Opposition: Marie-Madeleine Jerret de Vercheres, 1678-1747

Native war parties faced opposition from a wide variety of leaders, most of them male, but none would have expected to be stood off by a 14-year-old girl with a mind of her own.  Madeleine de Vergeres', 1678-1747, story has been told, retold, embellished and dissected over the years but the essentials remained the same.  During the Beaver Wars of the 18th century, she, her siblings and a few others stood off an attack from an Iroquois war party for the better part of a day. 

Francois Jerret de Vercheres was a Seigneur, or large landowner, in New France, what is now Quebec.  He had come from France seeking adventure on the frontier and amassed large landholdings.  He eventually married Marie Perrot, herself only 12 years old at the time, and the couple had twelve children.  Marie-Madeleine was fourth in birth order.  The family had built a fortified settlement, much like the blockhouses and stockades on the American frontier and had a great deal of experience fending off local Iroquois tribesmen.  In 1690, Marie Perrot de Vercheres commanded the defense of her family's home against the Iroquois.  Which tribe this was isn't stated.  Her eldest son, Francois-Michel had been killed by Natives, as had two successive husbands of her elder daughter, Marie-Jeanne.

In late October, 1692, Francois and Marie left their remaining children at home while they went into town to purchase supplies.  Madeleine was the eldest.  Soon after the parents left, other Settlers at the fort went outside the walls to tend the fields, guarded by 8 soldiers.  Madeleine was in a cabbage patch near the fort's gate.  The Iroquois attacked, quickly subduing the adults in the fields beyond the fort.  Madeleine made a run for the fort's gate.  A warrior caught hold of her scarf or neckerchief and it tore away in his hand, giving her time to sprint to safety and close the gates.  As she reached the fort, she began calling out, aux armes, to arms!, to warn any soldiers remaining to combat the danger.  Madeleine encouraged the panicked people inside the fort to fire muskets and make noise, trying to convince the Natives outside that there were more soldiers on hand then there really were.  She also ordered a cannon fired to warn nearby forts and possibly summon help.

The Iroquois were momentarily tricked by the ruse, knowing they'd lost the element of surprise but unaware that their adversary was a teenager with several smaller brothers and sisters, a few other women, and at best one or two men on hand to defend the fort.  She noticed a canoe on the nearby river with a family inside, unaware of their danger.  Overruling the soldiers left at the fort, Madeleine had the gate opened long enough for this family to come inside.  As night fell, it was time to let the cattle into the fort.  Madeleine was aware that the Natives might use this opportunity to sneak or force their way into the fort.  With her brothers on the lookout for any Native wrapped in a freshly killed hide, she let the cattle inside. 

Little did she know but help was on the way.  A small body of soldiers from Montreal arrived, to be greeted by a young girl who greeted them in grand style, "Monsieur, I surrender my arms to you." As romantic as it sounded, the lieutenant in command understood that it was the physical weapons on hand she was surrendering, not herself.  No romantic beginnings here.  Her surprised parents returned and learned of Madeleine's Home Alone adventure.  In 1700, her father died and it was Madeleine, not her brothers or her mother, who received his pension and control of his land claims or seigneury, on condition that she provide for her mother, which she did.  In 1706, she married Thomas de Lanougiere, the son of a French family of noble birth who had also acquired a great deal of land in New France.  Real estate legalities occupied much of her time, and Thomas trusted her enough that Madeleine sailed to France twice to represent both of them trying to iron out her ownership of Vercheres and his to various portions of land in her inheritance.  She died at age 69, with her husband following 10 years later.

A statue of Madeleine stands near where her family's stockade stood, at Vercheres Point near Montreal.  She was designated a Person of National Significance by Canada in 1923.  By that time her story had been told and retold.  Madeleine wrote two accounts of her story.  Others added to what she wrote.  Though the details have been rehashed and embellished over time, the basic facts remained the same. 

The Real People: the Lenape/Delaware

This historic tribe boasted such leaders as Buckongahelas, Tamanend, White Eyes and Lapowinsa.  Their name, Lenape, comes from Algonquian words meaning the real people.  They were an Algonquian-speaking people who used two primary languages, Umani and Munsee.  Their range, known as Lenapehoking, spread through portions of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and Delaware, hence the name.  Delaware place names were common in this area, particularly New York, where designations such as Tappan and Raritan were thought to be individual tribes, but were really bands of Lenape people.  Like other Algonquian nations, the Lenape were a loose grouping of several different bands, rather than one large tribe, or several different tribes, as some early commentators believed.  As usual among Eastern Woodlands Natives, their society was matrilineal, with women controlling the property and resources of their families, and able to appoint or remove leaders whom they believed were not meeting the people's needs.  They were hunter-gatherers as well as agricultural, depending on maize, beans and squash.

Europeans first encountered the Lenape in 1524, when explorer Giovanni De Verrezzano entered lower New York Bay.  Later, the Lenape had a complicated relationship with the Dutch, who were both trading partners in the 17th century period of the Beaver Wars, and sometimes enemies when local colonial officials, such as Willem Klieft, ineptly handled relations with local bands and tribes.  It was the inability of the Dutch to strike a consistent, harmonious relationship with the Lenape and other tribes that eventually doomed their colonial efforts in New York.  Prior to contact, the Lenape were considered the founders or more senior of other coastal Algonquian-speaking tribes, were called the grandfathers and treated with respect in inter-tribal diplomacy.  The Beaver Wars resulted in significant population reduction, bringing them under the domination of the Susquehannock, who in turn were tributaries to the Iroquois Confederacy. 

The Lenape were also noted for their close association with William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania.  While there may have been an agreement between the Lenape, represented by Tamanend and other leaders, to allow Penn and his followers to settle on their land, sources differ as to whether there was a signed agreement in 1682 under the Treaty Elm of Shackamaxon, since no trace of a document appears to exist.  The Walking Purchase fiasco of the 1730's, where the Lenape were forced to cede thousands of acres through potentially forged documents by Penn's heirs put pressure on them to relocated into the Ohio Valley.  During the French and Indian War (1755-1763), some Lenape sided with the British, while other bands believed the best way was to be neutral in the conflict.  The Moravian missionaries found many Lenape receptive to Christianity.  This, unfortunately, proved to be their undoing when the mission station at Gnadenhutten was raided in 1781 by Pennsylvania militia retaliating for attacks on frontier settlements.  One hundred men, women and children were killed. 

The Lenape were fortunate in the leadership of men like Buckongahelas, who ranked along with Dragging Canoe of the Cherokee, Blue Jacket of the Shawnee, and Little Turtle of the Miami as leaders and able military tacticians, respected by their British and American enemies for their ability to protect their people through skill in battle.  White Eyes, the first elected Principal Chief of the Delaware, attempted diplomacy with the Americans, hoping for a Native buffer state in Ohio.  The Treaty of Fort Pitt of 1778 was supposed to accomplish this, but that treaty never saw the light of day and White Eyes was assassinated before he could present his people's case directly to the Continental Congress.  During the American Revolution, some Lenape joined the Iroquois, Wyandot and other Ohio tribes on the side of the British, while others favored the Americans.  Several Lenape served in a Massachusetts Regiment of the Continental Army, hence the name Stockbridge.  At the end of the War, many Munsee-speaking Lenape chose to go to Canada, where some also found refuge on the Grand River with the Iroquois.  Others went to New York, before eventually being pressured to move to Wisconsin.  Finally, in 1860, most of the American Lenape had no choice but to remove to Oklahoma and make the best of life there.  However, groups do remain in New Jersey, Wisconsin, Oklahoma and even in Texas. 

Today, three federally recognized tribes, the Delaware Nation of Andarko, Oklahoma, the Delaware Tribe of Indians of Bartlesville, Oklahoma, and the Munsee-Stockbridge Community of Bowler, Wisconsin, are in the United States.  Canada also has First Nations communities of Delaware, the Munsee-Delaware Nation, Moravian on the Thames, and at Grand River of the Six Nations. 

Natives versus Settlers: the Fort Lachine Massacre of 1689

The Beaver Wars of the 17th century were a period of intense violence and conflict on all sides.  The beaver trade was lucrative business and colonial authorities rigorously maintained their trading connections with Native tribes who supplied the pelts.  Likewise, the tribes struggled to protect trading advantages and hunting range, while coping with incursions on to their land from Settlers and other displaced Natives, disease, warfare, and cultural disruption due to missionary activity by the Settlers.  When all of the above came to a head, as it frequently did, things turned tragic.

Lachine was a French settlement at the lower end of Montreal Island.  It was in land claimed by the Iroquois, particularly the Mohawk.  Beginning in 1688, King William's War/Nine Years War broke out in Europe and North America.  Both French and English colonists incited Native auxiliaries to raids on each other's settlements.  These, in turn, brought reprisals from angry colonists.  Natives raided other tribes and White settlements for a variety of reasons, but one in particular was to take captives who would replace tribal members killed by warfare or disease.  These "mourning raids" were often the most bitterly misunderstood aspects of Native life and instant propaganda for colonists seeking more punitive measures against Natives.  To add to the situation, the Iroquois were beginning to resent the Jesuit and other missionaries who insisted that they no longer practice cultural traditions but adhere strictly to Christianity.

The citizens of Lachine were probably not aware of any of the above on August 5, 1689, when a force of 1500 Mohawk warriors descended on their town, population of roughly 375 people.  The warriors began going from house to house, breaking down doors and taking Settlers captive.  When some of them fled to larger buildings within the town and barricade themselves in, the warriors set the buildings on fire and waited for those inside to flee.  Most likely, around 24 people were killed and 70 captured, those estimates of those killed swelled to over 250, or almost half the entire population of the town.  A commander of the local French garrison mobilized a force and prevented the Mohawk from raiding other settlements.  However, the Governor of New France, stationed in Montreal, knew that his forces were not up to a full-scale confrontation with the Mohawk and their allies and prevented further military action, instead hoping to negotiate for the release of some of the captives.

Both English and French propaganda capitalized on the cruelty of the Iroquois toward their prisoners with salacious stories.  According to second and third-hand accounts, men were tied to stakes and burned alive.  Parents were forced to cast their children on funeral pyres.  Some people were tortured and small children eaten.  Though the Natives did practice ritual killing and some survivors did report being tortured, the reports were most likely exaggerated in the telling.  Because no one attempted to get any reports from Mohawk survivors, their side of the story, including the exact reasons for the raid, will never be known.  The Governor of Montreal was able to negotiate the release of some captives, but many would never return to their families again.  A year later, the French retaliated against both the Mohawk, and the English settlers whom they believed were the true motivators of the incident, by a raid on Schenectady, New York.  Eventually, though, the French realized that they only solution to the enmity with the Iroquois was to treaty with them and make fur trade with the French more lucrative than that with the British.  This incident led indirectly to the Great Peace of Montreal of 1701.

Extinct Tribe; The Neutral

The Beaver Wars of the 17th century coupled with disease and ill-treatment decimated many Native tribes and caused others to lose their tribal identity entirely.  The Neutral, an Iroquoian-speaking people whose home range lay between that of the Five Nations, the Tobacco or Wenro, the Huron, the Susquehannock and the Erie, would suffer that fate. 

Although the name suggests that they were a buffer between larger Iroquoian-speaking tribes, or that they tried to remain neutral during the ongoing conflicts, there was constant friction within the Iroquoian peoples themselves, as well as with Algonquian-speaking tribes.  When the French first encountered them, they comprised about 40 permanent settlements.  Neutral is a French designation.  The people referred to themselves either as Keepers of the Dear, due to their practice of herding deer into pens to hunt.  Another group were the Onguiaarha, or Near the Big Water, from which the word Niagara may have come.  The Huron knew them as "People Whose Speech is Awry/Different".  Flint was found in their territory and became a valuable trade item until European firearms became more plentiful in the frontier and the market for local flint dropped off.  Jesuit sources in 1652 described the Neutral Natives' practice of tattooing. 

The Neutral occupied what is now southern Ontario and around modern-day Buffalo, New York.  At one time, they may have consolidated their power under a war leader named Souharissen.  Souharissen ranged as far as Michigan defending his people's home and hunting range and welcomed a French missionary who later wrote of the Neutral people's power at that time and of their war leader.  French missionaries and explorers of the 17th century made frequent mention of how powerful these people were, and the amount of plentiful wild game and food resources in their country.  Another leader, Tsouharrisen, Child of the Sun, who may be the same person or a relative, also led the Neutrals during their declining years in the latter 17th century as war and disease took their toll on all the Iroquoian peoples.  Constant wars with their fellow Iroquois, the Five Nations, led to the loss of the Neutral tribal identity, though individuals may have sought refuge with other tribes, such as the Huron and Wenro.  There is no further mention of this tribe in French sources after 1671.

Treaty: The Great Peace of Montreal, 1701

This treaty put a temporary end to one of the bloodiest periods of history on the frontier, the Beaver Wars between the French, with their Native allies the Huron and Algonquian people, and the English, with their allies, consisting of other Iroquoian tribes.  Though the English were not signatories to the treaty, they and their Native allies, and the fur trade, benefited from it in many ways.

The Beaver Wars began in earnest around 1648, and continued almost unabated for several decades.  Although the Iroquois and other tribes tried to make peace with the French in Montreal and Quebec City, misunderstandings, distrust of each other's motivations, and intrigue by the English always stymied the process, leading to more fighting.  The Beaver Wars were devastating to Native tribes, causing severe loss in population and displacement from ancient homelands and hunting ranges.  The Iroquois, in particular, also suffered from epidemics that threatened their entire population.  The French soon learned that they would have to deal with the Iroquois Five Nations directly, instead of through English mediation, if they wanted peace.  The Iroquois, tired of war and decimated by disease, were amenable to the French proposals.

Over 1300 Natives representing 40 tribes agreed to meet in Montreal to determine the terms of a peace accord.  Among the key provisions of the treaty was that the Iroquois would remain neutral in conflicts between the French and British, and that signatory tribes would submit their differences to the French for arbitration, rather than revert to war.  Among the signatories were the Iroquois/Haudenosaunee or Five Nations (Mohawk, Seneca, Onandaga, Oneida and Cayuga), other Mohawk bands, including the Kahnawake, the Montagnais, Anikwa, Odawa, Cree, Sac and Fox (Meskwaki), Huron, Illini, Kickapoo, Mescouten, Menominee, Miami, Piankeshaw, Wea, Missassauga, Nippissing, Ojibwe, Potawatomi, Winnebago, Algonquian, and Abenaki.  With peace restored among the tribes, French exploration of the Ohio, Missouri, and Mississippi River Valleys.  The peace established by this treaty would continue until the following year, when Queen Anne's War brought the British and French to arms again (1702-1713).