The Great Peace That Made No Peace

Indian treaties don’t receive much attention in the United States. Their dates sometimes adorn out-of-the-way plaques and monuments, and their terms repose in the historical memories of the Indian signatories (and their descendants), but none occupy a place in the mainstream American narrative comparable to the 1783 Treaty of Paris or the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. In Canada matters are somewhat different: Indians appear in Canadian historical memory more as allies than adversaries, and at least one Native American treaty, the Great Peace of 1701, became memorable enough to inspire a postage stamp and a tercentenary celebration in the host community (Montreal). The pageantry of the treaty conference certainly must have impressed both the Montrealais and the Indian conferees: 1,300 Native Americans from forty nations came to the small town for three weeks of feasting, speech-making, wampum belt exchanges, and solemn promises. French officials constructed a meeting hall and a 9,000-square-foot open-air arena for the meeting, and both French officers and Native American leaders wore their best attire.

 

While some French demands, like the requirement that the signatories return their captives, proved difficult to meet, at length the Indian diplomats and French governor Louis-Hector de Callieres signed the agreement. The treaty ended the on-again, off-again war between France, its Indian allies, and the Five Nations of Iroquois, a conflict that had lasted for a century. New France now had a secure southern flank for the next fifty years, and more stability than it had enjoyed since its founding.

Whatever else the 1701 treaty may have established, however, a “Great Peace” did not really come out of it. French officials’ commitment to returning captives led Callieres and his successors to promise Indian slaves in place of those whom they could not return. This initiated New France’s sixty-year involvement in the North American Indian slave trade. Concurrently, New France took advantage of its new security arrangements to send troops and officials into its march lands, building up its outposts of Detroit, Michilimackinac, and Vincennes.  French officials’ desire to impose peace and order on this far-flung region drew France into the bloody Fox Wars (1712-30), which led to the death or enslavement of more than 2,000 Indians. French authority began slipping nonetheless when Lakes Indians used the peace to travel to Albany or Oswego to trade with the English. The lure of cheaper English goods undermined the commercial power of French traders, and in the 1740s some French allies openly rebelled against those traders and opened negotiations with the English colonies. 

It would be fairer to say the treaty marked a shift to a more openly imperialistic policy on France's part, whereby France sought to establish sovereignty over its Indian "subjects," and forcibly to prevent them from warring on one another or coming under the authority of another European sovereign. If so, the Great Peace of 1701 actually set New France on the road to a new confrontation with the English colonies, and ultimately to the war that brought about the empire's collapse. 

Sources: Richard Aquila, The Iroquois Restoration (U. of Nebraska, 1983), 60-66; Brett Rushforth, Bonds of Alliance (UNC Press, 2012), 155-160.

The Habsburg Genealogical Implosion

Long after the end of its scions’ sovereignty, the Habsburg Dynasty remains famous for the grandeur and elegance of its imperial capitals, Madrid and Vienna in particular, and the tangled genealogy of its monarchs. Inbreeding narrowed the family’s cultural horizons and gave some members congenital physical defects as well. Ferdinand I of Austria, whose most memorable sentence was “I am the emperor and I want dumplings,” suffered from hydrocephaly and severe epilepsy. His parents were double first cousins and probably bequeathed their royal son more than his fair share of recessive genes. The Habsburg palme d’or in royal inbreeding and disability probably belongs to Ferdinand’s ancestor, Carlos II of Spain (1661-1700). Carlos’s maladies included vertigo, seizures, and an overdeveloped jaw that interfered with eating and talking. He probably also suffered from depression, impotence (he died without issue), and a learning disability – certainly he never received much formal education. Like Ferdinand’s, Carlos’s family tree had too few forks; where most people have 32 great-great-great grandparents, King C only had fourteen. His contemporaries thought him not so much inbred as “bewitched,” the sobriquet they pinned on him when his back was turned.

Before dismissing Carlos as a useless idiot, however, let the reader note that his defects did not prevent him from moral reasoning or from making significant decisions. The last Spanish Habsburg’s most consequential decision was one he took when writing his will, wherein he left his throne to Philip of Anjou, grandson of Louis XIV. France’s political rivals, including England, the Netherlands, and the Holy Roman Empire, formed an alliance to prevent unification of the French and Spanish crowns. The War of the Spanish Succession (1701-14) ensued. Less opprobriously, Carlos’s mother bequeathed him a passionate hatred of Native American enslavement, and as king he issued two proclamations, in 1676 and 1679, that banned Indian slavery throughout Spanish America. His governors honored the ban primarily in the breach, but Carlos’s instructions did force officials to develop legal fictions and workarounds if they wanted to preserve slavery de facto. Let us give Bewitched Carlos credit for doing as much as any distant monarch could do to emancipate his subjects. (Andres Resendez, The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America [Houghton-Mifflin, 2016], 137, 145-146.)

Let me apologize, too, for not giving poor Ferdinand the credit he deserves. Despite his disabilities and speech defects, King Ferd could communicate perfectly well in writing, and after his abdication he became a competent businessman; his successes in that field put him ahead of several American presidents. His physical disabilities, such as they were, did not prevent him from becoming an active sportsman or living a good long life – Ferdinand held on until the age of 82, something neither of my parents managed. Let us dine on dumplings in his honor.