King Phillip’s war accelerated a chain of displacements in the north that began in 1648 when the Dutch provided Iroquois with arms to abet their expansion into the fur trade. The Iroquois decimated France’s partners, the Huron. The Ottawa replaced them around Michilimackinac in the straits between lakes Huron and Michigan.
A routed Erie band, the Westo, and a Shawnee group, the Savannah, headed south. The Sioux-speaking Osage and Kansa abandoned the area south of the Ohio river for that south of the Missouri. Potawatomi shifted west. When they entered the Green Bay area of Wisconsin, others migrated farther west, until they reached the Sioux who would not be moved.
In the same years, the Dutch transferred their knowledge of sugar production from Brazil to English planters in Barbados. By 1680, 80% of the island was devoted to cane. Planters imported everything, even fire wood, from the Virginia colony.
Life spans were short on the island, labor scarce. Small pox was a constant menace in a society filled with newcomers and serviced by ships that visited many ports. In 1670, Caribbean settlers in Carolina teamed with the Westo to raid other southeastern tribes. Captives were sold into slavery in the sugar colonies. Charles Town traders replaced the Westo with the Savannah in 1680.
Jesuit missionaries followed their charges. In 1673 they assigned Jacques Marquette to the expedition sponsored by the governor general of Nouvelle-France to explore the Mississippi river. Everywhere he and Louis Joliet stopped, they saw evidence of the burgeoning trade in captives.
At a Peoria village in Illinois country the men possessed guns "to procure Slaves; these they barter, selling them at a high price to other Nations, in exchange for other Wares."
Farther down the Mississippi, they saw natives, probably Chickasaw, on the left bank with guns, "hatchets, hoes, knives, beads, and flasks of double glass" for their powder.
Next they met victims of the trade. The Arkansas, who lived at the confluence of that river from the west, existed on corn and dog meat because they didn’t dare go hunting or gathering. The warriors wanted to kill them for their guns, but sharing the calumet had placed them under the chief’s protection. The band already had hatchets, knives, and beads.
Once Marquette and Joliet were told the river went to the Gulf of Mexico, they realized the area to the south was controlled by the Spanish. To get there, they would pass through "Savages allied to The Europeans, who were numerous, and expert in firing guns, and who continually infested the lower part of the river."
On their return, they followed the Illinois river north toward Lake Michigan. On the way the men stopped at the Kaskaskia’s Grand Village near Starved Rock. Marquette died from dysentery before he could return to them. His journal was published a few years later in the Jesuit Relations.
Notes: For more on the origins of sugar cane and Barbados, see post for 30 August 2009. The northern Iroquois wars also are called the Beaver Wars.
Marquette, Jacques. Journal included in Claude Dablon’s "Le Premier Voÿage Qu’a Fait Le P. Marquette vers le Nouveau Mexique," translated by Reuben Gold Thwaites in The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, volume 59, 1899; Dablon was Marquette’s superior and had a copy of his journal.
Smith, Marvin T. Archaeology of Aboriginal Cultural Change in the Interior Southeast, 1987; he identified the Westo as displaced Erie.
Map: Charles Edward, map of the location of major tribes involved in the Beaver Wars in 1648, Wikimedia Commons, 15 November 2008. The boundaries of the English colonies weren’t as distinct then as they are shown, especially on the western sides.
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