the world. In it, France gave Britain:

• Acadia (most of present-day Nova Scotia),
• Newfoundland (France kept the right to fish on part of its coast),
• the lands around Hudson Bay.

France kept Île Royale (Cape Breton Island) and Île Saint-Jean (Prince Edward Island).

Who was left out? The Indigenous nations whose lands these were. They were not at the meeting and did not sign. Many Mi'kmaq said that France had never owned Mi'kma'ki, so it could not give it away.