Kondiaronk
[3] Noted as a brilliant orator and a formidable strategist, Kondiaronk led the pro-French Petun and Huron of Michilimackinac against their traditional Iroquois enemies.
This ended the Beaver Wars and helped open up the interior of North America to deeper French exploration and commerce.
The Jesuit historian Father Pierre François Xavier de Charlevoix wrote that "it was the general opinion that no Indian had ever possessed greater merit, a finer mind, more valor, prudence or discernment in understanding those with whom he had to deal".
[4] Louis-Hector de Callière, the Onontio (governor) that replaced Frontenac, was "exclusively indebted to him for ... this assemblage, till then unexampled of so many nations for a general peace".
[6] Kondiaronk maintained his position that the actions of the Huron were only to placate the Iroquois, but the Ottawa were not convinced and French efforts to conciliate the two tribes had little effect.
[5] Despite the tensions between the Huron and Ottawa, Kondiaronk's appeal to the French did secure an alliance to stave off Iroquois military advances.
While at the fort, Kondiaronk learned that Denonville had begun discussing peace with the Iroquois, despite his prior agreement with the Hurons that war would continue.
[5] The war party withdrew back across Lake Ontario and waited for the Iroquois Onondaga delegation to pass through on their way to Montreal.
"[6] Kondiaronk's war party returned to their village at Michilimackinac with an Iroquois captive given as a replacement for a Huron killed in the skirmish.
[5] An old Seneca slave was summoned to witness the execution of his countryman, and afterwards Kondiaronk ordered the man to travel to the Iroquois and report how badly the French had treated the captive.
[6] Since the captive was intended for adoption into the Michilimackinac village, the way his death was portrayed to the Iroquois angered them because they felt the French disrespected their tradition.
[4] The Iroquois, in retaliation to the French, burned, killed, and sacked plantations which left the Island of Montreal in a state of utmost dismay.
[12] However, Kondiaronk continued to prevent a separate French-Iroquois peace by any means possible despite the aggressiveness of the warrior nation, the Iroquois.
Since the Iroquois could no longer use English military threat to their advantage against New France in September 1700 they signed a treaty to make peace with Frontenac independent of New York, which led to the first step of negotiations.
One main conflict standing in the way of peace was the debates over the return of prisoners who had been captured during previous wars or other campaigns and enslaved or adopted.
Bacqueville de la Potherie (Le Roy), the primary source of information on these deliberations, went to Sault-Saint-Louis (Caughnawaga) to meet many of the parties at the village of the Mission Indians.
That evening, the "three rare words" of the ritual of requickening were presented to them – these three concepts included the wiping of tears, clearing of the ears, and opening of the throat.
Kondiaronk, having persuaded his own and allied tribes to bring their Iroquois prisoners to Montreal, was angry and embarrassed about his failed efforts at an exchange.
"We could not help but be touched", wrote La Potherie, "by the eloquence with which he expressed himself, and could not fail to recognize at the same time that he was a man of worth."
Sixty men marched in a procession led by Louis-Thomas Chabert de Joncaire, with the Seneca chief Tonatakout, carrying the rear.
They compared him to French leaders and institutions, which painted a picture of idealized chiefs who would direct consensual politics, and rule with non-coercive authority.
In fact, Pennahouel, an Ottawa chief who consulted with General Montcalm in July 1757, was compared to Kondiaronk, and "celebrated for his spirit, his wisdom" and his easy conversation with Frenchmen.
His skills won him tours of the salons of Paris and regular engagements as a supper debater with the Governor of Montreal, Hector de Callière.
One of these debates, in 1699, witnessed by Lahontan, is retold by Graeber and Wengrow: Kondiaronk: I have spent 6 years reflecting on the state of European society and I still can’t think of a single way they act that is not inhuman and I generally think this can only be the case as long as you stick to your distinctions of “mine” and “thine.” I affirm that what you call “money” is the devil of devils, the tyrant of the French, the source of all evils, the bane of souls and slaughterhouse of the living.
Can't you see, my dear friend, that the nations of Europe could not survive without gold and silver or some similar precious symbol?
A leveling equality would take place among you, as it now does among the Wyandotte and yes, for the first thirty years after the banishing of self-interest no doubt you would indeed see a certain desolation as those who are only qualified to eat, drink, sleep, and take pleasure would languish and die, but their progeny would be fit for our way of living.
[19]Graeber and Wengrow observe of this conversation that what the Europeans seem to have sacrificed for the sake of their social structure was the ability to conceive that their culture could be different by design.
Kondiaronk was willing to consider that Americans could be assimilated into European culture, as indeed they were, but Callière was unwilling to even imagine the possibility of such far-reaching and profound changes in the opposite direction.
Graeber and Wengrow make a lengthy case in their book that dismissing attestations of indigenous people's philosophical statements as fabrications created by Europeans is a form of anti-indigenous bigotry.
