User:Russell D. Jones/Beaver Wars/Draft
1643 -- The Iroquois sack Ste. Marie
1680 -- Iroquois sack Fort Crevecoeur in Illinois country.
1684 -- Goaded by New York governor Thomas Dongan, Iroquois attack southern Ontario and east, eventually reaching Montreal. This allowed English fur traders to infiltrate New France as far as the Straits of Mackinac by 1685.
1686 -- French counterattack under Marquis de Denonville.
Denonville ordered the construction of more forts. Nicholas Perrot placed in charge of construction. Built one fort in the Wisconsin area between Green Bay and the Mississippi River intending to demonstrate to the Miami, Fox, Sauk, Pottawatomie, and other nations of the region that the French meant to repel further westward encroachments by the Iroquois. A second fort was built in the St. Joseph river valley to send the same message to the Miami and Pottawatomie that were then migrating around the southern tip of Lake Michigan. To facilitate strengthening this fort, Denonville authorized a Jesuit mission at St. Joseph. The mission was built near present day Niles, Michigan, by 1690. Denonville's third fort was at Port Huron (1686). This was entrusted to Daniel Greysolon, Sieur de Duluth, a fur trader who had a license to trade with the Sioux. The fort was named Fort St. Joseph and was intended to block further English incursions in to the Upper Great Lakes. Duluth returned to the Lake Superior region the following summer leaving the fort in the charge of Louis Armand de Lom d'Arce, Baron de Lahontan. Lahontan was a young nobleman whose tastes were not suited to the primitive conditions of the frontier life. He abandoned the fort in 1688.
1687 -- Denonville requested a large force of French and Indians from the west for operations against the Iroquois. Henri de Tonty, Nicholas Perrot, and Olivier Morel de La Durantaye organized some 200 French traders and 500 Native warriors. Coupled with a French force under the command of Denonville, the attacks against the Iroquois in 1687 greatly boosted French and Indian morale.