As a result of this conflict, the Iroquois destroyed several confederacies and tribes through warfare: the Hurons or Wendat, Erie, Neutral, Wenro, Petun, Susquehannock, Mohican and northern Algonquins whom they defeated and dispersed, some fleeing to neighbouring peoples and others assimilated, routed, or killed.

The natural ecosystems that came to rely on the beavers for dams, water and other vital needs were also devastated leading to ecological destruction, environmental change, and drought in certain areas.

Cartier wrote of encounters with the St. Lawrence Iroquoians,[6] also known as the Stadaconan or Laurentian people who occupied several fortified villages, including Stadacona and Hochelaga.

[6][8] The causes remain unclear, although some anthropologists and historians have suggested that the Mohawk Nation of the Iroquois Confederacy destroyed or drove out the St. Lawrence Iroquoians.

[10] In 1610–1614, the Dutch established a series of seasonal trading posts on the Hudson and Delaware rivers, including one on Castle Island at the eastern edge of Mohawk territory near Albany.

In 1628, the Mohawks defeated the Mohicans, pushing them east of the Hudson River and establishing a monopoly of trade with the Dutch at Fort Orange, New Netherland.

The Susquehannocks were also well armed by Dutch traders, and they effectively reduced the strength of the Delawares and managed to win a protracted war with Maryland colonists.

The French, meanwhile, outlawed the trading of firearms to their Indian allies, though they occasionally gave arquebuses as gifts to individuals who converted to Christianity.

The expansion of the fur trade with Europe brought a decline in the beaver population in the region, and the animal had largely disappeared from the Hudson Valley by 1640.

American Heritage Magazine notes that the growing scarcity of the beaver in the lands controlled by the Iroquois in the middle 17th century accelerated the wars.

In the early 1640s, the war began in earnest with Iroquois attacks on frontier Huron villages along the St. Lawrence River in order to disrupt the trade with the French.

After a failed peace treaty negotiated by Chief Canaqueese, Iroquois moved north into New France along Lake Champlain and the Richelieu River, attacking and blockading Montreal.

Dollard des Ormeaux, for example, died in May 1660 while resisting an Iroquois raiding force at the Battle of Long Sault, the confluence of the St. Lawrence and the Ottawa Rivers, but saved Montreal by his actions.

Among those killed were Jesuit missionaries Jean Brebeuf, Charles Garnier, and Gabriel Lallemant, each of whom is considered a martyr of the Roman Catholic Church.

The surviving Hurons fled and were dispersed from their territory, some taking refuge with the Jesuits at Quebec, some assimilated and adopted by the Iroquois, others joined the Petun or Tobacco nation, another Iroquoian people to become the Wyandot.

[citation needed] Despite their victory, the Iroquois also suffered a significant number of casualties, and their leaders began to consider negotiating for peace with the French.

[24] The tide of war began to turn in the mid-1660s with the arrival of the Carignan-Salières Regiment, a unit of roughly 1000 regular troops from France and the first group of uniformed professional soldiers in Canada.

[25] A change in administration led the government of New France to authorize direct sale of arms and other military support to their Indian allies.

The invasion force of 400 to 500 men briefly skirmished with the Mohawk but failed to reach their villages as the French soldiers were ill-equipped to operate in the cold and deep snow.

Eastern tribes such as the Lakotas were pushed across the Mississippi onto the Great Plains in the early 18th century, where they adopted the horse culture and nomadic lifestyle for which they later became known.

The Miamis were a powerful tribe and brought together a confederacy of their neighboring allies, including the Pottawatomie and the Illini confederation who inhabited Michigan and Illinois.

Several Anishinaabe forces numbering in the thousands remained to the north of Lakes Huron and Superior, and they were later decisive in rolling back the Iroquois advance.

The Iroquois also drove the Mannahoac tribe out of the northern Virginia Piedmont region in 1670, and they claimed the land by right of conquest as a hunting ground.

Using their new firearms, the Confederacy laid an ambush near South Bend, Indiana, and they attacked and destroyed most of the Iroquois party,[30] and a large part of the region was left depopulated.

[37] France lifted the ban on the sale of firearms to the Indians, and colonists quickly armed the Algonquin tribes, evening the odds between the Iroquois and their enemies.

In June 1687, Governor Denonville and Pierre de Troyes set out with a well organized force to Fort Frontenac, where they met with the 50 sachems of the Iroquois Confederacy from their Onondaga council.

[13] The French policy began to change towards the Iroquois after nearly fifty years of warfare, and they decided that befriending them would be the easiest way to ensure their monopoly on the northern fur trade.

These conflicts would result in the loss of Albany's fur trade with the Iroquois and, without their protection, the northern flank of the Thirteen Colonies would be open to French attack.

Mohawk Chief Joseph Brant led a large group of Iroquois out of New York to what became the reserve of the Six Nations of the Grand River in Ontario.

[42] The coalition of Native American tribes, known as the Western Confederacy, was forced to cede extensive territory, including much of present-day Ohio, in the Treaty of Greenville in 1795.