The great peace of Montreal, 1701
The following article is from the June/July, 2001 issue of The Beaver, a Canadian historical publication.
Written by Julia Gedeon Matusky, a Montreal journalist.
Sample pictographic
signatures of native ambassadors.
When the French, on behalf of fur trade monopolists, inserted themselves into the rhythms of First Nations societies in the early seventeenth century, they became enmeshed in regional hostilities. Finally in 1701, after nearly a hundred years of recurrent warfare, French and natives joined together in a spectacular summit to sign a treaty that would end the atrocities and guarantee peace for more than a half century
During the summer of 1701, Montreal became an unprecedented hub of political importance and elaborate pageantry as no fewer than 1300 native envoys traveled to its shore to make peace. The Iroquois, perennial arch enemies of the French, arrived first on July 21. New France's governor, Louis-Hector de Calliere, had dispatched emissaries a month earlier to accompany 200 delegates from the Iroquois Five Nations confederacy. All but one- the Mohawks- accepted the invitation. They set up tents and rested before talks began.
The next day, a flotilla of almost two hundred canoes glided down the St. Lawrence River and docked one after the other as 700 to 800 ambassadors and merchants from thirty French - allied nations unpacked supplies and gifts. They had traveled from the Ottawa Valley, all around the Great Lakes, the eastern plains, and as far south as the Missouri River. They heralded their arrival with gunshots and cries of joy. The French military saluted them with cannon shot. Tekanoet, the grand chief of the Seneca, who had reached eighty years, stood in his canoe and shed tears for the dead.
The French diplomat Louis Thomas Chabert de Joncaire, once a prisoner of the Seneca, knew the custom of condolences. He took Tekanoet by the arm and guided him and the other chiefs, hand in hand, to the grand council to await the French governor. When representatives of the Algonquin Abenaki, Micmac and several other French allies turned up, thirty-nine sovereign nations (including France) had a voice at the summit. The native ambassadors outnumbered Montreal's population by 100.
Three hundred years later, the significance of the peace accord signed on August 4, 1701, has not been lost. The agreement negotiated between the Iroquois and the French and most of New France's allies established a peace that extended from the Maritimes, throughout the southern half of Quebec and Ontario, down to Illinois. It ended the Iroquois wars that had menaced French settlers for decades and limited colonial expansion. It enabled Montreal to prosper and the fertile land around it to be farmed. While the French showed diplomatic finesse and significant knowledge of native customs in obtaining this peace, it happened on the Iroquois terms. They astutely considered their options, even when these became fewer, and chose peace as their most prudent course.
Ironically, the people depicted so often as brutal savages never aimed to vanquish the French. The Jesuit missionary Pierre Francois Xavier de Charlevoix remarked in his History and General Description of New France that the Iroquois always ceased their attacks "at the point where they are in a position to do us the most injury." Bruce Trigger, an anthropology professor at McGill University, points out that the Iroquois did not follow the Lachine Massacre in 1689, which terrorized the inhabitants of Montreal, with subsequent raids. "It wasn't in the Mohawks interest to get rid of the French" Trigger says. "They wanted the French to be neutral and trade with them as they did others, and warfare was to persuade them to do so. Otherwise, they only retaliated when the French did nasty things to them.".
The confederacy of the Iroquois Five Nations, the Seneca, Cayuga, Oneida, Onondaga and Mohawk, likely dates to the fifteenth century, but independence persevered within tribes, villages and clans. "Chiefs initiated change by convincing others of its benefits," Trigger explains. "No one was ordered to follow a policy, or chastised for not doing so." The Bear clan of the Mohawks had established peace with the Dutch in 1618. They traded beaver pelts and other furs in Albany. The Turtle and Wolf clans became concerned that the Bear, bolstered by guns and exotic goods, would assert themselves over the other two clans. To balance power, they attempted to sell furs to the French. But they were already trading with the Algonquin, Huron and Montagnais, with whom the Iroquois remained at war. The French were forced to choose sides. The superior quality and quantity of furs from tribes living further north than the Iroquois made the choice obvious.
The Iroquois coped by selling the fur of animals they trapped to the Dutch (and to the English after 1664) and by acting as intermediaries for other tribes whenever prices for goods or import taxes in Montreal rose steeply. By the 1640's, however, the Iroquois had exhausted the beaver population in their territory in Northern New York. To expand their hunting grounds as well as repopulate their society with Iroquoian-speaking captives (epidemics had thinned their ranks), they attacked other tribes in southern Ontario. They also raided for furs from the camps of the Algonquin, Montagnais and others who did not have a peace agreement with them. The raids extended as far north as James Bay. Other tribes became terrified of the Iroquois, who were preeminent warriors.
Until the treaty of Ryswick ended the Nine Years War between France and Britain in 1697, English colonists helped the Iroquois to attack French forts and settlements. The French, aided by their allies, carried out brutal reprisals. An attack led by Louis de Baude de Frontenac on the central Iroquois tribes in 1696 caused the most destruction. While fleeing, the Onondagas burned their own village. Phillipe de Rigaud de Vaudreuil, Frontenac's second in command, torched the nearby Oneida village and its food stores. The allies took advantage of the Iroquois preoccupation with the French to launch their own attacks. Algonquin oral tradition contends that the combined forces of the Ojibwa, Ottawa and Potawatomi inflicted great losses on the Iroquois and drove them out of southern Ontario by the end of the century. By 1699, New York's governor, the Earl of Bellomont, wrote that the French allies were at the point of "totally destroying" the Iroquois. Later that year, an Iroquois orator called upon Calliere for a reprieve. "I ask you my father, to stop your allies who every day are among us breaking heads," he implored
Besieged and without military aid from the British, the Iroquois retreated to rethink their policies toward the colonies. They had lost the hunting territories they had fought hard to acquire. Repeated warfare and epidemics had diminished the warrior population by more than half. The Five Nations confederacy reckoned 2,550 warriors in 1689 and only 1,230 nine years later. "The Iroquois could no longer easily take prisoners and integrate them into their society after the 1680's because they were more often on the defence than on the attack," explains John A Dickinson, professor of history at l'Universite de Montreal. Disease and destruction of food supplies took a greater toll on the rest of the Iroquois society, especially the very young and old. "There are no exact numbers, but some estimates run as high as seventy percent," says Kanataka, executive director of Kanien'kehaka Onkwawen:na Raotitiohkwa, the cultural centre at Kahnawake, a Mohawk community near Montreal. "Imagine taking ten of your relatives and knowing that seven of them are going to die."
Steady immigration had further weakened the Iroquois demographic position. By 1700, the population of New France was more than double that of the confederacy. French settlements along the St. Lawrence ruled out Iroquois expansion to the northeast. The sizeable Mohawk communities around Montreal made fighting in the town unpalatable. Even when nations within the confederacy vehemently disagreed with each other, they went out of their way to avoid placing other Iroquois in the midst of a battle. The Iroquois could expand westward, but not with so many tribes at war with them. Besides, they recognized the opportunity to resume an intermediary role between some of the western Indians and the British after Louis XIV, responding to an oversupply of furs, withdrew French troops from the West and prohibited trade in the region. A treaty with the French would facilitate trade between Albany and the West, the large expanse of land occupied by several tribes along the southern shores of the Great Lakes down to the Ohio Valley. The Iroquois also realized that an alliance with some tribes would make it easier to combat others, especially with the French gone. Peace with the French became all the more attractive to the Iroquois after the British stopped giving them military aid to fight the French and had unilaterally declared the Iroquois to be British subjects. Many Iroquois aimed to get the best prices for their furs by playing the English and French off each other. Though the strategy divided the confederacy, four of the Five Nations made their way to Monreal.
The Iroquois and French resumed talks in 1699 and signed an important treaty with thirteen signatories in September of 1700. The Iroquois demanded that all prisoners be freed and that they have the right to sell furs at Fort Frontenac (the site of present day Kingston) at the same price as in Montreal. Calliere agreed despite the edict forbidding trade at the fort. The deal ended the wars with the tribes west of New France. The Iroquois wanted a subsequent treaty signed in Albany, but Calliere called upon the Iroquois and all French allies to gather in Montreal to work out a general peace the following summer. In July 1701, they began arriving. For the general council, a rectangular arena measuring 43 by 24 meters had been covered with leaves on the flat land between Montreal and the river to make it comfortable to sit for the harangues to come. Between 2,000 and 4,000 people, including the who's who of Montreal society, gathered to watch as the aboriginals, dressed in facial paint and their best feathers and fur robes, took turns to lament the past and express hopes for the future with a heartfelt theatricality of voice and gestures. Calliere spoke first through an interpreter, welcoming his "children." Subsequent speakers placed wampum belts of polished seashell beads or other gifts at the feet of the people they wanted to address. Custom demanded absolute silence during the lengthy speeches delivered by the best orators of each nation. Only other members of the tribe could interject or show enthusiasm for the words expressed. When all had spoken, the French passed around the treaty to be signed; the natives responded by offering the peace pipe. The ceremony ended with festive songs sung around a bonfire and artillery fire. The process had taken four years. It often faced difficulties regarding the release of prisoners who did not want to return to their former society or disputes over which family members should be allowed to accompany them.
Every potential obstacle to peace needed to be worked out before the final meeting on August 4, 1701. Some representatives found the wampum necklace and food that Calliere offered each nation less than impressive. Others scorned the suppressed prices for furs. Calliere vowed to improve them. A number of the chiefs fell gravely ill with what Calliere called a cold which he blamed on Indians from north of the Great Lakes. The Huron leader Kondiaronk, a pivotal negotiator in the talks, died from a high fever that likely resulted from his lack of immunity to the germs in Montreal. Despite their illness, the chiefs remained until the end of the conference to sign the treaty. Pictograms representing thirty-nine native nations figure on the treaty, with only the Mohawk adding their signature after the conference. The signatures represented France's tacit recognition of each nations sovereignty. The only natives tossed out of the deal were those living on reserves near Montreal whom the French considered subjects. They had the governor sign on their behalf. The last of the delegates left August 7. A chief remarked on the absence of fighting and killing, or any other sort of mayhem. Callieres prohibition of alcohol and firm military presence no doubt helped to keep the order, but decorum fitting with the significance of the occasion, made all the more solemn by the death of Kondiaronk, characterized the conference.
The Iroquois managed to secure by diplomacy what they could not do militarily. The treaty gave them access to the hunting territories north of Lake Ontario, which had become essential for the furs required to trade for weapons, meat and hides for clothing and footwear. By forcing Calliere to accept the Iroquois position of neutrality toward the French and British, the Iroquois managed to maintain commercial ties with the English, thereby avoiding economic dependence on either colonial power. While the accord made the Iroquois acknowledge the military supremacy of the French, it maintained the markets in Albany and established new ones in Montreal, Detroit and Fort Frontenac. Most importantly, it stopped the belligerency of the French and their native allies that had threatened to annihilate them. After 1701, French settlers could cultivate the fertile lands that surrounded Montreal without fear of being killed or captured. New France prospered and expanded. Future battles would be with a white tribe ---the British.
*Even thought they were not present at the Montreal conference in the summer of 1701, the Maliseet nation, traditional allies of the French and member of the Wabanakie confederation, were perhaps represented by the Meskouadoue, signatories for the Acadian Abénaquis.
