Systematic genocide over hundreds of years has reduced these people
to the margins of history, at the time of the French Indian Wars
many of the woodland tribes had already suffered from generations of
internal warfare. Deadly adversaries at skirmishing and scouting
among the forested areas of North America they were invaluable to
commanders with an advanced understanding of this unfamiliar type of
warfare. It is hard to draw lines between the various tribes to
establish those that were either pro-French or pro-English. Through
low level of settlement, efforts by their adventurous missionaries
and traders most tribes at the start of this conflict were more
aligned to France, though this was in some ways counterbalanced by
English Indian Agents like Sir William Johnson.
The woodland
native tribes were now caught up in wars that they neither
understood or could afford, squeezed from every side and manipulated
by all, the path to their virtual extinction would now be set no
matter what decisions that each chief now took, war or peace.
