The Beaver Wars
The fur trade sets off the region's longest war
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Beaver were hunted for the underfur, felted into hats — a fashion so sought after in Europe that it drove whole systems of trade. The wars show how European demand reshaped the politics of an interior Europeans had barely set foot in. Whole peoples — Huron, Erie, Neutral — were scattered or absorbed. The conflicts ended with the Great Peace of Montreal in 1701, where some forty nations negotiated a settlement that held for fifty years, and which is among the most comprehensive diplomatic agreements made in North America before independence.
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European demand for beaver pelts made hunting grounds so valuable that the nations around the Great Lakes went to war over them. The Haudenosaunee, armed with Dutch guns, extended their control over a vast area.
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