Beaver Believers

From roughly 1609 to 1701, a near-century of brutal warfare reshaped the entire eastern half of North America. The cause? Beaver pelts. European demand for felt hats — made from beaver fur — turned a modest North American rodent into the most strategically valuable commodity on the continent.

The Iroquois Confederacy, backed by Dutch and later English firearms, waged war against French-allied Algonquian-speaking tribes of the Great Lakes to monopolize the fur trade. Entire nations were displaced or destroyed. The wars were among the bloodiest conflicts in North American history.

By the time the Great Peace of Montreal was signed in 1701 — with representatives from over 39 Indigenous nations — the beaver had been hunted nearly to extinction. An estimated 400 million beavers before European contact had been reduced to around 100,000 by the early 20th century.

The wars cemented the lines between English and French colonial spheres — lines that would ignite the French and Indian War half a century later, and whose echoes still shape the US-Canada border today.