Other users might disagree with me on my answer, and that’s fine. This is an interesting question, and I believe its answer will be much more localized than you might be expecting. Ocean-going piracy was a global problem as much as it was a regional and local problem, and historians have been treating it as such for a while now, while mixing their analysis with the political, social, and economic motivations that caused individuals to undertake such robbery on the high seas. Oceans were a problem because they were locations of non-existent state power. Pirates moved from port to port and to desolate coastlines, bays, mangroves, lagoons, and islands. Mobility of maritime populations and vulnerability of valuable state and private targets is what made piracy so hard to control. Consequently, piracy wasn’t limited to the Caribbean in the Golden Age of Piracy; it spilled over from the Caribbean into the South Atlantic and then the Pacific. It also spilled from Southeast Asia into the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It continued unabated for centuries during times of war or economic depression, usually far more localized than the famous Golden Age pirates.

Point is, lakes...and I’m going to extend this answer to include rivers too...negate a lot of the things that made ocean-going piracy a viable nefarious action. Rivers and lakes negated the pirate’s ability to move any direction to different distant imperial peripheries to seek refuge. Lakes and rivers rarely see the high value targets that are found on the ocean. Moving fairly large groups of ships, supplies, and crews in secret is a lot harder on a lake or a river, and these people can’t go as far away to avoid reprisals by state authorities. My argument then is that piracy on lakes and rivers looks very different. It looks a lot more like what piracy actually is...robbery on the water. So I would say absolutely there were lake and river pirates, but they were criminals, (water)highwaymen, smugglers, and raiders. All of these are true of pirates on the high seas too, but for some reason, I think it is easier to see how they all happen at once on lakes and rivers.

In South America towards the end of the colonial period and into the early national period, rivers were the sites of a great deal of piracy. These vessels sometimes robbed riverine watercraft. The Gazeta de Buenos Ayres on November 22, 1817, relates the story of a river/estuary corsair who was out in the Río de la Plata (so technically in the ocean) near the mouth of the Paraná/Paraguay Rivers. The vessel refused to comply with a Buenos Aires revolutionary coast guard vessel instructions, so the porteño captain attempted to board it. A lively but inconclusive firefight ensued, and the corsair managed to slip away, dishonoring the captain in the process. These sorts of small, quick riverine/coastal vessels were able to move illicit cargos, especially contraband slaves relatively easily, away from regional authorities. These pirate ships were part of a long tradition of smuggling and slave running that had brought tens of thousands of African slaves into modern day Argentina. Smuggling was their main purpose, but if a target of opportunity arose, they would often rob it.

Thus, rivers and lakes were places of all sorts of questionable legal activities that occurred away from state power (similar to other desolate wildernesses through which people traveled). Francis Bond Head explained in his travel source through inland Río de la Plata in the early 1800s that he at one point came to a river crossing. Head explained that the operator of the ferry was going to charge him twelve dollars to cross the swollen river, an exorbitant fee, so he pulled out his pistols: “I put the muzzle of one of them against his front tooth, and told him very quietly, that I would pay him what was proper, but that if he demanded more, I would only pay him with that pistol” (237). Piracy? Not really. Extortion with a firearm involving a boat away from state power? Yes. These sorts of local crimes occurred frequently, usually off the books, so no record of them remains.

These small riverine crimes happened everywhere. A decree passed in Great Britain published in “Anno vicesimo quarto Georgii II. Regis” in London in 1751 attests to this fact. The decree that said some “wicked and ill-disposed Persons are encouraged to commit Robberies and Thefts upon navigable Rivers, Ports of Entry and Discharge, Wharfs, and Keys adjacent, by the privilege, as the Law now is, of being admitted to the benefit of of their Clergy; therefore….that all and every person or persons that shall, at any Time from and after the Twenty fourth Day of June, One thousand seven hundred and fifty one, feloniously steal any Goods, Ware, or Merchandize, of the Value of forty Shillings, in any Ship, Barge, Lighter, boat, or other vessel, or craft, upon any navigable River, or in any Port of Entry or Discharge, or in any Creek belonging to any navigable River, Port of Entry or Discharge, within the Kingdom of Great Britain; or shal feloniously steal any Goods, Wares, or Merchandize, of the Value of forty Shillings, upon any Wharf or Key adjacent to any navigable River, Port of Entry or Discharge, or shall be present, aiding, and assisting in committing any of the Offences aforesaid, being thereof convicted or attainted, or being indicted thereof...shall be excluded from the Benefit of Clergy” (1055-1056). These sorts of small petty thefts were common all over, here in Great Britain, but any place that authority was relatively weak (which was almost everywhere; it was way more common than I think we realize today).

Rivers and lakes were ideal places from which to launch raids on surrounding indigenous communities. For instance, the Cabeza de Vaca expedition to the Río de la Plata sailed up and down the Paraguay River in entrada after entrada carrying out raids on indigenous communities in attempts to subjugate them into a formal colony. They used small river craft to row up the river and set their soldiers and indigenous allies on unsuspecting indigenous communities. The same was done three hundred years later in 1875, when Maya rebels during the famous Caste War launched a raid on Robert Stephens’s hennequin plantation from the mangrove swamps in northern Yucatan. The speed and stealth of such attacks proved difficult to deal with.

Indigenous people were also often the masters of rivers and lakes, also using ambush tactics. Andrés de Avendaño traveled in 1696 to the Itza Maya capital Tayasal, located in the Petén of Guatemala on a large lake. He reported in his relación of the journey that Itza soldiers rowed in war canoes throughout the big lake and smaller surrounding ones. He even claimed that the soldiers flooded their canoes so that the boat, all of their bodies except for their heads, and weapons were below the surface of the lake, so that they could sneak up on unsuspecting canoes without being seen.

One last example is the Laguna de Términos logging camps that sprang up between 1660 and 1720 in Tabasco province. This body of water is actually tidal lagoon adjacent to the Gulf of Mexico, so basically, it is an extension of the ocean. The loggers there illegally harvested logwood and shipped it around the Caribbean and to Europe (they were precursors to the more famous loggers of Honduras and Belize). However, actual Golden Age pirates used the lagoon to launch attacks on surrounding indigenous and Spanish towns on the Gulf Coast. Pirates sailed there, loaded up some valuable logwood, then attacked Spanish coastal communities or vessels to get extra booty and slaves, and sail off again on the high seas. The tidal lagoon allowed them to make the best of both the riverine/lake piracy (for quick raids on inland populations and natural resources) and ocean-going piracy (attacking large trade ships) that I have heard of.

So the point of all these examples is to try to show the diversity of lake and river crimes committed away from early modern state control. Theft, slavery, smuggling, piracy, raiding, resource gathering, and trading all seemed to happen at once, using many of the same strategies.

At least in Canada, Piracy in the traditional sense of large tall ships raiding each other would not have been prevalent during the “Golden Age of Piracy,” but there would have been some conflicts in and around the Great Lakes that we could technically refer to as piracy if we look at them in more general terms. During the “Golden Age of Piracy” There would have been much more trade and travel going on by boat in rivers and smaller lakes around in what is now Ontario and Quebec as French and English settlers and colonial forces traded and trapped for furs with Indigenous peoples. The French developed their routes off of the St. Lawrence river and the surrounding rivers and lakes while the English focused on the area around Hudson’s Bay.

There would have occasionally been conflicts and engagements between these two forces as well as with Indigenous peoples. One such example is in the Iroquois or Beaver Wars, a series of 17th century conflicts between the Haudenosaunee Confederacy (the Iroquois, then made up of the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca) Along with other Iroquoian groups and French colonial forces.

While I cannot identify a specific instance of canoe to canoe combat that was undertaken primarily to rob one party of their furs, other types of raids on or by boat certainly did happen. This might technically satisfy the piracy aspect while falling into the broader period of the “Golden Age of Piracy”.

While not technically a lake, there were also conflicts in Hudson’s bay and James Bay in the north of Canada between French and English forces fighting over access to the interior of Canada for the fur trade. One man involved in this was Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville. Under the command of Pierre de Troyes where they lead expeditions against the British on James Bay. Iberville raided English posts in 1690 and 1694 seizing their furs. In September of 1697 his ship Pélican fought 3 English warships near York Factory along the Norther coast of Manitoba on Hudson’s Bay, sinking 2 of them. This could also technically fall under a form of piracy as they were using boats to fight and steal from each other and would fall into the period of the “Golden Age” of piracy. However, as d’Iberville and Troyes were both agents working in an official capacity under the French and were not “outlaws”. In fact, d’Iberville was rewarded by the French with the governorship of the posts he captured from the English in James Bay.

While quite a bit outside of the “Golden Age” of piracy a good example you might find interesting is that of William “Bill” Johnston. Pre-dating the the “timber pirates” of the Great Lakes, he was known as “Pirate of the St. Lawrence,” “Hero of the Lakes,” he operated in the Thousand Islands area between present-day Ontario and New York State. Johnston (a Canadian freighter turned traitor) terrorized the Canadian shore and attacked British and Canadian traffic on the river during the War of 1812.

On 30 May 1838, near Wellesley Island, NY, Johnston captured the steamer Sir Robert Peel, which was carrying the payroll for British troops in Upper Canada. Johnston and his crew carried off more than $175,000 in cash, jewellery and silver before burning the ship. Lord Durham, the Governor General of Canada at the time responded by putting a reward of $5,000 on Johnston’s head. To try and escape persecution for the attack, Johnston issued a proclamation justifying the capture of the ship as a legitimate act of war.

Johnston was a pretty interesting character, at the end of his life, he ran a tavern in Clayton, NY in the Thousand Islands and still engaged in smuggling. On festive occasions, his family would dine on the silver plates stolen from the Sir Robert Peel. At age 80, he volunteered for the US Army during the Civil War -but was turned down.

Suggested reading for further information:

Daniel P. Barr, Unconquered: The Iroquois League at War in Colonial America (2006)

Pierre Berton, My Country: The Remarkable Past (1976)

Harold Horwood and Ed Butts, Pirates & Outlaws of Canada 1610–1932 (1984)

George T. Hunt, Wars of the Iroquois: A Study in Intertribal Trade Relations (1978)