The Iroquois began their systematic effort to break the French hold on the fur trade in the 1640s by attacking the Hurons on their own ground in the Georgian Bay region of present-day Ontario. By 1650 virtually the entire Huron nation was annihilated.
Among the victims of the economic rivalry were the Hurons Jesuit missionaries. This coloured lithograph by Etienne David presents a composite view of the torture and death of the blackrobes of Huronia. The martyrdoms of Gabriel Lalemant (left) and Jean de Brebeuf (right) in 1649 were among the most atrocious in the annals of Christianity. The inhabitants of the settled areas no less than the soldiers campaigning in the wilderness, realized that to fall into the hands of the enemy was a fate worse than death
