Manage episode 487037675 series 3502293
Imagine standing on the edge of a Canadian forest, the trees black against a bruised sky, the only sound the ripple of water, and a sudden, thunderous splash. It’s a beaver. But this isn’t just the story of a quirky rodent building dams and chewing trees. This is the story of an animal that reshaped a continent, an animal so valuable, it drove men mad, sparked alliances, and unleashed a war so brutal that entire nations were wiped from the map.
Between the 1600s and 1700s, the lust for beaver pelts, soft gold, ignited a bloody contest across the forests and rivers of North America. Iroquois against Huron, French against British, Dutch traders making their own deadly bargains. The Beaver Wars weren’t a footnote, they were a cataclysm. Empires rose and fell. Languages vanished. Cultures were shattered.
Today, we’re diving into the shadowy heart of the Beaver Wars. Who survived? Who vanished forever? And in the end, was this really a war between people… or a war for the soul of a continent, waged in the name of an animal?
For books written and published by Keith Hocton
105 episodes