Coalescence and Conflict in Iroquoian Ontario

Abstract

arly European explorers and missionaries described the Native warrior of northeastern North America as a “blood-thirsty, war-mongering savage” (Axtell 1981: 160) accustomed to “the most atrocious carnage and the most barbarous spectacles” (Thwaites 1896–1901, 43: 263). While this view typically disregards the violent history of Europeans themselves, it is true that at the time of contact in the seventeenth century AD all Northern Iroquoian nations seem to have been in a state of prolonged conflict with either other Iroquoian groups, neighbouring Algonquian tribes or both (Trigger 1976: 153). The social and demographic crises created by European pathogens, the economic motivations of the fur trade and the introduction of firearms had, by this time, altered and escalated traditional patterns of conflict. Precontact warfare is less often referred to because the historical record paints a much clearer picture than archaeological evidence

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 28 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.