Indigenous communities pursued their own interests within the struggle for Canada. Native Canadian and Native American groups traded with both colonial rivals and also used Dutch connections. Playing competing suppliers against one another gave them bargaining room within overlapping commercial networks. King William's War in North America was therefore a contest among local diplomatic and trading relationships as well as a European colonial war.
Notable Point · 1:48-2:45
Indigenous trade diplomacy complicates the Canadian contest
Indigenous communities took active diplomatic and commercial roles, trading through French, English, and Dutch networks while retaining leverage among the colonial rivals.