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In
support of his Huron and Algonkian trading
partners, Samuel de Champlain shot and
killed two Iroquois chiefs in 1609 at
Ticonderoga, near the lake that now bears
his name. This incident helped touch
off a long, bitter war between the French
and the Iroquois Confederacy, comprised
of the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida,
and Mohawk. The Iroquois, like many of
North America’s First Peoples,
possessed a strong military organization
and, through skilful use of ambush and
knowledge of the terrain, nearly destroyed
New France in the first half of the 1600s.
After
close to a century of warfare involving
heavy loss of life on both sides, the
Treaty of Montreal in 1701 established
peace between the Iroquois and New France.
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