La Salle and the discovery of the great West - North Central ...

1680.] THE IROQUOIS WAR. 219the east, soon to burst with devastation over thefertile wilderness of the Illinois.I have recounted the ferocious triumphs of theIroquois in another volume. 1 Throughout a widesemicircle around their cantons, they had made theforest a solitude ;destroyed the Hurons, exterminatedthe Neutrals and the Eries, reduced the formidableAndastes to helpless insignificance, swept the bordersof the St. Lawrence with fire, spread terror anddesolation among the Algonquins of Canada; andnow, tired of peace, they were seeking, to borrowtheir own savage metaphor, new nations to devour.Yet it was not alone their homicidal fury that nowimpelled them to another war. Strange as it may •seem, this war was in no small measure one of com- ^mercial advantage. They had long traded with theDutch and English of New York, who gave them,in exchange for their furs, the guns, ammunition,knives, hatchets, kettles, beads, and brandy whichhad become indispensable to them. Game was scarcein their country. They must seek their beaver andother skins in the vacant territories of the tribes theyhad destroyed ; but this did not content them. TheFrench of Canada were seeking to secure a monopolyof the furs of the north and west; and, of late, theenterprises of La Salle on the tributaries of theMississippi had especially roused the jealousy ofthe Iroquois, fomented, moreover, by Dutch andEnglish traders. 2 These crafty savages would fain1 The Jesuits in North America.Duchesneau, in Porta Doc*., ix. 168.