en and children as slaves in the West Indies. Elsewhere on the North American continent, the European economic system, devoted to personal wealth and materialism, began to flourish. The fur trade was big business, and the land was raped in search of fur-bearing mammals. Fur traders and companies stole the lifeblood and foodsource of the Iroquois, and other northern tribes. Many Indians could not understand this way of life; this proto-capitalistic ideology. For most Indians, killing animals for anything other than food and shelter was a high crime. (Jacobs 1972) The Eighteenth Century... We move into the 18th century ever mindful of rapidly changing lifestyles, unjust war, ethnocentrism, sickness, greed, proto-capitalism, and a new nation kicking in the womb. Indian territories, the causes of many Indian skirmishes, were now becoming heated warzones. In 1730 the French traders in the north formed alliances with the Indians and began to subdue other tribes, in particular the Fox. The Fox were interfering with French fur-trade profits as middlemen, so the allied French and Indians thoroughly thrashed them (Wrone and Nelson, pp. 39). The French were also plundering in Louisiana. This time the Natchez Indians would fall victim. The Natchez were not hunting people, but rather, they were farmers with their own government. In 1714 the French built Fort Rosalie near the great Natchez settlement known as the Great Sun. The relations were stressed when the French wanted the site of a village, and wanted a secondary ruler in the Natchez government. In 1729, the Natchez retaliated against the French, killing a French official. In 1730, the French (again with Indian allies) attacked the Natchez and removed them. During the colonial era, the British and the French waged violent wars with the Indians of North America, often taking their lands by force and using the treaty more as an instrument of surrender than as a peaceful diplomatic tool(MSNBC On A...
