Canadian War Museum/Dundurn, Toronto, 2012
263 pp., illus., $29.99 paperback
On August 9, 1757, after a siege of less than a week, the British stronghold at Fort William Henry fell to the French. As officers from both forces met to decide the articles of capitulation, several hundred Canadian Iroquois warriors looked on with growing anger. What was this nonsense, they thought, of shaking hands with the enemy?
By day’s end, the Iroquois had attacked the prisoners, killing, scalping, or kidnapping several hundred redcoats. The attacks horrified the French, but it was no isolated incident. History records many occasions during the Seven Years War where Amerindians attacked prisoners who had waved the white flag.
I’ve often wondered why this is. In The Canadian Iroquois and the Seven Years’ War, historian D. Peter MacLeod offers a possible answer: It’s because the Amerindians were fighting a “parallel war” with their French allies — each sharing the same enemy but having totally different concepts of victory.
For the French, war was a strategic exercise. Soldiers were expendable so long as a key fort or pinch point on a map was captured or held. For Amerindians, the point of war was to obtain materiel, prisoners, and scalps. Thus, from the Aboriginal perspective, it was only logical to keep attacking an opponent following his surrender. How else could you achieve victory?
MacLeod’s book is a valuable addition to the canon of literature on the Seven Years War. The only failings are the lack of colour illustrations and the poor reproduction quality of many of the maps in the book. Some are so blurry as to be unreadable. This is a small complaint compared to the fine writing, but significant nonetheless.
— Mark Collin Reid (Read bio)
Mark Collin Reid is the Editor-in-Chief of Canada's History.