OCTOBER 15:

1874 Winnipeg Manitoba - Louis Riel 1844-1885 charged with a warrant of outlawry by a Manitoba court.

1763: Earlier in the year, the father of Delaware Chief, Captain Bull, was burned to death by white settlers. Today, to retaliate, his son Captain Bull, and his followers, will attack, and destroy, most of the white settlements in the Wyoming valley of Pennsylvania.

1754 Red Deer, Alberta - Anthony Henday sights the Rocky Mountains, near present day Red Deer; Hudson Bay Company employee is trying to get the Blackfoot to travel to Hudson Bay, avoiding the Cree middlemen.

1666 New York - Alexandre de Prouville, Marquis de Tracy c1596-1670 puts Mohawk villages to the torch after making peace with Senecas and Oneidas; claims Iroquois territory for Louis XIV.

1582 France - Gregorian calendar introduced in Catholic countries, cutting 10 prior days (October 5 becomes October 15). 

October 15, 1615: Today, Samuel de Champlain, 12 Frenchmen, and many of his Huron allies, attack the Iroquois town of Onondaga. Champlain will be wounded, and several Hurons will be killed. Champlain will give up the attack. Because of Champlain's actions, the Iroquois will fight the French for years to come.
 

BACKGROUND:
 

From http://www.centurytel.net/tjs11/hist/fiwar.htm
 

The conflict between England and France in North America centered on the fur trade. Although 1628 is the official date for the beginning of the Beaver Wars, increased intertribal warfare to control trade with the Europeans had started as soon as the first furs had been exchanged between the Micmac and European fishermen in the Canadian Maritimes in 1519.

By the time the French established their first trading post in New Brunswick in 1604, Algonquin-speaking Micmac, Algonkin, Montagnais (Innu), and Malecite (Etchemin) had forced the Laurentian Iroquois (either Huron or Iroquois) to abandon the lower St. Lawrence River at Quebec where Cartier had first found their villages in 1534. When the French soon afterwards shifted their trade to the St. Lawrence, the Algonkin and Montagnais had allied with the Huron and were fighting with the Iroquois League for control of the upper river. The French unwittingly decided to intervene in this war and in 1609 joined an Algonkin war party which defeated the Mohawk (Iroquois) in a battle fought at Lake Champlain. Within two years, the Algonkin had driven the Iroquois from the upper St. Lawrence, but the French had made a dangerous enemy.

In 1615, Samuel de Champlain arrived in Ontario. The Huron (Wyandot) Indians were at war with the Iroquois Indians. Champlain led a war party of Huron (Wyanhdot) and Algonquin Indians into Iroquois territory and gave the Iroquois a taste of battle using muskets and bayonets. The Iroquois retaliated by wiping out the Huron's and opposing French expansionism. This played a major role in the French's failure to establish a permanent link to the New World.

The extensive water system, stretching from the Atlantic to central Canada and the American Midwest, provided a natural transportation route through the rugged wilderness. By utilizing the lakes and their numerous tributaries, the Native peoples and European explorers could cross much of the continent. Portages connected the Great Lakes with water systems leading to the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys, the Gulf of Mexico and the Great Plains. These "carrying places" around obstacles to water transport - rapids, heights of land and, of course, Niagara Falls - were control points for waterborne commerce.

When European people began settling on the coast of North America in the early seventeenth century, the French accidentally occupied the most convenient route to the interior. From their posts at Quebec and Montreal they rapidly moved up the St. Lawrence River to explore the continent and trade for furs with the Native peoples. Although this route should have led them directly to Niagara and the great Falls, their path was blocked by the hostility of the Native people of the region, the Five Nations of the Iroquois.

The Iroquois consisted of five distinct nations linked by language and culture. By the fifteenth century, however, they had allied in a powerful confederation. This kept internal peace and allowed mutual defense against outsiders. The country of the Five Nations stretched across New York from the Mohawk River to the Niagara River. Ranged from east to west were the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca. These people became known as the Six Nations during the eighteenth century when the original five accepted the refugee Tuscarora from North Carolina.

Westernmost of the Iroquois was the Seneca. Though after the mid-seventeenth century the Niagara was part of their territory, the Seneca did not heavily populate the area. Their main villages were in the Genessee Valley, about eighty miles to the east. Archaeological evidence suggests, however, that the site of Fort Niagara was used seasonally as a fishing and hunting camp.

The Iroquois, perhaps the most politically powerful group of Native people in the history of North America, had early confrontations with the French. Their hostility would last until the French had been driven from North America. Since much of the land around Lake Ontario was Iroquois country, French exploration and influence was at first diverted up the Ottawa River to the northern Great Lakes.
 

*****
 

An excerpt from http://www.tolatsga.org/iro.html
 

The French only wanted to trade for fur. Their potential trading partners, however, wanted help fighting the Mohawk which trapped the French into winning their loyalty by jumping into someone else's war. It must have seemed a trivial at the time, but it proved a fateful decision. In July, 1609 Samuel de Champlain accompanied a Huron, Montagnais, and Algonkin war party which moved south along the shores of Lake Champlain. When they encountered Mohawk warriors, a battle followed during which French guns broke the massed Mohawk formation killing several war chiefs. The following year, Champlain joined another attack against a Mohawk fort on the Richelieu River. Although the Mohawk soon discarded mass formations, wooden body armor, and countered French firearms by falling to the ground just before they discharged, they were driven from the St. Lawrence after 1610. The Algonkin and Montagnais took control of the area and its fur trade for the next twenty years. Meanwhile, the French pushed west to the Huron villages and, in a similar error in 1615, participated in an attack on the Onondaga.

During the years following, the French paid dearly for their intervention. Iroquois hostility prevented them from using Lake Ontario and forced a detour through the Ottawa River Valley to reach the western Great Lakes. For the moment, however, the Iroquois needed guns and steel weapons to protect themselves, but these were available only through a fur trade controlled by their enemies. In 1610 Dutch traders arrived in the Hudson Valley of New York, and the Iroquois had solved a part of their problem. Still pressed from the north by the Huron, Algonkin, and Montagnais, the Mohawk in 1615 were also fighting their traditional Susquehannock rivals to the south. Suspecting the French were behind this, the Dutch helped the Mohawk against the Susquehannock. This attached the Mohawk to the Dutch, but there were problems. Located on the Hudson, the Mahican blocked Mohawk access to Dutch traders unless tribute was paid to cross their territory.

This unhappy arrangement did not sit well with the Mohawk and periodically erupted into war. Since this affected their fur trade, the Dutch arranged a truce in 1613. Four years later, renewed fighting between the Mohawk and Mahican forced the closure of Fort Nassau near Albany until another peace was made in 1618. Meanwhile, the Dutch demand for fur had created competition for previously-shared hunting territory, and Mohawk encroachment had led to fighting and subjugation of some the northern groups of Munsee Delaware during 1615. How long the Dutch could have "kept the lid on" this situation is questionable. The Mohawk were acting as middlemen for other Iroquois and had even greater ambitions. In 1624 the Dutch built a new post at Fort Orange which was actually closer to the the Mohawk. Unfortunately, they also tried to take some of the St. Lawrence fur trade from the French by using Mahican middlemen to open trade with the Algonkin.