<P> Iroquois access to firearms through Dutch and later English traders along the Hudson River increased the casualties in the warfare . This greater bloodshed, previously unseen in Iroquoian warfare, increased the practice of "Mourning Wars". The Iroquois raided neighboring groups to take captives, who were ritually adopted to replace the dead Iroquois; thus a cycle of violence and warfare escalated . More significantly, new infectious diseases brought by the French decimated native groups and broke up their communities . Combined with warfare, disease led to the near destruction of the Huron by 1650 . </P> <P> During the 1640s and 1650s, the Beaver Wars initiated by the Iroquois forced a massive demographic shift as the western neighbors of the Haudenosaunee (better known as the Iroquois) fled the violence . They sought refuge west and north of Lake Michigan . The Five Nations of the Haudenosaunee, who had a predatory attitude towards their neighbors even at the best of times, constantly raiding neighboring peoples in "mourning wars" in search of captives who would become Iroquois, were determined to be the only middlemen between the Europeans and the other Indians who lived in the West, and quite consciously set about eliminating any rivals as such as the Wendat (Huron). By the 1620s, the Iroquois had become dependent upon iron implements, which they obtained by trading fur with the Dutch at Fort Nassau (modern Albany, New York). Between 1624 - 1628, the Iroquois drove out their neighbors, the Mahican, to allow themselves to be the one people in the Hudson river valley able to trade with the Dutch . By 1640, the Five Nations had exhausted the supply of beavers in Kanienkeh ("the land of the flint" - the Iroquois name for their homeland in what is now upstate New York), and moreover Kanienkeh lacked the beavers with the thick pelts that the Europeans favored and would pay the best price for, which were to be found further north in what is now northern Canada . </P> <P> The Five Nations launched the "Beaver Wars" to take control of the fur trade by allowing themselves to be only middlemen who would deal with the Europeans . The Wendat homeland, Wendake, lies in what is now southern Ontario being bordered on three sides by Lake Ontario, Lake Simcoe and Georgian Bay, and it was through Wendake that the Ojibwa and Cree who lived further north traded with the French . In 1649, the Iroquois made a series of raids into Wendake that were intended to destroy the Wendat as a people with thousands of Wendat taken to be adopted by Iroquois families with the rest being killed . However, it should be noted that the war against the Wendat was at least just as much a "mourning war" as a "beaver war" as the Iroquois obsessively raided Wendake for ten years after their great raids of 1649 to take single Wendat back to Kanienkeh, even though they did not possess much in the way of beaver pelts . The Iroquois's population had been devastated by losses due to European diseases like smallpox which they had no immunity to, and it is notable that when the Iroquois finally made peace with the French in 1667, one of the terms was the French had to hand over all of the Wendat who had fled to New France over to them . </P> <P> The Iroquois had already clashed with the French in 1609, 1610 and 1615, but the "beaver wars" caused a lengthy struggle with the French who had no intention of allowing the Five Nations to set themselves up as the only middlemen in the fur trade . The French did not fare well at first, with the Iroquois inflicting more casualties then they suffered, French settlements frequently cut off, canoes bringing fur to Montreal intercepted and sometimes the Iroquois blockaded the St. Lawrence . New France was a proprietary colony run by the Compagnie des Cent - Associés who went bankrupt in 1663 because of the Iroquois attacks which made the fur trade unprofitable for the French . After the Compagnie des Cent - Associés went bankrupt, New France was taken over by the French Crown . King Louis XIV wanted his new Crown colony to turn a profit and dispatched the Carignan - Salières Regiment to defend it . In 1666, the Carignan - Salières Regiment made a devastating raid upon Kanienkeh, which led the Five Nations to sue for peace in 1667 . The era from roughly 1660 through 1763 saw a fierce rivalry grow between France and Great Britain as each European power struggled to expand their fur - trading territories . The two imperial powers and their native allies competed in conflicts that culminated in the French and Indian War, a part of the Seven Years' War in Europe . </P>

Why did the fur trade of north america expand so quickly