"A Daingerous Liberty": Mohawk-Dutch Relations and the Colonial Gunpowder Trade, 1534-1665

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Spring 2018

"A DAINGEROUS LIBERTY": MOHAWK-DUTCH RELATIONS AND THE COLONIAL GUNPOWDER TRADE, 1534-1665

Shaun Sayres University of New Hampshire, Durham

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Recommended Citation Sayres, Shaun, ""A DAINGEROUS LIBERTY": MOHAWK-DUTCH RELATIONS AND THE COLONIAL GUNPOWDER TRADE, 1534-1665" (2018). Master's Theses and Capstones. 1174. https://scholars.unh.edu/thesis/1174

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SHAUN SAYRES BA, State University of New York - New Paltz, 2015

THESIS

Submitted to the University of New Hampshire in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Master of Arts

History

May, 2018

Shaun Sayres

This thesis has been examined and approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in History by:

Thesis Director, Cynthia Van Zandt, Associate Professor of History

Eliga H. Gould, Professor of History

Willem Klooster, Professor of History, Clark University

On 5/4/2018

Original approval signatures are on file with the University of New Hampshire Graduate School.

DEDICATION

For my father and Sarah, the past and future.

iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

No work of history is the product of one person alone and this project is no different. I am grateful to the many people and institutions that have made this work possible. No person has shared a greater responsibility in the development of this thesis than Cynthia Van Zandt. Her invaluable edits, comments, and encouragements have improved this thesis beyond what I ever could have hoped. In addition, the comments and insights of Wim Klooster and Eliga Gould improved this work immensely. Few are fortunate enough to have such high-caliber historians on one committee. Their insight and breadth of knowledge is indescribable and I could not have asked for better. Any mistakes that follow are my own.

I have had the benefit to work with some of the best people in the profession that deserve recognition here. First, I would not be the historian I am today without the initial guidance of L.

H. Roper as my undergraduate advisor. Additionally, I would like to thank the faculty of the

University of New Hampshire–including Jeff Bolster, Jessica Lepler, Nicoletta Gullace, Jan

Golinski, and Kurk Dorsey–for always striving for excellence and setting the bar high for their students as well as the exceedingly helpful administrative staff, Laura Simard and Lara

Demarest. For their comments and pieces of wisdom, many thanks are due to: Jaap Jacobs,

David J. Silverman, Jon Parmenter, Evan Haefeli, Dennis Maika, David Voorhees, Susanah

Shaw Romney, Charly Gehring, and Dean Snow.

In addition to UNH’s prestigious faculty, this project is equally the product from having worked alongside the best group of scholars a graduate student could ask for. What happens in

Horton 428 stays in Horton 428, but I could not have produced this work without the invaluable

v help of Sarah McDonald, Eric Trautman-Mosher, Lila Teeters, Aaron Chin, Jared “Dagger”

Granato, Becca “Becky” Davis, Jordan Coulombe, Mike Varuolo, Susanah Deily-Swearingen,

Mike Anderson, Ben Schaeffer, Lottie Richard, Malcolm Gent, Rachel Kline, Chris Reardon, and Amanda Demmer. Thank you all for the insurmountable amount of time-wasting shenanigans in supplement to your collectively endless wisdom, support, and kindness. Thanks for the memories.

For better or worse, this scholastic journey is not over, and I owe my family my deepest gratitude for following along the entire way. Finally, I would like to thank my cat, Ash, for her relentless efforts to edit my work to the limits by which a cat possibly could, while making sure no work is ever accomplished at home.

vi TABLE OF CONTENTS

DEDICATION……………………………………………………………………………………iv

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS…………………………………………………………………….....v

ABBREVIATIONS.…………………………………………………………………………...... ix

ABSTRACT……...……………………………………………………………………………...xii

CHAPTER PAGE

INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………………...1

I. THE MOHAWKS’ OLD WORLD: THE BEGINNINGS OF THE MOHAWK-DUTCH

PARTNERSHIP, 1534-1639…………………………………………...…………………...…...15

Introduction……………………………………………………………………………....15

The Sixteenth Century…………………………………………………………………...16

The Governor Called Jacques…………………………………………………………....25

The Mohawk-Mohican War…………………………………………………………….. 33

Disease and Uncertainty………………………………………………………………....46

Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………….58

II. GUNPOWDER DIPLOMACY: TRADE AND SECURITY IN NEW NETHERLAND AND

RENSSELAERSWIJCK, 1639-1659…………………………………………………………....61

Introduction……………………………………………………………………………...61

vii Rensselaerswijck………………………………………………………………………...65

Security………………………………………………………………………………….69

Trade…………………………………………………………………………………….78

Appeasement…………………………………………………………………………….87

Retaliation……………………………………………………………………………….91

Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………...100

III. THE RECKONING: THE COLLAPSE OF THE MOHAWK-DUTCH PARTNERSHIP,

1659-1665……………………………………………………………………………………....104

Introduction……………………………………………………………………………..104

Trouble in Paradise……………………………………………………………………..110

Iroquoia in Recoil……………………………………………………………………....125

The Fall………………………………………………………………………………....131

Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………...145

CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………………………....149

BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………………………....157

viii ABBREVIATIONS

CJVR A. J. F. van Laer, ed. Correspondence of Jeremias van Rensselaer, 1651-1674. Albany: University of the State of New York, 1932.

DHM De Halve Maen. Journal of the Holland Society of New York.

DHNY Edmund B. O’Callaghan, The Documentary History of the State of New York, 4 volumes (Albany: Charles Van Benthuysen, 1851).

DRCHNY E. B. O’Callaghan, Berthold Fernow, and John R. Brodhead, eds. Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York. 15 volumes. Albany: Weed, Parsons, and Co., 1853-1887.

DRNN A. J. F. van Laer, ed. Documents Relating to New Netherland, 1624-1626. San Marino: The Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, 1924.

ERAR J. Pearson and A. J. F. van Laer, eds. Early Records of the City and County of Albany, and Colony of Rensselaerswijck, 1656-1657. 4 volumes, 2-4 revised by A. J. F. van Laer.. Albany, 1869.

FOCM A. J. F. van Laer, Minutes of the Court of Fort Orange and Beverwijck, 1652-1660. 2 Volumes. Albany: University of the State of New York, 1920-1923.

HNAI William C. Sturtevant, et. al. eds. Handbook of the North American Indians. 20 volumes. Washington D. C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1978-.

JR Reuben G. Thwaites, ed. The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents: Travels and

ix Explorations of the Jesuit Missionaries in New France, 1610-1791. 73 volumes. Cleveland: Burrows Brothers, 1896-1901.

LIR Lawrence H. Leder, ed. The Livingston Indian Records, 1666-1723. Gettysburg: Pennsylvania Historical Association, 1956.

MHSC Massachusetts Historical Society Collections.

MCARS A. J. F. van Laer, ed. Minutes of the Court of Albany, Rensselaerswijck, and Schenectady, 1668-1685. 3 volumes. Albany: University of the State of New York, 1926-1932.

MCR A. J. F. van Laer, ed. Minutes of the Court of Rensselaerswijck, 1648-1652. Albany: University of the State of New York, 1926-1932.

MPCP Samuel Hazard, ed. Minutes of the Provincial Council of Pennsylvania. 16 volumes. Harrisburg: Theo. Fenn, 1838-1853.

NNC Charles T. Gehring, ed. New Netherland Documents Series: Correspondence, 1646-1664. Volumes XI - XV. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2000.

NNCM Charles T. Gehring, ed. New Netherland Documents Series: Council Minutes, 1638-1665. Volumes IV-X. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2000-.

NNCP Charles T. Gehring, ed. New Netherland Documents Series: Curaçao Papers, 1640-1665. Volume XVII. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2000.

NNDP Charles T, Gehring, ed. New Netherland Document Series: Delaware Papers

x (Dutch Period): A Collection of Documents Pertaining to the Regulation of Affairs on the South River of New Netherlands, 1648–1664. Volumes XVIII-XIX. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2000.

NNFOR Charles T. Gehring, ed. New Netherland Documents Series: Fort Orange Records, 1656-1660. Volume XVI (Parts 2 and 3). Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2000.

NNLO Edmund B. O’Callaghan, ed. Laws and Ordinances of New Netherland, 1638-1674 (Albany: Weed, Parsons, and Co., 1868).

NNN J. Franklin Jameson, ed. Narratives of New Netherland, 1609-1664. 1909. Reprint, New York: Barnes and Noble, 1959.

NNO Charles T. Gehring, ed. New Netherland Documents Series: Ordinances, 1647-1658. Volume XVI (Part 1). Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2000.

NNRPS Charles T. Gehring, ed. New Netherland Documents Series: Register of the Provincial Secretary, 1638-1660. Volumes I-III. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2000.

NYHS New York Historical Society

PA Samuel Hazard et. al., eds. Pennsylvania Archives. 9 series, 138 volumes. Philadelphia and Harrisburg: Joseph Severns, 1852-1949.

PP Carl Bridenbaugh, ed. The Pynchon Papers. 2 volumes. Colonial Society of Massachusetts Publications Nos. 60-61. Boston, 1982-1985.

PRCC J. Hammond Trumbull and Charles J. Hoadly, eds. The Public Records of the

xi Colony of Connecticut. 15 volumes. Hartford: Brown and Parsons, 1850-90.

RCNH Charles J. Hoadly, ed. Records of the Colony of New Haven, 1638 to 1664. 2 volumes.

RCNP Nathaniel B. Shurtleff and David Pulsifer; eds. Records of the Colony of New Plymouth in New England. 12 volumes. Boston: William White, 1855-1861.

RCRP Bartlett, John Russell, ed., Records of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, 1636-1674. 7 volumes. Providence: A. C. Greene and Brothers, 1857-62.

RGCMB Nathaniel Shurtleff, ed. Records of the Government and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England. 5 volumes. Boston: William White, 1853- 1854.

RNA O’Callaghan, Edmund B. and Berthold Fernow, eds., Records of New Amsterdam from 1653-1674. 7 volumes. New York: Knickerbocker Press, 1897.

VRBM A. J. F. van Laer, ed. Van Rensselaer-Bowier Manuscripts, Being Letters of Kiliaen van Rensselaer, 1630-1643. Albany: University of the State of New York, 1908.

WP Allyn B. Forbes et. al., eds. The Winthrop Papers, 1498-1654. 6 volumes. Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1929-1992.

xii ABSTRACT

“A DAINGEROUS LIBERTY”: MOHAWK-DUTCH RELATIONS AND THE COLONIAL

GUNPOWDER TRADE, 1534-1665

Shaun Sayres

University of New Hampshire, May, 2018

This thesis examines seventeenth-century Mohawk-Dutch relations through the lens of the colonial gunpowder trade. Looking through the eyes of cultural brokers such as Arent van

Curler or Saggodryochta, it argues the Dutch colonies of New Netherland and Rensselaerswijck and the Mohawk Nation of the Haudenosaunee formed a symbiotic relationship that significantly altered the geopolitical landscape of eastern North America in the seventeenth century. As time wore on, and neighboring European colonies and Indian nations grew stronger, the Mohawks and

Dutch grew increasingly dependent on one another for survival. These Mohawk-Dutch encounters and negotiations, dictated by the need for gunpowder and pelts, reveal a distinct arc of intertwined fates, outlining their shared rise, peak, and decline within a world embroiled in conflict. As a result of perpetual mourning wars, and a colony plagued with indigenous conflicts,

New Netherland never possessed adequate stores of guns, powder, and shot to defend itself from invasion or fuel endless Mohawk conquests. The Mohawks survived, but the Dutch did not, relinquishing New Netherland to the English without a shot in 1664.

xiii INTRODUCTION

“We are joined together with chains.”

On an early summer day in 1689, an embassy of Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, and Oneida sachems treated the Albany magistrates of colonial New York to a rich oration of

Haudenosaunee history. They had come to “Renew the old Covenant” with the English, first

“made with Jacques many years ago who came with a Ship into their Waters” and recorded them as “Bretheren.”1 The Five Nations wanted this “Governor Called Jacques” to establish himself among them, and together with Jacques they drew a “General Covenant,” metaphorically concluded by planting the “Tree of good Understanding.”2 They had “allways been dutifull to this Government,” recounted the orator to his English audience, with whom the Haudenosaunee sought to “Confirm the old Covenant made here” where the “Sun may allways shine on them.”3

Having cast “Beams to the Sun of Peace,” the speaker concluded the oral history by returning to its starting place.4 From the memory of Jacques, the orator recalled how the Mohawks, Oneidas,

1 This speech is one of three such recorded accounts dated 1678, 1689, and 1691. For all three accounts, extracted from an anonymous notebook in the possession of the American Antiquarian Society, see Daniel K. Richter, “Rediscovered Links in the Covenant Chain: Previously Unpublished Transcripts of New York Indian Treaty Minutes, 1677-1691,” American Antiquarian Society, Proceedings, XCII (1982), 45-88; 48-49 and Appendix B. A separate, loosely transcribed version of this speech can be found in Cadwallader Colden, The History of the Five Nations: Depending on the Province of New-York in America, and Are the Barrier between the English and the French in That Part of the World (London, 1747), 99. The notebook, donated by Thomas Jefferson to the AAS in 1815, is catalogued under Indians of North America, Miscellaneous Papers, 1620-1895, Manuscript Collections, American Antiquarian Society.

2 Jacques is referred to as a “governor” in the preceding 1678 oration, all other quotations come from the 1689 oration. Richter, “Rediscovered Links,” 48-49.

3 Richter, “Rediscovered Links,” 48-49.

4 Richter, “Rediscovered Links,” 48-49.

1 and Onondagas “did carry the Ankor of the Ship that Jaques came in to onnondages [Onondaga

Country],” grounding the English to this old covenant, originally made with Dutch colonists, the

Five Nations now “renew [and] Confirm.”5 The oral tradition evokes elements of clarity, kinship and alliance, all deeply anchored by a chain to a distinct moment in the past, to the time when

Dutch traders first encountered Haudenosaunee peoples in the Hudson Valley. Beginning with the “Governor called Jacques,” this covenant made between the Haudenosaunee and Europeans remained in a state of constant flux, of rust and renewal, one that the Haudenosaunee had come to make “Bright” again.6

Following the lead of the Haudenosaunee orator, this thesis focuses on the initial links in the relationship between the Five Nations and Europeans, first established between the Mohawk

Nation of the Iroquois and the Dutch traders that came to North America in the early seventeenth century. By examining the colonial gunpowder trade, it argues that Mohawk imperialists and

Dutch colonizers formed a symbiotic relationship, which drastically altered the geopolitical landscape of eastern North America. With the help of Dutch munitions, the Mohawks transformed themselves into an expansive colonial power, leading to their sweeping conquests that would stretch from Nova Scotia to Wisconsin.7 In return, the Dutch received a powerful, and feared, indigenous ally it desperately needed in order to survive the turbulent currents of a

5 Richter, “Rediscovered Links,” 48-49.

6 (“linking of arms”) Mary Druke Becker, “Linking Arms: The Structure of Iroquois Intertribal Diplomacy,” in Beyond the Covenant Chain: The Iroquois and Their Neighbors in Indian North America, 1600-1800, eds. Daniel K. Richter and James H. Merrell (University Park, PA.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1987), 29-39; 29. (“bright”) Richter, “Rediscovered Links,” 48.

7 For histories of seventeenth-century Mohawk responses to change and strategies of survival, see Jon Parmenter, The Edge of the Woods; José António Brandão, “Your Fyre Shall Burn No More,”; Richter, Ordeal of the Longhouse; “War and Culture: The Iroquois Experience,” WMQ vol. 40 (1983), 528-559; Francis Jennings, The Ambiguous Iroquois Empire; and Ian K. Steele, Warpaths.

2 predominantly native space and a powerful ally who helped curb English and French territorial expansion.8 In the pages that follow, I retrace the footsteps of the “Governor called Jacques” and

“Old Corlaer,” known also as Jacob Eelckens and Arent van Curler, as participants in the intercultural gunpowder trade, both crucial links in the chain of events that saw the Mohawk-

Dutch partnership rise and fall while each attempted to navigate the complex entanglements of seventeenth-century America.9 Out of separate needs for munitions and beaver pelts, Dutch traders and Mohawk imperialists found common ground, forming a mutually-beneficial partnership, which would contribute both to New Netherland’s economic prosperity and the

Mohawk quest for empire.

The significance of gunpowder cannot be understated. Europeans could not produce gunpowder domestically in the colonial period. Saltpeter, gunpowder’s chief ingredient, came almost exclusively from the East Indies, forcing Atlantic imperialists to rely on amicable diplomatic and trade relations with Asian polities. Moreover, although the Dutch would lead the global market in munitions by the seventeenth century, wars in Europe and in more important

Atlantic colonies left New Netherland at the bottom of the keg. Through the colony’s duration, gunpowder remained scarce to the point Director-General Petrus Stuyvesant began maintaining records of it, as if to preemptively prepare for a defense for why the colony fell.10 Despite a clear

8 On the histories of New Netherland and Rensselaerswijck and their ties to the Mohawks, see Allen W. Trelease, Indian Affairs in Colonial New York, Richter, Ordeal of the Longhouse; Jacobs, New Netherland; Merwick, Possessing Albany; Parmenter, The Edge of the Woods; Venema, Beverwijck; Burke, Mohawk Frontier;

9 “Old Corlaer” appears in the oration of 1678 and refers to the Dutch trader Arent van Curler, Richter, “Rediscovered Links,” 49, 55. For brief summations of both Jacob Eelckens and Arent van Curler, see Richter, “Rediscovered Links,” 50-56.

10 See an account from the Gunner’s Delivery Book detailing incoming shipments of powder and its dispersal from May 1661 to September 1664; DRCHNY 2: 460-471.

3 scarcity of gunpowder in the colony, however, colonial records suggest that New Netherland’s continued existence depended heavily on a consistent flow of gunpowder to their Native

American allies. Dutch officials quickly identified a need to meet indigenous demands for gunpowder, lest powerful nations such as the Mohawks begin seeking “munitions from our neighbors the English.”11

Analyzing this Mohawk-Dutch partnership through the colonial gunpowder trade draws from several subfields colonial historians have developed in recent years. First and foremost, this interpretation builds on the recent explosion in Native American scholarship.12Several scholars of Iroquoia have reconstructed the Haudenosaunee’s complex relationship with the Dutch, while some New Netherland scholars have integrated dealings with the Haudenosaunee into the Dutch colonial narrative.13 As a study deeply immersed in both worlds, this analysis benefits from the

11 February, 24, 1654, Council Minutes II, 116 (“munitions”).

12 Native American history as a discipline has changed tremendously since the days of “shattered” peoples written about in James H. Merrell, The Indians’ New World: Catawbas and their Neighbors from European Contact through the Era of Removal (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1989) and Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991). Following the steps of Daniel K. Richter’s Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), historians have now begun creating continentally- oriented histories that both shed the trappings of Eurocentric analyses while also reinserting Native Americans within the contexts that shaped their decisions and developments. Best examples include: Kathleen DuVal, The Native Ground: Indians and Colonists in the Heart of the Continent (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006); Pekka Hämäläinen, The Comanche Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008); Michael J. Witgen, An Infinity of Nations: How the Native New World Shaped Early North America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012); and Michael A. McDonnell, Masters of Empire: Great Lakes Indians and the Making on America (New York: Hill and Wang, 2015).

13 On histories of the Haudenosaunee and their relationship with the Dutch, see Allen W. Trelease, Indian Affairs in Colonial New York: The Seventeenth Century (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1960); Francis Jennings, The Ambiguous Iroquois Empire: The Covenant Chain Confederation of Indian Tribes with English Colonies from its Beginnings to the Lancaster Treaty of 1744 (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1984); Daniel K. Richter, The Ordeal of the Longhouse; Matthew Dennis, Cultivating a Landscape of Peace: Iroquois-European Encounters in Seventeenth-Century America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993); José António Brandão, “Your Fyre Shall Burn No More:” Iroquois Policy toward New France and its Native Allies to 1701 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1997); and Jon Parmenter, The Edge of the Woods: Iroquoia, 1534-1701 (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2010). On histories of New Netherland and Dutch-Iroquoian relations, see Donna Merwick, Possessing Albany, 1630-1710: The Dutch and English Experiences (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Janny Venema, Beverwijck: A Dutch Village on the American Frontier, 1652-1664 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003); Susanah Shaw Romney: New Netherland Connections: Intimate Networks and Atlantic

4 great strides made in recent years on intercultural encounters and partnerships.14 In relation to gunpowder, a few New Netherland scholars have touched upon the contraband trade and smuggling as pieces of larger studies on Dutch colonial trade and administrative policy.15 In this vein, historians have gradually begun to consider the impact of European weapons technology on

Native American society. As David J. Silverman has argued in Thundersticks (2016), Native

American adoption of gunpowder technology dramatically altered the course of events in Early

North America.16 “A Daingerous Liberty” draws on these approaches to help explain how Dutch

Ties in Seventeenth-Century America (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2013). Many anthropological works have contributed to these discussions as well including: William Engelbrecht, Iroquoia: The Development of a Native World (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2003); William N. Fenton, The Great Law and the Longhouse: A Political History of the Iroquois Confederacy (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998); Jordan E. Kerber, ed. Archaeology of the Iroquois: Selected Readings & Research Sources (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2007) and James W. Bradley, Before Albany: An Archaeology of Native-Dutch Relations in the Capital Region, 1600-1664 (Albany: New York State Museum, 2007).

14 On intercultural encounters, alliances, and partnerships pertaining to New Netherland, see: See Cynthia J. Van Zandt, Brothers among Nations: The Pursuit of Intercultural Alliances in Early America, 1580-1660 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); Evan Haefeli, “Kieft’s War and the Cultures of Violence in Early America” in Lethal Imagination: Violence and Brutality in American History, ed. Michael A. Bellesiles (New York: New York University Press, 1999), 17-42; and “On First Contact and Apotheosis: Manitou and Men in North America,” in Ethnohistory vol. 54, no. 3 (Summer 2007), 407-443; Daniel K. Richter, Trade, Land, Power: The Struggle For Eastern North America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013); Jeffrey Glover, Paper Sovereigns: Anglo-Native Treaties and the Law of Nations, 1604-1664 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014); Mark L. Thompson, The Contest for the Delaware Valley: Allegiance, Identity, and Empire in the Seventeenth Century (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2013); Andrew Lipman, The Saltwater Frontier: Indians and the Contest for the American Coast (New haven: Yale University Press, 2015); Donna Merwick, The Shame and the Sorrow: Dutch-Amerindian Encounters in New Netherland (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006); Paul Otto, The Dutch-Munsee Encounter: The Struggle for Sovereignty in the Hudson Valley (New York: Berghahn Books, 2006); Tom Arne Midtrød, The Memory of All Ancient Customs: Native American Diplomacy in the Colonial Hudson Valley (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012); and of the Dutch more broadly, Mark Meuwese, Brothers in Arms, Partners in Trade: Dutch-Indigenous Alliances in the Atlantic World, 1595-1674 (Boston: Brill, 2012).

15 On Dutch trade, see Jaap Jacobs, New Netherland: A Dutch Colony in Seventeenth-Century America (Boston: Brill, 2005); Oliver A. Rink, Holland on the Hudson: An Economic and Social History of Dutch New York (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986); Dennis J. Maika, “Commerce and Community: Manhattan Merchants in the Seventeenth Century," Ph.D. diss., (New York: New York University, 1995); Janny Venema, Beverwijck: A Dutch Village on the American Frontier, 1652-1664 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003); Susanah Shaw Romney, New Netherland Connections; Wim Klooster, The Dutch Moment: War, Trade, and Settlement in the Seventeenth-Century Atlantic World (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2016).

16 David J. Silverman, Thundersticks: Firearms and the Violent Transformation of Native America (Cambridge: The Belknap Press, 2016), 21-55. For an older account, see Carl P. Russell, Guns on the Early Frontier: A History of Firearms from Colonial Times Through the Years of the Western Fur Trade (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1957). For a source on the broader Dutch arms trade, consult Jan Piet Puype and Marco van der Hoeven, eds., The

5 colonists and Mohawk natives operated within a contested space shared by powerful European and indigenous rivals. Moreover, connecting colonial events to gunpowder highlights the importance of tying events in North America to broader developments in the Atlantic World and beyond.

By analyzing gunpowder as both a commodity and tool of diplomacy, New Netherland’s role within the Dutch Atlantic and broader Dutch empire becomes especially crucial to its developments within New Netherland and by extension Iroquoia.17 In an examination of the mutually-beneficial, Dutch-Mohawk partnership, this thesis examines how the Dutch and

Mohawks slowly crumbled under the pressures of a contentious power struggle between powerful Native American groups and other European forces, when faced with the realities of a limited gunpowder supply. Examining the colonial gunpowder trade places the short tenure of

New Netherland in new light, underscoring the significance of Mohawk-Dutch relations and the importance of Native American warfare and the unpredictable fur trade that ultimately contributed to the their mutual rise and decline.

* * *

Arsenal of the World: The Dutch Arms Trade in the Seventeenth Century (Amsterdam: Batavian Lion International, 1996) and Michiel de Jong, ‘Staat van Oorlog:’Wapenbedrijf en Militaire Hervorming in de Republiek der Verenigde Nederlanden, 1585-1621 (Hilversum: Uitgeverij Verloren, 2005) [‘State of War:’ Arms Industry and Military Reform in the Dutch Republic, 1585-1621].

17 For other examples of histories centered on commodities, see Noël Deerr, History of Sugar, 2 vols. (London: Chapman and Hall, 1949); James Walvin, Fruits of Empire: Exotic Produce and British Taste, 1660-1800 (New York: New York University, 1997); Russell Menard, Sweet Negotiations: Sugar, Slavery, and Plantation Agriculture in Early Barbados (Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 2006); David Hancock, Oceans of Wine: Madeira and the Emergence of American Trade and Taste (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009); Jennifer L. Anderson, Mahogany: The Costs of Luxury in Early America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012); Jane T. Merritt, The Trouble with Tea: The Politics of Consumption in the Eighteenth-Century Global Economy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016); and Brian Fagan, Fishing: How the Sea Fed Civilization (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017).

6 As Daniel Richter once wrote, the “Iroquois used European goods and tools in distinctively native ways.”18 Following this insight, this thesis seeks to explore how the

Mohawks adopted and manipulated European gunpowder technology for their own purposes.

Building on the recent work of David Silverman, it examines the Mohawk-Dutch partnership in greater detail, in order to expand Silverman’s brilliant elucidation that the Mohawks did not decline after the advent of firearms, but mastered them, “making choices for their own futures instead of suffering as passive victims of colonial decisions, abstract economic forces, or foreign technology.”19

Yet in order to understand how Native Americans made European technology their own to the fullest extent, historians need to go one step further, by recreating the world as the

Mohawks saw it. In order to better understand the complex web of relations in the colonial northeast in which the Mohawks and Dutch operated, I have adopted the term, Ahnowahraake, as a place name for the eastern woodlands of North America in which this history takes place. In

Mohawk, Ahnowahraake (A’nowara:ke) means “on the turtle,” a concept that originates from the

Haudenosaunee Creation Myth: the myth of the Earth Grasper, also known as the Woman Who

Fell from the Sky.20 In the tradition, Sky Woman is falling violently to the earth composed entirely of water. Various animals scramble to save her, frantically sacrificing themselves to obtain dirt from the ocean floor. Muskrat succeeds, placing a clump of dirt on a floating turtle’s

18 Richter, Ordeal of the Longhouse, 83.

19 David J. Silverman, Thundersticks: Firearms and the Violent Transformation of Native America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016), 55.

20 For an excellent overview and analysis of this tradition including elements of the tradition that are uniquely Iroquoian concepts, see William N. Fenton, The Great Law and the Longhouse: A Political History of the Iroquois Confederacy (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998), 35-51. Those looking for a concise, textual narrative should consult Dean R. Snow, The Iroquois (Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, 1994), 2-4.

7 back. The turtle’s back is transformed into an island, and Sky Woman is gently carried down by geese onto it, completing the intersection of the physical and spiritual realms from which life begins.

This is how the Mohawks envisioned North America in the seventeenth century, as a giant floating turtle upon which all life existed, swaying back and forth as it navigates the cosmic waters of the universe. Ahnowahraake is a native space, a world set in motion long before

Europeans arrived. Ahnowahraake becomes a lens for historians to view the eastern woodlands of North America the way Europeans encountered it as “a network of relations and waterways containing many different groups of people… that was sustained through the constant transformative “being” of its inhabitants.”21 Reconfiguring the historical analysis of North

America as a predominantly native space in this way reveals more nuanced views of Mohawk imperial construction and intercultural exchange. The Dutch, in this instance, tried and failed to establish themselves in a native world embroiled in conflict, one the Mohawks navigated with exceptional prowess by drawing on years of cultural experience and traditions molded over generations of change. The Mohawks were more than just people of the longhouse, they were people of the canoe, utilizing lakes, rivers, and streams to exert imperial dominance over eastern

North America.

21 Lisa Brooks, The Common Pot: The Recovery of Native Space in the Northeast (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008), 3. My interpretation and use of Ahnowahraake follows a long theoretical trajectory of reclaiming (and renaming) native spaces such as Brooks’s “Common Pot” as well as Tsenacommacah and Anishinaabe. On Tsenacommacah, see Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Indians and English: Facing Off in Early America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000); Frederic Gleach, Powhatan’s World and Colonial Virginia: A Conflict of Cultures (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1997); April Lee Hatfield, Atlantic Virginia: Intercolonial Relations in the Seventeenth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004) and James D. Rice, Nature and History in the Potomac Country: From Hunter-Gatherers to the Age of Jefferson (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009). On Anishinaabe, see Michael Witgen, An Infinity of Nations: How the Native New World Shaped Early North America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012) and Michael A. McDonnell, Masters of Empire: Great Lakes Indians and the Making of North America (New York: Hill and Wang, 2015).

8 Beyond its utility in portraying the eastern woodlands of colonial North America as an inherently Native world, Ahnowahraake as a framework also stresses the importance of imperial entanglement and a shared colonial experience. Following the lead of Eliga Gould, Jorge

Cañizares-Esguerra, and others, I use Ahnowahraake as a means of shattering the rigid colonial boundaries that once were the foundation of comparative histories.22 Indeed, as this study reveals, the colonial gunpowder trade formed the conduit on an interconnected space in which the ebb and flow of Dutch, English, French, Swedish, and Native American jurisdictions moved as one, juxtaposed between two overbearing forces: the Atlantic and the heart of the continent.23

In order to explain my view of the Mohawks as a dominant force in Ahnowahraake, there are two additional elements of my analysis that must flushed out here. The first, as I have already alluded to, is my conception of the Mohawk Nation as an empire. This historiography of the

Iroquois empire begins with Lewis Henry Morgan and Francis Parkman in the nineteenth century, whose works first envisioned the Iroquois as masters of the wilderness, ruthless imperialists skulking about the eastern woodlands in search of enemies to torture and consume.24

Then in 1940, George Hunt contextualized the Iroquoian themes of declension and war into a

22 On entangled histories, see Eliga H. Gould, “Entangled Histories, Entangled Worlds: The English-Speaking Atlantic as a Spanish Periphery,” in The American Historical Review, vol. 112, no. 3 (June 2007), 764-786; Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, “Entangled Histories: Borderlands Historiographies in New Clothes?,” in The American Historical Review, vol. 112, no. 3 (June 2007), 787-799; and Gunlög Fur, “Indians and Immigrants– Entangled Histories,” in Journal of American Ethnic History, vol. 33, no. 3 (Spring 2014), 55-76.

23 For similar approaches, see Michael Witgen, An Infinity of Nations: How the Native New World Shaped Early North America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012); April Lee Hatfield, Atlantic Virginia: Intercolonial Relations in the Seventeenth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); Cynthia Van Zandt, Brothers among Nations: The Pursuit of Intercultural Alliances in Early America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); Gunlög Fur, Colonialism in the Margins: Cultural Encounters in New Sweden and Lapland (Boston: Brill, 2006) and Mark Meuwese, Brothers in Arms, Partners in Trade (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2011).

24 Lewis Henry Morgan, League of the Iroquois (Rochester: Sage and Brother, 1851). Francis Parkman immortalized Morgan’s image of the Haudenosaunee in his multi-volumed France and England in North America, 7 volumes (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1865-1892).

9 new thesis: the beaver wars.25 Economically motivated, the empire of the Five Nations now had a vision, to obtain beaver pelts by any means to trade for European goods. Finally in 1960, Allen

W. Trelease added the final link to the history of the Iroquois empire, transforming Hunt’s study within the context of English and Dutch colonization.26 Trelease maintained the framework of declension, but for the first time, “European trade and aid were indispensable components of

Iroquois greatness.”27

For a moment, scholars appeared to be closing in on the more familiar concepts of indigenous autonomy and agency used today. The publication of Francis Jennings’s The

Ambiguous Iroquois Empire, however, took the scholarship in a different direction.28 Morgan’s

“empire for the Iroquois never existed.”29 In its place, Jennings inserted the Covenant Chain, diminishing the imperial reach of the Five Nations to an ancillary extension of English hegemony in North America, and thereby reducing the Iroquois into a state of perpetual dependence, devoid of an independent political identity. Finally, in 1987 a collection of essays edited by Daniel K. Richter and James H. Merrell hit the final nail in the coffin, confiscating empire from the Haudenosaunee once and for all, albeit in a fashion that posed more questions

25 George Hunt, The Wars of the Iroquois: A Study in Intertribal Trade Relations (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1940), for a basic trajectory of the beaver wars theory, see Allen W. Trelease, “The Iroquois and the Western Fur Trade: A Problem of Interpretation,” in The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, vol. 49, no. 1 (June 1962), 32-51; Bruce G. Trigger, “The Mohawk-Mahican War (1624-1628): The Establishment of a Pattern,” in Canadian Historical Review 52 (1971), 276-286; and William A Starna and José António Brandão, “From the Mohawk-Mahican War to the Beaver Wars: Questioning the Pattern,” in Ethnohistory, vol. 51, no. 4 (Fall 2004), 725-750.

26 Allen W. Trelease, Indian Affairs in Colonial New York: The Seventeenth Century (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1960).

27 Trelease, Indian Affairs, 24.

28 Francis Jennings, The Ambiguous Iroquois Empire: The Covenant Chain Confederation of Indian Tribes with English Colonies (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1984).

29 Jennings, The Ambiguous Iroquois Empire, xvii.

10 than it answered.30 Together, these scholars compiled the most in-depth analysis of the Iroquois of the time, forcing scholars to build a new theoretical framework from which to understand

Iroquois history.

Daniel K. Richter’s The Ordeal of the Longhouse answered it beautifully.31 Following the example of Merrell’s The Indians’ New World, Richter chronicled the history of the

Haudenosaunee in a continual state of regression and renewal, adapting to the trials and tribulations of seventeenth-century North America in order to preserve their cultural identity and autonomy.32 Richter’s monograph has since remained the standard work on the Haudenosaunee, and has had a powerful influence on the progression of the field ever since. While other scholars including Matthew Dennis and José António Brandão have subsequently published important contributions to today’s perception of the Iroquois, none have matched the impact of Richter’s magisterial work.33

After a revolution of sorts in Native American history, however, the great chain of

Iroquois history seemed in need of repair, so that by 2010, it appears historians had already begun to take Iroquois history in a new direction. Jon Parmenter, David L. Preston, and Gail D.

MacLeitch, among others, put forth studies “positioning native people as central actors” in order

30 Richter and Merrell, Beyond the Covenant Chain.

31 Daniel K. Richter, The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European Colonization (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1992).

32 James H. Merrell, The Indians’ New World: Catawbas and Their Neighbors from European Contact through the Era of Removal (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1989).

33 Dennis persuasively dismantled the idea of the Haudenosaunee as warmongers, while Brandão compiled substantial evidence to refute the long-accepted beaver wars thesis. Matthew Dennis, Cultivating a Landscape of Peace: Iroquois-European Encounters in Seventeenth-Century America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993); José António Brandão, “Your Fyre Shall Burn No More: Iroquois Policy toward New France and its Native Allies to 1701 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1997).

11 to enhance the trajectory of survival, what Edward Countryman has recently broken down into

“four successive historical situations in which the Iroquois found themselves compelled to take part:” the seventeenth century; a period of development situated between the Great Peace of

Montreal and the beginnings of the Seven Years’ War; the imperial crisis and American

Revolution; and the foundation of the early American republic leading up to the Civil War.34

These recent studies, combined with the Mohawk (and Haudenosaunee) traditions established in older works, suggest in my view, that the empire the Iroquois was not so ambiguous. In the same ways that the Comanche, Powhatan, Anishinaabeg, or Quapaws dictated the course of their relationships with Europeans, so too did the Mohawks with the Dutch.

Invoking the precursor to what would become the basis of the Covenant Chain agreement later formed with the English and French, the Mohawks implemented an alliance framework called kaswentha or “Two Row.”35 First put into practice with the Dutch, kaswentha in theory symbolized “a separate but equal relationship between two entities based on mutual benefit and noninterference.”36 Although the relationship between the Mohawks and Dutch did not always pan out this way, it is nonetheless important that the Mohawks routinely chastised the Dutch when their actions broke kaswentha protocol. Kaswentha thus formed the basis of how the

34 Jon Parmenter, The Edge of the Woods: Iroquoia 1534-1701 (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2010); David L. Preston, The Texture of Contact: European and Indian Settler Communities on the Frontiers of Iroquoia, 1667-1783 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009); Gail D. MacLeitch, Imperial Entanglements: Iroquois change and persistence on the frontiers of empire (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011); Edward Countryman, “Review: Toward a Different Iroquois History,” in The William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 69, no. 2 (April 2012), 347-360, 358.

35 Parmenter, Edge of the Woods, 24.

36 Parmenter, Edge of the Woods, 24. For a deeper analysis on the origins of kaswentha, see Jon Parmenter, “The Meaning of Kaswentha and the Two Row Wampum Belt in Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) History: Can Indigenous Oral Tradition be Reconciled with the Documentary Record?,” in Journal of Early American History, vol. 3, no. 1 (2013), 82-109.

12 Mohawks absorbed Europeans into their space and forced them to accommodate their own customs, traditions, and ambitions regardless of whether or not the Dutch consented. The

Mohawks dominated Ahnowahraake, and as the Dutch quickly realized, Europeans did not. The strategy implemented by the Mohawks–who continually insisted that the trade in gunpowder belonged within the framework of diplomacy established by kaswentha–worked.

By the 1660s, the Mohawk-Dutch partnership proceeded to deteriorate under the mounting aggression of neighboring Europeans and Native Americans, no longer incapable of carrying out protective countermeasures. While English settlers increasingly penetrated New

Netherland’s borders, Indians from New England, New France, and the Delaware River Valley initiated disparate retaliatory offensives into Iroquoia. Together, the disparate movements crippled the Mohawks and Dutch at a time of increased vulnerability, created from the inability to recover from years of war that strained resources and population numbers. The Mohawks and

Dutch suffered a mutual political decline, culminating in the loss of New Netherland to the

English and a Mohawk Nation in recoil. The Mohawks would rise again; the Dutch would not.

Central to all of this, was gunpowder. Through the context of the colonial arms trade, with special attention to gunpowder, this thesis examines the transformation of this intercultural symbiosis from separate factions to brothers in arms “joined together with chains.”37 These

Mohawk-Dutch encounters and negotiations, dictated by the need for gunpowder and pelts, reveal a distinct arc of intertwined fates, outlining their shared rise, peak, and decline within a world embroiled in conflict. The first Dutch observers might have described North America as “a blessed country, where milk and honey flow,” but in reality, these initial European traders

37 “Extraordinary Session held in Fort Orange by both courts to hear the propositions made by the Maquaes [Mohawks], this 6th of September Anno 1659,” FOCM, 453.

13 encountered a volatile landscape stricken by indigenous discord.38 These Native American contests for power and autonomy, notably those between the Haudenosaunee and their surrounding neighbors, conjured a vortex that inevitably swallowed the Dutch whole. To be sure,

New Netherland’s relationship with the Mohawks was unsustainable, but it was also unavoidable.

38 Jacobs uses this phrase to illustrate how initial Dutch observations of North America came from traders, highlighting that Dutch colonists were interested primarily in the exploitation of the land’s resources, but also that like other Europeans, they conceived of North America in terms that did not consider the impact of Native Americans. Jacobs, New Netherland, 1-44.

14 CHAPTER ONE

THE MOHAWKS’ OLD WORLD: THE BEGINNINGS OF THE MOHAWK-DUTCH PARTNERSHIP, 1534-1639

Introduction

Most histories of Iroquois-Dutch relations begin with Henry Hudson’s infamous voyage in 1609; this one does not. Ahnowahraake was a world set in motion long before the arrival of de

Halve Maen and the waves of Dutch traders that followed its wake. Traditionally, this moment has been described in the context of encounters, a potential first contact between the Native

Americans of the Hudson Valley and Europeans, immortalized in the context of discovering a new world.

1 Yet the actions of these indigenous groups described in the records paint a different picture.

Upon sailing within the vicinity of Castle Island near modern-day Albany, Indians believed to have been Mohicans met Hudson’s crew ready to trade beaver and otter pelts for “Beades,

Knives, and Hatchets,” although no documented voyages had come remotely close to Mohican territory since Giovanni Verrazano’s peripheral visit almost a century earlier.2 Because of the entangled indigenous networks of Ahnowahraake, the Mohawks and their neighbors were well-

1 Juet, NNN, 36-60.

2 Juet, NNN, 49; Evan Haefeli, “On First Contact and Apotheosis,” Ethnohistory 54, no. 3 (July 2007): 429. Not to be confused with Mohegans, historians have traditionally spelled the Mohicans as is or as “Mahicans.” I use the spelling of Mohican consistent with how present-day Mohicans have chosen to be federally registered. For more information on the Mohicans, see HNAI 15: 212-228.

15 acquainted with Europeans and their goods long before European traders entered the Hudson

Valley. Indeed, the world that Hudson’s crew encountered in 1609 was in fact quite old.

Bringing Mohawk history to the fore reveals a nuanced interpretation of how events in the first years of Dutch trade and settlement unfolded. By pulling back into the sixteenth century, when we first see Mohawk responses to European trade goods as well as the preexisting geopolitical rivalries set in place, historians may rediscover patterns of continuity otherwise not visible, which influenced Mohawk objectives and actions in the seventeenth century. This simple understanding, then, suggests the initial encounters between the Mohawks and Dutch traders are more complex than historians have previously believed.

When grounded in the deeper history of Ahnowahraake, Mohawk responses to Dutch trade and settlement become more pronounced, adding depth to the shallow areas of the historiography of Mohawk-Dutch relations traditionally defined by moments such as the construction of Fort Nassau, the Mohawk-Mohican War, and the “beaver wars” of the 1630s.

These events can be seen quite differently when considered in the context of entanglement, the unseen ties that bound the Dutch to a world entrenched in Native American rivalries and conflicts they could only begin to understand. Ahnowahraake was no edenic paradise ripe with the fruits of profit, but an old world over which the Mohawks exhibited incredible influence over, a blanketing cloud of manipulation and power under which the Dutch quickly fell.

The Sixteenth Century

Mohawk responses to the advent of European trade date back well into the sixteenth century. As European fishermen of the North Atlantic began probing the coastline near the

16 mouth of the St. Lawrence River, these Laurentian Iroquois–and their Algonquian neighbors– proved more than willing to resupply European food stores in exchange for metal goods. The bulk of these encounters took place in or around the flourishing trade center of Tadoussac, but occurred as far away as Newfoundland.3 Tadoussac’s location across the St. Lawrence River from Île aux Basques provided European mariners the unique opportunity to carry out usual business in a centralized location from which they could reprovision themselves while also touching into indigenous trade circles. By the late sixteenth century, European traffic to

Tadoussac reached close to 100 ships a year.4

The Laurentian Iroquois, Algonquians, and Montagnais benefited immensely, usually carrying off superior metal tools in exchange for provisions. A growing consciousness of the potential profit of the fur trade, driven by the increased demand for beaver hats in Europe, gradually led to a growing number of European vessels sailing to the St. Lawrence valley in subsequent years. In the interim, while European mariners continued to take advantage of the trade at Tadoussac, others began exploring the coastal interior for resources and a potential route to the East Indies. This was precisely what Francis I of France instructed Jacques Cartier to do in

1534.5 Cartier reached the Gulf of St. Lawrence in 1535, and his accounts provide the first documented accounts of Iroquoian peoples.

3 W. J. Eccles, The French in North America, 1500-1783 (Markham, Ont.: Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 1998), 13-15; Jon Parmenter, The Edge of the Woods, 11-12; Sam White, A Cold Welcome: The Little ice Age and Europe’s Encounter with North America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2017), 209-211. Archaeological evidence including Iroquoian ceramics have been found at Basque Newfoundland sites; Claude Chapdelaine and Gregory G. Kennedy, “The Origin of the Iroquoian Rim Sherd from Red Bay,” in Man in the Northeast, vol. 40 (1990), 41-43.

4 Parmenter, The Edge of the Woods, 13; White, A Cold Welcome, 204-205.

5 White, A Cold Welcome, 189.

17 The Mohawks, too, quickly developed an interest in the new European trade goods that gradually flowed into the interior. Archaeological evidence reveals the arrival of trade goods from Tadoussac into Iroquoia by the mid-sixteenth century. Exotic glass and metal objects, found in grave sites located as far west as Seneca territory, illustrate a clear map of the complex web of indigenous trade connections sprawling inward across the continent upon which the

Mohawks initially relied.6 For them, items such as glass beads or copper kettles possessed spiritual qualities congruent with the traditional appreciation for wampum. Like wampum, the

Mohawks revered these objects for their orenda, “a supernatural force inherent in shiny objects that seemed to come from outside the natural world.”7 The increased practicality and spiritual value of these new European goods drove a gradual demand for more among the Mohawks and their neighbors. As a result, by 1550 the Laurentian Iroquois benefitted as middlemen in a burgeoning indigenous trade system between Iroquoia and Tadoussac which–along with the trade axis developing out of the Chesapeake–became one of two “key axes of human, material,

6 The discovery of a singular fragment of brass or copper at the Mohawk site, Garoga (1525-1545), suggests there had been a fairly limited, but accessible connection to European trade goods by the time of the site’s abandonment in 1545; James W. Bradley, Before Albany: An Archaeology of Native-Dutch Relations in the Capital Region 1600- 1664 (Albany, N.Y.: New York State Museum, 2007), 14-15. Daniel K. Richter, Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European Colonization (Chapel Hill: Omohundro Institute and University of North Carolina, 1992), 52; Charles Wray and Harry L. Schoff, “A Preliminary Report on the Seneca Sequence in Western New York, 1550-1687,” in Pennsylvania Archaeologist, vol. 23, no. 2 (July 1953), 53-63.

7 Richter, Ordeal of the Longhouse, 52; Christopher L. Pastore, Between Land and Sea: The Atlantic Coast and the Transformation of New England (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2014), 30. Anthropologist George Hamell has argued that sixteenth-century Native Americans valued European goods based on the cultural significance of specific colors in their religions, but others have since contended that some utilitarian qualities were still valued to some degree. See George R. Hamell, “Strawberries, Floating Islands, and Rabbit Captains: Mythical Realities and European Contact in the Northeast During the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” in Canadian Studies Review, vol. 21, no. 4 (Winter 1986/87), 72-94. For a brief rebuttal, see Haefeli, “On First Contact and Apotheosis,” 425. For ways in which sixteenth-century Iroquoian peoples manipulated European products to create new Native material goods, such as fashioning traditional earrings out of brass, see James W. Bradley and S. Terry Childs, “Basque Earrings and Panther’s Tails: The Form of Cross-Cultural Contact in Sixteenth-Century Iroquoia,” in Archaeology of the Iroquois: Selected Readings and Research Sources, ed. Jordan E. Kerber (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2007), 290-305.

18 and informational movement during the early contact period of Iroquois history.”8 As both axes continued to expand, the Mohawks found themselves–as historian Jon Parmenter argues– increasingly isolated after 1560, a decline possibly related to the severe drought that fell upon much of North America at the time.9

In addition to the growing fear of isolation, the Mohawks grew increasingly concerned over a developing alliance between the Europeans and their northern rivals, the Montagnais,

Algonquins and Wendats (Hurons). The Montagnais benefitted the most. The growing French presence at Tadoussac enabled the Montagnais to act as middlemen, controlling the inward flow of goods to their allies located deeper in Ahnowahraake.10 The Mohawks, longstanding enemies of the Montagnais, feared the repercussions of this newfound French connection the Montagnais had cultivated. Unsatisfied with their limited access to European goods via the Laurentian

Iroquois, the Mohawks aggressively pursued direct trade access to Tadoussac, relieving themselves of their dependence on the Laurentian Iroquois while simultaneously threatening the control over the area exerted by their Montagnais enemies.11

Just around the time the Mohawks began a forceful push towards Tadoussac, the

Laurentian Iroquois dispersed. Exploring the vacant lands once occupied by the Laurentian

Iroquois in 1608, Champlain remarked the Indians “abandoned them on account of the frequent

8 Parmenter, Edge of the Woods, 12.

9 Parmenter, The Edge of the Woods, 13-14. On the Megadrought that hit eastern North America by 1560, see David W. Stable and Jeffrey S. Dean, “North American Tree Rings, Climatic Extremes, and Social Disasters,” in, Dendroclimatology: Progress and Prospects (Developments in Paleoenvironmental Research, vol. 11), ed. M. K. Hughes (New York: Springer, 2010), 313-315, see especially Figure 10.12.

10 Bruce Trigger, The Children of Aataentsic: A History of the Huron People to 1660, 2 volumes (Montreal: McGill- Queen’s University Press, 1976), 1: 208-214.

11 The Montagnais allowed their Algonquin neighbors access to trade in exchange for defensive support against Mohawk onslaughts, Parmenter, The Edge of the Woods, 13.

19 wars which they carried on there” and “out of fear for the enemies.”12 Historians have since debated possible reasons for the dispersal of the Laurentian Iroquois, including disease, migration, and war. Presently, the consensus is the Laurentian Iroquois is a combination of the three, with most of their population believed to have been absorbed by other Iroquoian peoples, the Wendats and Mohawks.13 For the Mohawks, absorbing the Laurentian Iroquois refugees into their communities solved multiple problems. On the one hand, the culturally and linguistically similar Laurentian Iroquois were easier to incorporate into Mohawk society. On the other, overlapping Laurentian territory gave the Mohawks better access to trade with the French, who had established a trading post at Tadoussac by 1600.14

French efforts to entrench their presence in the St. Lawrence valley negated any advantages the Mohawk gained from absorbing Laurentian Iroquois communities. Their incipient alliance with the Montagnais, made clear by their new trading post at Tadoussac, was a dark omen for the future of Mohawk trade ambitions in the St. Lawrence valley. Committed to keeping the Mohawks out of Laurentian trade, the Montagnais sent two diplomats to the court of

King Henri IV in 1602, brokering for a military alliance. Having foreseen the advantages of a

Franco-Algonquin union for the advancement of the fur trade, Henri agreed to assist the

Montagnais in making peace. His commitment to maintain a French presence in North America however, meant war was not off the table. The two diplomats, accompanied by a Champlain-led

12 Champlain, Works, II: 176; III: 59.

13 Notwithstanding more recent works that have touched on the subject, the best historiographic discussion of the disappearance of the Laurentian Iroquois remains Trigger, Children of Aataentsic, 1: 214-228. For more recent approaches to their disappearance, see John P. Hart, Jennifer Birch, and Christian Gates St-Pierre, “Effects of Population Dispersal on Regional Signaling Networks: An Example from Northern Iroquoia,” in Science Advances (August 2017), 1-11.

14 Parmenter, Edge of the Woods, 18; White, A Cold Welcome, 190-192; Eccles, The French in North America, 13- 15.

20 convoy, returned to North America the following year to make peace with the Iroquois, but the negotiations went sour fast.15 The Mohawks wanted access to Tadoussac; the Montagnais would not allow it. The French kept their word, and Champlain promised to send for additional forces.

In the interim, a treaty was struck with the Montagnais, Algonquins, and Eastern Abenaki. For every inch the French advanced towards control of the fur trade, the Mohawks lost a mile.16

By either good fortune or adept observation, the French quickly established themselves in the Laurentian trade axis, effectively dipping their hands into the highest quality fur market while also obtaining a post in a newly formed northern alliance. The Montagnais were keen to protect their profitable position as middlemen for themselves and went great lengths to secure it.

In 1603, an invitation sent to the Kichesipirini Algonquins was well-received when their headman, Tessouat entered the walls of Tadoussac, ready to trade with the French in exchange for military assistance against the Mohawks and their Iroquoian allies. As a result of their inability to secure a direct trade line, the Mohawks resorted to perpetual raids against the

Algonquins to obtain metal goods, forcing the French to take the side of the Algonquins and

Montagnais in the ensuing rift.17

An alliance with the Montagnais gave the Algonquins the defensive strength they desperately needed. In addition to partnering with the Montagnais, they also sought out an alliance with the Hurons, who intended to utilize their Algonquin connections to establish their own tradelines with the French, which would make the Hurons middlemen for furs coming from

15 Parmenter, Edge of the Woods, 18-19; White, A Cold Welcome, 212-213; Trigger, Children of Aataentsic, 1: 229- 231.

16 Parmenter, Edge of the Woods, 18-19; Trigger, Children of Aataentsic, 1: 221-224.

17 Trigger, Children of Aataentsic, 1: 231-233.

21 the interior of the continent.18 Traditionally, the Laurentian Iroquois hold over the St. Lawrence

River forced the Montagnais and Algonquins to continue utilizing the older trade routes of sixteenth-century copper goods that connected Tadoussac to the Great Lakes region via a long arch following the trajectory of the Saguenay River and St. Jean basin, the line of which can be traced today by the modern settlements of the region.19 The incoming tidal wave of furs rushing towards the French meant a stronger presence in Canada would be required especially in order to transform the St. Lawrence River into a central artery for the flow of trade. The disappearance of the Laurentian Iroquois conveniently provided the French with an empty space from which they could seamlessly enter Ahnowahraake, further impeding Mohawk efforts to establish control over St. Lawrence trade routes while strengthening their northern Indian rivals.

The French blockade against Mohawk advances into the St. Lawrence continued in 1608 when Champlain erected a small fort at Quebec, only a short distance from the abandoned site of

Stadacona.20 Thus a well-fortified French presence was established at the heart of the St.

Lawrence valley, and the river was opened up to trade, now well-protected from the Basques,

Spanish, and the private French traders in the area.21 Later that year, Champlain confirmed he would assist an Algonquin war party in an upcoming expedition against the Iroquois, with whom the Algonquins “had long been at war, on account of many cruelties practised against their tribe

18 Champlain Works, 1:107-109; HNAI 15: 347.

19 Marcel Trudel, The Beginnings of New France, 1524-1663 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1973), 72-73.

20 Parmenter, The Edge of the Woods, 19.

21 Quebec’s construction was not without resistance, with the plans nearly compromised by a rogue locksmith, Jean Duval. Duval’s actions demonstrate the perceived significance to vying European factions of an established French presence in North America. Trudel, The Beginnings of New France, 1524-1663, 94; Parmenter, The Edge of the Woods, 18.

22 under the colour of friendship.”22 “Having ever since desired vengeance,” the Algonquins were ready to shift the balance of power to themselves and their new Wendat and French allies.23 In

Champlain’s mind, this provided the perfect chance to earn the trust of his new trade partners, while also enabling the further exploration of the interior with native protection.

The events that followed mark the beginning of a new era in Native American warfare. In

1609, Champlain and his men accompanied a war party of Montagnais, Wendats, and

Algonquins into Iroquoia. The coalition encountered a Mohawk war party off the shore of Lake

Champlain. While the sachems of both sides deliberated on when to fight, Champlain and his men remained concealed in their canoes, evading detection by Mohawk eyes. Both parties agreed to fight at dawn, and through the night the French remained hidden, never once giving the

Mohawks reason to suspect their presence. The battle lasted only seconds. Within the blink of an eye, Champlain’s arquebuses gunned down two Mohawk chiefs, and mortally wounded a third.24

Bewildered by the thunderous noise and immediate loss of their leaders, the Mohawk warriors fled, even leaving their shields behind.25

Historians have traditionally used this moment to describe two related, but distinct trajectories: the beginnings of a long and bitter rivalry between the French and the Five Nations and the deadly impact of European firearms on technologically inferior Native American peoples.26 As David Silverman has argued, however, this analysis is incomplete when one

22 Parmenter, The Edge of the Woods, 19; Champlain Works, 2: 68-69..

23 Champlain Works, 2: 69.

24 Roger Carpenter, “Making War More Lethal: Iroquois vs. Huron in the Great Lakes Region, 1609 to 1650,” in Michigan Historical Review, vol. 27, no. 2 (Fall 2001), pp. 33-51; 33.

25 Carpenter, “Making War More Lethal,” 34.

26 Carpenter, “Making War More Lethal,” 33.

23 considers the broader trajectory of Indians’ assessment and adoption of firearms. “The ironic result of the colonists’ superiority in firearms,” Silverman explains, “was the Indians’ so-called skulking way of war, which plagued Euro-American society throughout the colonial era.”27

Indeed, this “Champlain thesis” as Silverman calls it, was not paradigmatic as a moment from which Native Americans collectively declined in an inevitably deterministic pattern akin to Jared

Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel.28 Instead, we see a transformative saga in which Native

American groups such as the Mohawks embraced gunpowder technology. This short encounter marked the beginning of a new era in Iroquois (and Native American) warfare, setting in motion the gradual transition of the Mohawks to gunpowder technology that would gain traction in the coming decades. This gunpowder was Dutch in origin, but it was the Mohawks that make the most of its power.

The destructive power of gunpowder technology forced Native Americans to design new military strategies. The technological advantages of firearms gave Indians with first access a quick advantage over rivals who lacked them.29 Up until then, battles were fought with relatively few casualties. Traditional armor and shields provided adequate protection from arrowheads, but quickly proved useless against musket balls and shrapnel. The Iroquois’ early entrance into a

Native American arms race allowed them to advance through enemy territory with relative ease.

Their ambitions drew from a combination of forces: the need for adopted captives, hunting grounds, beaver skins, and the glowing opportunity to subjugate their ancient rivals once and for

27 Silverman, Thundersticks, 23.

28 Silverman, Thundersticks, 23; Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1999).

29 Recent scholarship has found these indigenous power dynamics created by firearms are not exclusive to the northeast. See Paul Kelton, Epidemics and Enslavement: Biological Catastrophe in the Native Southeast, 1492-1715 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 2007), 102-143.

24 all.30 As we shall see, the inability to make gunpowder themselves left the Mohawks dependent on access to European traders, a need the Dutch would fill in return for beavers. In this way, Fort

Orange would become a portal to the international arms market, and one the Mohawks sought to reserve for themselves.

The Governor Called Jacques

News of Hudson’s voyage caught the attention of many merchant capitalists in

Amsterdam and a scramble ensued for merchants seeking to establish themselves in the burgeoning fur trade. In 1611, the Van Tweenhuysen Company (VTC) dispatched the St. Pieter to the New World.31 In 1613 or 1614 a crude trading post was erected on Castle Island near present-day Albany. The post’s construction, and the decisions of some men to stay behind and maintain it, was likely the VTC’s response to increased merchant competition in the area.32 After a brief period of hostility, the separate companies conceded “transatlantic ventures could only yield profits if the purchase prices for beaver pelts were kept down and the costs of maintaining a small fort could be shared.”33 The directors of the four companies petitioned for a monopoly, and

30 Carpenter, “Making War More Lethal,” 50-51.

31 Jacobs speculates the merchant vessels of Hendrick Christiansen and Adriaen Block sailed alongside as supercargoes, but other sources suggest Christiansen might have made earlier trips; Jacobs, New Netherland, 32.

32 By 1614, Christiansen and his men found themselves in competition with the Hans Claesz, Hoorn, and Amsterdam Companies. The routine undercutting of beaver prices that ensued and the appearance of the Northern Company, a whaling company, made turning a profit for the fur trade companies exceedingly difficult. Jacobs, “Early Dutch Explorations in North America,” Journal of Early American History 3, no. 1 (January 2013): 59-64; Jacobs, New Netherland, 32-34.

33 Jacobs, “Early Dutch Explorations in North America,” 65.

25 by October the companies had amalgamated into the New Netherland Company.34 The protection from rival merchants however, did not make the process of familiarizing themselves with the Indians any easier.

Although the economically-minded Dutch were not compelled to record the details of their relationship with the Indigenous groups, Haudenosaunee oral traditions place great importance on this period in the formation of their alliance with the Dutch and a “governor called

Jacques.”35 In 1678 for instance, a delegation of Onondagas recalled, to the English officials at

Albany, the beginnings of the “Ancient Brotherhood” that emerged “from the first Instance of

Navagation being in use here (at the Time of a Govr Called Jacques) & hath continued to the

Time of Old Corlaer & from Old Corlaer to his Present Excely.”36 Historians do not know definitively who Jacques was, but his perpetual resurgence in the oral traditions calls attention to his importance to the Haudenosaunee.37 For the Mohawks and their Kanosoni brethren, personal relationships were essential to the nature of gift-giving and their partnership with Europeans,

Dutch and English. Inquiries into the mysterious figure of Jacques could potentially illuminate the context behind the Mohawk-Dutch alliance, and perhaps answer questions regarding what both groups expected of each other.

34 This monopoly was granted on the basis of “first discovery” and was exclusive to the area between the fortieth and forty-fifth parallels which did not include the Delaware River. The States General awarded the company permission to undertake four voyages within the next three years effective January 1. Jacobs, “Early Dutch Explorations in North America,” 65.

35 Richter, “Undiscovered Links in the Covenant Chain,” 45-46.

36 Richter, “Rediscovered Links in the Covenant Chain,” 48. Van Wassenaer refers to Eelckens as ‘Jacques’ in a description of Eelcken’s incident with a sachem in 1622, Jacobs, “Early Dutch Explorations in North America,” 70.

37 Richter, “Rediscovered Links in the Covenant Chain,” 48-49.

26 The most convincing case put forth by Richter and others suggests ‘Jacques’ must have been none other than Jacob Jacobsen Eelckens, a Dutch mariner whose career involved ventures for several fur trading companies and is also believed to have spent considerable time with the natives.38 Born in Amsterdam in 1593, and then relocated to Rouen around 1600, Eelckens grew up exposed to the rising merchant culture of the burgeoning fur trade.39 His career began as a merchant clerk, but by twenty one years of age he was a skipper of a supercargo accompanying

Christiansen to North America for the VTC.40 Historians have assumed Eelckens was one of the company men to stay behind on Castle Island following the construction of the trading post.41 Of the group known to have remained, we know there were at least six and can name four of them:

Esker Annes, Dirck Claesz, Cornelis Hendricksen, and a man called ‘Kleyntjen,’ or ‘shorty.’42 It is possible Eelckens was present as well, but likely not until after 1615 since his first mention in the record comes from July 1614, referencing his return to Amsterdam with Christiansen.43 Hart implies Eelckens returned to North America in 1615 as a member of the New Netherland

Company and resumed command of the trading post on Castle Island then.44 We do not know

38 Richter, Ordeal of the Longhouse, 87-89; Parmenter, The Edge of the Woods, 22-24.

39 Simon Hart, The Prehistory of the New Netherland Company, Amsterdam Notarial Records of the First Dutch Voyages to the Hudson (City of Amsterdam, 1959), 54. See also, Willem Frijhoff, “Jacob Eelkens Revisited: A Young Franco-Dutch Entrepreneur in the New World”, in De Halve Maen, vol. 88, no. 1 (Spring 2015).

40 Hart, Prehistory, 54.

41 Richter, Ordeal of the Longhouse, 87-89.

42 Jacobs, “Early Dutch Explorations in North America,” 65.

43 Jacobs, “Early Dutch Explorations in North America,” 70.

44 Hart, Prehistory, 55.

27 when he left the post, but it must have been around the time the Hudson washed away the trading post in 1617, since Eelckens was sailing for a new company on a new ship in 1618.45

This account of Eelckens goes against some of the assumptions historians have made of his involvement in North America thus far. These discrepancies in the narrative can be attributed largely to the fascination with a dubious treaty, and also to a deposition made by Eelckens to

English officials in 1633 in which he claims to have lived “foure years” with the Indians.46

Historians have used this information to argue Eelckens must have lived on Castle Island from the construction of the post between 1613/14 and its destruction in 1617, but no records exist to confirm this. Their willingness to accept it relates directly to the treaty Eelckens is said to have authored.

The treaty aforementioned, is most commonly known as the “Tawagonshi Treaty,” a trade pact alleged to have been drawn up by Eelckens and Christiansen and signed by representatives of the Mohawk, Oneida, and Onondaga. Both sides are believed to have commemorated the accord per their own customs. The European traders had the written document, while the Iroquois responded with a gift of wampum, signifying the beginning of what has become known as the “Two-Row Tradition,” or kaswentha. The meeting is said to have followed the construction of the Dutch trading post, but the rest is unclear. The document has been purported by certain parties to carry significance as the first documented treaty between the

Dutch and the Iroquois as well as that between Indigenous peoples and Europeans in North

45 On the disintegration of the New Netherland Company, see Jacobs, New Netherland, 34-37.

46 On the “Tawagonshi Treaty,” see below. The deposition can be found in DRCHNY 1: 39-81, “7 November 1633.” Quote on page 80. Disagreement over native access to the Hudson River has led some historians to believe that Mohawk relations with the Dutch during these early years were unlikely, given they had to travel through hostile Mohican territory. Newer archaeological evidence has since come forward to suggest the Mohawks and potentially other Iroquois groups had been in contact with the Dutch since 1611. Parmenter, The Edge of the Woods, 22.

28 America. While historians may continue to debate the legitimacy of this document, others must now revisit this formative period with the tools necessary to revise our understanding of what happened, a process that inevitably includes the daunting task of separating assumptions from fact.47 Multiple arguments have been made to demonstrate that a treaty drawn between the Dutch and Iroquois is unlikely, but this does not mean a ceremony intended to serve such a purpose did not occur. Eelckens, nor any other Dutch trader in the Hudson Valley at the time, possessed permission from the States General to conduct treaty negotiations. More likely than not,

Eelckens orchestrated an agreement facilitated via an exchange of goods. A presentation of metal goods and cloth to the Mohawks and/or Mohicans for the right to build on their land would have followed Dutch protocol in other parts of the world in establishing trade relations, while the

Mohawks would have understood this moment as a ceremonious gesture to a new mutually- beneficial partnership that could level the balance of power with their Montagnais-French enemies.48

47 The history of the “Tawagonshi Treaty” begins with the work of a once prominent Dutch historian, L. G. Van Loon, who first brought light to the document (in his possession) in “Tawagonshi, the beginning of the Treaty Era,” The Indian Historian, Vol. 1, no. 1 (December 1967), 22-26. This publication went largely unnoticed by specialists, but nonetheless caught the attention of the emerging scholar Daniel K. Richter, who used the document as suggestive evidence in his article, “Rediscovered Links in the Covenant Chain: Previously Unpublished Transcripts of New York Indian Treaty Minutes, 1677-1691,” 51-52. Some years later, Charles T. Gehring, William A. Starna, and William N. Fenton jointly published, “The Tawagonshi Treaty of 1613: The Final Chapter,” in New York History, Vol. 68, No. 4 (October 1987), 373-393. The well-known Dutch and Iroquois specialists assessed the likelihood of such a document and firmly concluded the document in Van Loon’s possession to be a fake with the additional hope of shutting down any further discussion on the matter. Richter had since recanted any faith in the document’s authenticity in Ordeal of the Longhouse, 323n19, but other parties including Van Loon and Vernon Benjamin (see Benjamin, “The Tawagonshi Agreement of 1613: A Chain of Friendship in the Dutch Hudson Valley,” in The Hudson Valley Regional Review 16, no. 2 (1999)) continued to profess it, leading to an initiative of the Two Row Renewal Campaign that resulted in another intense debate over the document’s authenticity, resuming with Gehring and Starna, ““Revisiting the Fake Tawagonshi Treaty of 1613,” New York History 90 (Winter 2012), pp. 95-101.This debate has been sufficiently summarized and addressed in a special issue of a scholarly journal: “Early Iroquoian-European Contacts: The Kaswentha Tradition, the Two Row Wampum Belt, and the Tawagonshi Document, 2013,” Journal of Early American History Vol. 3, No. 1 (2013) and the reader is encouraged to peruse the articles there that collectively assert the fraudulence of Van Loon and the document from multiple angles including linguistic analysis, assessing Dutch trade patterns, and the anachronisms against the oral traditions.

48 Meuwese, “The States General and the Stadholder,” 58; Wim Klooster, The Dutch Moment, 238, 393n163.

29 That Eelckens and Christiansen drafted any type of diplomatic treaty document with the local indigenous peoples is unlikely on multiple counts that highlight the importance of understanding these initial encounters within their proper contexts. Neither Eelckens nor

Christiansen likely exhibited the literary skills required to draft such a document.49 Indeed, as skippers of private trade vessels, neither possessed the authority from the States General to execute diplomatic functions. Such would have been unnecessary anyway given the lack of other external threats to the local geopolitical structure like an Iberian presence in the area.50 An ability to conduct matters of international diplomacy would serve no benefit to merchants in the

Hudson, who continued to exercise business on behalf of themselves and their respective companies.51 Moreover, cultivating a direct relationship with the Iroquois at this time would not have been a priority given the willingness of other Hudson Valley native groups to trade. The drawing up of treaties and desire to establish alliances with local communities was atypical for

Dutch trading, based on previous experiences in other parts of the world including South

America and Africa.52 This is not to say however, that Eelckens did not contribute to the formation of the Mohawk-Dutch partnership. The evidence available suggests he did.53

Looking at this period from a Mohawk perspective helps explain the discrepancies between the written record and oral traditions over the involvement of men like Eelckens. That

49 Hermkens, Noordegraaf, and van der Sijs, “The Tawagonshi Tale: Can Linguistic Analysis Prove the Tawagonshi Treaty to Be a Forgery?” Journal of Early American History 3, no. 1 (January 2013): 26.

50 Mark Meuwese, “The States General and the Stadholder: Dutch Diplomatic Practices in the Atlantic World before the West India Company,” Journal of Early American History 3, no. 1 (January 2013): 57.

51 Jacobs, “Early Dutch Explorations in North America,” 70.

52 Klooster, The Dutch Moment, 234-238.

53 For a nuanced study on treaties and their significance to Native Americans, see Jeffrey Glover, Paper Sovereigns: Anglo-Native Treaties and the Law of Nations, 1604-1664 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2014).

30 the only mention of the “governor called Jacques” stems from the oral history, demonstrates the differing expectations the Mohawks held for their new foreign neighbors. In the immediate sense, the arrivals of the Dutch and English would have given the Iroquois a useful counterbalance in their quarrels with the French in Canada and direct access to the trade they had been fighting for. Moreover, on a metaphysical level, the success of these interactions with orenda–the omnipresent spiritual power of the universe–mattered greatly to the well-being of their communities and the retention of balance in the world.54

In the Spring of 1617, melting ice upriver caused the Hudson to swell over Castle Island and destroy Fort Nassau.55 In response, the Dutch traders opted to relocate a few miles southbound where the Tawasentha Creek or “Norman’s Kil” flowed into the Hudson. “The new situation was well chosen,” writes Brodhead, “The portage path of the Mohawks, coming from the west, terminated about two miles above at Skanektade.”56 It was once alleged by nineteenth- century historians and Iroquois ethnographers the word Tawasentha translated to “the place of the many dead” in the Mohawk language.57 This was sacred Mohawk territory, an intersecting plane between the spiritual and physical realms. One wonders how the Mohawks perceived how the Dutch almost blindly stumbled right up to the eastern doorstep of their extended longhouse.58

54 Also known by the Algonquian word, “manitou,” Richter, Ordeal of the Longhouse, 9-11, 24-33.

55 Richter, Ordeal of the Longhouse, 87. According to Trelease, “Freshets caused by melting ice upstream subjected Castle Island to almost annual floods, and in the Spring of 1617, the post had to be abandoned,” Allen W. Trelease, Indian Affairs in Colonial New York: The Seventeenth Century (Ithaca, N.Y.: Fall Creak Books, 2010), 33-34.

56 Brodhead, History of the State of New York, 1: 81.

57 Brodhead, History of the State of New York, 1: 81; Henry R. Schoolcraft, Notes on the Iroquois (Albany: Erastus H. Pease and Co., 1847), 75, 439, 460.

58 Brodhead, History of New York, 81-82; John V. N. Yates and Joseph W. Moulton, History of the State of New York: Including its Aboriginal and Colonial Annals (New York: A. T. Goodrich, 1824), 346-347.

31 Despite some initial success for Eelckens and others however, trade did not always go so smoothly. In October 1618, leading NNC officials sent Christiaensz aboard the Swarte Beer back to the Hudson to resume trade. Christiaensz had been warned by Eelckens and Engel not to hinder their trading, but proceeded anyway, sealing his fate. In 1619, just off the coast of

Governor’s Island, Indians violently attacked the Swarte Beer killing Christiaensz and most of his crew.59 The limited records available do not discern what might have provoked the attack, but other documented incidents reveal flaring tempers and violence were not necessarily uncommon.

That following year, a tense situation aboard the Schildpad climaxed when Eelckens took four

Indians hostage. The secondary account provided by Hart suggests tensions rose out of indecision on the part of the Indians and paranoia on the Dutch, but that the Dutch only released the four prisoners after a ransom in wampum was paid signals their openness to aggressive trading strategies. Indeed, ransoming captured Indians for wampum quickly became a pattern.60

In 1622, “Jaques Elekes,” imprisoned a Pequot sachem on his ship and threatened to “cut off his head” unless a ransom of 140 fathoms of wampum was paid.61 The quick ability of the

Pequots to fulfill the demand demonstrated to Eelckens and compatriot Hans Hontom the

Pequot’s wealth and power, while also underscoring the importance of wampum in indigenous

59 Jacobs, New Netherland, 36. It is possible the reasons for the attack against Christiaensz are similar to those speculated by Haefeli in Hudson’s voyage which involved a seemingly random attack by Navasinks. “On First Contact and Apotheosis,” 416.

60 Hart, Prehistory, 37. Jacobs, New Netherland, 37.

61 Salisbury speculates the sachem was Tatobem, who was later murdered by Dutch traders in a separate incident. He further argues this event became a “critical point in the rise of the Pequot and Narragansett.” Van Wassenaer, NNN, 86; Mark Meuwese, “The Dutch Connection: New Netherland, the Pequots, and the Puritans in Southern New England, 1620-1638,” Journal of Early American History 3, no. 1 (January 2013): 307, (on Tatobem’s murder) 314; Neal Salisbury, Manitou and Providence: Indians, Europeans, and the Making of New England, 1500-1643 (New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 1984), 148-149; Klooster, The Dutch Moment, 259.

32 societies.62 For Dutch traders like Eelckens and Hontom, “always interested in learning about commodities in order to expand their commercial activities,” the process was largely successful.63 Later on in the Hudson Valley, Hontom took a Mohawk sachem hostage following a brief altercation.64 To the horror of the Mohawks who met Hontom’s demanded ransom of wampum, Hontom “cut out the male organs of the aforesaid chief, and [hanged] them on the mast stay with rope, and thus killed the sachem.”65 It is unclear how this incident affected

Eelckens’s relationship with the Mohawks. His presence, if not involvement, might explain why the West India Company did not employ him after 1624. Nonetheless, Eelckens’ dealings with the Mohawks years later unfolded quite differently from that of Hontom’s, who the Mohawks, and their sachem Saggodryochta remembered quite well.66

Mohawk-Mahican War

The first test for this Dutch-Mohawk relationship erupted in the form of a native conflict known as the Mohawk-Mohican War. In the early summer of 1626, a Mohican war party made its way into Fort Orange. In short order, they were joined by Dutch commander Daniel van

62 Salisbury credits Eelckens’ actions as the cause of wampum transforming into a colonial “currency” for which many Dutch traders would soon seek out to buy in bulk to exchange for furs at Fort Orange. Manitou and Providence, 149. On Hontom and his trading affiliations, see Hart, Prehistory, 60-61.

63 Meuwese, “The Dutch Connection,” 307-308.

64 Gehring and Starna, “Dutch and Indians in the Hudson Valley: The Early Period” The Hudson Valley Regional Review 9, no. 2 (1992): 15-16.

65 Gehring and Starna, “Dutch and Indians in the Hudson Valley,” 16; “Examination of Bastiaen Krol,” VRBM, 302- 304.

66 The Eelckens Company regularly sent ships to New Netherland up until 1623, but Jacob Eelckens would continue trading well after the company’s dissolution by taking up service with English companies. Jacobs, New Netherland, 37, 110; Gehring and Starna, “Dutch and Indians in the Hudson Valley, 15; Hart, Prehistory, 37-38.

33 Krieckenbeeck and several of his men. The entourage marched into Mohawk territory, where suddenly a waiting band of Mohawk warriors “fell so boldly upon them with a barrage of arrows.”67 Krieckenbeeck, three of his men, and several Mohican warriors were killed. The

Mohawks consumed one Dutchman, burned the rest, and “carried a leg and an arm home to be divided among their families, as a sign that they had conquered their enemies.”68 Bewildered by the news of what transpired, then Director-General Pieter Minuit sent Pieter Barentsen, a trade with years of experience in learning indigenous customs and languages, into Mohawk country to make peace. Barentsen’s experience, including regular contact with the Mohawks through his work on the sloops, made him a favorable candidate as an intercultural ambassador and likely contributed to the success of his mission for peace.69 “They wished to excuse their act,” Van

Wassenaer later recorded of the Mohawks, “and asked the reason why the latter [Dutch] had meddled with them [Mohawks]; otherwise, they would not have shot them.”70 Van

Krieckenbeeck’s ill-fated attack is the only documented case of Dutch involvement in the war, and little is known of why he elected to support the Mohicans, breaking the WIC’s strict policy of maintaining neutrality. Historians continue to argue over the causes of the war and why the

Dutch became involved, but the results are plain. Both the Mohawks and Dutch had different

67 Van Wassenaer, “Historisch Verhael,” in NNN, 84.

68 Van Wassenaer, NNN, 85. For studies on the significance of body parts and cannibalism among Native Americans, see Andrew Lipman, ““A Means to Knit Them Together”: The Exchange of Body Parts in the Pequot War,” in William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 65 (January 2008), 3–28.

69 Demonstrating the capacity to learn indigenous customs was a coveted skill among traders in order to facilitate fruitful exchanges. Barentsen was no stranger to this, after ventures in Guiana, the Caribbean, and Florida. Klooster, The Dutch Moment, 234.

70 Van Wassenaer, NNN, 85.

34 objectives and presently remained uncertain of how to proceed without interfering in the affairs of the other.

Among a select group of scholars, the Mohawk-Mohican War has received critical attention in recent years that, in addition to the historical misconceptions they address, must be recounted to some degree here.71 To begin with, the Mohawk-Mohican relationship remains ambiguous to historians. The two nations were at peace when the Dutch arrived in 1609, but had been at war previously for an unknown number of years. Although the history of this prior rivalry is lost, archaeologists have discovered Mohawk sites from this period closely hugged the bends of the Mohawk River, making use of the topology to ward off potential Mohican attacks, thus indicating relations were at times less than amicable.72

Complicating the issue further, is the issue of van Krieckenbeeck’s intervention. At a glance, any Dutchman living at Fort Orange must have known challenging the Mohawks with only a handful of gunmen was not only dangerous, but also potentially ruinous for trade. The lack of strong Mohawk retaliation suggests this was an isolated incident, and not indicative of a deeper anti-Mohawk stance. Nevertheless, left with only two relatively vague sources, historians remain divided to the meaning of van Krieckenbeeck’s ill-fated decision and its implications for the Mohawk-Dutch relationship.73

71 For the traditionally accepted interpretation, see Trigger, “The Mohawk-Mahican War.” For a sharp critique, see Starna and Brandão, “From the Mohawk-Mahican War to the Beaver Wars: Questioning the Pattern,” in Ethnohistory, vol. 51, no. 4 (Fall 2004), 725-750.

72 Bradley, Before Albany, 66-67.

73 Most recently, Richter and Parmenter have restated a modified version of the traditional view that the Mohawks sought to expel Mohicans from the vicinity of Fort Orange, while Starna has reiterated his argument that the traditional interpretation is incorrect. Richter, Trade, Land, Power, 78; Parmenter, Edge of the Woods, ; Starna, From Homeland to New Land, 79-96.

35 Historians’ attempts to discern the cause of the conflict stem primarily from two contemporary accounts, one from the hand of Secretary de Rasiere and the other from the ear of

Champlain. The focus of de Rasiere ’s entry on the war is the disruption of trade and as such he outlines Dutch objectives in the conflict: to rid themselves of the Mohawks and restore trade with the Canadian Indians to the north. Champlain’s document, informed solely by Native

Americans, tells the Mohawk/Mohican side of the story which is less concerned with the fur trade. On the Dutch perspective of events, the passage oft quoted from de Rasiere reads as follows:

“I must perforce go up the river to see whether I can get the Minquaes [Mohawks] to come to an agreement with the French Indians whereby they may obtain forever a free passage through their country. That being accomplished, I hope to carry out my design of [exploring] Lake Champlain, and, if this cannot be done by amicable means, I beg your Honors to authorize me to go with 50 or 60 men on an expedition against them in order to drive them off, which in the end will have to be done anyway, as they are a vindictive race. I shall take great pleasure in it.”74

Meanwhile, listening from afar in Quebec and relying on Indian intel, Champlain recorded:

“During the winter some of our savages [Montagnais and Algonquins] went to the settlements of the Dutch, and were asked by them and the savages [Mohicans] of that region to make war on the Iroquois, who had killed twenty-four of their men and five Dutchmen, for not willing to allow them free passage to go and make war on a nation called the Wolves [Sokokis], with whom the Iroquois were at enmity. And in order to persuade our savages, who were at peace with the Iroquois, to undertake this war, they made presents to them in wampum belts, to be given to

74 Van Laer, Documents Relating to New Netherland, 212-215. On ‘exploring,’ the original translation by Van Laer is ‘discovering,’ but according to Gehring and Starna, ‘exploring’ or investigating’ is a better fit; Starna, From Homeland to New Land, 241n26.

36 certain chiefs, amongst others, to the Reconciled, in order to break the peace.”75

From these contemporary accounts, historians at first assumed the Mohawk-Mohican

War stemmed from a fierce desire on both sides to control the Dutch fur trade.76 Economically motivated, the Mohawks attempted to monopolize the trade by denying the French Indians “free passage” to trade with the Dutch while also driving out the Mohicans.77 By extension, historians have interpreted the Dutch to have regarded the Mohawks as a threat to the enterprise. As evidenced by Champlain’s journal, the Dutch welcomed efforts by the Mohicans, and the French

Indians, to drive the Mohawks out. By 1628/29 it becomes clear the Mohawks proved successful in driving the Mohicans–at least partially–into the Upper Connecticut River Valley, thereby resuming sole control of indigenous access to trade at Fort Orange.78

In the traditional view, historians have since gone on to interpret the significance of this conflict in terms of economically-motivated imperialism and alliances. The war became famously known as the first indigenous conflict in North America to have directly erupted out of tensions created by the introduction of European trade. The success of the Mohawks established the base of a longer imperial saga in which the Haudenosaunee went on to conquer their

75 In a footnote, Biggar assumes the Wolves referred to the Mohicans, but in reality Champlain was referring to the Sokokis of the Upper Connecticut River Valley with whom the Mohawks were intermittently at war. Biggar, Samuel de Champlain Works, V: 214. Parmenter suggests ‘The Reconciled’ refers to Cherououny, sachem of the Montagnais, who would be killed by Senecas soon after following a joint Montagnais-Mohican attack against the Mohawks; Parmenter, The Edge of the Woods, 33-35.

76 George T. Hunt, The Wars of the Iroquois: A Study in Intertribal Trade Relations (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1967), 17; Trelease, Indian Affairs in Colonial New York, 46; Trigger, “The Mohawk-Mohican War (1624-1628): The Establishment of a Pattern” Canadian Historical Review 52 (1971): 276.

77 See De Laet in NNN who remarks on the Mohawks pushing the Mohicans further east starting in 1624.

78 Matthew Dennis, Cultivating a Landscape of Peace, 131.

37 surrounding neighbors in a hunt for beaver skins in order to further guard their relationship with

European traders and the flow of goods from their hands.79

Based on this narrative, the Mohawk-Mohican War initiated the “beaver wars” of which the Iroquois would fight several in the 1640s and beyond. “While it was in the Indians’ interest to trade with more than one European power,” Trigger concluded, “no tribe in the area was sufficiently self-confident that it was prepared to acquiesce that its enemies, or even potential enemies, should trade with the same European power with which it had an alliance.”80 The

Mohawk-Mohican War, then, established a pattern of Mohawk (and Haudenosaunee) ambition to control the fur trade.81

With both sweeping developments in Dutch and Native history, it should come as no surprise that this view has not aged particularly well. For one, Iroquoian historians writing since

Hunt have done little to correct the Eurocentric economic model he employed. Trelease, Trigger, and Jennings all maintained the same basic framework employed by Hunt, and only in 1992 had

Richter only initiated the process of adopting the Mohawks’ perspective.82 Shortly after,

Matthew Dennis echoed the usual narrative, but crucially added an important distinction that

79 Trigger, “The Mohawk-Mahican War,” 284-286.

80 Trigger, “The Mohawk-Mahican War,” 285.

81 Trigger, “The Mohawk-Mahican War,” 281-282. Although the relationship between the Mohawk-Mohican War and the Beaver Wars thesis will be discussed at length below, it should be noted that José António Brandão has assertively refuted the beaver wars theory on the grounds that Native American actions should not be analyzed in purely European terms such as economic motivations in “Your Fyre Shall Burn No More.” Although most historians have since remained neutral in this debate since, one should note, as Andrea Smalley has done, that the fur trade “served a variety of functions for colonizers, and … not all colonists agreed that economic gain should supersede defense or territorial control.” Wild by Nature: North American Animals Confront Colonization (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017), 250-251n127.

82 Trelease, Indian Affairs, 46-48; Trigger, “From the Mohawk-Mahican War to the Beaver Wars”; Jennings, The Ambiguous Iroquois Empire, 49-50; Richter, Ordeal of the Longhouse, 55-57. For a similar take, see also Parmenter, The Edge of the Woods, 32-33 or Mark Meuwese, Brothers in Arms, Partners in Trade (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2011), 257-259.

38 bears renewed consideration. “While European materials and trade goods held great attraction for native people,” Dennis continued, “the Iroquois and other Indians did not conceive of their relationships with Europeans simply in economic terms.”83 With historians finally acknowledging the limitations of the ethnocentric approach, it seemed the opportune time to rewrite the entire event in new words. Despite such remarkable progress however, when Starna and Brandão set out to set the record straight in “From the Mohawk-Mohican War to the Beaver

Wars,” they missed the mark.84

Together, Starna and Brandão echoed the argument put forth in previous publications by

Starna, that scholars had continued to interpret the conflict incorrectly.85 “The primary sources,” they insisted, “simply do not describe the Mohawks, or their native foes, as doing much at all of what they are said to have done.”86 They focused on perceived errors in the interpretation, but offered little on the problematic methodology. To be sure, the piece is relatively successful in refuting the correlation between the Mohawk-Mohican War and the Beaver Wars originally proposed by Trigger. The Mohawk-Mohican War did not establish a pattern of indigenous

83 Dennis, Cultivating a Landscape of Peace, 132.

84 William A. Starna and José António Brandão, “From the Mohawk-Mohican War to the Beaver Wars: Questioning the Pattern,” in Ethnohistory vol. 51, no. 4 (Fall 2004), 725-750.

85 See Gehring and Starna, “Dutch and Indians in the Hudson Valley,” 14-19; William Starna, “Assessing American Indian-Dutch Studies: Missed and Missing Opportunities” New York History 84, no. 1 (2003): 7, 24-28, in which he somewhat ironically observes a growing pattern in Indian-Dutch historiography “that one secondary source tends to resemble earlier secondary sources, with the possible addition of seemingly inventive, but usually inconsequential twists on the same old story;” or his latest publication: Starna, From Homeland to New Land, page numbers.

86 For better context, the complete concluding rebuttal is: “The Mohawks had not been poorly positioned to take advantage of the early seventeenth-century trade; they did not make a peace with the French Indians in 1624 with the intention to then attack the Mohicans and seize control of the trade at Fort Orange; and they did not blockade the Champlain Valley to prevent French Indians from trading with the Dutch.” Starna and Brandão, “From the Mohawk-Mohican War to the Beaver Wars: Questioning the Pattern” Ethnohistory 51, no. 4 (Fall 2004): 740.

39 dependence on furs that–as beaver populations dwindled–perpetuated military campaigns by the

Haudenosaunee in order to accumulate more furs to trade for more goods.

However, Starna and Brandão found themselves distracted by the conflict’s legacy and failed to offer an accurate alternative interpretation of the conflict itself, which if done correctly, may greatly change our understanding of Mohawk-Dutch relations in this period. In this vain, the basis of their argument countered four core assumptions that continued to pervade in the historiography: first, the Mohawks enjoyed only limited trade with Europeans before 1628; second, this limited access to European goods, and importantly Fort Orange, due to the Mohawks being “landlocked” by the Mohicans; third, the Dutch, in turn, considered the Mohawks

“marginal to their economic interests” and actively pursued higher quality furs from Canada; and fourth, that the Mohawks recognized this Dutch desire to trade with the French Indians and sought to cut them off.87 Having now stated the aims of their scrutiny, what follows below does not attempt to rehash, but proposes a new interpretation based off factual evidence and conservative assumptions from the existing scholarship.

From a Dutch or European perspective, the lack of sources makes piecing together the outline of the conflict difficult. From a Mohawk perspective however, despite the lack of sources, it is clear enough to justify why they would have initiated a new war against the

Mohicans. The Mohawks were losing ground in the St. Lawrence river valley and along the

Ottawa River by the 1620s, while their relationship with the French remained especially rocky.

This directly conflicted with the increased necessity of hunting grounds as a result of the

87 Starna and Brandão, “From the Mohawk-Mohican War to the Beaver Wars,” 729-730.

40 population boom that saw Mohawk numbers increase to more than 4,500 between 1580 and

1614.88

A renewed peace with the Montagnais in 1624, orchestrated predominantly by

Champlain, allowed the Mohawks to reset themselves, recalibrating to the increased volume of trade around Fort Orange and Quebec. It is likely the Mohawks made use of their peace with the

French Indians to renew war against the Sokokis as Champlain’s intelligence described. Mohican territory acted as a buffer to the Indian nations of the Upper Connecticut River Valley including the Sokokis, Pennecooks, and Pockumtucks. As a strong eastern Algonquian speaking power, the

Mohicans frequently protected these eastern nations from Mohawk war parties. It is also possible that the Mohawks sought war against the Mohicans who then turned to the Upper Connecticut

River Valley Nations for help. Curiously, this can be evidenced by threats from Champlain to help the Mohawks if a coalition did emerge.89

But why might the Mohawks have initiated war with the Mohicans and why did the

Dutch side with the Mohicans? To reiterate, it has been traditionally argued–and debunked–that the Mohawks attacked the Mohicans to gain access to trade at Fort Orange while some historians have assumed the fighting erupted out of the refusal of the Mohicans to allow the Mohawks free passage into the Upper Connecticut River Valley. In view of the sources at hand however, there

88 Starna and Brandão, “From the Mohawk-Mohican War to the Beaver Wars,” 726.

89 Peter Allen Thomas, In the Maelstrom of Change: The Indian Trade and Cultural Process in the Middle Connecticut River Valley: 1635-1665 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Amherst, 1979), 47. Biggar, Champlain Works, 5: 214-219, 229-230, 308. Inference from passage, notably on 217 is not clear. Champlain clearly threatens to aid the Mohawks against the Dutch and the Mohicans, but there is no clear mention of peoples belonging to the Upper Connecticut River Valley. It might be worth noting the Mohicans may have been weakened by disease from the 1616 epidemic, however, historians are still unsure of how far the disease penetrated inland. On this epidemic and possible Mohican casualties, see Dean R. Snow and Kim M. Lanphear, “European Contact and Indian Depopulation in the Northeast: The Timing of the First Epidemics,” Ethnohistory 35, no. 1 (Winter 1988): 21-23; Shirley W. Dunn, The Mohicans and Their Land, 1609-1730 (Fleischmanns, NY: Purple Mountain Press, 1994), 76; 257-259; and Starna, From Homeland to New Land, 45-46.

41 appear to have been other possible motives. First, it is possible the Mohawks, in a manner relative to their imperial power, sought to take control of all Fort Orange trade for themselves as the Pequots had successfully done around Fort Good Hope around the same time.90 This move would have allowed the Mohawks a primary say in who the Dutch could and could not trade with, an especially crucial position they would have used to prevent the Dutch from trading wampum to their enemies, the French Indians.

Secondly, and equally likely, the Mohawks sought to displace the Mohicans as middlemen in a burgeoning wampum trade. The Mohicans possessed geographical advantages the Mohawks coveted access to, controlling the wampum trade axis that extended north-south from the coastal groups of Southern New England and the Long Island Sound to the First Nations of Canada.91 In doing so, the Mohicans could collect wampum from coastal groups via either tribute or trade, and then turn around and exchange this wampum to the Northern Algonquians for their beaver skins before then trading these skins to the Dutch for more wampum. If one considers this indigenous trade network, one that mattered little to the business of European traders, the Mohawks were indeed landlocked, not from Dutch trade, but from the wampum producing polities to which the Mohicans had access.

In a manner of good fortune, the Dutch entering Ahnowahraake inserted themselves along key nodes of the indigenous wampum trade. The location of Dutch trading posts scattered along the coast from Narragansett Bay to the Long Island Sound gave them direct access to the largest wampum production zones. Dutch traders could obtain the shell beads from the

90 Salisbury, Manitou and Providence, 147-150.

91 Colin G. Calloway, The Western Abenaki of Vermont, 1600-1800: War, Migration, and the Survival of an Indian People (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994), 40-42.

42 Narragansetts and Pequots and then use them as a bargaining piece to lure in trade of the

Canadian First Nations that did not have local access to wampum.92 According to Neal Salisbury,

“It was the prospect of wampum that drew the Ottawa Valley Algonquin and the Montagnais allies of the French to begin carrying many of their furs to the Mohicans after the Dutch established a new Hudson River post at Fort Orange in 1624.”93 It should be seen as no coincidence then, that the Mohawks promptly established peace with the Montagnais in order to pursue a new war against the Mohicans for trading with their enemies. These actions should not be taken lightly. From a Mohawk perspective, a steady flow of wampum into the hands of their enemies in Canada would contribute to a spiritual strengthening that could then leave the

Mohawks at a disadvantage in future conflicts.94 For these same reasons, the Mohawks would not have wanted Northern Algonquian groups such as the Montagnais trading with the Dutch, thereby negating the advantage the Mohawks possessed from having access to the Dutch themselves.95

Although only a blip in most histories of the period, the Mohawk-Mohican War had significant short and long-term consequences in Ahnowahraake. Fear of Mohawk retaliation

92 Neal Salisbury, “Native People and European Settlers in Eastern North America,” in The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas: Vol. 1: North America, part 1, ed. Bruce G. Trigger, Wilcomb E. Washburn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996): 404.

93 Salisbury, “Native People and European Settlers in Eastern North America,” 406.

94 On the spiritual significance of wampum, see Richter, Ordeal of the Longhouse, 52; Pastore, Between Land and Sea, 33; Lipman, The Saltwater Frontier, 108; Salisbury, Manitou and Providence, 149.

95 In his own reading of the de Rasiere passage for which historians rely on to discern the Dutch perspective on the conflict, Starna argues against idea that Mohawks were preventing French Indians free passage to Fort Orange. Rather than the Dutch attempting to drive off the Mohawks, Starna argues the Dutch desired to drive off the Montagnais, From Homeland to New Land, 84-85. This view, however, contradicts the account provided by Champlain, who wrote, “During the winter some of our savages went to the settlements of the Dutch, and were asked by them and the savages of that region [Mohicans] to make war on the Iroquois [Mohawks], who had killed twenty-four of their men [Mohicans] and five Dutchmen [van Krieckenbeeck and co.].” Biggar. Champlain, 5: 214.

43 following van Krieckenbeeck’s ill-fated attack forced the Dutch to relocate south. Shortly thereafter, Director Pieter Minuit and Secretary Isaac de Rasière orchestrated the purchase of

Manhattan Island for a bundle of tools and goods worth approximately sixty guilders.96 The island provided the Dutch with an ideal location to facilitate trade with the indigenous groups that surrounded the harbor, but also control entrance of the Hudson River. This new location was also more easily defensible, since no other indigenous groups inhabited the island. Also of note is how the war changed the geopolitical landscape. By 1629, the Mohawks had effectively driven the Mohicans out of the Hudson Valley, forcing the nation to relocate with their allies in the

Upper Connecticut River Valley and instituting a tributary system there.97 This rivalry would continue through the duration of New Netherland, and embroil the Mohawks in intermittent wars the Dutch could not avoid. The Mohawks were a problem the Dutch–nor any other seventeenth- century colonial power–could not solve.98

While Starna and Brandão are correct in identifying some historical misconceptions and errors that have skewed our understanding of this event, they have equally become distracted in the event’s overall importance. Indeed, the Mohawk-Mohican War, for what it was, is not significant for being “the first and defining example of a conflict fought in direct response to the

European-introduced fur trade,” true or otherwise, but for its illuminating light on a complex web

96 Jean R. Soderlund, Lenape Country: Delaware Valley Society Before William Penn (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), 30; Jacobs, New Netherland, 43.

97 The Mohicans would become influential in funneling furs to the English in New England, Thomas, “Maelstrom of Change,” 49-51. That the Mohawks began extorting tribute from the Mohicans and their Algonquian allies of the Upper Connecticut is inferred from a passage in JR 28: 277; 283-285.

98 Trelease, Indian Affairs in Colonial New York, 53.

44 of geopolitical rivalries and tensions that which contemporary observers could only partially understand.99

Historians including Trelease, Richter, Parmenter, Trigger, Starna, Brandão, and others have all grappled to some extent in illustrating the true nature of this conflict, diverging wildly in how the conflict relates to the French and Dutch, and also to several Native American political groups including the Mohawks, Mohicans, the Upper Connecticut River Valley Indians, the coastal groups in Southern New England and around Long Island Sound, and the French Indians including the Montagnais, Algonquins, and Hurons. When one considers the breadth of this disorienting geopolitical landscape, it stands to reason then that historians have overly relied on the written record, composed by contemporaries lacking an adequate sense of the complex web of relations they sought to describe.

While excellent historical and anthropological scholarship has done well to help color in some of the missing pieces, this event will frustratingly remain a shattered mosaic for historians, just as it had been for the contemporaries we rely on to describe it. The reality of the Mohawk-

Mohican War remains an elusive truth, one that may only be uncovered if the motivations of the

Mohawks and Mohicans are fully considered, rather than those of Champlain or de Rasiere. If the Mohawk-Mohican War may not have produced a pattern, but its historiography has: the inability of historians to recognize the Mohawks and Dutch inhibited disparate objectives and different interpretations of the events happening around them. Moreover, the conflict initiated a

99 Starna and Brandão, “From the Mohawk-Mahican War,” 725.

45 “contest for power” between the Mohawks and their eastern Algonquian rivals, “[that] significantly influenced life in the Northeast for the next half century.”100

Disease and Uncertainty

How the Mohawks perceived their position by the 1630s might be best illustrated by the death of a nameless Mohawk sachem who readily accepted his execution at the hands of the

Montagnais, satisfied with the imperial position the Mohawks had carved out for themselves. In

1631, an Algonkian-Montagnais war party returned to New France with the spoils of the recent raid of a Mohawk village. Nine Mohawks including the sachem were captured, the Algonquins kept six captives for themselves and left three for the Montagnais to take back to Tadoussac so they too could share their trophies with their families. At first, negotiations delayed the ritual execution process as the Mohawks and Montagnais attempted to broker a peace. Unfortunately for the captives, however, the murder of one of the captives by a drunken guard stalled negotiations indefinitely. As a result, the rest of the prisoners were killed including one particular

“powerful and courageous” sachem in particular whose confident taunts captured the attention of

French observers.101 Upon learning of his impending death, this Mohawk sachem happily boasted of his own Montagnais conquests before adding “his friends will take still more.”102 In resignation of his fate, the sachem bade farewells to his friends, family, allies, and even the

100 Peter A. Thomas, 1979, “In the Maelstrom of Change: The Indian Trade and Cultural Process in the Middle Connecticut River Valley, 1635-1665.” PhD diss., University of Massachusetts. Published in The Evolution of North America Indians: A 31-volume series of outstanding dissertations, ed. David Hurst Thomas (New York: Garland Publishing Inc., 1990), 45.

101 JR 5: 53.

102 JR 5: 55.

46 “Flemish Captain who goes to trade for furs in the country of the Hiroquois by the Northern sea.”103 This last quip, undoubtedly the warrior’s final means of taunting his executioners, perfectly captured the confidence of the Mohawks as they entered the 1630s, both well-seasoned in battle and primed to take advantage of the Dutch connection they controlled.104

The Mohawks, a stronger nation with a powerful grasp over the indigenous geopolitics of

Ahnowahraake possessed the upper hand over a small faction of traders inexperienced in the local customs and too weak to disregard them. The Dutch may have had wampum and other exotic goods of use to the Mohawks, but trade as a medium of exchange held equal weight in diplomacy. Trade with the Dutch occurred on Mohawk terms, and as the Dutch would discover, this meant exotic goods took second place to the value of established connections and personal relationships. The Dutch learned this lesson the hard way when Eelckens returned to New

Netherland under an English flag, and to their dismay, briefly resumed trading at Fort Orange as if he had never left.

103 JR 5: 55.

104 Interpretation taken from JR 5: 21, 27, 29, 45, 49, 53, 55; Parmenter, “Separate Vessels: Hudson , the Dutch, and the Iroquois” in The Worlds of the Seventeenth Century Hudson Valley, ed. Jaap Jacobs and Louis Roper (Albany: SUNY Press, 2014), 113; Brandão, “Your Fyre Shall Burn No More”, Table D.1. It is quite possible the “Flemish captain” referred to here could be the father of Canaqueese, also known as Smits Jan (to the Dutch), John Smith (to the English), and “the Flemish bastard” (to the French. Canaqueese was a formidable war sachem by 1650 and would have had to have taken part in the wars of the 1640s in order to rise in stature. Based on this information, a birth in the early 1630s is the most plausible time frame, especially in a village closer to the Dutch given the Dutch are not known to have penetrated far into Mohawk Country as of yet. With that said however, the birth of Canaqueese multiple years before Van der Bogaert’s journey suggests historians have underestimated the level of intimacy of Mohawk-Dutch relations at this point and that Canaqueese might have been the first child of this relationship. On Canaqueese, see JR XIX: 213; Parmenter, “Separate Vessels,” 116, 129n48; Mark Meuwese, “From Intercolonial Messenger to ‘Christian Indian’: The Felmish Bastard and the Mohawk Struggle for Independence from New France and Colonial New York in the Eastern Great Lakes Borderlands, 1647-1687,” in Karl Hele (ed.), Lines Drawn Upon the Water: First Nations and the Great Lakes Borders and Borderlands (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2008), 43-63; Peter Lowensteyn, “The Role of the Dutch in the Iroquois Wars,” in de Halve Maen vol. 58, no. 3 (1984), 5-13.

47 In 1632, Eelckens returned to the Hudson River as skipper of the William, commissioned by London merchants to dispute Dutch commercial claims to New Netherland. Following a brief standoff with Van Twiller in Manhattan, Eelckens made his way up the river to Fort Orange with the Dutch in slow pursuit.105 Preparation of the Zoutberg delayed the Dutch departure by several days, leaving Eelckens approximately two weeks to trade with the Indians nearly uninhibited. By the time the Dutch caught up with the William, anchored a mile south from Fort Orange, trade between Eelckens and the surrounding Indians was well underway. Almost immediately after pitching his tent, both Mohawks and Mohicans broke through the trees to trade with Eelckens, pelts in hand. Until authorities from New Amsterdam arrived, all the Dutch at Fort Orange could do was attempt to out-trade their English rivals whereupon they immediately fell to a disadvantage. Eelckens, “beinge well acquainted” with the Indians and “havinge heretofore lived foure yeare with them,” had the upper hand.106 Eelckens possessed key knowledge of Mohawk trading practices that made for a successful intercultural relationship, and the Mohawks remembered the ‘governor’ well for it. But just as they remembered the good traders, they also remembered the bad. When Hans Hontom, appointed just a month earlier as the commies of Fort

Orange attempted to “challenge” Eelckens, the Mohawks withdrew.107 Saggodryochta, recalling

105 Director-General Van Twiller initially invited Eelckens into New Amsterdam for a meal, but upon hearing of Eelckens’s plans to establish an English trading post near Fort Orange, the meeting went sour. De Vries chastises Van Twiller in his recording of the event for having allowed Eelckens passage, causing Oliver Rink to describe this brief episode as Van Twiller’s first diplomatic crisis and ultimately a chief example of Van Twiller’s incompetence as a leader. Conversely, we should also heed the warning of Jacobs who points out De Vries was not above “blackening” the reputation of the colonial administration while simultaneously elevating himself. Oliver A. Rink, Holland on the Hudson: An Economic and Social History of Dutch New York (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), 118-124; Jacobs, New Netherland, 110-111.

106 DRCHNY 1: 80.

107 Bastiaen Jans Krol later testified that Van Twiller had asked Hontom to confront Eelckens over establishing his trade post near Mill Creek, however, other parts of the examination reveal that relations between Eelckens and Hontom remained close despite not having traded together for several years. It is possible Hontom sought to gain from Eelckens’s venture in one form or another, or perhaps intended to defect as Oliver Rink suggested. VRBM, 302-304; Rink, Holland on the Hudson, 120.

48 how he witnessed first-hand Hontom violently mutilate and murder another Mohawk sachem, “at once packed up his skins and rising up said, ‘That man is a scoundrel, I will not trade with him.’”108 For a moment it seemed the English, via the intercultural connection established by

Eelckens, appeared to have superseded the Dutch in their relationship with the Mohawks, but the success was short-lived. Van Twiller and the Zoutberg arrived to confiscate Eelckens’s goods and escort him out of New Netherland. As for the Mohawks and the Dutch, Saggodryochta was outraged a man of Hontom’s abhorrent character could become a principal representative of the

Dutch. In his native tongue, he threatened to kill Hontom “the first time they should find him alone.”109 Hontom told them to “do their best.”110

The Mohawks did not hold back. Saggodryochta organized a massive force of 900

Konosoni warriors to send a message to their Dutch brothers and finally avenge the death of the fallen chief Hontom murdered.111 In short order the army surrounded the fort, demanding the surrender of Hontom, intent on avenging the death of the sachem he had tortured to death years earlier112 Perhaps with the fate of Van Krieckenbeeck’s coalition fresh in his mind for the moment, Hontom refused to leave. In a show of force and aggression the Mohawks retaliated, setting ablaze the Company sloop docked on the river and slaughtering nearly all Kiliaen van

Rensselaer’s livestock.113 Hontom survived the onslaught, but the message was clear. The

108 VRBM, 304.

109 Rink, Holland on the Hudson, 120. VRBM, 304.

110 VRBM, 304.

111 Parmenter, Edge of the Woods, 37; Richter, Ordeal of the Longhouse, 90; Trelease, Indian Affairs in Colonial New York, 51.

112 VRBM, 303-304.

113 VRBM, 243; Parmenter, Edge of the Woods, 37.

49 Mohawks controlled Ahnowahraake, including the Dutch who to them were one and the same despite the colony-patroonship dynamic.

The Mohawks did not recognize colonial jurisdictions as the Dutch had, perceiving New

Netherland and its patroonships as one entity, one extension of their longhouse, and one to be held accountable for its actions.114 The Dutch colonists did not see things the same way. Hontom died soon after in a scuffle with Cornelis van der Vorst in Rensselaerswijck. How exactly the fight started is unknown, but it likely ignited out of residual tensions from the Mohawk attack that put the colony on edge. The Dutch knew the Mohawks were not to be trifled with, and

Hontom’s “behavior with the Indians was shameful.”115

Disaster struck for the Mohawks in 1633 when the first smallpox epidemic swept across

Ahnowahraake.116 The effects were devastating as Native Americans perished in unprecedented numbers, never before seen by their own accounts. As the disease spread westward out of New

England, several indigenous groups suffered drastic population losses, effectively paving the way for English settlement into the Connecticut River Valley where the recorded losses

114 Rensselaerswijck could send agents to trade wherever the WIC did not already have one. Trelease, Indian Affairs of Colonial New York, 51.

115 Van der Vorst was the director of the patroonship at Pavonia further south. Jacobs states the argument turned to blows when Van der Vorst insulted members of the WIC to which Hontom took offence. Van der Vorst was probably in Rensselaerswijck along with Hontom to discuss the damage sustained from the Mohawks whereupon Hontom likely received considerable blame on the part of his poor relationship with Saggodryochta as well as Kiliaen van Rensselaer. Hart, Prehistory of New Netherland, 60-61; Jacobs, New Netherland, 455. Rink, Holland on the Hudson, 120. For a detailed summary of how contemporaries viewed Hontom, see VRBM, 243-244.

116 Richter, Ordeal of the Longhouse, 58-59; Parmenter, The Edge of the Woods, 41. Evidence suggests this was the first epidemic to affect Haudenosaunee populations in the seventeenth-century. Dean Snow and William A. Starna estimate Mohawk population numbers dropped from approximately 8,000 strong to 3,200 by 1644, “Sixteenth- Century Depopulation: A View from Mohawk Valley,” in American Anthropologist, New Series, vol. 91, no. 1 (March 1989), 142-149. For more on epidemics and population changes in Iroquoia, consult Appendices B and C of José António Brandão, “Your fyre shall burn no more”: Iroquois Policy toward New France and Its Native Allies to 1701 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998), 145-169. Snow argues it was the arrival of Dutch children (brought out by Dutch efforts to increase the colonial population) that ultimately led to the exposure of European diseases to the Haudenosaunee, The Iroquois (Wiley-Blackwell, 1996), 99.

50 peaked.117 Contemporary writings closely followed the trail, with documentation of the sheer destruction appearing in Bradford, Winthrop, Jameson, and others.118 Modern estimates place

Mohawk population numbers in 1633 at around 8,100 strong.119 Studies by Snow and Lanphear, based on the archaeological data, estimate a mortality rate of 75 percent in Mohawk country, leaving approximately 2,000 survivors.120

In an instant, the Mohawk vision for Ahnowahraake began to blur. The immediate severe losses forced the Mohawks to regroup, in order to rekindling their imperial aims would require hundreds of new captives to replace those that had been lost. They would mourn for their victims on the battlefield, and would look to the Dutch for help. Understandably, the sudden losses from smallpox slowed trade between the Mohawks and the Dutch considerably.

In light of both the recent diplomatic setbacks and a fear of French intervention, the

Dutch were quick to investigate what had happened.121 In December of 1634, a small expedition led by Harmen Meyndertsz van den Bogaert, a barber-surgeon who arrived to New Netherland in

1630, embarked from Fort Orange into Mohawk country.122 By the time van den Bogaert visited

117 Thomas, “In the Maelstrom of Change,” 53-54.

118 See William Bradford, Bradford’s History of Plymouth Plantation, 302-303; John Winthrop, Winthrop’s Journal “History of New England”, I: 111-114; and Jameson, NNN, 141. Dean R. Snow and Kim M. Lanphear, “European Contact and Indian Depopulation in the Northeast: The Timing of the First Epidemics,” in Ethnohistory, vol. 35, no. 1 (Winter 1988), 15-33; 23.

119 Snow and Lanphear, “European Contact and Indian Depopulation,” 23.

120 Indian Nations in the Upper Connecticut River Valley appear to have fared far worse with mortality rates ranging from 92 percent (Mohican) to 98 percent (Western Abenaki); Snow and Lanphear, “European Contact and Indian Depopulation,” 24. Snow attributes the epidemic to the increased influx of European women and children, The Iroquois, 99, 110.

121 Charles Gehring and William Starna, A Journey into Mohawk and Oneida Country (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2013), xxvii. David J. Silverman, Thundersticks, 21. Snow, The Iroquois, 94-96.

122 Gehring and Starna, A Journey into Mohawk and Oneida Country: The Journal of Harmen Meyndertsz van den Bogaert, xxxi; 1.

51 the Mohawk Valley the following year, the disease had passed through the heart of Iroquoia into

Huronia [Wendake], but evidence of the epidemic remained.123 Some of the descriptions left by

Bogaert in his journal that documented his journey into Mohawk country provide clear indications of a recent smallpox outbreak. Upon reaching the easternmost village, Onekahoncka, van den Bogaert discovered Saggodryochta living “one-quarter of a mile from his village because many Indians here in the castle had died of smallpox.”124 Van den Bogaert’s journal does not detail his brief encounter with Saggodryochta, but historians can speculate what they might have discussed. As the surgeon soon discovered, in spite of the obvious physical damage smallpox had wrought on the Mohawk communities he visited, the disease did little to alter to their spirits.

The timing of the Dutch expedition could not have been better. As van den Bogaert traversed deeper into Mohawk country, the words “Allese Rondade,” or “Shoot,” echoed by the piercing shouts of Mohawk warriors, reminded him of why Saggodryochta had been glad to see him.125 The smallpox epidemic created a void in Mohawk communities that had to be filled immediately. New warriors and matrons had to be adopted from neighboring indigenous groups.

The need for captives meant waging new wars, and the Mohawks, now well-versed in the power of gunpowder technology, sought guns of their own to win them.126 From a Mohawk perspective,

123 Trigger, Children of Aataentsic, 2: 500-501.

124 The site of Onekahoncka was located in preset-day Glen, New York on the southern side of the Mohawk River, Snow, Mohawk Valley Archaeology, 281-282. The name van den Bogaert gives for Saggodryochta is “Adriochten.” Gehring and Starna suggest Adriochten was in fact a man the village had deemed responsible for the epidemic whose name could possibly be translated as “he has caused others to die.” Yet, it is more likely van den Bogaert had actually met Saggodryochta, a well-known Mohawk sachem who had significant experience with Dutch traders. This would explain why van den Bogaert refers to him as “the most principal one.” Gehring and Starna, A Journey Into Mohawk and Oneida Country, 4, 32, 34-35.

125 Van den Bogaert, A Journey into Mohawk and Oneida Country, 4; “ALLESE RONDADE” meant “Shoot!” 16.

126 Van den Bogaert, A Journey into Mohawk and Oneida Country, 11-12; Silverman, Thundersticks, 21-24.

52 the Dutch were the perfect suppliers: the beaver skins Dutch traders wanted were relatively easy to acquire, and more importantly, the Mohawks viewed the Dutch as expendable.

The Mohawks controlled the relationship, and as was made perfectly clear during Van den Bogaert’s visit, they could just as easily turn to the French if a partnership with the Dutch could not be achieved.127 Moreover, his journey illustrated the precarious position the Dutch unwittingly found themselves in as a result. After days of refusing to discharge their muskets for fear of their own safety, Van den Bogaert and his comrades eventually gave into the pressure, firing a thunderous volley skyward that captivated his hosts. They had little choice, whether they fired or not did not change the reality that their fates were in the Mohawks’ hands128. With the leaders of the global arms trade at their disposal, the Mohawks ushered in “the dawn of a new era in the Northeast.”129

Conveniently for the Mohawks, the Dutch were the perfect arms suppliers. By the 1630s, the United Provinces were firmly established as the leading arms dealers of the world with supply lines linked to the Baltic, Mediterranean, and East Indies.130 Trading in gunpowder required connections to the East Indies and the cooperation of the East India Company, allowing

127 Van den Bogaert, A Journey into Mohawk and Oneida Country, 9, 14-16.

128 Dutch paranoia and fear can be felt throughout the journal. In an entry dated January 1, Van den Bogaert wrote, “Had they had any malicious intentions, they could have easily grabbed us with their hands and killed us without much trouble.” See also the January 7 entry that describes a letter from Fort Orange detailing how the colonists feared the worst of what might have become of Van den Bogaert’s mission, Van den Bogaert, A Journey into Mohawk and Oneida Country, 17, 21.

129 Silverman, Thundersticks, 21, 25; H. Ph. Vogel, “The Republic as an Exporter of Arms, 1600-1650,” in The Arsenal of the World: The Dutch Arms Trade in the Seventeenth Century ed. Jan Piet Puype and Marco van der Hoeven (Amsterdam, 1996), 13-22. Interestingly, the Oneidas attempted to work out their own alliance with van den Bogaert, listing off their grievances regarding prices and the long trek to Fort Orange for which they more than likely had to appease the Mohawks for access. Van den Bogaert conferred to them that he had not the authority to make such pacts. A Journey into Mohawk and Oneida Country, 18-19; Richter, Ordeal of the Longhouse, 92-93.

130 Silverman, Thundersticks, 25.

53 for the swift development of commercial markets within which guns, gunpowder and ammunition were sold to international bidders regardless of diplomatic relations. Moreover, many Dutch traders were perfectly willing to trade munitions for beavers, often at exorbitant prices. Although historians of New Netherland have mostly focused on the “wampum revolution,” the Mohawks were purchasing guns early and paid steep prices for them.131

Dutch traders exploited Mohawk demands for guns, powder, and shot to the fullest extent. During the 1630s, firelock weapons could be furnished for roughly 12 guilders, and a pound of gunpowder for 2. The Mohawks, in turn, paid five to ten times the production costs in up to 120 guilders per gun and 12 guilders for gunpowder, equating to approximately 20 and 2 beaver pelts respectively.132 Gunsmiths in New Netherland could make additional profits by charging Mohawk warriors for repairs, a practice the Mohawks took considerable exception to throughout the seventeenth century.133

The Mohawks benefitted from access to Dutch firearms, but also from advancements in firearm technology. The emergence of the flintlock by the mid-1630s, a far and away improvement from the antecedent matchlock or wheel lock, meshed nicely with Mohawk imperial ambitions. The key component to the flintlock’s improved efficiency was the “battery,” which combined the steel and pan lid into a singular cover that protected the charge from the elements prior to ignition. This critical alteration, in addition to other cosmetic improvements,

131 On the “wampum revolution,” see for example Salisbury, Manitou and Providence, 147-152; Lipman, The Saltwater Frontier, 105-112; Jacobs, New Netherland, 192-197.

132 “Journal of New Netherland” in NNN, 274; Brandão, Your Fyre Shall Burn No More, 88.

133 See for example, FOCM, 453-454.

54 made the flintlock more compatible with indigenous warfare, a “dependable and relatively easy to maintain” weapon that fit the Mohawks’ “skulking way of war.”134

Previous historical inquiries into the effects of gunpowder technology on the Mohawks and Haudenosaunee are generally one-sided: the introduction of guns into Iroquoia resulted in a growing dependence on European weaponry at the expense of declining cultural traditions and knowledge, inducing an endless cycle of inciting wars to obtain beavers to obtain guns to fight more wars.135 Yet, “in both this world and the next,” Richter points out, “Iroquois used European goods and tools in distinctively Indian ways.”136 Richter, Parmenter, and Silverman have since turned the tables, ushering in new ways to think about Native American warfare in strictly native terms. Rather than subscribing to the Champlain Thesis, Silverman argues the gun quickly became a central element in indigenous culture, especially as a symbol of Indian manhood via its pragmatic uses in hunting and warfare, but also as a means of exercising cultural autonomy.137

Indeed, gunpowder technology formed an integral role in Mohawk diplomacy. The transfer of munitions, tools with symbolic meaning to power and sovereignty, helped facilitate the preservation of kaswentha, maintaining a steady balance of exchange between the Mohawks and their Dutch brothers. Mohawk warriors interested in procuring Dutch flintlocks “did not so

134 For a succinct discussion on seventeenth-century firelocks, see Silverman, Thundersticks, 25-28; “dependable,” 27. Readers interested in a deeper analysis of flintlocks the Haudenosaunee had access to in the seventeenth-century should consult Joseph R. Mayer, “Flintlocks- of the Iroquois, 1620-1687” in Research Records of the Rochester Museum of Arts and Sciences, no. 6 (1943), 18-37. On Mohawk warfare, see Patrick M. Malone, The Skulking Way of War: Technology and Tactics among the New England Indians (New York: Madison Books, 1991), 23-24.

135 See for example Trelease, Indian Affairs; Jennings, The Ambiguous Empire; or Steele, Warpaths.

136 Richter, Ordeal of the Longhouse, 83.

137 Silverman, Thundersticks, 9-10.

55 much purchase European goods as they did ‘Indian goods’” constructed specifically to meet their needs.138

This same adaptability that enabled the Mohawks to seamlessly adopt gunpowder technology into their way of life swiftly pervaded the ritual adoption of people, a core element of cultural preservation in Haudenosaunee society known as “requickening.”139 Following the death of an individual, the deceased’s title, social role, and any duties associated with either would be transferred to a living successor through ceremony. In the cases of high status individuals, these positions were typically filled from within the lineage, clan, or village. For members of lower social rank or importance however, Haudenosaunee communities relied on cultural adoption. As a result, Mohawk warriors conducted raids or battles with their indigenous neighbors with the explicit intent to capture potential adoptees. Captives deemed worthy of entry into society would escape death by ritual torture, and in turn be ritually absorbed into social role vacated by the deceased, thus restoring balance within the community. Ritual violence became the primary avenue for dealing with tragedy.140

A successful “requickening” depended on success in war. The wars initiated in the 1630s and onward were not as much fought over beavers as they were over captives for which the epidemic of 1634 created a dire need. Between 1635 and 1640, the Mohawks waged “mourning wars” in seemingly all directions, usually against their enemies.141 One of their ancient enemies,

138 Richter, Ordeal of the Longhouse, 83.

139 Richter, Ordeal of the Longhouse, 32-33; Parmenter, Edge of the Woods, 81; Dennis, Cultivating a Landscape of Peace, 80, 89-91.

140 Richter, Ordeal of the Longhouse, 32-33.

141 Richter, Ordeal of the Longhouse, 32-38; Parmenter, The Edge of the Woods, 45-51.

56 the Wendats, became a primary target. The harsh effects of smallpox in Wendake coaxed many

Wendats to convert to Christianity. According to W. J. Eccles, this made the Wendats favorable targets for adoption, since the Mohawks would have perceived their willingness to convert to

Christianity as evidence of a weak cultural loyalty that could be exploited.142

The Mohawks did not shy away from attacking Europeans either. They made multiple attacks against the English during the Pequot War. In August 1636 a war party of Mohawks armed with Dutch flintlocks fell upon some English in Connecticut, killing several.143 A year later, a group of Mohawk gunmen joined forces with Pequots against a joint English-

Narragansett coalition in Connecticut, a further warning to both the English and Narragansetts that the Mohawks were not to be trifled with.144 According to Alfred Cave, Roger Williams’s report of this second attack is false, but nonetheless, Williams’ observations of the Mohawks as

“most savage, their weapons more dangerous, and their crueltie dreadfull, roasting allive, etc.” succinctly captures the consistent attitude of New England Indians towards the Mohawks.145

Even in a weakened state, they were a considerable threat in want of respect, a lesson the English learned after Mohawk messengers delivered the head of Sassacus back to Connecticut in 1637.146

142 W. Eccles, The French in North America: 1500-1783 (Fitzhenry and Whiteside, 2010), 49. Parmenter further argues that the acquisition of Wendat captives also served as an effective means of gathering valuable intel on the French. The Mohawks made used of this “symbiotic relationship” between people and information by adopting Wendat peoples to enhance Iroquoian spatial knowledge of North America that could then be applied to imperial strategy. Edge of the Woods, 51, 81, (on the symbiotic relationship) xliii.

143 Winthrop Papers, vol. 3, 318; Brandão, Your Fyre Shall Burn No More, Table D.1. . For another example of how historians have examined the Pequot War within a longer chronological trajectory, see Katherine Grandjean, “The Long Wake of the Pequot War,” in Early American Studies, vol. 9, no. 2 (Spring 2011), 379-411.

144 Winthrop Papers, vol. 3, 438; Brandão, Your Fyre Shall Burn No More, Table D.1.

145 Williams, Correspondence, I: 90; Alfred A. Cave, The Pequot War (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996), 158.

146 “August 5, 1637, Winthrop, The Journal of John Winthrop, 127; Cave, The Pequot War, 161.

57 The move served as a gesture for continued good trade relations with the English, but was also a conspicuous reminder Ahnowahraake was a world the Mohawks controlled.

Both English and French agents recognized the ferocity of Mohawk warfare, but ultimately blamed the Dutch for their rise in power. Contemporaries believed the Dutch were intentionally dealing arms to the Mohawks in order to harass their European rivals. Moreover, the resulting imbalance of power between Native American factions necessitated the need for

French and English agents to trade guns, gunpowder, and lead to their own indigenous allies, a practice both factions abhorred for fear of their own safety. As the Mohawks expanded their imperial reach, the effects rippled across Ahnowahraake, inciting tension and fear that affected the relationships of Dutch, French, and English colonists with their neighboring Indian groups for the next several decades. As intense as the effects of their partnership were however, neither the Dutch nor the Mohawks intended to assist the other in the problems they shared ties to.

Neither party was certain of the role of the other in their own designs, neither fully trusted the other, but for the moment both factions realized one could meet the needs of the other. It was a symbiotic relationship in the making, yet neither the Dutch nor the Mohawks were willing to acknowledge the signs that both had become dependent on the other for survival.

Conclusion

By 1639, a Mohawk-Dutch relationship began to solidify into something both sides could recognize as mutually beneficial. Mohawk reliance on firearms developed hand-in-hand with their desire to extend their longhouse, to make “one people.”147 Far-flung hunting

147 Brandão, Your Fyre Shall Burn No More, 80.

58 expeditions for beaver pelts might not as of yet been necessary, but it fit snug within the motives of Mohawk military campaigns. Wars for captives often served the dual purpose of gaining access to new hunting grounds whereby additional beaver populations could be exploited.148

Despite some resistance from colonial officials and the WIC Directors, many Dutch traders were more than willing to oblige. Even then they had little choice. Years of strained relations with the

Mohawks made perfectly clear that the Mohawks–could and did–trade with their French and

English rivals and more importantly, could easily exterminate New Netherland altogether. The

Dutch were expendable.

Two events in 1639 perfectly capture the dichotomous nature of New Netherland’s existence in this early period. First, the lift of the company monopsony on the fur trade ushered in a wave of private traders eager to capitalize on a burgeoning market. At the same time, in recognizing that “which has already caused much evil and will hereafter result in greater evil if no means be adopted,” the WIC attempted to officially halt the vending of guns, powder, and shot to the Indians.149 Effective March 31, 1639, “every inhabitant of New Netherland … [was]

… most expressly forbidden to sell any muskets, powder or lead to the Indians, on pain of being punished by death.”150 As far as the outcome, the Dutch received mixed results. The lift on the company monopsony provided enough incentive for New Netherland’s population to boom with scores of settlers flooding the docks of New Amsterdam over the subsequent years.

Consequently however, the newly-opened opportunity for profit attracted private traders who bore no interests in adhering to the local laws that colonial magistrates lacked the resources to

148 Parmenter, The Edge of the Woods, xlvi-xlvii.

149 VRBM, 426.

150 VRBM, 426.

59 fully enforce. The ordinance prohibiting the trade of munitions would be one of several to be restated over the duration of the colony, but the official legislation did little to curb the rampant smuggling that private traders brought with them, much less the official company trade that continued unabated.

The advent of European trade into Ahnowahraake did not render an old world new.

Certainly European goods helped reorient trade axes over which indigenous geopolitics fluctuated, but these goods did little to affect the imperial strategies of Native American factions.

As has been discussed thus far, the Mohawks utilized traditional systems of adaptation and survival to navigate change before and after the beginnings of European settlement. They did not react to European colonization, but instead forced Europeans to accommodate their own value systems and customs. It was the Europeans who found themselves constantly reacting to the ebb and flow of the indigenous conflicts that continuously shift across the landscape, connecting the worlds of New England, New France, and New Netherland beyond a point any of the three were comfortable with. Far from a land where milk and honey flowed, Ahnowahraake was a world enmeshed in intense geopolitical friction dating back to centuries that convulsed in a manner utterly invisible to the first Europeans’ eyes.151 As the Dutch would quickly discover,

Ahnowahraake was a distinctly native world, and they would need the help of the Mohawks if they were to survive it.

151 H. C. Murphy, Anthology of New Netherland or Translations from the Early Dutch Poets of New York with Memoirs of their Lives (New York: 1865), 30-31; Jacobs, New Netherland, 7-21.

60 CHAPTER TWO

GUNPOWDER DIPLOMACY: TRADE AND SECURITY IN NEW NETHERLAND AND RENSSELAERSWIJCK, 1639-1659

Introduction Perched atop his horse with a clear view of the Mohawk castle, Arent van Curler and his envoy waited patiently “fully a quarter of an hour,” on a brisk morning in 1643 while their native hosts prepared the welcoming ceremony.1 Van Curler knew the process well. Travelling from village to village into the heart of Mohawk country, he had been well-received at every turn with warm welcomes, smooth gift exchanges, and hearty meals just for the occasion, all indications of the immense respect the Mohawks held for their Dutch brother. Standing in unison, the village’s best warriors brandished muskets, took aim at the sky and fired. These were ceremonies articulated to demonstrate the weight of Mohawk power. The Mohawks took pride in their rising capacity as a military force, and no Dutch colonist had been more instrumental in this feat than

Corlaer.2 Having graciously acknowledged the salute, van Curler’s group approached, guided by

1 Arent van Curler, "Arent van Curler and His Historic Letter to the Patroon," trans., A. J. F. Van Laer, Dutch Setters Society of Albany Yearbook 3 (1927-1928) hosted through New Netherland Institute: “Letter of Arent van Curler to Kiliaen van Rensselaer, June 16, 1643,” pp.1-12, 10-11; https://www.newnetherlandinstitute.org/files/2913/5464/7575/Van_CurlerLetterFinal120212.pdf.

2 Van Curler’s reputation was held with high regard by the Mohawks for his involvement in the trade of munitions and liquor as well as his ability to negotiate settlements in Mohawk-Dutch conflicts, a skill the Dutch would utilize with other indigenous groups as well. On the first recorded use of Corlaer after van Curler’s death, see Richter, “Rediscovered Links in the Covenant Chain,” 48. On van Curler’s influence as a “cultural broker,” see Daniel K. Richter, “Cultural Brokers and Intercultural Politics: New York-Iroquois Relations, 1664-1701,” in JAH vol. 75, no. 1 (June 1988), 40-67; 46, 53. On his intimate relationship with the Mohawks including conceiving a child with a Mohawk woman, see Jacobs, New Netherland, 395-396; Romney, New Netherland Connections, 180-181; Richter, Trade, Land, Power, 114-115; and Parmenter, Edge of the Woods, 113-114.

61 the glowing smiles of their hosts that broke through the clearing smoke. “There was,” he later wrote, “great joy among them because I had come.”3

This short cultural exchange, albeit part of a larger initiative in van Curler’s failed attempt to procure French prisoners of war–a group that included Father Isaac Jogues–from his

Mohawk allies, marked the beginning of what would become an intense relationship between the

Dutch and the Mohawks. With the help of Dutch munitions, the Mohawks evolved from a premier fighting force into an imperial power that could hold its own against Dutch, French, or

English foes, leading to their expansive conquests that would stretch from Iowa to Maine over the following decades. In return, the Dutch received a powerful–and feared–native ally that could serve to tie the Dutch economy into the fur trade while also providing mediation for intermittent

Dutch-Indian conflicts, both equally crucial to the colony’s economic prosperity and encouraging immigration.

From a Dutch perspective, trading a steady flow of guns, powder, and shot to appease the demands of their powderful Indian neighbors assured continued friendship and alliances crucial to sustaining a colonial presence in Ahnowahraake. Yet these promises did little to curb the prevailing fears of Indian duplicity. The “imminent danger of being suddenly attacked, massacred and driven off” by Indians and Europeans alike was a constant threat in the minds of both the colonists and the WIC, especially after Kieft’s War.4 This fear became the basis for the ordinances that officially banned the trade of guns, powder, and shot. Indeed, by 1650 the WIC acknowledged the trade had reached a point in which the “aforesaid contraband goods cannot

3 Van Curler, “Letter of Arent van Curler to Kiliaen van Rensselaer, June 16, 1643,” 11.

4 DRCHNY 1: 388.

62 easily be cut short or forbidden, without evident danger of new war and trouble between the subjects of the State and the Aborigines.”5 The scarcity of gunpowder compounded the issues. In trading away their limited gunpowder supplies for continued friendship, the Dutch were trading away their best means of defense in exchange for temporary peace. Only a year earlier in 1649 did Director-General Petrus Stuyvesant remark on the paucity of powder available for the

“eventuality of new war.”6 With the looming threat of being overrun by the English in New

Haven permanently stitched in the back of Stuyvesant’s mind, the suppression of the gunpowder trade became all the more prudent, especially following successive encroachments into the

Connecticut and Delaware River Valleys in the late 1630s and 1640s.7

Looking at the Mohawk-Dutch partnership through the eyes of van Curler and other

Dutch gunrunners yields a nuanced view of why the Dutch traded munitions to the Mohawks, voluntarily and by force, and the implications of these actions for the combined futures of New

Netherland and Rensselaerswijck. Together, van Curler, and the Mohawk headman he dealt with set dangerous precedents for how the Mohawks and Dutch negotiated with one another, solidifying the place of gunpowder in kaswentha. From this moment on, the Mohawks expected a continual supply of guns, powder, and shot from WIC representatives in order to maintain their friendship, anything less threatened to break the chains that bound them together.

In 1643, Van Curler and the Dutch had reason to believe a bright future was on the horizon. As Wim Klooster argues, “the Dutch empire in the Atlantic reached its greatest extent” in 1642 following the additions of Luanda, São Tomé, and expansion in West Africa and Brazil,

5 DRCHNY 1: 388.

6 NNCM 4: 595-597

7 Isabel MacBeath Calder, The New Haven Colony (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1934), 183-192.

63 all on the heels of the Iberian disunion.8 After years of struggling to establish themselves in

North America in the same way, the Dutch finally conceded any progress to be made in North

America would come only with the cooperation of the Mohawks. By July 1640, Kiliaen van

Rensselaer dropped his charges of indemnity against the Mohawks for killing his cattle years earlier–a change of heart likely influenced by the success of William Pynchon to divert Mohawk trade in Springfield–and instructed van Curler to forge a new relationship with the Mohawks.9

Accordingly, “three very fine blankets” were distributed in van Rensselaer’s name to three sachems. The first was for Saggodryochta, who van Rensselaer took careful attention to mention by name, and the other two “to the two chiefs who have the greatest credit and power among the maquaes [Mohawks] or to one of the principal men of the mahikans [Mohicans].”10 Doing so was no difficult task for van Curler, who was already known to “spend too much time in the woods” and had even constructed the patroon’s house on the western bank of the Hudson, opposite Rensselaerswijck, but closer to the Mohawks.11 The letters detailing van Curler’s vivid

8 Dutch imperialists sought to take advantage of Portugal’s break from Spain by blitzing Portuguese colonial territories before King John IV’s regime could firmly establish itself; Klooster, The Dutch Moment, 69; “the Dutch empire,” 72; C. R. Boxer, The Dutch in Brazil, 1624-1654 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957), 157-158; Filipa Ribeiro da Silva, Dutch and Portuguese in Western Africa: Empires, Merchants, and the Atlantic System, 1580-1674 (Boston: Brill, 2011), 238-242.

9 New Netherland officials accused Rensselaerswijck of diverting the trade of Mohawks and Mohicans from Fort Orange to which van Rensselaer pointed the blame toward the English in Connecticut. VRBM, 483-484; Alden T. Vaughn, New England Frontier: Puritans and Indians, 1620-1675 (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1956), 216.

10 VRBM, 508-509.

11 VRBM, 486; Van Curler’s motion to build on the west bank confirm his intimate knowledge of Ahnowahraake that he obtained from the Mohawks. A residence on the west side of the Hudson would have allowed van Curler to travel into Mohawk Country more frequently, against the wishes of van Rensselaer, as well as take advantage of the fertile farm lands to tap into the corn trade; James W. Bradley, “Visualizing Arent van Curler,” in DHM, vol. 73, no. 1 (Spring 2005), 3-14; 4. See also Winifred Notman Prince and Mrs. David C. Prince, “An Episode in the Life of Arent van Curler,” New York History, vol. 13, no. 3 (July 1932), 256-263; 259-260.

64 ideas for the Dutch colonization of North America may not have survived, but his actions make them clear.

Like van Curler, the Dutch of New Netherland depended on the Mohawks for survival.

The Mohawks’ firm grip on much of the fur trade made them an invaluable client for both the company and its colonists. In addition, siphoning off munitions to the Mohawks increased the protection of the colony. On one hand, increasing Mohawk power helped sustain their dominance over the smaller indigenous nations that surrounded New Netherland on all sides. On the other, fueling Mohawk military campaigns abroad worked well to both create a buffer zone between the Dutch and their imperial rivals, the French and the English, while also serving as a means to indirectly disrupt trade with the Native Americans of those areas. Lastly, elements of fear and dependence also played a considerable part in Dutch motives. The WIC recognized the degree to which New Netherland’s sustenance and economy depended on the Mohawks, and as a result, feared the consequences potentially wrought should relations turn sour to the point the

Mohawks divert the fur trade to the English or French. Worse still, the Mohawks were powerful enough in Dutch eyes to oust the colony altogether, either on their own or in a joint effort with

French or English agents eager to see New Netherland razed. Maintaining the gunpowder trade with the Mohawks assured their allegiance, and with luck, their protection.

Rensselaerswijck

By the time of his trip in 1643, van Curler had done well to climb the ranks in his great- grand uncle’s patroonship. After two years of training under Jacob Albertsz Planck, Van Curler

65 was made the patroonship’s secretary and bookkeeper in 1639, and commies by 1641.12 Together with Cornelis Teunisz van Slijck, representative of the patroon, and Pieter Cornelisz van

Monnickendam, who collected tithes and monitored operations on the Hudson, the three men ran

Rensselaerswijck. The three men, “all in their early twenties,” historian Janny Venema notes,

“repeatedly had differences of opinion.”13 Yet it appears from an early stage, van Rensselaer favored van Curler over the others, and seems to have entrusted him with the greatest amount of authority.14

The objectives of Rensselaerswijck changed considerably after 1639. Prior to the end of the fur trade monopsony, WIC policies for New Netherland typically favored trade over colonization and settlement. Patroons enjoyed separate colonial jurisdictions outside the control of the West India Company so long as their businesses were conducted where company representation did not exist in order to not interfere with the official trade. As part of the original pro-colonization faction of the WIC, Van Rensselaer seemed disinterested initially in the fur trade, evidenced by his tense relationship with the Mohawks in the 1630s. For years, van

Rensselaer continued to demand retribution for an incident involving Mohawk warriors and Hans

Hontom in 1632. Yet, by 1641, van Rensselaer appears to have changed course. He still considered Rensselaerswijck as primarily an agricultural colony, but interests in taking advantage of the fur trade were present.15 Always an astute observer of events in the patroonship,

12 VRBM, 411-416; Richter, Ordeal of the Longhouse, 93. On the typical duties and responsibilities of a commies, a chief political and diplomatic officer, see Jacobs, New Netherland, 61-66.

13 Venema, Kiliaen van Rensselaer, 263.

14 Venema, Kiliaen van Rensselaer, 263.

15 Van Rensselaer was careful to ensure relations between his patroon and New Netherland officials were good in the 1640s. He desired to ease into the fur trade without interfering in company business. Janny Venema has indicated evidence from this not only from his correspondence with Kieft, but also with the patroon’s trading house site, which appears to have been built between 1640 and 1641, sitting just outside the moat of Fort Orange.

66 even from afar, perhaps van Rensselaer recognized the necessity of the fur trade in efforts to promote and sustain a colonial settlement.

Van Rensselaer’s change in course, and subsequently Van Curler’s newfound duties as a cultural liaison would force extensive changes in the Mohawk-Dutch relationship. Despite efforts by Van Rensselaer to curb smuggling within his patroonship, as well as the effects of the seasonal private traders that would float firearms and brandy up the Hudson, it would not be enough to prevent Rensselaerswijck from turning into a reliable commercial supplier for munitions, linens, and liquor.16 As a result, Rensselaerswijck and the private traders hiding under its jurisdiction quickly set precedents for how the Mohawks and other Indians would pursue relationships with New Netherland through the duration of the colony. Indeed, attempts by

Director-General Kieft to curb the hazardous trade of guns and alcohol failed to suppress the operations in Rensselaerswijck where most of the illicit trading occurred.17 Indeed, “after 1639 there are many references to Iroquois armament, and one of the most commonly assigned reasons for the growing tensions at Manhattan and the outbreak of Kieft’s War in February

1643.”18

The outgrowth of illicit trading in guns, powder, shot, and liquor from Rensselaerswijck completely changed the nature of trading around Fort Orange.19 Almost immediately, official

Additionally, on various occasions it appears the two colonies cooperated extensively including on Van Curler’s trip in 1643. Venema, Kiliaen van Rensselaer, 264; Beverwijck, 46-47.

16 On the seasonal “Scottish traders,” see Venema, Kiliaen van Rensselaer, 48, 264-265.

17 DRCHNY 1: 182; Venema, Kiliaen van Rensselaer, 264-265.

18 Venema, Kiliaen van Rensselaer, 264. Richter, Ordeal of the Longhouse, 94. Trelease, Indian Affairs in Colonial New York, 93-102.

19 Richter, Ordeal of the Longhouse, 93.

67 company trade at Fort Orange declined, while a local population of private traders quickly sprouted. Like van Curler, these traders were commonly called boschlopers, secretive merchants

“who defied West India Company directives by peddling their contraband wares or brokering trade with native inhabitants in the forests of and its colonial North America.”20 Under the cover of foliage, these private traders, “well-provisioned with high quality trade goods such as textiles and firearms,” undercut company prices and utilized the lack of locally-centralized government offices to forge intercultural partnerships and alliances.21 Traditionally, historians have portrayed these traders in specific terms, as “strong-armed” merchants not above resorting to physical abuse or intimidation to acquire the business of Mohawk patrons.22 While violence did indeed pervade many of these encounters, however, the treatment of these incidents as evidentiary fragments of a frontier where “civility vanished” does little to push forth a stronger understanding of intercultural relationships, especially ones the Mohawks often controlled.23

As the commies of Rensselaerswijck, Van Curler brokered an alliance with the Mohawks on their own terms, travelling from his residence near Fort Orange with gifts that echoed loudly in a world that hinged on commitment and reciprocity. Although van Curler technically by title represented Rensselaerswijck, and not New Netherland, the Mohawks nonetheless perceived him as an ambassador of all Dutch people, enabling van Curler to carry out a diplomatic mission without official authority from the States General. As a result, he successfully resumed the

20 The term “boschloper” was adapted to seventeenth-century Dutch by Timothy Reid Romans, “The Boschlopers of New Netherland and the Iroquois, 1633-1664,” Master’s Thesis, (Florida State University, 2005), 12-13; Richter, Ordeal of the Longhouse, 96.

21 Meuwese, Brothers in Arms, Partners in Trade, 10.

22 Richter, Ordeal of the Longhouse, 96-97; Merwick, Possessing Albany, 88-91; Bailyn, The Barbarous Years, 248-251.

23 Bailyn, The Barbarous Years, 250.

68 dominant role in Mohawk-Dutch relations previously held by Eelckens, carving out a permanent place in Mohawk memory as an influential intercultural contact and ambassador of all Dutch people.24 Despite lacking any diplomatic titles or duties from the States General or West India

Company, “the Mohawks received him as the respected headman he appeared to them to be, with all due ceremony as embellished with the fruits of intercultural trade.”25 Van Curler’s success would set a precedent for years to come, forcing both Willem Kieft and later, Stuyvesant to continue trading company munitions to the Mohawks, while also attempting to derail the contraband trade the Mohawks willfully encouraged.26

Security

Faced with the constant, simultaneous threats of an English invasion or Indian massacre, the Dutch had little choice but to continue trading gunpowder to the Mohawks for their own security. The Dutch depended on their alliance with the Mohawks to help settle disputes with other indigenous groups and for protection from potential French or English threats. Colonial officials frequently called upon the Mohawks to act as mediators as happened in both Kieft’s

War and the Second Dutch-Munsee War–sometimes known as the Peach War–as well as other small conflicts that intermittently plagued the colony. The Mohawks and Mohicans both exerted heavy influence over the smaller Hudson Valley bands, and the Dutch used this power dynamic to their advantage as best they could when necessary.

24 Richter, “Rediscovered Links,” 53.

25 Richter, Ordeal of the Longhouse, 94.

26 Richter, Ordeal of the Longhouse, 95.

69 Most of the friction between the Dutch and Indians in the early stages of settlement stemmed over land. In response to the influx of colonists in 1639, Kieft made several land purchases from the Indians in the vicinity of New Amsterdam.27 At first these transactions, such as one land deed with the Rockaways, often came with stipulations that the Indians could remain on the land to “plant corn, fish, hunt, and make a living” that could contribute to the welfare of the colony through trade.28 While agreeable initially, however, sharing land with the Indians soon became problematic for the Dutch. It was not uncommon for groups such as the

Rockaways, either unfamiliar with or apathetic towards European concepts of private property, to frequently resell purchased land to different buyers in exchange for goods including guns, powder, shot, knives, linens, wampum, and alcohol.29

Additionally, the lack of distinctive geopolitical boundaries often made settlers uncomfortable, leading to intercultural disputes frequently worsened by alcohol.30 Colonists’ pigs, for example, proved to be quite troublesome, with numerous incidents of free-range pigs destroying Indian gardens and crop fields.31 The hazardous effects of these occurrences are captured in ordinances as early as 1640 warning that the continued failure to restrain livestock will result in poor harvests and worse, “the Indians would be caused to move and develop a

27 DRCHNY 14: 15.

28 DRCHNY 14: 15.

29 Trelease, Indian Affairs, 64.

30 On alcohol, and its tendencies to spur violent interactions between Indians and Europeans, see JR 51: 123; 53: 241; 55: 85; 57: 81. Peter C. Mancall, Deadly Medicine: Indians and Alcohol in Early America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995), 141-142 (on the Dutch liquor trade); Merwick, Possessing Albany, 68-133; Haefeli, “Kieft’s War and the Cultures of Violence,” 17-42; Otto, The Dutch-Munsee Encounter, 108-111, 138-141, 148- 151, 170-171.

31 Jacobs, New Netherland, 223-225; Trelease, Indian Affairs in Colonial New York, 64-65.

70 hatred against our nation and some injury might happen to one or the other of us.”32 These specific clauses in land deeds and ordinances, moreover, reveal how Dutch settlers remained reliant on the Indians for at least some of their food supplies. Surviving in Ahnowahraake meant maintaining amicable relations. Moreover, the need to preserve healthy relationships with local

Indian nations was becoming increasingly difficult around New Amsterdam, “where the fur trade was fast disappearing.”33

Navigating the complex geopolitics of Ahnowahraake required an adept awareness of what was occurring in the forests surrounding New Netherland. By 1639, the Mohawks were obtaining guns from English traders along the Connecticut River, and were less than shy about showing them off to Dutch traders.34 Archaeological evidence suggests the Mohawks had long been receiving firearms from Dutch sources at this point, but any indication that the Mohawks might turn to English suppliers was a red flag to Dutch colonizers. Maintaining the trade connection that sustained the colony’s economy and protected its borders meant the WIC would have to reconsider how to go about preserving the colony’s relationship with the Mohawks, even if the answer was obvious.35 The Mohawks wanted guns, and would go to great lengths to get their hands on them.

Many of the smaller indigenous groups in the Hudson Valley and around Manhattan soon looked upon the Dutch arms trade with the Mohawks and Mohicans with disdain, and it was

32 NNCM 4: 73-74; Jacobs, New Netherland, 224.

33 Trelease, Indian Affairs in Colonial New York, 62.

34 “Journal of New Netherland,” NNN, 274; Trigger, The Children of Aataentsic, 630-631; Calloway, The Western Abenaki of Vermont, 1600-1800, 45. Silverman, Thundersticks, 32.

35 “Journal of New Netherland,” NNN, 274; Trigger, The Children of Aataentsic, 630-631; Calloway, The Western Abenaki of Vermont, 1600-1800, 45. Silverman, Thundersticks, 32.

71 partially the refusal of Dutch officials to permit the sale of firearms to the coastal Indian groups around Manhattan that led to the outbreak of Kieft’s War. In contrast to Dutch strategies for the

Mohawks and Mohicans, colonial officials sought to avoid trading munitions to the smaller local groups for fear of uprisings against Dutch settlers, only a short extension from the intermittent conflicts that continued to impede further settlement.36 In 1639, officials in New Amsterdam posted the first ordinance banning the sale of guns, gunpowder, and shot to the Indians.37 The new law forced disgruntled Hudson Valley groups–incapable of asserting themselves in ways the

Mohawks or Mahicans could–to trek up to Rensselaerswijck where van Curler would draw up a similar ordinance two years later.38 The Dutch took great precaution with regard to who gunpowder went to in these early years, and the case of the smaller Munsee bands living in the vicinity of New Amsterdam, the risks outweigh the benefits. Maintaining an adequate supply to meet the demands of the Mohawks and Mahicans, moreover, was equally crucial. The Dutch might have been the world leaders in arms dealing, but New Netherland was far from a top priority in terms of imperial possessions and received resources accordingly. While the focus in the Dutch Atlantic remained Brazil, carefully retaining munitions for the most important clients was paramount.39

36 Trelease explained these contrasting approaches in a dichotomy defined by “valuable” and “expendable” Indian groups. For the Dutch, smaller Algonquian groups around the Hudson Valley were expendable and could be utilized as buffer zones against English encroachment or removed if necessary for the benefit of the colony. Mohawks, Mohicans, and Susquehannocks, on the other hand were considered valuable because of the influence over the local Indian groups as well as their dominant presence in the fur trade. This framework is rather optimistic of Dutch influence in Ahnowahraake, given the advantages in power and influence the Mohawks, Mohicans, and Susquehannocks had over the Dutch at this time. Indian Affairs, xii-xiii.

37 NNLO, 18-19.

38 VRBM, 565-566.

39 Klooster, The Dutch Moment, 77-83; Boxer, The Dutch in Brazil, 89-111; Meuwese, Brothers in Arms, Partners in Trade, 43-48.

72 In February 1643, a well-armed Mohican war party conducted a raid against unsuspecting

Wecquaesgeek and Tappan Indians, armed only with bows and arrows.40 According to De Vries,

“eighty to ninety” Mohican warriors had descended from Fort Orange, “each with a gun on his shoulder” to levy tribute from the smaller Algonquin nations.41 At least seventeen

Wecquaesgeeks were killed. As the invaders made off with many captive women and children, the bewildered survivors fled to Fort Amsterdam to seek refuge.42

That the attackers were Mohicans and not Mohawks is worth discussing further here.

O’Callaghan and Brodhead were both confident enough to ignore the primary documents and assume the attackers were actually Mohawks and not Mohicans.43 The Mohawks were in fact enemies of these smaller Algonquian groups, but attacks were rare and would have factored little in Mohawk imperial designs at this time.44 The Mohicans, on the other hand, were allies with these smaller Hudson Valley groups and as part of their covenant, occasionally called upon these groups to collect tribute. According to De Vries, this attack was the result of the

Mohicans“want[ing] to levy a contribution,” probably in response to other events happening in

Ahnowahraake.45 Amy Schutt has argued the Mohican attack might have been a response to Van

40 De Vries, NNN, 225-226; “Journal of New Netherland,” NNN, 276-277. Trelease, Indian Affairs of Colonial New York, 70-71.

41 NNN, 225.

42 The author, either writing from memory or from the account of someone else, noted the Indians appeared “half dead of cold and hunger,” suggesting there perhaps might have been a food shortage among the local indigenous populations that winter that could possibly have spurred the attack. There was enough however, for the Dutch to spare some corn. “Journal of New Netherland,” NNN, 275-277.

43 O’Callaghan, History of New Netherland, I: 264; Brodhead, History of New York: I: 349; Trelease, Indian Affairs in Colonial New York, 71n30.

44 NYDH, 4: 104; Ruttenber, Indian Tribes of Hudson’s River, 105n; Trelease, Indian Affairs of Colonial New York, 71n30.

45 De Vries, NNN, 225.

73 Curler’s renewed covenant with the Mohawks. “The Mohicans watched these activities carefully,” Schutt continues, “and considered ways to make themselves valuable to the Dutch at a time when the Mohawks were gaining an advantage.”46 The attack on the Weckquaesgeek and

Tappans aligns with both objectives, since exerting their influence of the wampum and corn trades of the lower Hudson Valley, and by the same token, avenging the death of Claes Swits would have allowed the Mohicans to bolster their position as Dutch trade partners in their own terms. Building on highly coveted wampum connections gave them leverage over the Mohawks as well.47

In the short and long term, the tensions between the smaller Hudson River indigenous groups and the Mohawks, Mohicans, and even the Susquehannocks, helped create a state of fear among the WIC Directors. Kiliaen van Rensselaer himself took quick precaution in the event a new Indian war might spread up river. Venema speculates it was likely the 1643 attack that might have encouraged Kiliaen van Rensselaer to install Nicolaes Coorn as a drill sergeant on

Beeren Island along with artillery along the southernmost side. These installments initiated the process of transforming the island into a defensible retreat for the colonists as well as an ideal location for storing company goods and housing an arsenal over which Van Rensselaer hoped to maintain tight control.48 An inventory list from 1643 included “two iron three pounders with

46 Schutt, Peoples of the River Valleys, 44.

47 Schutt, Peoples of the River Valleys, 44-45; Otto, The Dutch-Munsee Encounter, 124-125. Corn would have been a valuable trade asset in these years since intermittent fighting and poor harvests rendered New Netherland’s agricultural production unreliably sporadic in the 1640s; Jacobs, New Netherland, 214-233. Dutch colonists were not above attacking the Indians for corn either; Haefeli, “Kieft’s War and the Cultures of Violence in Colonial America,” 32-35.

48 Van Rensselaer would soon rename this outpost, Rensselaerssteijn. Venema, Kiliaen van Rensselaer, 265; VRBM, 680-682. In addition to attempting to tighten his grip on his own colonists, Van Rensselaer attempted to prohibit the trading of seasonal private merchants that continued to supply local Indians with firearms and alcohol; see VRBM, 682-685.

74 their gun carriages, ladles and sponges, a cannon, gun carriages, musket balls, muskets, firelocks, pistols, spears, powder, ball molds, and other equipment for a value of f. 1094.18.”49

For fear of an attack, colonial officials expected settlers to have adequately equipped themselves for training and protection. The guns, gunpowder, and lead that made its way to the colony were mostly property of the WIC and kept in the colonial armories. There were times the

WIC felt it necessary to supply colonists with guns, powder, and shot before crossing the

Atlantic. In a letter to Stuyvesant, the Directors note their permission directed to Antonia

Juriansen, a mother travelling with a large family aboard the Valckenier in 1648 “to take with her

12 guns, 50 lbs. of powder and as much lead for the defense of her family in time of need.”50 The

Directors paid close attention to these particular cases. In order to insure “all smuggling be prevented,” the WIC routinely requested Stuyvesant to maintain close watch on incoming colonists “to see whether they have not made a profitable trade in arms, instead of keeping them for defense.”51

Although their relationship with the Mohawks was at least partly to blame for the internecine fighting with the local Indians, the Dutch still relied on this connection for the safety of the colony. Colonial magistrates knew well enough to take advantage of the influence the

Mohawks exerted over the local bands of the Hudson Valley, and frequently called upon

Mohawk sachems to mediate conflicts and help restore peace. It was only after Kieft’s first visit to Fort Orange in the seven years he had been in New Netherland that progress towards peace

49 Venema, Kiliaen van Rensselaer, 265; Gelders Archief, Court Case Brant van Slichtenhorst and Jan van Rensselaer, 74. Venema places the date of this list to 1652, but this is in fact an inventory list from 1643, VRBM, 706-707.

50 DRCHNY 14, 86-87.

51 DRCHNY 14, 86-87.

75 were tangibly in reach. In the summer of 1645, Kieft embraced kaswentha for the first time, calling upon Mohawk and Mohican ambassadors to assist drawing up the terms of a new peace treaty.52 With the assistance of Van Curler and the representatives of Rensselaerswijck, an agreement was swiftly met. Shortly thereafter, Kieft, in the company of Rensselaerswijck officials and Mohawk ambassadors journeyed back to New Amsterdam. There “under the blue canopy of heaven,” a ‘masked’ Mohawk sachem Agheroense, serenaded his international audience with metaphors of brotherhood, peace, and the laws of kaswentha.53

Evidently, much of Agheroense’s speech, undoubtedly clouded in metaphor akin to

Haudenosaunee tradition, went over Dutch heads. The “mask” Agheroense wore captivated onlookers including van der Donck, who later wrote that Kieft and La Montagne determined the substance was gold, prompting secretive expeditions into the mountains “which the Indians had indicated perfectly.”54 This distraction, over a substance that turned out to be pyrite, perfectly captures the lack of awareness of even the most adept Dutch intercultural liasons of Mohawk customs. The mask symbolized not wealth or beauty, but clarity, an important theme deeply rooted in the metaphorical Tree of Peace from the Deganawidah Epic.55 Unbeknownst to Dutch observers, Agheroense–by covering half of his face in pyrite–was actually replicating a specific concept from Haudenosaunee oral traditions. The pyrite–ironically, given the Dutch reaction to

52 DRCHNY, 13: 18-19; Trelease, Indian Affairs in Colonial New York, 83.

53 Face painting was actually a common practice among Mohawk negotiators, the meaning of which has still yet to be investigated in full. See for instance, Jennings et. al., The History and Culture of Iroquois Diplomacy, 128-129. The Dutch initially thought Agheroesnse had smeared authentic gold powder on his face and immediately designed plans to find the supposed mine he had obtained it from. Much to the disappointment of the Dutch though, the substance was found to be pyrite. Van der Donck, A Description of New Netherland, 39. (“under the”) DRCHNY, 13: 18; Parmenter, The Edge of the Woods, 64.

54 Van der Donck, A Description of New Netherland, 40; DHNY 4: 76; NNCM 4: 280.

55 On clarity and its importance in the epic, see Dennis, Cultivating a Landscape of Peace, 76-115, especially 100- 105.

76 it–represented the “clouds that covered the sun and implied the absence of clarity and reason.”56

While addressing the forum of Dutch colonists and Indians before him, the unpainted side faced the Dutch indicative of their adherence to kaswentha, while the gold faced the Indians, an intentional signal that the Indians had been behaving poorly and with lack of clarity, for why else would they seek to harm the Mohawks’ Dutch brothers.57

On August 30, a general peace was declared, culminating in the signing of a treaty between the Dutch and the several Indian Nations involved, all under the supervision of the

Mohawks, “the strongest and most feared in the country.”58 The negotiations provided the

Mohawks with an opportunity to demonstrate their commitment to kaswentha and their relationship with the Dutch as well as a means of strengthening their influence over the local

Munsee groups, in order to take advantage of their wampum production.59

56 Dennis, Cultivating a Landscape of Peace, 100; on the divided face, see Jennings, History and Culture of Iroquois Diplomacy, 118.

57 The surviving Dutch records fail to offer any glimpse of what Agheroense said, but if we take into account that another Mohawk speaker, Kiotsaeton, was simultaneously giving a similar speech to a French, Algonquin, Montagnais, and Wendat audience at Trois-Rivières, we can assume Agheroense’s actions and oration were similar if not identical. JR 27: 255-259; Parmenter convincingly argues these speeches were both part of a concerted effort by the Mohawks that reflected a “clear enactment of ideas embedded in the Iroquois Condolence ceremony,” that would allow the Haudenosaunee to absorb the neighbors and become one people. Edge of the Woods, 62-70, (“clear enactment”) 64. The Mohawks would invoke this rhetoric again in 1658 when calling upon the Dutch for help in negotiating peace with the French. DRCHNY 13: 88-89; Dennis, Cultivating a Landscape of Peace, 139.

58 (“the strongest”), van der Donck, A Description of New Netherland, 39.

59 The Mohawk efforts to negotiate peace in New Netherland were part of a broader initiative to recalibrate the position of the Mohawks in Ahnowahraake. Kiotsaeton’s speech was given intentionally at Trois-Rivières, a location farther away from the Onondagas than Montreal. The Mohawks would later attempt to establish Trois- Rivières as the official place of negotiations between the Haudenosaunee and New France; JR, 27: 247-253; 29: 53- 59; Jennings et. al., The History and Culture of Iroquois Diplomacy, 127-132; Meuwese, Brothers in Arms, Partners in Trade, 248. Parmenter, Edge of the Woods, 63-65.

77 Trade

When Adriaen van der Donck wrote, “the beaver is the main reason and the source of the means for the initial settlement of this fine country,” he was not wrong.60 In fact, it took the

Dutch just two decades to exhaust the beaver population around Manhattan Island to near completion by 1639.61 This posed significant challenges to the colony’s development with a new wave of colonists on the way. The end of the WIC’s monopsony on the fur trade was a final resort to encourage settlement. It incited a sharp increase in colonists while also exacerbating

New Netherland’s problems including its peripheral importance to the Dutch in the Atlantic.

Unlike in Brazil, the Dutch in New Netherland did not possess a mint to sustain a metallic-based economy or sugar to attract many capital investors, resulting in a local currency driven by wampum and beaver pelts.62 Success of the colony and its inhabitants quickly entangled itself with the unreliable current of the fur trade, ultimately tying both settlers’ and traders’ fates to the land that was constantly shifting from geopolitical tensions below the surface. As these new colonists would soon find, Ahnowahraake was no more stable than the ships they sailed in on.

While the fur trade around New Amsterdam began to dwindle as a result of the declining populations in the surrounding areas, the fur trade at Fort Orange expanded tremendously in the

1640s, resulting in the swift armament of Haudenosaunee war brigades.63 Jogues reported the

60 Van der Donck, A Description of New Netherland, , 115.

61 Frijhoff, Fulfilling God’s Mission, 472.

62 Jacobs, New Netherland, 196; Klooster, The Dutch Moment, 148-154; De Vries and van der Woude, The First Modern Economy, 402.

63 It is difficult to estimate how many pelts came through the gates of Fort Orange, but if Symon Groot’s deposition is to be believed, the “great Trade with the Sinnekes [and the other] Indians” westward produced at least 37,000 beavers in one year between 1638 and 1645 when he left the colony. Deposition of Symon Groot, 2 July 1688, LIR, 144. As Brandao notes, however, Groot was only twelve years old in 1638, giving additional reason to question his figures. He may have in fact confused his estimate with the trade for 1657 which was reported to be 37,000 pelts. Your Fyre Shall Burn No More, 87. However impressive this figure was, it dwarfs in comparison to the figure

78 Mohawks possessed “nearly three hundred arquebuses” in 1643, and by the following year,

Dutch traders “sold for furs in the consequence of great profit” enough guns, powder and lead for the Mohawks to field an armed force 400 strong.64 With the French establishing new posts at

Montreal and Fort Richelieu in 1642, the Mohawks were more than happy to oblige, and “gave everything they had” for firearms.65

Although colonial officials recognized the inherent dangers of trading munitions to the

Mohawks, the intimate ties between the fur trade and New Netherland’s economy ultimately bound the colony to its continuation.66 Private traders and settlers alike depended on the fur trade for survival and many families took on illicit enterprises at the risk of substantial fines and even banishment in the face of poverty.67 In 1657 for instance, Beverwijck officials discovered twenty-three year old Susanna Jans serving one daring Mohawk patron a concoction of beer, brandy, and wine on the grounds that her “husband having double hernia and being therefore unable to earn his living and she being burdened with three small children, for whom she can buy

provided by van der Donck that no less than 80,000 beaver pelts were collected annually. Van der Donck, A Description of New Netherland, 117. As Jacobs states, the motive to pitch a good venture might have distorted Donck’s figures. Between 1624 and 1635, the Dutch collected approximately 80,000 beavers and 9,000 otters cumulatively, thus demonstrating the sheer exaggeration of Donck’s estimate. These figures come from De Laet, “History of the West India Company,” in NYHS, I: 385. Jacobs, New Netherland, 198. There is reason to believe beaver pelts might have declined in the 1640s given the amount of time and energy the Haudenosaunee allocated to military campaigns, Brandao, Your Fyre Shall Burn No More, 330n68.

64 JR, 24: 295; DRCHNY, 1: 150; Brandao, Your Fyre Shall Burn No More, 88; Steele, Warpaths, 115; Richter, Ordeal of the Longhouse, 62. Jennings, The Ambiguous Iroquois Empire, 57; Trigger, Natives and Newcomers, 262.

65 The Mohawks recognized the establishment of the new fort was a direct attempt to suppress Mohawk aggression into the St. Lawrence River Valley, but attacks designed to impede on its construction were unsuccessful. Jennings et. al., The History and Culture of Iroquois Diplomacy, 131; (“gave everything”), Snow, et al. eds., In Mohawk Country, 209. Steele. Warpaths, 115. Silverman, Thundersticks, 32.

66 Silverman, Thundersticks, 32.

67 For more on the role of women, especially in the face of poverty, in Dutch colonization, see Romney, New Netherland Connections, 66-121.

79 no food except with beavers.”68 Initially, the court resolved to have the defendant pay a steep fine of 500 guilders, but upon observation the final fee amount was never transcribed.

Considering the Susanna Jans’ household would never have been able to pay the fine, it is possible magistrates either looked the other way or settled out of court.69 Connivance, in Dutch society, was common practice.70

Private traders eager to turn a quick profit and return to Europe were even less likely to abide by colonial regulations. While some families might have resorted to illegal measures in times of need, itinerant traders disinterested in settling permanently in the New World felt less inclined to obey local regulations that protected the security of the New Netherland. As a result, lifting the monopsony in 1639 not only caused an upsurge in private traders, but an equal spike in illicit trading. Smuggling remained a continuous problem through the entirety of the colony’s duration. The high demands and profitability of selling guns, powder, and shot enticed private traders. Although legal ordinances made participation in the contraband trade punishable by death, the WIC appears to have been lenient on the issue. Adopting the same policies used to deal with matters of religious tolerance, the Directors encouraged Stuyvesant to “take good care that through this winking no more ammunition be sold than each one had need of for

68 FOCM, 328; Jacobs, New Netherland, 208-209.

69 “The court, considering the dangerous consequences of the case and the severe placards, condemn the said Susanna Janssen, in accordance with the said placards, to pay a fine of [left blank].” FOCM, 328; Jacobs, New Netherland, 208.

70 See for instance, Evan Haefeli, New Netherland and the Dutch Origins of American Religious Liberty (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 54-58.

80 protection.”71 These ordinances were continually renewed to no avail.72 Private traders continued smuggling contraband to the Indians, and colonial magistrates lacked the means of stopping them. Even then, not all those who were caught were necessarily punished.73

Two distinct classes of merchants developed in New Netherland in the 1640s: major and minor. The major merchants were generally permanent residents, and demonstrated interests in climbing the social rankings with large amounts of capital and family connections. The minor merchants, otherwise known as the Scotch merchants that frequently drew the ire of Kiliaen van

Rensselaer, were seasonal.74 Often independent, these merchants made voyages to New

Netherland on private loans known as bottomry bonds.75 These traders, crucially, did not typically own places of residence in the colony, and therefore have traditionally been understood as apathetic to the local ordinances prohibiting the vending of firearms or liquor. Discussions of smuggling, as a result, usually focus around them. As we shall see however, merchants well- grounded in the affairs of New Netherland and Rensselaerswijck were also heavily involved.76

Petrus Stuyvesant would do his best to put an end to the clandestine trade in arms following his

71 Janny Venema, Beverwijck: A Dutch Village on the American Frontier, 1652-1664 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003), 181-182; (“take good care,”) in NNLO, 128. On the “church of winking,” and Dutch religious tolerance, see Evan Haefeli, New Netherland and the Dutch Origins of American Religious Liberty (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 50.

72 Ordinances on the contraband trade appear in the years: 1639, 1645, 1652, 1656, NNLO, 18-19; 47; 128; 278, 287.

73 On the uneven hand of justice in the Dutch Atlantic, see Klooster, 127-128.

74 Venema, Kiliaen van Rensselaer, 264-265.

75 Jacobs, New Netherland, 71.

76 Jacobs, New Netherland, 205-206; Venema, Kiliaen van Rensselaer, 264; Rink, Holland on the Hudson, 133-138; Klooster, The Dutch Moment, 184-187.

81 assumption to the position of Director-General of New Netherland in 1647. As he soon discovered though, the private trade in gunpowder had already taken a life of its own.

Stuyvesant’s crackdown on the illicit trade began in May 1648, the fiscal of New

Netherland, Hendrick van Dyck uncovered a major smuggling operation and arrested Jacob

Reynsen for “selling gunpowder, lead and shot to the Indians.”77 The court proceedings reveal a tremendous amount of information regarding Reynsen’s network connections, activities, and eventual sentencing paint a vivid picture of the inability or unwillingness of colonial officials to fully suppress illicit trading networks. Reynsen was convicted on two charges: buying guns, gun barrels, and locks from the company smith and corporal, Barent Ennesz van Noorden, and subsequently sending these arms along with powder and lead to Fort Orange where his partner,

Jacob Schermerhoorn, sold them to the Indians.”78 The gunpowder consisted of 70 pounds brought over from Holland with him in prune barrels, and an additional 75 pounds purchased from Egbert van Borsum and Abraham Willemsz.79 Reynsen admitted to smuggling lead into

New Amsterdam himself by casting overboard a watertight cask containing ten staves of lead to

77 NNCM 5: 105-106, (“selling,” on 105). This document is a petition by van Dyck to the Director-General and Council over not having received one third the amount of worth for the goods confiscated from Reynsen after the arrest. Interestingly, the Council responds by asserting Reynsen’s goods were confiscated for having been stolen from the Company stores, rather than as a result of partaking in the contraband trade as van Dyck says. Also of note: Reynsen’s name appears in this particular document as “Rynties” with consistency, but other documents pertaining to the event most commonly use “Reynsen” with slight variations: “Reynsz,” NNCM 4: 522; and “Reyntzes,” NNCM 4: 523. For clarity and consistency, I have opted to use only “Reynsen.”

78 See the confession of van Noorden (July 9, 1648), NNCM 4: 534 and court proceedings of May 29, 1648 through June 19 on Reynsen’s case, NNCM 4: 522-524. More information on Jacob Schermerhoorn can be found in New York Geneological and Biological Record, vol. 35 (New York: New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, 1904), pp. 141-144: “History of Schermerhorn Family.”

79 NNCM 4: 522-523. Both Willemsz and van Borsum were involved in purchasing contraband goods in New Haven. Willemsz purchased purchased two kegs of powder from Cornelis and Claes Jansz aboard the St. Beninjo, but no lead or guns. Van Borsum purchased 50 guns at 26 florins each, four kegs of powder at one guilder each, and three 50 pound kegs of shot at 12 stivers per pound from smugglers aboard the St. Beninjo and the Klinckert in northern New Haven. See Willemsz confession on NNCM 4: 531, and a more detailed summary on 549.

82 a location he later returned to fish it out undetected.80 This case involving Reynsen and

Schermerhoorn provides not only the most revealing example of smuggling operations in New

Netherland, but also of the company’s response. Reynsen, Schermerhoorn, and others were found guilty of smuggling and illicit trading, the consequences of which being that “the

Christians are weakened and the barbarians strengthened.”81 Yet, their actions went unpunished.

Several aspects of the official response to this particular smuggling case are telling of how the colonial government lacked the necessary means of curbing the contraband trade. First, the colonial government seemed disinterested in pursuing the maximum penalties, namely execution, for their prisoners. Although the crimes of Reynsen and Schermerhoorn were punishable by death, Stuyvesant, “considering the petition and recommendation of several honest persons and Inhabitants of this place and the former good behavior of the offenders,” opted to moderate the sentence.82 Instead, “to punish them as an example to others,” he ordered the confiscation of their goods and a five year banishment from the colony to begin on the next ship out.83 As for van Noorden, he was sentenced to house arrest inside the smith shop for one year in order to compensate the value of the total goods sold as company property. He too avoided execution, but on the pretense of being a first-time offender.84 By August 1st, a petition among the colonists successfully prompted the remission of Reynsen’s and Schermerhoorn’s

80 See Reynsen’s confession, NNCM 4: 530, and 532 where it is noted his operation goes back to March 1647.

81 NNCM 4: 535. No specific Indian groups are mentioned in any of the documents pertaining to this case suggesting perhaps Reynsen and Schermerhoorn traded indiscriminately, but also the availability of arms at Fort Orange for any Native American groups with access.

82 Stuyvesant references Kieft’s ordinance of February 23, 1645: NNCM 4: 533, on the ordinance, which references the troubling amount of powder among the Indians and complaints of the king of France regarding the trade, see O’Callaghan, NNLO, 47.

83 Done on July 9, 1648: NNCM 4: 533-534.

84 July 9, 1648: NNCM 4: 534-535.

83 banishment. Their exile null and void, Stuyvesant resolved to “declare them henceforth capable of going, coming and returning here as other respectable persons are permitted to do.”85 Despite the gravity a punishment of banishment carried, leniency prevailed. For better or worse, Jacob

Reynsen and Jacob Schermerhoorn were free men again.

Broader measures to curb smuggling were equally ineffective. Upon learning of

Reynsen’s method of casting off contraband goods into the bay, the company immediately responded by stationing a vessel, De Liefde, under the command of the naval store guard on board at Sandy Hook to monitor and convoy incoming ships from patria.86 Interestingly, this was done “without written resolution adopted by all the members of the council, in order that it might proceed more secretly.”87 The presence of Govert Loockermans on the Council of Nine bound

Stuyvesant against making his intentions known.88 Stuyvesant hoped to gather closer observations of the operations of Govert Loockermans and his ship, De Valckenier.89 The targeting of Loockermans suggests his influence on the affairs of Reynsen and Schermerhoorn. It is possible Reynsen’s tactics of hiding watertight crates of contraband goods into the bay may have been a well-established practice within Loockerman’s circle. If or how long the plan was carried out however, is not known. A report from August 15 notes De Liefde was in desperate need of repair and prone to heavy leakage. Lacking the materials and carpenters to repair the

85 August 1, 1648: NNCM 4: 548-549.

86 June 19, 1648: NNCM 4: 524.

87 June 23, 1648: NNCM 4: 526.

88 See Appendix 5, “Twelve, Eight, and Nine Men, 1641-1652,” where Loockermans is listed to have served on the Council of Nine in 1647, 49, and 50. Jacobs notes the lack of data for 1648, but it is unlikely Loockermans was not on the Council that year since he is one of eight to have consistently served under the aforesaid years; Jacobs, New Netherland, 488.

89 The naval store guard is noted to have been well acquainted with Loockermans and his partners: NNCM 4: 526- 527.

84 vessel and replenish its provisions, Stuyvesant and Council resolved to sell the ship with the intent to dismantle it for parts if no buyer could be found.90 These were troubling times for the

Dutch colony. A decaying infrastructure and stagnant population contributed little to prevent the continued seepage of munitions to their potential enemies.

To make matters worse, the root of Reynsen’s smuggling activities went to an English owned ship. The St. Beninjo, while captained by the Dutch skipper Snoy, was owned by

Englishman William Westerhouse. The ordeal with Westerhouse’s ship became the point of contention over Stuyvesant’s push for the Hartford Treaty. Both the Dutch and English argued over the jurisdiction of the St. Beninjo. As Stuyvesant understood the scenario, Westerhouse sailed into New Netherland territory with the intent to trade goods, contraband or otherwise, without paying company fees. Controlling English traders like Westerhouse would help put down Dutch smuggling.91

Before Loockermans emerged as a prominent schepen of New Amsterdam, he was a low ranking cook from Turnhout, Brabant.92 Like many of the other powerful merchant class of the

1650s, he used his ties to trading to strengthen his personal position in the wake of the colony’s population boom during those years as traders flooded the countryside.93 He made most of his

90 FOCM, 552-553; A report dated January 12, 1648 details the express orders to burn down a decrepit saw mill on Nooten Island, wholly decayed and In ruins and to all appearance can not be repaired by the carpenters who are now here, and the iron work which Is still on It is daily disappearing; therefore, it is for the best advantage of the honorable West India Company considered advisable and unanimously resolved In council to take down said mill if possible, or otherwise to bum it, in order to salvage the iron work…” FOCM , 473. Note the availability of carpenters who seem to be out of the picture six months later when De Liefde needs repairs.

91 NNC 11: xxi-xxii.

92 Jacobs, New Netherland, 59; 330.

93 Jacobs, New Netherland, 339. Loockerman’s worked under Wouter van Twiller as a clerk before taking a prominent position among the Verbrugge’s network, the most important trading house in New Netherland; Jacobs, New Netherland, 69-71; NNN, 376. He is also known to have been a business partner of Isaac Allerton; NNN, 290.

85 success trading around Fort Orange and the Delaware River.94 It is possible he entered the contraband trade through his connection to Van Twiller, another thorn in the side of the WIC who was caught shipping gunpowder out of the United Provinces in 1653.95 His involvement in the fur trade goes unquestioned, but his illicit work in the contraband trade is less well known.

Both the English and Swedes were growing agitated with Loockermans’ dealings.

There is irony to the chaos of 1648. Amidst the efforts of the magistracy to cut down on the contraband smugglers and traders, the official Company trade in guns, powder, and lead continued. Just a couple months prior to Jacob Reynsen’s arrest, Stuyvesant received orders from the Directors to continue selling powder to the Indians while enforcing the contraband restrictions.96 The Directors, weary of more conflict with the natives in the wake of the disastrous Kieft’s War, urged Stuyvesant to continue the detrimental trade. They feared the war enabled the surrounding Indian groups to become “conscious of their strength,” and consequently more anxious to provide themselves with muskets, powder, and lead.” Company officials–growing increasingly paranoid of their Munsee neighbors–often saw through Indian requests for munitions veiled by a need for hunting, but nonetheless resolved to maintain a secretive trade so to pacify any ill-will. Not wanting to quell their anger further, the Directors explain, “we perceive them to be so extremely eager, that we fear, they would rather begin a new war against us, than be entirely deprived of these articles.” They ordered Stuyvesant to supply the Indians “sparingly” given the present situation of the colony rendered a new war “wholly

94 Loockermans owned significant property among the Raritans and is reported to have been heavily involved in Dutch fighting there; Merwick, The Shame and the Sorrow, 150; 179.

95 DRCHNY 14: 210.

96 April 7, 1648: DRCHNY 13: 22-23.

86 unadvisable.”97 He would do so only through the Company officers whilst simultaneously preventing private trading. One wonders how Stuyvesant perceived these directions. How could his employers expect him to maintain an official contraband trade with the Indians while simultaneously denying colonists the rights and benefits of the same? Smuggling was a rampant problem in the colony, and Stuyvesant lacked the resources to stop the main contributors. With hope of curbing the contraband trade, Stuyvesant renewed the ordinance of 1645, “relative to the trade In powder and lead.”98 As for the official Company trade however, Stuyvesant’s options were limited. As the English rightly put it, the Mohawks were indeed growing bolder. Their ascendancy, fueled by Dutch gunpowder, would mean increased demand for contraband goods.

Appeasement

Indeed, the period from roughly 1648 through the 1650’s saw a substantial rise in

Mohawk prowess and reach. Previous Iroquois historians have regarded this period as destructive and shaped by indiscriminate violence directed by need for beavers and captives.99

Parmenter, however, asserts Iroquoian rampages into Wendake drew upon ancient principles.

Faced with the challenges of substantial population loss combined with now established

97 All quotes from “Letter from the Directors in Holland to Peter Stuyvesant; the ship “Princess” lost with Dir. Kieft and Domine Bogardus on Board; lenient policy towards the Indians Recommended; trade with South America; church matters; Governor Forrester of Long Island.” Dated April 7, 1648. DRCHNY 14: 83. The same letter also warns Stuyvesant against trading with traders and ships from other Departments of the Company other than Amsterdam whom are noted to not have invested in New Netherland and therefore do not deserve its benefits of trade. Cornelis Claeson Snoo, skipper of the Hercules, also known as the St. Beninjo (aforementioned), is mentioned specifically here as a “cheat and smuggler.” The association between the ship names is made known in a report in NNCM 4: 432.

98 Referring to Kieft’s ordinance of February 23, 1648; August 19, 1648; NNCM 4: 556.

99 White, The Middle Ground, 1-10; Snow, The Iroquois, 114-119; Jennings, The Ambiguous Iroquois Empire, 84- 112; Richter, Ordeal of the Longhouse, 61-68.

87 European settler groups within the Iroquoian spatial domain, the Haudenosaunee underwent a soft reset.100 The Wendats maintained a pivotal role in this process. Apart from the potential benefits of captives, the longstanding rivalry with the Wendats made absorbing Wendake into

Iroquoia an accomplishment of intense, symbolic power. This extension of the longhouse remained crucial to the “requickening” process that began to unfold after 1650.101 That the

Iroquois could also land a disruptive blow to French operations in Canada in the process was an added bonus.

Gunpowder featured centrally to the Iroquoian designs of renewal in these years. The means by which they could have planned to undertake campaigns as far as Iowa rested heavily on a trusted source for additional munitions. Historians have done well to grasp the Iroquois perspective in these developments. Silverman correctly discerns the heavy influence firearms left on Iroquois military power in Wendake and elsewhere.102 Moreover, Benjamin Schmidt and Jon

Parmenter have respectively emphasized the significances of cartographic knowledge and conceptions of space among the Haudenosaunee.103 Knowledge of their surrounding terrain and peoples proved just as important as guns themselves. Expanding their geographical reach brought the benefit of new hunting grounds that could produce additional beavers and sustain growing populations.104 The Dutch had little say in how the Mohawks and their brethren used the

100 Parmenter, The Edge of the Woods, 81.

101 Parmenter, Edge of the Woods, 81.

102 Silverman, Thundersticks, 37-38.

103 Parmenter, The Edge of the Woods, 69; Benjamin Schmidt, “Mapping an Empire: Cartographic and Colonial Rivalry in Seventeenth-Century Dutch and English North America,” in The William and Mary Quarterly vol. 54, no. 3 (July 1997), 549-578.

104 McDonnell, Masters of Empire, 28; Witgen, Infinity of Nations, 53-54.

88 munitions they acquired. Far less so, could they say no when the Mohawks returned looking for more.

The Mohawks had their own reasons for arming themselves. Peace negotiations with the

French continued to stagnate in the years following Kiotsaeton’s speech in 1645. Following another failed missionary expedition that cost Father Jogues his life in 1646, and numerous attempts to convince the Wendats to turn against the French, the Mohawks settled on a more aggressive strategy that would cut off all ties between New France and Ahnowahraake.105 This strategy quickly took shape following Jogues’s death, with the Mohawks using their intimate knowledge of their northern hunting grounds to systematically blockade Algonquin and Wendat convoy routes to New France.106 Tensions escalated further the following year, as the Mohawks joined forces with the Senecas to inflict direct assaults on Wendake beginning in July 1647.

Once again, disease was a driving factor. A second surge of smallpox raged across

Iroquoia in 1646-1647, forcing Haudenosaunee to regroup.107 In June 1646, an unknown Indian pregnant woman managed to escape captivity from the Mohawks to Trois-Rivières. In her weakened state, starving and unborn child dead, she informed the Jesuits the Mohawks were

“inflicted with a general malady, which caus[ed] great numbers of them to die.”108 Over the next several months, wave after wave of Haudenosaunee warriors, mostly Mohawks and Senecas, steadily eroded the edges of Wendake and even Anishinaabeg. Jesuit reports from the 1640s and

105 Parmenter, Edge of the Woods, 66-70.

106 Parmenter, Edge of the Woods, 70-71.

107 JR 33:81-83; Susan Johnston, “Epidemics: The Forgotten Factor in Seventeenth-Century Native Warfare in the St. Lawrence Region,” in Bruce Cox, ed. Native People, Native Lands: Canadian Indians, Inuit, and Metis (Montreal: McGill-Queen University Press, 1987), 14-31; 24.

108 JR 30: 273; Parmenter, The Edge of the Woods, 328n77.

89 1650s detail specific attack strategies, generally involving armed Haudenosaunee warriors killing the men and making off with as many women and children as they could take.109

The Wendats suffered most, and historians have generally declared Wendake to be utterly destroyed by 1650.110 Haudenosaunee war parties led by Mohawks, Senecas, and Onondagas continued to pursue the remaining pockets that fled westward into Anishinaabeg. More attacks would come in the years that followed, as the Haudenosaunee “shattered” the Petuns, Neutrals, and Eries by 1657.111 French contemporaries that attributed the success of the Haudenosaunee to their access to guns, gunpowder, and lead were most certainly correct. Crucially, although descriptions of these wars provide numerous in-depth examples of Haudenosaunee ingenuity and effectiveness in battle, horrified European observed to horrified European onlookers, blamed

Dutch guns for the damage the Haudenosaunee caused.112

The Five Nations benefited from these onslaughts in distinct ways. For the Senecas,

Cayugas, and Onondagas, the attacks effectively cleared out new hunting grounds that expanded their source base for food and beavers. The Mohawks, in return, received prisoners and the spoils

109 Multiple raids were reported along the Ottawa River and shore of Lake Nippissing; JR 22: 249; 24: 297; 26: 19; 29: 251; 36: 177, 189; Johnston, “Epidemics,” 24-28. On these attacks from the point of view of the Anishinaabeg, see McDonnell, Masters of Empire, 30-31 and Witgen, An Infinity of Nations, 46-54.

110 JR 35: 183-205; 36: 177-191; 41: 43-65; 43: 115-125, 187-207; 44: 69-77, 165-167, 187-191; Richter, Trade, Land, Power, 79, 270n47. Trigger, Natives and Newcomers, 264-275; The Children of Aataentsic, 751-788. The Haudenosaunee were not the only indigenous group to endure and respond to epidemics of the 1640s in this way, for a discussion of how the Neutrals and Wendats tried and failed to absorb surrounding peoples, see Johnston, “Epidemics,” 24-29.

111 Silverman, Thundersticks, 38; Trelease, Indian Affairs in Colonial New York, 120-122; White, The Middle Ground, 1-23; Richter, Trade, Land, Power, 76-78; Steele, Warpaths, 117-118; McDonnell, Masters of Empire, 27- 36.

112 JR 34: 89-91; 35: 111-113; 36: 115-117; Silverman, Thundersticks, 37, 307n27; Craig S. Keener, “An Ethnohistorical Analysis of Iroquois Assault Tactics Used against Fortified Settlements of the Northeast in the Seventeenth Century,” in Ethnohistory, vol. 46, no. 4 (Fall 1999), 791-794.

90 of war, as well as the reciprocal military aid from their Haudenosaunee brethren against a newly forming Franco-Susquehannock alliance.113

Retaliation

European colonists on all sides of Iroquoia grew increasingly alarmed at the breath of

Mohawk power. Witnessing the disappearance of the Wendats first hand, French officials found it prudent to begin arming the neighboring Indian Nations in New France and northern New

England. The French took the additional step of extending terms of an alliance with the United

Colonies in 1650, arguing the Mohawk aggression against the Abenaki and Sokoki would prove hazardous to English settlements. Yet the residual fear of Mohawk aggression from the Pequot

War influenced the English decision to decline the offer.114 Moreover, the United Colonies were preoccupied with threats closer to home where relations between the Mohegans and

Narragansetts began to boil over.115 Countless rumors circulated in English circles of an impending Indian attack, with the Dutch supplying the arms. Meanwhile to the south, the

113 The French were hoping to ally themselves with the Susquehannocks and Swedes against the Dutch, who in response called upon the Mohawks to attack the Susquehannocks, hoping to prime New Sweden for capture; Trigger, Natives and Newcomers, 275; Parmenter, Edge of the Woods, 75-76; Van Zandt, Brothers among Nations, 184-185.

114 RCNP 9: 113; Parmenter, Edge of the Woods, 82-83; Salisbury, “Toward the Covenant Chain,” 62-65.

115 On the history of the conflict between Uncas, sachem of the Mohegans, and Ninigret, sachem of the Niantics and Narragansetts, and their entanglements with the Dutch and English, see Michael Leroy Oberg, Uncas: First of the Mohegans (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003); Julie A. Fisher and David J. Silverman, Ninigret, Sachem of the Niantics and Narragansetts: Diplomacy, War, and the Balance of Power in Seventeenth-Century New England and Indian Country (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014); Katherine Grandjean, American Passage: The Communications Frontier in Early New England (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015), 76-109; and Lipman, The Saltwater Frontier, 168-173.

91 Swedish and English in the Delaware Valley and the Chesapeake both took to arming their indigenous neighbors as well, especially the Susquehannocks.116

French, Swedish, and English observers blamed the Dutch for the rise of the Mohawks and promptly demanded Stuyvesant to cease and desist the “daingerous liberty” of trading guns, powder, and shot to the Indians.117 Stuyvesant acknowledged the concerns of his neighboring governors, but as he well knew from his recent attempts to cut off the munitions network of

Reynsen and Schermerhorn, halting the illicit trade in gunpowder was beyond his control.

Indeed, Stuyvesant knew well of Govert Loockermans’ contraband network well before governor of New Haven, Theophilus Eaton, complained of Loockermans’ selling of “powder, gunnes and lead” to the Indians with the intention “to instigate the Indians there against the English.”118

Stuyvesant stood firm, refusing to concede any knowing of Loockermans’ activities he most certainly knew to be true. Dissatisfied with Stuyvesant’s ploy, Governor Eaton fired back with a letter that illustrates the remarkable–yet unsettling–underground network Loockermans had created. The region “concerning this dangerous trade,” Eaton explains, stretches from “att

Aurania fort, at Long Island, within the river of Conneticut, att Narrowgansett, and oth[er places within the English] jurisdictions.”119 He describes Loockermans’ “crooked and perverse waye,” on Long Island as well: “with everie Coate hee would give a pownd of powder, which procured him a quicke markett, and soe furnished the Indians, with powder that they could sell to the

116 Van Zandt, Brothers among Nations, 116-136; Silverman, Thundersticks, 39-48; Fur, Colonialism in the Margins, 150-165.

117 NNC 11: 39-42.

118 May 28, 1648: “Director General Stuyvesant to Governor Eaton,” in NNC 11: 31-32.

119 Gehring fills in the missing text (noted in brackets) from New Haven Colony Records, 522-523; May 31, 1648, “The Answer,” in NNC 11: 32-33.

92 English.”120 Eaton then goes on to say, “the same Indians further testified, that Govert wisht them to Cutt of the English, and the Dutch (to such a worke) would furnish them with peices, powder, and shott enough.”121 Stuyvesant had no answer, but he knew eventually, the English would.122

Anglo-Dutch relations rippled over the continued trade to their indigenous neighbors, with traders like van Curler and Loockermans standing at its center. Rumors circulated around southern New England that the Dutch were conspiring with the Narragansetts against the

English, using the sloops of private traders to discreetly smuggle munitions into the estuaries of

Narragansett Bay.123 Although it was later determined most of the rumors had been intentionally circulated by Uncas, Loockermans played no small part in giving them added credibility.124 For a moment, the English thought they had finally caught Loockermans in May 1648, only to realize they had arrested the wrong Govert. Shortly after his arrest, Govert Aertsen appeared before the

Council in New Amsterdam to request an official document of personal identification that he may produce before the United Colonies magistrates to prove he was not in fact Govert

Loockermans.125 Aertsen had been spending time in Rhode Island “where he was threatened to

120 Eaton is referencing a complaint from Southampton that he dates back to January 3, 1647, NNC 11: 33.

121 NNC 11: 33. The letters go on back and forth for several pages with both Stuyvesant and Eaton pointing the finger at one another over arms dealing with natives. NNC 11: 32-39. See especially Stuvyesant’s accusations of a Mr. Will Westerhouse on 37.

122 Each of the United Colonies had ordinances prohibiting the sale of Dutch guns to Indians: PRCC 1: 197, 207, 218-220; RGCMB 4: part I, 21-22; RCRP 1: 153, 243-246; Kim Todt, “Trading Between New Netherland and New England, 1624-1664,” in Early American Studies, vol. 9, no. 2, Special Issue: The Worlds of Lion Gardiner, ca. 1599-1663: Crossings and Boundaries (Spring 2011), 348-378, 375n79.

123 Breen, Transgressing the Bounds, 118.

124 Breen, Transgressing the Bounds, 118; Oberg, Uncas, 132-138.

125 May 25, 1648: NNCM 4: 519-520.

93 be put into prison, it being said that he was Loockemans.”126 A Captain Cleroq informed Aertsen that Loockermans was already well known in the area for selling powder and lead to the Indians, and regarding the misunderstanding, “they would have confiscated his sloop for that reason had he been Lookmans.”127 There could be no question Loockermans was causing trouble in all the wrong places. Stuyvesant knew the English were looking for reasons to oust the Dutch there, which would surely happen if he allowed Loockermans to continue his illicit business.

Between the slippery dealings of Loockermans, the rumors of a Narragansett attack, and lately the Dutch confiscation of the St. Beninjo in New Haven, the commissioners of the United

Colonies would tolerate the chaos no longer. In October 1648, Stuyvesant received a scathing letter concerning “a daingerous Liberty taken by yours to sell guns, powder and shott, and other

Instruments of warr to the Indians.”128 The letter reads heavily with concern towards the trade at

Fort Orange where the Commissioners perceived the Mohawks to becoming more “bould, and dareing and may proue daingerous to us all.”129 English aggression was temporarily stalled, however, following the death of John Winthrop Sr. in 1649. Winthrop’s death provided a brief moment for reconciliation between the English and the Dutch who had become fond of Winthrop over the years.130 Stuyvesant made the most of the opportunity. In 1650, he met with the governors of the United Colonies to draft a new boundary line between New Netherland and

126 NNCM 4: 519.

127 NNCM 4: 520.

128 December 16, 1648: “Commissioners of the United Colonies to Stuyvesant,” in NNC 11: 39-42.

129 NNC 11: 40.

130 The two sides most likely had also been influenced by developments in Europe, including the victory in the war for independence from Spain and the beginning of Oliver Cromwell’s Commonwealth, Klooster, The Dutch Moment, 89-90; Carla Gardina Pestana, The English Atlantic in the Age of Revolution, 1640-1661 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004), 88-99.

94 New England. The resultant Hartford Treaty ceded western Long Island to the English, and set a new boundary line northward from the coastal town of Stamford.131 New Netherland lost a great deal of territory in the deal, but by biting the bullet and formally recognizing New Haven,

Stuyvesant hoped the English might resolve to respect New Netherland’s boundaries going forward. As Andrew Lipman has noted, the treaty negotiations failed to address either English encroachment on the Delaware or the illicit arms trade with the Indians, implying Stuyvesant likely knew further action would be required to counter English expansion.132

Indeed, the beginning of the First Anglo-Dutch War in Europe gave Stuyvesant reason to believe the end was near. While the conflict never officially reached North America, it doubtless influenced the actions of governor Eaton who requested assistance from Cromwell to help overtake New Netherland.133 Cromwell approved. In late 1653, the Dutch caught wind of an impending invasion orchestrated by Cromwell’s government, prompting the swift construction of fortifications in New Amsterdam.134 Fortunately for the Dutch, a prompt peace agreement between England and the Dutch Republic would force Cromwell to divert the expedition to the

French in Acadia. For a moment it seemed the English threat had fizzled out. Stuyvesant made the most of the opportunity, redirecting the resources he had compiled to fight the English towards New Sweden. Worrisome developments had been unfolding along the Delaware River

131 NNC 11: 46; RCNP 9: 112-115, 171-173, 188-189; Lipman, The Saltwater Frontier, 179-180; Rink, Holland on the Hudson, 246-249.

132 Lipman, The Saltwater Frontier, 180.

133 Klooster, The Dutch Moment, 96-97; Breen, Transgressing the Bounds, 57-59. .

134 Klooster, The Dutch Moment, 97.

95 as well where the Swedes succeeded in capturing Fort Casimir, indefensible for lack of gunpowder.135

Increased hostility between New Sweden and New Netherland had been brewing for some time, particularly over the arms trade. Both the Dutch and Swedes complained of each other selling gunpowder to the Susquehannocks as part of concerted efforts to ruin each other’s colonial enterprises. In 1648, New Sweden Governor Johan Printz is noted to have “protested and complained vociferously” of the operations of Govert Loockermans who had been “highly suspected here by many people for contraband trade of guns, powder and lead to the Indians.”136

The Dutch were quick to accuse Printz of the same.137 It was the taking of the fort and the continued disruptions of trade there with the Susquehannocks that encouraged the WIC to empower Stuyvesant in dealing with it. Conveniently for Stuyvesant, this special attention only came after the loss of Dutch Brazil in January 1654.138

The Dutch-sponsored Iroquois attacks also drew particular resentment from other native groups, especially the Susquehannocks. As allies of the Wendats, the Susquehannocks looked upon the rising Iroquois hegemony with particular disdain. Their alliance with the Wendats as mutual rivals of the Haudenosaunee caused the Susquehannocks to view “the assault as a direct attack on themselves.”139 Seneca and Oneida attacks against the Susquehannocks of the Niagara

135 DRCHNY 1: 602-603; Thompson, The Contest for the Delaware Valley, 96-103.

136 NNDP: 26.

137 NNDP: 28

138 Klooster, The Dutch Moment, 94-95.

139 Van Zandt, Brothers among Nations, 172. Silverman suggests relations between the Iroquois-speaking Susquehannocks and the Five Nations might have gone sour as a reaction to European settlement since the Susquehannocks appear to have been major traffickers of shells between the Chesapeake and Iroquoia; Silverman, Thundersticks, 39.

96 River Valley and Ontario peninsula directly between 1652 and 1654 forced the Susquehannocks to pursue guns, gunpowder, and lead with increased ferocity, but also compelled them to reconsider their relationship with the Dutch.140 The Dutch conquest of New Sweden in 1655 opened up New Netherland to fierce retaliation by the Susquehannocks for having eliminated their premier European partner.

Like the Haudenosaunee and Susquehannocks, the Dutch too were in a process of realignment. Antagonization of Portuguese forces in South America drew attention to Dutch

Brazil. The First Anglo-Dutch War isolated Dutch forces in Brazil, leaving the colony susceptible to Portuguese invasion.141 The surrender of Brazil back to the Portuguese was a heavy loss for the WIC, but beneficial for New Netherland. The colony’s new attention came just in time. In a bold move, New Sweden’s new governor, Johan Rising captured Fort Casimir that

May. When asked why the fort gave in without resistance, Commander Bicker predictably replied, “there is no powder.”142 By November, Stuyvesant received the permission and gunpowder from the Directors to seize New Sweden altogether.143 The takeover of the colony in

1655 went smoothly, but carried heavy consequences. It appears the Susquehannocks did not take kindly to the removal of their premier trading client, and retaliated with a vengeance.144

Stuyvesant and New Sweden governor, Johan Printz had been arguing back and forth over the continuing trade of guns, gunpowder, and lead to the Indians of the Delaware,

140 Silverman, Thundersticks, 42.

141 Klooster, The Dutch Moment, 96-97.

142 DRCHNY 13: 602-603.

143 NNC 12: 37.

144 Van Zandt, Brothers among Nations, 170-172.

97 particularly the Susquehannocks. The Susquehannocks, the dominant group in the area, relied on gunpowder technology to offset the ascendancy of their Mohawk rivals. With New Sweden often lacking materials, they turned to the Dutch with the hope of establishing steady trade lines.

Indeed, a letter sent back to Stuyvesant in September of 1648 concluded the Susquehannocks were “very unhappy that this river is not continually stocked with our goods. The Swede presently has little merchandise left; consequently, if we had any here, there would be without a doubt a favorable trade with the Minquas.”145 Loockermans capitalized on the opportunity. Printz had already been complaining of Loockerman’s trade in the area earlier in the year. Although

Loockermans’ dealings may have been private, Printz interpreted them as actions sanctioned by

Stuyvesant and the WIC. He complained about Stuyvesant’s “arrogant and unneighborly conduct” regarding Stuyvesant’s having “ordered some beavers from the Indians with the intention of trading them for some contraband merchandise.”146 Amid the accusations towards

Loockermans as well as the arrests of Jacob Reynsen and Jacob Schermerhoorn, Stuyvesant summarized the intensifying relations between New Netherland, New Sweden, and New Haven to the WIC Directors:

“It is known to me and to all your honors that since our arrival here frequent complaints have been received from our neighbors, the English and Swedes, as well as from our own subjects, about the altogether too dangerous and prohibited trade in powder, guns and lead carried on with the natives, whereby our persons, although we protest our innocence before God, are accused and suspected of conniving at this trade, not only by our neighbors, the English and Swedes, but also by some of our vassals, and that not without some semblance of Justification and reason, because the trade is carried on so

145September 21, 1648; NNDP 18: 13. In December of that year, Adriaen van Teinhoven concluded the fur trade along the Delaware was “too expensive” and “badly spoiled,” having described the exchange rates as “two fathoms of white and one fathom of black sewant must be given for one beaver, and one fathom of cloth for two beavers;” NNDP 18: 19.

146 NNDP 18: 26-28.

98 generally, in regard to which the fiscal, who by virtue of his office is most concerned therein, has become either too lax or blind.”147

Stuyvesant recognized the detrimental effects of a trade he lacked the power to stop.

Maintaining a flow of arms to the Indians had its benefits in diverting trade, but the results were still concerning. The colonial gunpowder trade grew parallel to rising tensions among

New Netherland’s imperial rivals. Moreover, the problems pertaining to New Sweden were of less importance than those of an expanding New England. There, the illicit trading with

Indians by merchants like Loockermans only seemed to contribute to the growing apprehension behind English encroachment into the Dutch colony.

Stuyvesant was in the midst of executing a significant ransom while these laws were being introduced. On October 17th, 1655, an envoy of fourteen captured “Christians” marched into Fort Amsterdam. They were sent by the Achkinkeshaky chief, Pennekeck, who “requested that the honorable director general show his faith by sending powder and lead.”148 With hope the rest of the prisoners may be turned over, Stuyvesant resolved to send him “two Indian prisoners captured by our people, although not of his people, as a present and a little powder and lead.”149

Unwilling to assume the subordinate role, Stuyvesant thought it necessary to inform Pennekeck that prisoners ought to be returned “with the goodness of the heart.” The powder and lead, he claimed, were not part of the ransom, but intended as a “token of our good faith, and that only so

147 June 23, 1648: “Written Proposition submitted to the Officers of the council by the Honorable Director General Stuyvesant,” in NNCM 4: 525-527.

148 Gehring notes this as a variation of Hackensack; October 16, 1655; NNCM 7: 102. For a detailed discussion on Stuyvesant’s relationship with Pennekeck, see Merwick, The Shame and the Sorrow, 125-127.

149 NNCM 7: 103. The two Indian captives had Wappinger and Esopus ties, 104.

99 that they do their best with the other sachems to gain the release of the other prisoners.”150

Stuyvesant assured more powder and lead would be sent upon the return of the rest of the prisoners, but only the condition the gunpowder was a gift and not part of a ransom. He tried to hold his ground in the negotiations, but nevertheless lacked any power in swaying the pendulum his way. However Stuyvesant worded his decisions would not change the troubling power dynamics New Netherland shared with the local Indian groups during these years.

Stuyvesant’s strategy was failing. Responding to Dutch inquiries on the prisoners,

Pennekeck demanded an additional 75 pounds of powder and 40 bars of lead for the remaining

28 prisoners.151 Having “seriously considered the hardship of the captured Christians,”

Stuyvesant and his Council conceded to meet the demanded amounts of powder and lead.

Moreover, the “demonstrate to them our sincere intentions,” they opted to send “an additional 35 lbs. of gunpowder and 10 staves of lead over and above the ransom as a gift.”152 Gunpowder continued to drain out of the company vaults as New Netherland failed to fulfill a dominant role in Ahnowahraake.

Conclusion

Gunpowder played a crucial role in the cultivation of Indian-European partnerships. In response to the volatile changes brought about by European settlement, groups like the Mohawks

150 NNCM 7: 104.

151 The expedition to the Delaware left on October 21, 1655; NNCM 7: 112; and the response came on October 26, 119. The Mochgeychkonk, or Mogewehogh, are posed by Robert S. Grumet to part of the Amogarickakan-Munsee group, The Munsee Indians: A History (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2009), 17.

152 NNCM 7: 119.

100 and Susquehannocks both coveted European clients. Europeans needed furs, and the Indians wanted guns. The Susquehannocks in this case, “cultivated Europeans as clients, while some

Europeans cultivated Native Americans as trading partners.”153 Van Zandt correctly applies this framework to understand the reasons for the Susquehannock onslaught of New Amsterdam, and takes it further. When viewed collectively, the Mohawk attacks made possible by Dutch weaponry suggest the Peach War resulted from a long build-up of Susquehannock resentment toward the Dutch who favored the Mohawks–their on-again-off-again enemies–in trade. Beyond avenging the end of their Swedish partnership, the Susquehannocks were actively protesting a

Dutch-Iroquois partnership that threatened their continued existence.154

The resulting dynamics of the Peach War are telling of how Indians negotiated their position with the Dutch around gunpowder. At a time when Stuyvesant’s need for gunpowder was critical, he found himself forced to give quantities away as ransom for prisoners captured by

Munsee groups during and after the Peach War. One residual attack of six Dutch men hunting at

“Schoorsteenveger’s plantation” resulted in a man’s torso being fully pierced by an arrow. The thirty unidentified Indians captured four men and as ransom demanded a wealth of goods including “20 double handfuls of gunpowder.”155 These sort of negative consequences from private European excursions happened frequently enough by then to call for an ordinance to be adopted by the Director-General and Council soon after. Not wanting to continue paying ransoms that incentivized the Indians, the ordinance decried, “no person, of whatever capacity he

153 NNCM 7: 119.

154 Van Zandt, Brothers among Nations, 185-186.

155 October 13, 1655; NNCM 7: 95-96.

101 may be, shall henceforward undertake to proceed or to go inland without first having applied for and obtained the special consent of the director general or their deputy.”156

This was the world Arent van Curler and the Mohawks created. By the 1650s, the colonial trade in gunpowder had expanded well beyond the means of European control. Private traders like van Curler willfully traded munitions to the Mohawks, molding in place a specific medium of intercultural exchange colonial governments were forced to abide by. The Mohawks, in return, happily absorbed the Dutch into the extended longhouse as brothers both figuratively and literally through marriage with Mohawk women. “The Mohawk and Munsee women who entered into these few recognized, permanent relationships and their male kinsmen,” Susanah

Shaw Romney has shown, “sought to access power inherent in the other-than-human quality of their odd neighbors,” gunpowder surely among them.157 Just as among the Anishinaabeg, the

Mohawks sought marital kinship ties to “solidify diplomatic bonds.”158 Van Curler recognized the benefits of these cultural exchanges and reaped the rewards. In the 1650s he conceived a child with a Mohawk woman, and would eventually receive rich Mohawk land in return.159

An intimate relationship with the Mohawks had its benefits. While Stuyvesant abhorred the illicit munitions trade and the problems it helped create, he nonetheless felt compelled to maintain an official supply line of gunpowder to the Mohawks for the security of the colony and

156 NNCM 7: 98. This would soon be followed up with a separate ordinance that prohibited private contact with Indians west of the Hudson River: October 18, 1655, NNCM 7: 101-102.

157 Romney, New Netherland Connections, 181.

158 Romney, New Netherland Connections, 181. On Anishinaabeg kinship practices, see McDonnell, Masters of Empire, 101-109.

159 MCARS, 2: 86. Thomas E. Burke, Mohawk Frontier: The Dutch Community of Schenectady, New York, 1661- 1710, second edition (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2009), 21-23, 148-149; Romney, New Netherland Connections, 180-184; Richter, “Cultural Brokers and Intercultural Politics,” 40-67; Jacobs, New Netherland, 395-396.

102 preservation of the fur trade. The subsequent rise of the Mohawks, climaxing with the dispersal of the Wendats, naturally incurred negative reactions from French, English, Swedish and Native neighbors. Indeed, the imperial success of the Mohawks and the expansion of Dutch settlement into Beverwijck marked the furthest extent to which the Dutch-Mohawk partnership would reach. As we shall see in the next chapter, however, it was all downhill from here.

103 CHAPTER THREE

THE RECKONING: THE COLLAPSE OF THE MOHAWK-DUTCH PARTNERSHIP, 1659- 1665

Introduction

Following the “usual ringing of the bell,” churchwardens, Nicasius de Sille and Govert

Loockermans prepared to address the bustling crowd anxiously seeking refuge from the cold

January air.1 As an order of appreciation for the good fortune that had been bestowed upon New

Netherland over the course of 1658, the Director-General and Council proclaimed March 13,

1659 as a day of prayer, and de Sille had been tasked with delivering a speech Stuyvesant had written himself just for the occasion. As the bustle of an anxious crowd dropped to a whisper, de

Sille spoke, bringing Stuyvesant’s words to life from the page. “Honorable and well beloved,” he began, “... the good and all merciful God has favoured and blessed this newly rising Province… with many and innumerable mercies and benefits.”2 Of these blessings, de Sille recounted the agreeable health of the colony, a newfound peace with the neighboring Indians, and the

“remarkable increase of population and trade.”3 Stuyvesant would soon discover, however, that his optimism was sorely misplaced.

1 “Proclamation of a Day of Prayer for March 13,” January 21, 1658, ERNY 1: 414; Frijhoff, Fulfilling God’s Mission, 458.

2 ERNY, 1: 414.

3 ERNY 1: 414.

104 Two parallel trajectories emerged in the 1660s: the decline of Mohawk power and the final descent of New Netherland. After years of warring for captives and beavers in the distant corners of Ahnowahraake, the Mohawks finally showed signs of slowing down. The rise of the

Mohawks in the 1640s and 50s prompted many of their enemies to begin building arsenals of their own so that by 1660, the tables had turned. The Susquehannocks had access to guns, powder, and lead from English in the Chesapeake as well as Dutch and Swedish traders and knew how to play one power off of another.4 The Mohicans and their eastern allies wasted no time in acquiring gunpowder weapons either. Aside from the Dutch traders at Fort Orange,

Silverman speculates Indians of the Upper Connecticut River Valley such as the Pocumtucks,

Pennecocks, and Sokokis most likely received guns from John Pynchon’s trade post in

Springfield as well as the French to the north.5 These Indians benefited from connections to New

France as well, with the Western Abenakis acting as gun runners between French traders and their Algonquian speaking allies in New England.6 By acquiring reliable access to gunpowder, the Indian rivals of the Mohawks increased in power, putting themselves in a better position to fend off military attacks and even coordinate their own against Iroquoia and New Netherland.

The Dutch, for their part, worried these campaigns would bring about potentially hazardous consequences for the colony. Soon enough, retaliatory raids from New England Indians began

4 See for example, when Susquehannock sachems, Aquariochquo and Quadickho, informed the Dutch of their dealings with Printz, who promised them guns, gunpowder, and lead which the poor Dutch could not provide; July 13, 1647, NNRPS 2: 426-427.

5 Silverman, Thundersticks, 44.

6 Silverman, Thundersticks, 44.

105 striking the area around Fort Orange.7 Indeed, the Mohawks would eventually recover from the ordeals of the 1660s. Their Dutch brethren would not.8

New Netherland’s economy continued to give way as the fur trade showed signs of a crash. Indian wars around the colony and the decline of the Mohawks and Haudenosaunee slowed the incoming stream of pelts while prices skyrocketed as a result of private Dutch,

English, and French traders. Moreover, New Netherland was once again embroiled in conflicts of its own when conflict broke out at Esopus again in 1659 and again in 1663, steadily draining the limited resources that remained in the colony as the WIC stumbled towards bankruptcy. Making matters worse, the continued encroachment of the English into Oostdorp (Westchester) and Long

Island seemed to confirm the rumors of preparations for an incoming Anglo invasion.9

The Mohawk-Dutch partnership had seemingly run its course, no longer capable of sustaining the increasing outside pressures of Native American conflicts and European advances.

Dutch attempts to remain neutral in Mohawk affairs grew increasingly ineffective. In the late

1650s, Mohawk requests to Fort Orange officials for diplomatic assistance with the French fell on deaf ears. La Montagne sent out a small delegation in 1658 to no avail, and subsequent requests were ignored.10 The French, too, took a position of neutrality rather than assist in resolving the conflict. As Trelease notes, both the Dutch and French were content to let “their

Indian allies do most of the fighting.”11 Nevertheless, these European strategies of neutrality

7 Mitrød, The Memory of All Ancient Customs, 113.

8 Richter, Ordeal of the Longhouse, 105-132; Parmenter, Edge of the Woods, 127-179; Silverman, Thundersticks, 48-56; Preston, The Texture of Contact, 23-60.

9 Merwick, Stuyvesant Bound, 81.

10 Parmenter, Edge of the Woods, 105-107.

11 Trelease, Indian Affairs, 124.

106 rarely produced the desired result, with Dutch, French, and English colonial governments constantly finding themselves entangled in the contests of their indigenous allies.

Observations of animosity among local Indian groups in addition to incoming attacks by

New England Indians and the Susquehannocks suggest the Dutch may have perceived Mohawk vulnerability, and consequently, their own.12 For years now the Mohawks had provided a reliable buffer zone for the Dutch, but their waning power did not bode well for the colony, especially given the growing resentment neighboring Indian nations and Europeans felt for the Dutch and their involvement in the Mohawks’ rise in power. Their fates were intertwined. Iroquois recession during these years combined with Dutch instability made New Netherland particularly susceptible to an invasion of English and Native forces.

Indeed, 1659 was a year of mutual decline for the Dutch and the Mohawks, their unsustainable partnership finally showing signs of significant wear from the violent ebb and flow of Ahnowahraake. In addition to renewed warfare with the Munsees, by 1659 New Netherland and Rensselaerswijck were both inundated in what one historian has described as a “trinity of economic plagues:” the continued devaluation of wampum currency, saturation of the beaver market, and a chaotic and unpredictable fur trade waning in the event of the wars that enveloped the forests of the province.13 Meanwhile in Iroquoia, the fragile peace between the

Haudenosaunee and New France broke down yet again. Negotiations once again gave way to the combined pressures of internal strife within in the longhouse, botched rescue missions to recover

12 For an example of local Mohawk animosity, see Otto, The Dutch-Munsee Encounter, 150; Silverman discusses the power reversal against the Iroquois in Thundersticks, 139-145.

13 Richter, Ordeal of the Longhouse, 96.

107 prisoners, and the inability of French Jesuits to abide by the principles of kaswentha.14 Worst of all, the iron chain binding the Mohawks and Dutch together was eroding away, unsheltered from the hostile climate of Ahnowahraake as their respective pressures pitched both sides against each other. After Dutch emissaries failed to assist the Mohawks broker a peace with the French in

1658, silence fell between then, neither side content with the situation at hand, nor how to use the benefit of their relationship with the other to improve it.

The Mohawks spoke first. In an extraordinary session at Fort Orange that September, a disgruntled Mohawk delegation aired the grievances against the Dutch to an audience of important Dutch officials and cultural liaisons including La Montagne, Jeremias van Rensselaer, and Arent van Curler.15 Several of the Mohawks’ concerns were critical issues. They reminded the Dutch that they “are brothers and that we are joined together in chains,” but complained the relationship “lasts only as long as we have beavers.”16 They bemoaned the trade in alcohol, and asked that no more brandy be sold to their nation on the grounds that “if we drink ourselves drunk, we cannot fight” the French.17 They also repeated past protests against the violent trading practices of Dutch boschlopers that continued to harass Mohawk trappers in the woods.18

Like the French, the Dutch too were guilty of violating the terms of kaswentha in recent years. Citing how the Mohawks took it upon themselves to fight the French, the common enemy

14 Parmenter, Edge of the Woods, 100-108; Meuwese, Brothers in Arms, Partners in Trade, 268-270.

15 “Extraordinary Session held in Fort Orange by Both Courts To Hear the Propositions Made by the [Mohawks], this 6th of September 1659,” FOCM, 453-454.

16 FOCM, 453; Richter, Ordeal of the Longhouse, 95; Parmenter, Edge of the Woods, 108-109.

17 It would appear Mohawk leadership had reservations toward cutting off the alcohol trade completely. In contradictory fashion, the ambassadors follow up this demand with: “When we leave now, we shall just take some brandy with us, and then no more after this time.” FOCM, 453-454.

18 Merwick, Possessing Albany, 77; Richter, Ordeal of the Longhouse, 96-97; Trelease, Indian Affairs, 131-132.

108 of their Dutch brethren, they demanded that gunsmiths no longer be permitted to charge Mohawk gunmen for repairs and “finish their gunstocks at first opportunity.”19 Anything less would be seen as interfering with Mohawk imperial aims, a clear violation of kaswentha. To this end, the

Mohawks also demanded more gunpowder, and complained that while the French appear to have enthusiastically distributed firearms to their neighboring First Nation allies, their Dutch brothers only provided guns at a price. The Mohawks appear to have been feeling the effects of this change in policy in New France, and demanded both horses and men to repair their palisades and help assist in recover captives in New France.20 Lastly, as if to tie the iron knot that bound the

Mohawks and Dutch together, the Mohawks reminded the Dutch of their duties as fathers in

Mohawk society, calling upon Dutch widowers of Mohawk women to adhere to the traditional mourning practice of giving “the relatives of the deceased one or two suits of cloth.”21 This poignant clause, an indicator of the “increasing interpersonal bonds between the Mohawks and

Dutch settlers, reminded the Dutch their relationship had become more intimate than they might have liked to believe.22 “You need not present us with any return,” concluded the Mohawks, effectively challenging the Dutch to deliver on their promises with more than paltry gifts.23

An untimely fever prevented Stuyvesant from personally addressing the Mohawks’ concerns, invoking the need for a special council of leading cultural liaisons to trek into Mohawk country to make amends. Carrying gifts of wampum and gunpowder, van Curler and Jeremias

19 FOCM, 454; Parmenter, Edge of the Woods, 108-109.

20 FOCM, 454; Parmenter, Edge of the Woods, 108-109.

21 FOCM, 454.

22 Parmenter, Edge of the Woods, 109.

23 FOCM, 454.

109 van Rensselaer led the Dutch embassy into the Mohawk castle, Kaghnuwage, ready to renew their “old friendship and brotherhood.”24 Following the established model of diplomacy dictated from countless Mohawk orations at past gatherings, the Dutch emissaries wasted little time before recounting their shared history to their audience that included the three principal sachems of the Mohawks. Drawing from van Curler’s agreement with the Mohawks in 1643, the emissaries–likely van Curler himself– reminded their Mohawk brethren “it is now sixteen years ago that we made our first treaty of friendship and brotherhood between you and all the Dutch, which we then joined together with an iron chain.”25 The Mohawks, the Dutch assured, had “no reason to doubt that we shall remain brothers,” and to this end the Dutch bestowed upon the

Mohawks sachems a hefty gift including 75 pounds of gunpowder and 100 pounds of lead.26

Shortly after these gifts “were gratefully accepted by the chiefs and all the bystanders,” however, celebrations were abruptly cut short by news of trouble in Esopus. The Dutch might have restored relations with the Mohawks, but they were not out of the woods yet.

Trouble in Paradise

Hostilities between the Dutch and the Esopus Indians dated back as far as 1653.

Encouraged by a new peace between the Five Nations and New France, a new wave of colonists swarmed into the area. The increased pressure for limited fertile land left the Esopus in a tough

24 FOCM, 456; DRCHNY 13: 110-114. Kaghnuwage was the easternmost village of the Mohawks belonging to the Turtle Clan. Parmenter, Edge of the Woods, 109, 338n103. Trelease, Indian Affairs in Colonial New York, 125-126.

25 FOCM, 457.

26 The gifts included an unknown amount of sewant, 75 pounds of powder, 100 pounds of lead, 15 axes and two beavers’ worth of knives, FOCM, 456, 458.

110 position, already strained by the Mohawks and Mohicans who frequently called upon them from tribute, usually in the form of corn.27 As pressure mounted on both sides, Dutch settlers worried about potential Esopus raids, especially after learning of Esopus involvement in the Peace War.

Meanwhile, the Esopus exhibited little trust in the new settlers, based on their previous experiences with Fort Orange traders that often left them drunk.28 The tense relations prompted

Stuyvesant to begin constructing a fort there along Rondout Creek that became known as

Wiltwijck (present-day Kingston).29 His journal makes various notes of the construction process and its deficiency of resources including the lack of gunpowder.30 Thankfully for its inhabitants, a slender 50 pounds of gunpowder arrived in May of 1659, just enough to ward off the 500 men siege in September.31 Relations improved slightly in October when a small box of powder was included in a trade with some Esopus, to which they decided the Dutch were “well-intentioned” and promised to “come henceforth every day with Indian corn.”32

Under the impression that a permanent peace with the Esopus would be impossible so long as Indians and colonists continued to share the limited fertile land, the Directors expected

Stuyvesant to drive the Esopus out for good, and implored him to enlist the help of the Mohawks to do so. Stuyvesant might have agreed, but he feared the repercussions of asking the Mohawks

27 Trelease, Indian Affairs, 153-154; Richter; Ordeal of the Longhouse; 96-97; Midtrød, The Memory of All Ancient Customs, 103-119. The Munsees also frequently complained to the Dutch over reluctance to trade them firearms, while the Mohawks and Mohicans enjoyed consistent access to Dutch guns, gunpowder, and shot. Otto, The Dutch- Munsee Encounter, 137-140.

28 Grumet, The Munsee Indians, 72.

29 Grumet, The Munsee Indians, 72-73.

30 June 5/6, 1657, DRCHNY 13: 81-87.

31 On the receipt of powder in Esopus, May 24, 1659, DRCHNY 13: 101; on the siege, 123-126; Otto, The Dutch- Munsee Encounter, 150.

32 October 28, 1659. DRCHNY 13: 132.

111 to assist in what he perceived would have been an easy task for them. In Stuyvesant’s eyes, the continued military success of the Mohawks in recent years rendered them an unpredictable ally,

“a self-exulting, arrogant, and bold tribe made too haughty through their continuous victories.”33

Indeed, after repeated successes by the Mohawks against the French themselves and their allies,

Stuyvesant feared a decisive Mohawk victory against the Esopus might reduce the Dutch position in the partnership, thereby justifying continued taunting from Mohawk warriors, and a perceived vulnerability from other Indian nations. Stuyvesant desperately needed the help of the

Mohawks, but he wisely perceived the image which the Dutch had made for themselves among the Mohawks’ many enemies. Stuyvesant knew his colony was vulnerable, and beyond repeated demands for munitions and soldiers, there was in fact little he could do about it.34

In the interim, Stuyvesant’s directions to Wiltwijck to appease the Esopus with small gifts of powder did little to improve relations in Esopus.35 Strangely, the officials at Fort Orange appear to have lost hope of peace with the Esopus, and declined Mohican offers to mediate the conflict on the grounds that the Esopus sachems were less inclined to meet at Fort Orange themselves. In frustration, the Mohicans washed their hands of the matter. They warned the

Dutch, “must not be angry with them, if it should happen, that the Esopus savages were to injure or capture some Dutchmen along the river and near Fort Orange.”36 Nevertheless, Stuyvesant’s strategy of coercion proved successful–at least temporarily– in forcing the Esopus into a peace

33 DRCHNY 13: 149-150, 176; Trelease, Indian Affairs, 126.

34 DRCHNY 13: 131-135; Trelease, Indian Affairs, 153-155.

35 “Letter from Director Stuyvesant to (Ensign Smith at Esopus) Recommending Caution and Civility Towards the Indians etc,” January, 29, 1660, DRCHNY 13: 134-135.

36 “Conference between the Director-General and Three Chiefs of the Mohicans who ask that Peace may be made with the Esopus Indians,” May, 24, 1660; after an exchange of gifts, the three sachems left with goods including a pound of powder each, DRCHNY 13: 168-169.

112 treaty in 1660. In contrast, Paul Otto has argued the Esopus may have been pushed for peace by other Indian groups including the Hackensacks, Wappingers, Mohicans, Susquehannocks, and

Catskills; the Mohawks were also involved.37 He explains the Esopus decision to give in as part of a larger transition of smaller Hudson Valley and Delaware groups who began to willfully–or reluctantly–accept Dutch presence in the area.38 For Stuyvesant, a lasting peace would provide the opportunity to act upon encroaching English settlers in the area, but in the end, it would not last.39

The peace treaty of 1660 failed to address the discrepancies between Dutch settlers and the Esopus. For one, the forced submission of the Esopus into a peace did little to erase the longstanding animosity Esopus Indians had for their Dutch neighbors. These feelings were amplified by heavy alcohol consumption, especially during times of stress such as the formation of a second Dutch settlement at Nieuwdorp (present-day Hurley). Lastly, the Dutch retained many of their Esopus captives were “employed” with the slaves on Curaçao. Their reasoning was as follows:

“...to release them, would not only tend to create disregard and contempt of our nation among neighbors as well as our own subjects, but also the neighboring barbarians and especially the Esopus savages would glory in it, as if they inspired such great awe to our people, that we were afraid to rouse their anger and that we had no courage, to treat, according to their merits and as an example for others, the prisoners, among whom

37 DRCHNY 13: 150-151, 160; Otto, The Dutch-Munsee Encounter, 151; Trelease, Indian Affairs, 158-159.

38 DRCHNY 13: 160, 164-166; Otto, The Dutch-Munsee Encounter, 151. Tackapousha in particular, a Massapequa sachem that openly expressed his support for the Dutch, seems to have been influential in brokering peace. Otto, The Dutch-Munsee Encounter, 153-154; Grumet, The Munsee Indians, 20-22.

39 DRCHNY 13: 168-176, 179-184; Otto, The Dutch-Munsee Encounter, 151.

113 there are some, who have dared to murder our people, captured by them, in cool blood and with unheard cruelty.”40

Even if Stuyvesant had returned the prisoners, it remains possible that violence was unavoidable.

Against the advice of Stuyvesant, settlers branched out from Wiltwijck to establish a new town,

Nieuwdorp in 1662, angering the Esopus.41 War would break out again a year later in a coordinated attack, adding further damage to the economically crippled colony.

The rapid depopulation of beavers in Iroquoia and recurrent Indian Wars that prevented the Mohawks from hunting elsewhere forced the fur trade into a steady decline after 1657. As historian William Cronon has noted, the commodification of beavers and wampum drastically altered Native American systems of hunting and honor. “Certain things began to have prices

[sic] that had not had them before,” Cronon continues, “one could buy personal prestige by killing animals and exchanging their skins for wampum or high-status European goods.”42

Indians of the Upper Connecticut River Valley where beaver populations still persisted, for instance, no longer hunted beavers on the basis of need only.43 Instead, these Indian nations including the Abenaki, Sokoki, Penacooks, Pocumtucks, and Mohicans benefitted from trapping as many beavers as possible. Pelts in hand, these Indian trappers could then exchange their skins in flourishing trade centers such as John Pynchon’s estate in Springfield where Indians of

Southern New England gathered with wampum, while John Pynchon and Haudenosaunee traders

40 Otto, The Dutch-Munsee Encounter, 151-152; “to release them,” “Resolution to Transport all but two or three of the Lately Captured Esopus Indians,” May 25, 1660, DRCHNY 13: 169. See also Stuyvesant’s corresponding letter to the Vice-Director at Curaçao, DRCHNY 13: 298.

41 Otto, The Dutch-Munsee Encounter, 152.

42 Cronon, Changes in the Land, 97.

43 Cronon, Changes in the Land, 98-99.

114 carried English and Dutch goods.44 Some historians have speculated this decline in trade resulted from the diversion of trade to Pynchon’s enterprise in the Connecticut River Valley which was on the rise after local beaver populations in Southern New England withered away.45

The Pynchon family had been successfully diverting the flow of Mohawk and Mohican pelts from Dutch hands since the 1630s.46 Springfield’s location on the Connecticut River, “upon the great Indian trail leading from the Narraganset and Pequot country, via the Westfleld river, to the Mohawk country above Albany [Fort Orange],” allowed John Pynchon to tap directly into preexisting indigenous trade routes, making his post an ideal stoppage point for Indian caravans of wampum or beaver pelts.47 Like van Curler, Pynchon also exhibited the qualities necessary to host cross-cultural encounters, making himself an influential representative of the English in the forests of Ahnowahraake. Indeed, much as the Mohawks referred to the Dutch as “Corlaer’s men,” the people of New England were subsequently known by the Mohawks as “Pynchon’s men.”48 The Mohawks held Pynchon in high regard, and it is no coincidence that when they delivered the head of Sassacus to the English in 1637, it was directly to Pynchon’s doorstep.49

Pynchon’s business remained a significant threat to the Dutch fur trade, who blamed Pynchon for

44 Brooks, The Common Pot, 60.

45 Salisbury, “Toward the Covenant Chain,” 65; Krech, The Ecological Indian, 175-177.

46VRBM, 483-484; Salisbury, “Toward the Covenant Chain,” 65; Thomas, “Maelstrom of Change,” 179. Originally founded by William Pynchon in 1636, the management of the estate was handed to William Pynchon’s son, John Pynchon in 1652 when William returned to England. Carl Bridenbaugh, ed., The Pynchon Papers, volume 1: Letters of John Pynchon, 1654-1700 (Boston: University Press of Virginia, 1982), xv.

47 Henry P. Waters, ed. Genealogical Gleanings in England, vol. 2 (Boston: New England Historic and Genealogical Society, 1901), 867; Thomas, “Maelstrom of Change,” 179.

48 Waters, Genealogical Gleanings in England, 867.

49 Waters, Genealogical Gleanings in England, 867.

115 having caused the fur trade to be “much damnified and undervalued not onely to the Inriching the said Native barbarians but the overthrow of the trade.”50

Despite these supposed successes, the dwindling fur trade in Connecticut drove John

Pynchon to further into New Netherland. In 1659, he formed a new company with the powerful

English merchants William Hawthorne and William Paine designed to develop new fur trade connections to the west.51 Together, Hawthorne and Pynchon conducted an exploratory survey of the Hudson Valley, hoping to find a sufficient place of operations for the new venture.

Convening with the town officials at Beverwijck, the two requested permission to establish a new post near Wappingers’ kill, offering in return the alluring prospect of a new place to obtain

English cattle which Dutch settlers had a particular affinity for.52 Recalling how the Wappinger

Indians aligned themselves with the Esopus, and their particular hostility during and after the

Peach War, Stuyvesant knew potential collusion with Pynchon was not out of the question.53 He later warned the Directors against allowing Pynchon to establish himself in the Hudson Valley where he may “cut off our beaver trade, as they had done” in Connecticut.54

50 Based on Thomas’s assessment of Pynchon’s records, Pynchon was undercutting Dutch prices for beaver pelts in 1647. Pulsipher, CRNP 1: 172-173; Thomas, “Maelstrom of Change,” 179.

51 Burke, Mohawk Frontier, 14; Stephen Innes, Labor in a New Land: Economy and Society in Seventeenth-Century Springfield (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 31-32; Bernard Bailyn, The New England Merchants in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1955), 53-54.

52 CJVR, 156; DRCHNY 1: 368-369; van der Donck, A Description of New Netherland, 44-45; Burke, Mohawk Frontier, 14-15. On Dutch proclivities for English cattle, see Todt, “Trading Between New Netherland and New England,” 365-366.

53 Grumet, The Munsee Indians, 74-75; Otto, The Dutch-Munsee Encounter, 144-145.

54 DRCHNY 13: 126; Burke, Mohawk Country, 15.

116 By 1660, the lack of local beavers forced a greater dependence on Dutch munitions as they expanded into enemy hunting grounds.55 In preparation of a long journey into Canada, a

Seneca caravan stopped at Fort Orange so to stock up on munitions before entering enemy territory. Citing their obligation to capture beavers for their Dutch brothers, the Seneca pleaded:

“They say, we must work hard to fetch the beavers through the enemy's country, therefore we ask, that we may obtain much powder and lead, for if the enemies overpower us, where shall we then catch the beavers.”56 Despite the ability of Haudenosaunee war parties to beat back French defenses, trapping envoys behind enemy lines were not to be taken lightly.57 French documents confirm the desperation of the Haudenosaunee, reporting on the Seneca caravan, 600 strong, that

“[carried] their Beaver-skins to the Dutch with great inconvenience and by long and perilous routes” from beyond Montreal.58 Despite short term success, continued excursions such as these wrought disastrous consequences for the Haudenosaunee and Dutch. French colonists and their

Indian allies alike sought to put an end to the Dutch-harassment of their people. Resentment towards the Haudenosaunee-Dutch partnership continued to build.

In addition to the faltering beaver trade, New Netherland’s economy also suffered from major wampum inflation. Its value decreased by approximately sixty percent between 1641 and

1658, “and more than 200 percent during the following decade.”59 While the WIC took

55 La Montagne estimated the total number of pelts received in Fort Orange in 1660 barely reached 30,000. DRCHNY 14: 484; Jacobs, New Netherland, 201.

56 DRCHNY 13: 185.

57 As if Haudenosaunee victories were to be expected, La Montagne almost nonchalantly reports of a brutal Iroquois victory against the French and their Indian allies. In June 1660, a Mohawk-Seneca military brigade successfully toppled a French fort reported to have defenses of 17 Frenchmen and 100 Indians. Only 2 French and 20 Indians were spared. DRCHNY 13: 176.

58 JR 47: 111; DRCHNY 13: 185-186.

59 Richter, Ordeal of the Longhouse, 96; Jacobs, New Netherland, 195.

117 precautions to regulate the quality of wampum produced for the purposes of trade, company officials could not prevent traders such as Pynchon from introducing wampum into New England markets, where the shell beads were typically undervalued.60 “Apart from trying to keep the rate equal to that of the English colonies by continual devaluation,” Jacobs writes, “few solutions to the problem could be found.”61

This posed a significant dilemma for the Dutch, who needed to maintain wampum’s value at manageable levels if the fur trade was to remain economically viable. Unfortunately for

Europeans, however, no amount of gunpowder or linen possessed the spiritual qualities of orenda inherent in wampum. Compounding the issue, the seemingly endless warfare of the

Mohawks and other Haudenosaunee created the need for an increased reliance on Condolence and Adoption ceremonies, facilitating a constant need for new additional wampum, the “conduit for rebalancing.”62 Needless to say, the continuous inflation of wampum made it increasingly difficult for Dutch bookkeepers to balance the account books of the official company store and merchant houses, resulting in money lost for both parties, at a time when economic sustainability was especially pertinent. Even one historian has gone so far to argue the economic failure of

New Netherland reduced the colony to ruin before the English frigates arrived.63

60 Jacobs, New Netherland, 194-195.

61 Jacobs, New Netherland, 195.

62 Brooks, The Common Pot, 58; Ceci, “Native Wampum,” 48-59; McBride, “Source and Mother of the Fur Trade,” 35; Salisbury, “Toward the Covenant Chain,” 61-65; Richter, Ordeal of the Longhouse, 32-33.

63 Lynn Ceci, “The First Fiscal Crisis in New York,” in Economic Development and Cultural Change, vol. 28, no. 4 (July 1980), 839-847. Jacobs, New Netherland, 197.

118 As wampum values dropped, beaver pelt prices skyrocketed, drawing great ire among the

Dutch settlers of the Hudson Valley that relied on the fur trade for income.64 The fur trade appeared to be on the rise in Beverwijck in 1656 and 1657, only to fall into sharp decline by

1659.65 Many colonists blamed their economic misfortunes on the boschlopers, the rugged private traders of the woods unafraid to undercut established prices or intimidate their clients through the use of force to secure business deals. Usually contracted out by other merchants, these “brokers” as they were known, offered a selection of presents to native clients, as a means of showcasing the goods available for sale at the patron’s residence in Beverwijck. This system allowed the smaller traders of Beverwijck to better compete with the “principal traders” who enjoyed a greater degree of trade connections and access to resources which allowed them to generally offer better prices and acquire most of the business.66 Many of these principal traders felt the boschlopers’ violence towards the Mohawks and disregard for market values threatened the fur trade altogether, and in May 1660, petitioned the court of Beverwijck–made up almost entirely of principal merchants–to outlaw the use of European brokers.67 According to Jacobs, the court compromised with a resolution that forbid the use of both European and Indian brokers, but recurrent violations forced an amendment that allowed the use of Indian brokers to continue.68 Many Dutch traders continued to violate the law on the pretense of chasing after lost horses or collecting blueberries, but the rift in itself among the inhabitants of Beverwijck, as

64 Meuwese, Brothers in Arms, Partners in Trade, 269-271; Jacobs, New Netherland, 210-214.

65 Burke, Mohawk Frontier, 7-11; Trelease, Indian Affairs in Colonial New York, 131.

66 Burke, Mohawk Frontier, 8-9.

67 Jacobs, New Netherland, 212-213; Burke, Mohawk Country, 10-11; Venema, Beverwijck, 183-186.

68 FOCM, 223-224, 453-454; NNO, 190; Burke, Mohawk Frontier, 9-11; Jacobs, New Netherland, 213.

119 Jacobs notes, demonstrates how the decline of the beaver trade “exerted serious pressure on the society.”69

While order among the Dutch traders devolved into chaos, indigenous conflicts around

Ahnowahraake continued to impede on the flow of pelts into New Netherland from the outside.70

By April 1664, a frustrated Stuyvesant blamed the poor state of the fur trade, incurring thousands of guilders in expenses, on the continued “the wars which the Maquaes [Mohawks] and

Sinnekuit [Senecas] wage against the Northern and Canadian [Indians].”71 The looming threat of

English retaliation made Stuyvesant’s calls for peace all the more dire. The United Colonies magistrates had grown increasingly unapologetic over the continued English encroachment into

New Netherland, and in 1659 incredulously reminded Stuyvesant of the “English territorial rights” that extended from “Sea to Sea.”72

The English Restoration in 1660 added an additional layer of concern for Stuyvesant.

Without a legitimate charter, Connecticut imperialists seized the opportunity to “encourage

Charles II to define their colony as they did,” a grandiose design that engulfed Rhode Island,

New Haven, Long Island, and all of New Netherland.73 In haste, Winthrop, Jr. quickly set about planning a visit to London, where he intended to pledge the loyalty of his ‘formerly’ puritan

69 Jacobs, New Netherland, 214; Richter, Ordeal of the Longhouse, 97; Merwick, Death of a Notary, 109-113.

70 Trelease, Indian Affairs, 131.

71 DRCHNY 13: 373.

72 PA 30: 281-282; Burke, Mohawk Country, 15.

73 Roper, “The Fall of New Netherland,” 677.

120 colony to the new king. Perhaps aware of Winthrop’s intentions, Stuyvesant asked him to visit

New Amsterdam before he crossed the Atlantic.74

New rumors quickly spread of English settlers negotiating land sales near Wappinger’s

Kill. “Many hounds are the hare’s death,” Stuyvesant warned the Directors, implying the Dutch colony would soon be overrun without bolstering its settler population considerably.75 “As the state of affairs in England under the last changes is so uncertain,” Stuyvesant lamented, “it is undoubtedly to be feared, that they may send some colonists with cattle there overland, to crawl along in time and finally obtain their end.”76 In resolve, Stuyvesant suggested the WIC go to such extreme ends as to seek out “homeless Polish, Lithuanian, Prussian, Jutlandish or Flemish farmers… easily to be found during this Eastern and Northern war.”77 Under the assumption his employers will succeed in finding new colonists, Stuyvesant lays out his plan for settlement in the following lines:

We shall on our side endeavor to provide them with cattle and necessary provisions and other means and in order that these people may not be delayed upon their arrival here, I hope, if it pleases God to give me life and sufficient health, to go there during the coming autumn, view the land and buy it from the savages and at the same time look up an opportunity, to make the settlement defendable, which with the blessing of God will increase and not only will promote civilization and bring safety to the yachts and passengers travelling up

74 Roper, “The Fall of New Netherland,” 678.

75 DRCHNY 13: 107. See also 108; DRCHNY 12: 249-250.

76 DRCHNY 13: 107.

77 DRCHNY 13: 108. Stuyvesant is referring to the Second Northern War fought along the southern rim of the Baltic Sea between Sweden (under King Charles X) and a coalition of forces including the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Russia, Prussia, Denmark-Norway, the Habsburgs and at times the Dutch Republic. See Stewart P. Oakley, War and Peace in the Baltic, 1560-1790 (New York: Routledge, 1993) and Robert I. Frost, After the Deluge: Poland-Lithuania and the Second Northern War, 1655-1660 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993).

121 and down the river, but will also cause mistrust and terror among the barbarians or natives.78

Beneath a thin veil of optimism, Stuyvesant’s plea reveals some of the chronic issues that plagued Dutch colonial efforts in Ahnowahraake from the beginning. First and foremost, his emphasis on contracting foreigners highlights the perpetual problem for the Dutch West India

Company of populating their colonies with native Dutch people. Domestically, the United

Provinces remained blissfully absorbed in the Dutch Golden Age by the mid-seventeenth century, including a favorable economic prosperity that left Dutch people little reason to risk everything by migrating to the New World.79 Stuyvesant rightly understood, that although unlikely, the WIC had a better chance in recruiting refugees from the wars that continued to tear through Northern and Eastern Europe.

This inability to implant dense settlements in the heart of Ahnowahraake directly contributed to the colony’s downfall in a number of ways. Unlike the English, New Netherland and Rensselaerswijck never attained the same level of settlement growth, producing a strong enough polity that could hold its own under the constant pressures of Native American geopolitics. Instead, the small settlements that dotted the Hudson, Connecticut, and Delaware river valleys quickly fused with the local Indian peoples, producing fragile economic and political unity out of which Dutch-Native partnerships became the basis for survival. Moreover, as was the case with the Mohawks, the Dutch sometimes entered into these relationships in subordinate roles, leaving themselves ultimately tied to strengths of their native partners. In this

78 DRCHNY 13: 108.

79 Israel, The Dutch Republic, 328-360; Klooster, The Dutch Moment, 198-208, 215-233; Boxer, The Dutch Seaborne Empire, 115-132.

122 sense then, the Mohawks were the best Native American ally the Dutch could have had, but it was also this connection that led to their downfall.

Despite the tattered state of affairs in New Netherland and Rensselaerswijck, Arent van

Curler’s relationship with the Mohawks continued to bear fruit. In April 1661, van Curler– accompanied by three Mohawk sachems–journeyed down to New Amsterdam where he would finalize his purchase of Mohawk land that would ultimately become the town of Schenectady.80

The plans contradicted Stuyvesant’s attempts to consolidate Dutch settlements, but the expansion solved the problems of both the Mohawks and the Dutch of Rensselaerswijck. Rensselaerswijck, while small, had steadily become overcrowded over the years resulting in an overabundance of settlers sharing a pitiful swath of land that was not necessarily fertile.81 The Mohawks openly encouraged van Curler’s plans, drawing Dutch trade connections further into Iroquoia off the treacherous paths often stalked by enemy Indians.82 Stuyvesant remained apprehensive, but knew the new settlement could help address the need for produce in New Netherland and

Rensselaerswijck while also drawing the fur trade further away from the English.83 Stuyvesant worried, too, that van Curler’s connections might draw the center of the fur trade away from

Beverwijck and further cripple the colony.84 With the English shadow steadily sprawling over

New Netherland, however, the ill effects of the new settlement might as well have been mute.

80 CJVR, 251; Burke, Mohawk Country, 17.

81 CJVR, 156-157, 225; NNN, 262; Nissenson, The Patroon’s Domain, 46-47; Burke, Mohawk Frontier, 17n35.

82 Parmenter, Edge of the Woods, 113-114.

83 PA 27: 811; CJVR, 187-189; DRCHNY 2: 373; Burke, Mohawk Country, 17-19.

84 Burke, Mohawk Country, 19-21; Trelease, Indian Affairs, 115.

123 The tip of that shadow emerged as the sails of John Winthrop Jr.’s ship pierced the horizon of New Amsterdam’s harbor in July 1661. Stuyvesant did his best to conceal the chaos, and made sure to welcome Winthrop as a respected head of state, saluting the arrival of

Winthrop’s ship with a 25-pound discharge of powder.85 Stuyvesant respected Winthrop as a friend, but approached their planned meeting with caution. With rumors of a new Anglo-Dutch war in the air, Stuyvesant calculated his actions carefully.86 He knew inviting Winthrop to New

Amsterdam, allowing his English rival two weeks time to take invaluable notes on the city’s fortifications and stores, was a risk.87 He also knew Winthrop intended to meet with Charles II in order to legitimize Connecticut’s territorial claims. By inviting Winthrop, Stuyvesant hoped to confide in Winthrop that he might see the Hartford Treaty ratified by the new king, ending officially the threat of an English takeover for good.88 Only time would tell if Stuyvesant’s plea worked, but as Lou Roper has shown, Winthrop had no intention of fulfilling Stuyvesant’s wishes.89 With Connecticut unable to expand anywhere but west, Stuyvesant knew New

Netherland could not possibly figure into Winthrop’s greater designs. As Winthrop’s ship embarked for England, another 25-pound charge sent him off. Stuyvesant later had the gunner record the discharge in a logbook. From that moment on, every documentable use of gunpowder

85 In total, 141 pounds of gunpowder was used for Winthrop’s visit including 79 pounds for his escorts and a 10- pound discharge for when Stuyvesant and Winthrop Jr. entered Brooklyn. DRCHNY 2: 460.

86 DRCHNY 14: 506; Roper, “Fall of New Netherland,” 679.

87 Shorto, The Island at the Center of the World, 287-290.

88 DRCHNY 14: 515; Roper, “Fall of New Netherland,” 679-680.

89 Roper, “Fall of New Netherland,” 679-681, 679n23.

124 in the colony would be recorded for the inevitable day when Stuyvesant would have to defend himself for his actions in the eventual surrender of the colony.90

Iroquoia in Recoil

The Mohawks had problems of their own. By the 1660s, the Haudenosaunee longhouse had begun to crumble under the pressure of the shifting power dynamics over the last several years, pitting the Mohawks against the Onondagas and Senecas at points, as these nations developed their own ideas of how to renew themselves in a rapidly changing world. Externally, the Mohawk imperial expansion seemingly reached its peak, no longer possessing the distinct upper-hand in firearms as they had previously. Indeed, the arming of the indigenous enemies of the Haudenosaunee by English and French agents left the Haudenosaunee in a state of recoil. As the walls of the longhouse began to crack, the Dutch worst fears quickly became reality.

The rise of the Susquehannocks posed significant challenges for the Haudenosaunee. In the 1650s, the Susquehannocks suffered at both Dutch and Iroquois hands as the Dutch conquered New Sweden and the western Iroquois nations conducted military raids into

Susquehanna and the Chesapeake. As an Iroquoian people, the Susquehannocks lived under the constant threat of Haudenosaunee captivity raids. The Dutch conquest of New Sweden removed an integral piece in the Susquehannock’s support system, creating the need to find new suppliers of guns, powder, and shot.91 Fortunately for them, as David Silverman has pointed out, “a

90 DRCHNY 2: 460-470.

91 Francis Jennings, “Glory, Death, and Transfiguration: The Susquehannock Indians in the Seventeenth Century,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 112, no. 1 (February 1968), 15-53; 26-28.

125 changing political landscape encouraged rapprochement between the Susquehannocks and

Maryland.”92 Given the superior strength of the Susquehannocks, “Maryland had concluded that it was more politic and profitable to seek alliance with the Susquehannocks through the arms trade than to continue trying to resist them.”93 The Susquehannocks made the most of their new

Atlantic connection, bolstering their defenses with munitions, cannons, and in at least one fort, fifty English soldiers that could tutor Susquehannock warriors in the art of siege warfare.94

Accordingly, this newfound strength so emboldened the Susquehannocks were conducting military expeditions deeper into Iroquoia.95 Indeed, by the 1660s the Haudenosaunee became increasingly fearful of Susquehannock war parties to the point Iroquois caravans to Fort Orange numbered as many as 600 strong.96

Disagreement among the Five Nations over how to address the ascendance of the

Susquehannocks temporarily split the longhouse in two. The Senecas wanted to continue fighting

92 Following the execution of Charles I in England, Maryland Puritans revolted against the Proprietary government, installing a Protestant government that last until 1658. Many of the political leaders in this movement happened to have close ties to William Claiborne, a former munitions supplier and ally of the Susquehannocks. Silverman, Thundersticks, 42; Van Zandt, Brothers among Nations; 117-119, 133-137, 174-175; Bailyn, The Barbarous Years, 154-161. Interestingly, Claiborne established a base of operation on Palmer’s Island, not far from where the itinerant Dutch trader of many names, Jacob Claeson (or Young), was also peddling guns to Susquehannock fur trappers. Silverman, Thundersticks, 42; Van Zandt, Brothers among Nations, 130-132. For more on Claeson who Stuyvesant worried might assist in an English invasion of New Netherland from the south, see DRCHNY 12: 317; Francis Jennings, “Jacob Young: Indian Trader and Interpreter, in Struggle and Survival in Colonial America, eds. David G. Sweet and Gary B. Nash (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 347-361; see also, to quote Jennings therein, the “index references to “Young, Jacob” in that exasperating grab-bag of comprehensiveness, confusion, and ethnocentrism:” Charles H. Hanna, The Wilderness Trail, 2 volumes. (New York: G. P. Putnam and Sons, 1911).

93 Silverman, Thundersticks, 42-43.

94 JR 48: 75; Silverman, Thundersticks, 42.

95 Silverman, Thundersticks, 43.

96 JR 46: 155; Silverman, Thundersticks, 45; Parmenter, Edge of the Woods, 111.

126 the Susquehannocks while maintaining peace with New France.97 Having enjoyed peaceful relations with the Susquehannocks in recent years however, the Mohawks desired the opposite and refused to give on the matter despite pleas for help from the Senecas, Cayugas, and

Onondagas faced with the growing threat of Susquehannock raids into western Iroquoia.98 The refusal of the Mohawks to break their peace with the Susquehannocks nearly brought the Five

Nations into a civil war. Although tensions never came to blows, the threat of a split in the longhouse was great enough for a moment to warrant Mohawk requests for Dutch cannons and horses to strengthen their forts along with an expedition to the Mohicans to “renew the old friendship.”99 Scant documentary evidence leaves relations between the Senecas and Mohawks relatively ambiguous in these years, but by 1660 Dutch records suggest that both sides remained on edge. In July 1660, Stuyvesant granted the Senecas’ request for gunpowder on the condition they “make and keep peace with the Macquaas [Mohawks]” and only “use it against their enemies, where they have to bring the beavers from.”100It remains unclear when the Mohawks made peace with the Senecas, but their efforts to mediate conflict between the Seneca and

Susquehannocks were less successful.101 For the time being, the Mohawks could only hope for the best. Another deadly bout with smallpox between 1660 and 1662 again created the need for

97 The Senecas might not have wanted to double back against the truce settled between the Onondagas and French, while the Mohawks had long been attempting to arrange their own peace agreements independently from the League. Parmenter, Edge of the Woods, 86-96.

98 Parmenter, Edge of the Woods, 116; Trelease, Indian Affairs, 127; Jennings, The Ambiguous Iroquois Empire, 123-125; Richter, Ordeal of the Longhouse, 98-99.

99 DRCHNY 13: 72-73; Parmenter, Edge of the Woods, 106-107.

100 DRCHNY 13: 186; Trelease, Indian Affairs, 128.

101 DRCHNY 13: 191-192.

127 captives.102 Maintaining peaceful relations with the Susquehannocks allowed the Mohawks to focus on adoption raids to the north and east.

Faced with the need for captives, pelts, and wampum, the Mohawks tore eastward through Ahnowahraake, stretching as far as Maine and Nova Scotia.103 The dispersal of the remaining Iroquoian peoples in Canada and peace with the Susquehannocks left the Mohawks with little choice but to begin adopting Algonquian peoples. The Abenaki appear to have been a favored target. They had been sporadically assisting the Canadian Indians in battles against the

Mohawks since the sixteenth century. More recently, the Mohawks detested the Abenaki for acting as middlemen between the French and their enemies in the Connecticut River Valley including the Mohicans and Sokokis.104 Both Dutch and English officials tried to curb Mohawk aggression to no avail. The Europeans reportedly succeeded in drawing a peace agreement between the Mohawks and “Northern Indians” in the Spring of 1661, but the Abenaki might not have supported the terms.105 Shortly thereafter, Abenaki on the Kennebec slaughtered an armed party of Mohawks coming to collect tribute. The Abenaki tortured and killed twenty-nine,

102 Brandão speculates the epidemic hit at two different times. Striking the Mohawks in 1660 before inflicting all of Iroquoia between 1661 and 1662. Based on the captivity narrative of Kateri Tekakwitha, her parents were killed by smallpox in 1660. Annales de l’Hotel-Dieu, 198; Dictionary of Canadian Biography 1: 635; Brandão, “Your Fyre Shall Burn No More”, 148, 346n13-14; Richter, Facing East from Indian Country, 79-80; Parmenter, Edge of the Woods, 116-117.

103 DRCHNY 13: 297.

104 The Mohawks also likely sought to cut off the growing bond between the French and the Indians of Northern England, signalled by the baptism of a Sokoki warrior in 1658. JR 40: 197; Calloway, The Western Abenakis of Vermont, 69-70.

105 DRCHNY 13: 224.

128 leaving one half-scalped survivor with orders to “tell his country men that like ignominy was in store for them if they undertook a similar act of molestation.”106

The Mohawks returned with a vengeance. In March 1662, a fourteen year old Abenaki refugee reported to the Jesuits that a Mohawk war party of 200 men had set out on a rampage into Abenaki territory, “resolved to return only at the end of two years, after having roamed over the entire land.”107 The next month the Mohawks defeated a band of Abenaki on the Kennebec

River to avenge the deaths of their kin.108 Weeks later, the same Mohawks ambushed close to one hundred unsuspecting Abenaki coming to trade along, taking close to eighty captive.109

Prisoners and booty secured, the Mohawks turned to the horrified English settlers cowering in the fort. The sachems reportedly desired to form an alliance with the English there, but no sooner did the English provide gifts then the Mohawks killed ten of their cattle and ransacked the trading house.110 By the time the Mohawks reached Nova Scotia the English had had enough.

While the exasperated governors of Nova Scotia and Massachusetts Bay furiously penned off letters to Stuyvesant, other representatives met with Mohawk headman to discuss reparations.

The Mohawks, restating their sole interests in fighting the Northern Indians, rebuffed the charges, unconcerned that the English possessed the power to stop them.111 For Stuyvesant, however, the writing was on the wall. Governor Sir Thomas Temple’s words echoed through the

106 JR 47: 139-143; RCNP 10: 282; DRCHNY 13: 190; Parmenter, Edge of the Woods, 115; Thomas, “Maelstrom of Change,” 242.

107 JR 47: 279; Thomas, “Maelstrom of Change,” 242.

108 JR 47: 279; Thomas, “Maelstrom of Change,” 242.

109 DRCHNY 13: 224-227; RCNP 10: 282; JR 47: 279; Trelease, Indian Affairs, 129; Parmenter, Edge of the Woods, 115; Calloway, The Western Abenakis of Vermont, 70.

110 DRCHNY 13: 226-227.

111 DRCHNY 2: 462, 13: 224; Thomas, “Maelstrom of Change,” 243-244; Trelease, Indian Affairs, 129-130.

129 empty powder kegs: “[if] matters remain as they are, then we are sure, the Maquaes [Mohawks] will be shortly attacked by the English neighbors and the savages.”112

The consequences of hostility towards the French became increasingly more pronounced for the Mohawks. Frequent raids against French indigenous allies eroded French reluctance against arming the local First Nations to the point that by 1662, French gun merchants finally designed their own flintlock model to comparable in portability to Dutch designs. Supplying the local natives with guns strengthened the buffer zone between the Iroquois and French, but also meant First Nations could better defend themselves. The Mohawks would discover this the hard way when a joint military expedition with Oneida warriors succumbed to Ojibwa gunmen along

Lake Superior, killing most of their party.113 On the part of the French and English, increased imperial involvement directly threatened Iroquois power and spatial mobility. The dissemination of firearms to French and English indigenous allies levelled the battlefield. “Without the advantage in firearms,” Silverman writes, “the Iroquois no longer enjoyed the lopsided victories they had come to expect and that were their measure of a successful campaign.”114 As we shall see, these circumstances only got worse when the French Crown seized control of the colony the following year.115

The recent defeats pushing the Mohawks to the brink of collapse incurred significant consequences for the colonial economy and security of the Dutch. The increasing vulnerability of the Mohawks, exacerbated by recent defeats in New England and Anishinaabe, left the door open

112 DRCHNY 13: 297-298, 302-304, 355-356.

113 Silverman, Thundersticks, 46-47. JR, 48: 75; 49: 243-245.

114 Silverman, Thundersticks, 46.

115 Silverman, Thundersticks, 47.

130 for retaliatory Indian-European attacks that could prove fatal for colonists or worse engulf the colony whole.116 Moreover, without the strength of the Mohawks, the Dutch all of a sudden lost their chief bargaining chip with the Munsees at moment when the waters of the Esopus were once again percolating with tension.117 Meanwhile, with the WIC on the verge of bankruptcy across the Atlantic, the economy of New Netherland rested almost entirely on the fur trade, the economic lifeline that depended directly on Mohawk and Haudenosaunee power and influence.

These were, as Trelease accurately described, the “perils of coexistence.”118

The Fall

Shortly after sunset on February 5th, a powerful earthquake struck near Quebec, the tremor and its aftershocks jolting Ahnowahraake for several days. Strong reverberations channeled through St. Lawrence basin and as far as Boston and New Amsterdam. causing landslides and levelling buildings in its wake. New France bore the worst of it: “Mountains were swallowed up; Forests were changed into great Lakes; Rivers disappeared; Rocks were split, and their fragments hurled to the very tops of the tallest trees.”119 Modern studies suggest magnitude levels wavered between 7 and 8 on the Richter Scale.120 “All the elements,” wrote one witness,

116 DRCHNY 13: 240.

117 DRCHNY 13: 242-243; CJVR, 325-326.

118 Trelease, Indian Affairs, Chapter IV: “Perils of Coexistence,” 85-111.

119 JR, 48: 27.

120 John E. Ebel, “A New Analysis of the Magnitude of the February 1663 Earthquake at Charlevoix, Quebec” Bulletin of the Seismology Society of America, v. 101, no. 3 (June 2011), 1024-1038; 1036.

131 “seemed armed against us, and threatened us with the direst disaster.”121 In New Netherland, the ground quivered from Beverwijck to Manhattan. Undoubtedly relieved to have escaped disaster,

Jeremias van Rensselaer commented, “we had an earthquake which was very strong further inland and did a lot of damage to the houses of the French.”122 However fortuitous Dutch colonists perceived themselves was soon to be forgotten. The “year of many disasters” was only just beginning, and the Dutch would soon find themselves overwhelmed in a whirlwind of calamity, so catastrophic that only God could have caused such destruction.123 God’s wrath, it turns out, “was kindled against New Netherland.”124

The worst was yet to come. Early into the spring, extraordinary flooding caused by melting freshets upstream inundated the corn fields. At the time, Jeremias van Rensselaer could not yet estimate the potential damage done to that year’s harvest, but later events paint a dark picture.125 For the Esopus, the timing of the floods could not have been worse, as they continued to find themselves pushed farther and farther away from fertile lands by incoming waves of

Dutch settlers, while their remaining corn mounds frequently fell victim to Dutch livestock.126

Meanwhile, tensions continued to brew over the illicit alcohol trade, sporadically inciting violence between natives and settlers, especially after news had been received that many Esopus

121 JR, 48: 27.

122 CJVR, 325; Ebel, “A New Analysis,” 1026. Jaap Jacobs, “The 1663 Charlevoix Earthquake in New Netherland sources,” unpublished.

123 Abbott, Peter Stuyvesant, 240.

124 JR, 48: 27; (quote) Fiske, Dutch and Quaker Colonies, 233.

125 CJVR, 325; Fiske, Dutch and Quaker Colonies, 1: 244.

126 Merwick, The Shame and the Sorrow, 240.

132 prisoners from the last war had been sold into slavery at Curaçao.127 It is also possible the

Mohawks called upon the Esopus for tribute in the form of wampum or even captives. The

Esopus fell under increased pressure to preserve their independence in the face of both increased

Dutch settlement and the Mohawk want of tribute, and eventually caved.

On June 7, an armed band of Esopus warriors descended upon the unsuspecting Dutch settlers at Wiltwijck and Nieuwdorp. “They took a good time to strike,” as most of the men were out in the fields, isolated and unarmed.128 In the blink of an eye, the Indians reduced the settlement to ruin, killing many of the men, burning the houses, some of which sheltering women and children, and plundering whatever goods they could find including ammunition and clothing.

In total, officials counted 65 settlers to be either dead or captured. Those taken captive included one man, Jan Gerritsen, and at least eight women, and twenty-six children.129 Only a fortunate shift in the wind kept the entire town from burning to the ground. The massacre initiated a new war the Dutch were ill-prepared to fight, especially with the Mohawks “hard pressed and surrounded by their enemies.”130 While the Esopus warriors made off with prisoners and booty, the Dutch survivors huddled inside the fort, waiting for Stuyvesant and reinforcements.131

While the Dutch continued to recover from the destruction of the Esopus Wars, both

England and France made concerted efforts to restructure and strengthen their respective claims in Ahnowahraake by 1663. The new regime of Charles II bent under the pressure of Winthrop,

127 DRCHNY 13: 169, 178, 190; Otto, The Dutch-Munsee Encounter, 152.

128 DRCHNY 13: 245; ERNY 1: 534-535, 545-546.

129 DRCHNY 13: 236, 245-246.

130 DRCHNY 13: 258; Trelease, Indian Affairs, 160-161; Otto, The Dutch-Munsee Encounter, 152-153; Bailyn, The Barbarous Years, 272-273.

131 Otto, The Dutch-Munsee Encounter, 152; Grumet, The Munsee Indians, 76-78.

133 Jr., other influential merchants, and even the Duke of York to sponsor a recalibration of English

America that included the ratification of previously illegitimate charters and the go-ahead to oust the Dutch colony.132 Meanwhile across the English Channel, King Louis XIV of France proceeded to overhaul the colonial government of New France. After assuming control of the colony, Louis XIV relegated its operations to Jean-Baptiste Colbert, one his ministers and “the most powerful man in France.”133 Colbert envisioned a new role for New France in a burgeoning

French Atlantic world. Moreover, Colbert had the power and resources to address the various local problems of the colony, the highest being the Mohawks.134 Colbert drafted plans for an army of 1,000 French soldiers to be sent to New France to address the problem of the Iroquois, but it would take additional years to put the “massive campaign in motion.”135

By extension, the administrative changes in New England and New France empowered their respective Native allies, allowing the enemies of the Mohawks to blockade pathways to hunting grounds to the point that “the trade ceases so abruptly that one hardly sees an Indian … because the path is not safe for the Indians.”136 The timing could not have been worse, given the current strain that wars with the Esopus and the exhaustive campaigns of the Mohawks put on

Dutch gunpowder stores. The turbulence of Native American conflicts in Ahnowahraake

132 J. M. Sosin, English America and the Restoration Monarchy of Charles II: Transatlantic Politics, Commerce, and Kinship (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1980), 98-113; Roper, “Fall of New Netherland,” 675, 681- 703.

133 W. J. Eccles, Canada under Louis XIV, 1663-1701 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), 6.

134 Eccles, Canada under Louis XIV, 6-22; Parmenter, Edge of the Woods, 114-116.

135 Silverman, Thundersticks, 47.

136 CJVR, 325-326; Jacobs, New Netherland, 201.

134 rendered the Dutch woefully ill-prepared for an invasion. While their enemies prepared for a massive offensive, both the Dutch and Mohawks were at a point of recoil.

The threat of an English invasion was quickly becoming a reality.137 The governors of the

United Colonies had been complaining of the Dutch contraband trade for years. As early as

1628, Bradford lamented over the empowerment of local Indians by the trade of “peeces,

e powder, and shote, which no laws can restraine, by reasons of y bassnes of sundry unworthy persons, both English, Dutch & French.”138 Evidenced from letters to Stuyvesant from English governors in the Chesapeake and New England, complaints of the trade continued through the

1650s.139 In September 1663, Stuyvesant received his latest complaint from Colonel Temple on

Nova Scotia, bemoaning of the most recent developments in the war between the Mohawks and the Sokokis. Saheda defended the actions of the Mohawks, recalling to the Fort Orange officials that he had warned Temple to “not trouble himself between them [the Mohawks] and the

Northern Indians.”140 In the face of Temple’s request for peace, the Mohawks showed no signs of backing down. Moreover, Temple’s letter contained an alarming new development for the

Mohawks and Dutch. The English were no longer fearful of attacking the Mohawks themselves.141 As English encroachment into Oostdorp and Newesingh increased in the 1660s, so too did threats of violence.142

137 JR: 48: 27-29; 40-57; 58-73; 221-223.

138 William Bradford, History of Plymouth Plantation, vol 2 in Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society vol 3, series 4 (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1856), 235.

139 On New England, NNC 1: 9; 31-34; 38-42; 233-235. On the Chesapeake, NNDP 18: 213.

140 DRCHNY 13: 298.

141 DRCHNY 13: 298.

142 See documents on English purchasing lands in Newesingh, DRCHNY 14: 314-317.

135 Convening at Hartford in October, the Dutch representatives reminded the English once again of the oft-ignored boundaries set by the Hartford Treaty, but their pleas fell on deaf ears.

Winthrop, Jr. confided in his guests that Connecticut’s patent honored New Netherland’s boundaries, but his plan had already been set in place. Always an adept negotiator, Winthrop willfully leveraged his inside knowledge of New England’s government in order to procure a royal charter for Connecticut. For the invaluable intel on the United Colonies, Charles II awarded

Winthrop with a blank map, allowing Winthrop near free rein to decide Connecticut’s western borders as he pleased. Stuyvesant continued to hope that a pan-Indian peace might allow him to refocus his efforts on negotiations with the English. Reading between the lines of Mohawk bullet holes, however, the writing was on the wall.143

With Temple’s threats in the back of his mind, Stuyvesant seized the opportunity following a sound victory against the Munsees, to call for a general peace in October 1663. More rooms had been circulating of a pan-Indian invasion among some of Algonquian nations, and

Stuyvesant worried the colony might be on its last leg.144 Enclosed with his instructions to

Lieutenant Couwenhoven on the exchange of prisoners with the Munsees, Stuyvesant informed

Couwenhoven of intentions to go to Fort Orange “before the winter and speak with the Maquaas

[Mohawks], to see whether peace can be made between them, the Mahicanders [Mohicans] and the Northern Indians, so that each tribe may go quietly hunting beavers.”145 The Mohicans, with a heavy emphasis on their sachem, Aepjen, had remained faithful to the Dutch cause to find peace with the Esopus, but new evidence had been mounting of a potential Mohican-English

143 DRCHNY 13: 363-364; Connecticut Records 1: 411-412; Roper, “The Fall of New Netherland,” 680, 687.

144 DRCHNY 13: 294, 299, 301-302.

145 DRCHNY 13: 302. Trelease, Indian Affairs, 129.

136 alliance, and worse, of their renewed involvement in the wars between the Mohawks and the

Sokokis. Shortly after receiving Stuyvesant’s orders to arrange peace negotiations, La Montagne caught wind of a joint Mohawk-Seneca expedition travelling to fight the Sokokis, that had taken a circuitous route above Cohoes Falls to avoid detection by the Dutch or Mohicans.146 La

Montagne’s return letter dashed any hope of Stuyvesant’s of negotiating a general peace. The

Mohicans, La Montagne reported, had abruptly abandoned “their land and their corn.”147 Of the other Indians around Fort Orange, La Montagne observed “a strange and unheard of disposition,” as if the worst was yet to come.

1663 ended in the same rough fashion in which it began. That December, the Mohawks suffered another major defeat to the Sokokis at Fort Hill.148 Before leaving, the war party stopped at Fort Orange, likely for munitions, where they told La Montagne the planned expedition was a response to a previous defeat that left a number of Mohawks and Senecas dead.

Evidently, the Mohawks had accepted a peace offering from the Sokoki without consulting the

Senecas and Onondagas. When the latter pressed the Mohawks to renew hostilities, the

Mohawks stepped back, reluctant “to storm their castle, for it is strong and cannot be taken by us.”149 Ultimately, however, the Mohawks were finally persuaded to join, and they would lose the most men in the fight. Sokoki gunmen successfully warded off an early onslaught of

146 DRCHNY 13: 307-309; Starna, From Homeland to New Land, 139.

147 DRCHNY 13: 304.

148 Modern day Hinsdale, New Hampshire; Silverman, Thundersticks, 44.

149 The reluctance of the Mohawks is worth considering further. As the easternmost nation of the Haudenosaunee, and most experienced in fighting with the Algonquians of the Upper Connecticut River Valley, they possessed the most knowledge of their enemy’s strengths and capabilities. That this knowledge failed to sway their Iroquoian brethren highlights a subtle strain in the Covenant Chain. The Onondagas and Senecas did not value the accord the Mohawks made with the Sokokis, nor did they accept the Mohawks’ unwillingness to fight as a possible reason not too. This might suggest the increased desperation of the Iroquois as a result of the heightened need for adoptees and possibly a growing disregard for Mohawk roles in diplomacy. DRCHNY, 13: 355.

137 Mohawk, Seneca and Onondaga warriors. In desperation, the attackers furnished an improvised explosive from a sack of gunpowder that they ignited and hurled over the palisades. The Sokoki defenders quickly extinguished the flames. Utterly defeated the Iroquois withdrew, wounded, captive-less, and at least 100 men short.150

The truth was hard to bear, but the Mohawks and their allies no longer held an advantage in firepower.151 Moreover, the Mohawks must have been especially frustrated, having lost the most men in a conflict they tried to avoid. Stuyvesant knew the defeat was cause for concern. He prayed that Fort Orange might “remain unmolested,” by retaliating war parties and realized neutrality in the indigenous conflicts was no longer an option. “We can expect only little trade, as long as this war between the natives lasts” Stuyvesant concluded, “it would be therefore best to pacify them by intervention.”152

In May of 1664, a general peace was made with the involvement of most of the Hudson

Valley groups as well as the Mohawks, Mohicans, Hackensacks, and Marsepinghs of Long

Island.153 The majority of the local Indian groups could no longer afford to protest Dutch colonization as they had become entrenched in the European colonial economy by 1664. Their connections to these markets via Dutch traders were too vital to risk.154

150 Stuyvesant notes the Iroquois likely lost far more men than they were inclined to reveal, pointing to rumors circulating around Manhattan that the “Maquaes and Sinnekus lost about 2 or 3 hundred [men].” DRCHNY, 13: 356.

151 Silverman, Thundersticks, 44-45.

152 DRCHNY, 13: 356. The French perceived this defeat to have “humbled [the Iroquois] greatly, and brought them very low; and that is thought to have been the reason which forced them to come to us and ask for peace.” JR, 49: 139-141.

153 Otto, The Dutch-Munsee Encounter, 153; Grumet, The Munsee Indians, 78-79.

154Amid the problems the Esopus faced during these years, Otto also mentions an epidemic most likely hit them hard in 1661; Otto, The Dutch-Munsee Encounter, 154. See also, DRCHNY 13: 355-356.

138 Weakened by disease and short of ammunition, the Mohawks too, begrudgingly settled for peace with the New England Indians. In May 1664, a Mohawk delegation accompanied by a few Mohicans and two Dutchmen, doubtless eager to see the fur trade resume, journeyed to the

Pocumtucks with presents and good will. Until the most recent war with the Sokokis, the

Pocumtucks had long been allies of the Mohawks, mostly as middlemen in the wampum trade with the Narragansetts.155 Relations appeared to be restored, but ended abruptly a month later when the Pocumtucks murdered a visiting Mohawk delegation in cold blood, a telling moment that reveals the change in stature of the Mohawks. Among the dead, Jeremias van Rensselaer reported, was Saheda, “much beloved by us and the Indians on account of his knowledge.”156

Some historians have suggested the Mohicans might have been complicit in the killings, based on the ensuing escalation in hostilities between them and the Mohawks.157

Rumors had already been circulating that the Mohicans and English had joined forces.

Following Saheda’s death, Jeremias van Rensselaer reported the Mohicans had not only sided with the Northern Indians, but had become increasingly aggressive and attacked his farm.158 The

Mohicans worked alongside the Abenakis to blockade the Mohawks from reaching eastern hunting grounds. With the help of English guns, the Algonquians “render[ed] the roads very dangerous,” further suppressing the struggling fur trade.159

155 DRCHNY 13: 380-382; Calloway, The Western Abenakis of Vermont, 72. Thomas, “Maelstrom of Change,” 253- 255.

156 CJVR, 358; DRCHNY 2: 371-372; Calloway, The Western Abenakis of Vermont, 72.

157 DRCHNY 2: 371-372; 13: 378-380; Starna, From Homeland to New Land, 141. Other reports blamed the English, possibly inspired by news of the commissioners coming with orders to take New Netherland, see DRCHNY 2: 371-372; 13: 389.

158 CJVR, 358; Trelease, Indian Affairs, 130.

159 JR 49: 141; Parmenter, Edge of the Woods, 116.

139 An intriguing report by van Couwenhoven in March 1664 detailed possibilities of collusion between Wappinger Indians and the English of Connecticut–almost certainly Pynchon– who allegedly promised the Wappingers land in Esopus should they help kill the Dutch.160 When confronted by Dutch authorities, Wappinger emissaries denied the charges, citing their distrust of the English and want of friendship with the Dutch. As the Dutch knew however, the Wappingers were allies of the Esopus and remained on the fence through most of the Esopus Wars.161 With

English encroachment continuing on Long Island and elsewhere, and rumors of a new patent looming, Stuyvesant continued to lament to the Directors on their failure to secure the royal ratification of the Treaty of Hartford.162

The Dutch imperial presence as a whole in the Atlantic had been in decline for several years and New Netherland felt every blow. The West India Company failed to recover from the substantial loss of investment return following the loss of Dutch Brazil in 1654 and many speculated the internal structure of the company would eventually lead to financial ruin.163 The

WIC never attained the level of profit sustained by the VOC and consequently did not receive the luxury of state support the VOC regularly received as a “commercial enterprise and war maker.”164 The lack of influence over the States General left the WIC constantly wanting of resources that could be redirected abroad, rather than on the continent. The power vacuum left by

160 DRCHNY 13: 363.

161 The Wappingers may have even harbored some of the Dutch prisoners captured by the Esopus during the conflict, Otto, The Dutch-Munsee Encounter, 153-154; Roper, “Fall of New Netherland,” 686.

162 John Scott had informed the magistrates at New Amsterdam of a patent signed by the Duke of York that granted England possession of the lands occupied by New Netherland, DRCHNY 14: 546; see also, 531-540.

163 Klooster, The Dutch Moment, 83-90.

164 Brandon, War, Capital, and the Dutch State, 136.

140 the Spanish de-occupation of the Low Countries left the States General in a tense standoff with

Louis XIV, who appeared to have his eyes set on the claiming the region for himself. With the need for soldiers and munitions in the Dutch Republic, it became increasingly difficult for the

WIC to send the necessary troops and munitions to New Netherland, a colony of little significance at this point in grander Dutch imperial designs.165 The WIC simply could not meet

Stuyvesant’s perpetual demands for munitions and soldiers. Only two company ships carrying munitions–with roughly 800 pounds of gunpowder between them–docked in New Amsterdam in

1664 when an English invasion was almost guaranteed.166

By the 1660s, the Dutch had grown numb to the arms trade that they initially sought to prevent in earlier years. After Stuyvesant’s failed attempts to halt the illicit arms trade upon his arrival in 1647, the courts hardly regulated the trade other than to repost previous ordinances.167

Indeed, in the court proceedings in which the West India Company shamelessly chastised

Stuyvesant for surrendering the colony, the company officials evidenced the open knowledge that gunpowder had become the most important good of the fur trade, with private merchants taking care to thoroughly provision themselves for the annual trading season.168 Many of these merchants sold guns, powder, and lead indiscriminately to Indians regardless of whether or not the they were allies or enemies of the colony. During the final war with the Esopus, the enemy

Indians were free to arm themselves from the flea market of sloops floating on the Hudson.169

165 Israel, The Dutch Republic, 776-785.

166 Dutch Colonial Manuscripts: Correspondence, vol. 15, doc. 99 and 104 (Dennis Maika, trans., personal communication). I am grateful to Dennis Maika for this source.

167 Trelease, Indian Affairs, 135-136.

168 DRCHNY 2: 496.

169 DRCHNY 13: 334.

141 The Mohawks took advantage of this freelance trade as well, as one Dutch observer noted when he observed two Mohawks paddling down the Hudson with an estimated 300 pounds of gunpowder and 400 pounds of lead.170 Moreover, although most of the presents given at diplomatic meetings usually consisted of gunpowder and lead, by the 1660s, the Dutch appear to have been designing firearms specifically for their native partners. As Silverman has pointed out,

Indian guns took on a lighter design than the European equivalent, clearly adjusted for the long- distance transportation that necessitated Iroquois warfare and hunting.171 The thought that the

Dutch embraced the Indian demands is rather unsettling when the effects of the trade on the colony’s downfall are considered.

New Netherland fell in two different worlds simultaneously. Rumors circulated of

English and Indian collusion directed at both the Mohawks and Dutch. While the inhabitants of

New Amsterdam braced for the incoming English fleet, the Dutch settlers in Beverwijck and

Rensselaerswijck feared an Indian massacre. Evidence suggests the English were instigating animosity between the Mohicans and the Dutch and Mohawks, but an attack from the north was not out of the question either.172 “Everything is very [uncertain] here,” wrote van Rensselaer,

“and we do not know which side [misfortune] will strike us, nor what is hanging above our heads.”173 In desperation, the colonists beckoned Stuyvesant for help, who wasted no time in getting to Fort Orange to investigate matters himself.174

170 DRCHNY 13: 334.

171 Silverman, Thundersticks, 28; see also Puype, “Dutch Firearms from Seventeenth-Century Indian Sites,” 52-61.

172 DRCHNY 13: 363-364, 389-390, 392; CJVR, 356; Trelease, Indian Affairs, 130.

173 CJVR, 356.

174 DRCHNY 2: 372, 497; 13: 390-391; O’Callaghan, History of New Netherland, 2: 519-520; Trelease, Indian Affairs, 131.

142 No sooner did Stuyvesant reach Fort Orange than the sails of four English frigates appeared over the horizon of present-day New York harbor. Under the command of Sir Richard

Nicolls, the fleet “disembarked their soldiers about two miles off at Gravesend,” and weighed anchor in Nyack, guns trained on Fort Amsterdam.175 To the south, the English settlers of Long

Island, some of whom having lived under Dutch jurisdiction for years, began forming ranks. To the east, Englishmen on foot and horseback were arriving by the day, “hotly bent on plundering the place.”176 To top it off, their forces included a concourse of “600 Northern Indians and 150

French privateers.”177 In haste, Stuyvesant quickly made his way back to New Amsterdam whereupon he had a letter penned off to Nicolls to inquire upon his business. Nicolls’ reply came the next morning. Stuyvesant would either surrender the fort and colony to the English or face

“the mysteries of the war.”178 Despite the tendency of historians to mistake Stuyvesant’s stubbornness for foolishness, Stuyvesant knew resistance was out of the question. With a shortage of men, defenses in disrepair, and only “a slender supply of powder either in the fort or in the town,” the Dutch stood no chance against an multinational force that surrounded the fort on all sides.179

175 “Letter from Rev. Samuel Drisius to the Classis of Amsterdam; The Surrender of New-Amsterdam to the English,” September 15, 1664, DRCHNY 13: 393-394. The Dutch version of the letter is transcribed in Albert Eekhof, De Hervormde Kerk in Noord-Amerika (1624-1664), 2 vols. (‘s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1913), 2: xlvii; Klooster, The Dutch Moment, 311 fn. 174.

176 DRCHNY 13: 393-394.

177 The “Northern Indians” officially remain unidentified, but most likely were combined forces of Indians from the Upper Connecticut River Valley including the Sokokis, Pocumtucks, Pennacooks and other New England Indians who would have seized the opportunity to attack an ally of the Haudenosaunee. DRCHNY 13: 393-394.

178 Shorto, Island at the Center of the World, 296.

179 DRCHNY 13: 393.

143 The English had conquered a shell of a colony, a shattered mosaic of imperialists’ dreams and economic promises that gave way to the intense geopolitical environment that made

Ahnowahraake so difficult to survive in. Stuyvesant’s signature on the capitulation papers may have surrendered New Netherland to the English, but it was to the constrictive entanglements of

Native America to which New Netherland fell. Historians have often glossed over the English takeover of New Netherland as a quick affair and an inevitable product of English expansion.180

Instead, we uncover the saga of a desperate colony on the fringe of a declining imperial network, poorly provided and unable to escape the torrents of Native American warfare. Stuyvesant’s signature, transferred a power to the English, that was never his to give.181

In late September, a Haudenosaunee embassy led by Canaqueese met with Nicolls and

George Cartwright at Fort Orange (now Fort Albany) to discuss the regime change. In exchange for favorable trade options comparable to those enjoyed by the Dutch and “kaswentha demands for the Iroquois right of free trade and for English noninterference in their war with the

Pocumtucks and Abenakis,” the Iroquois pledged mutual-assistance to future English designs as well as intel of England’s newfound territory.182 As many of the Dutch traders, including van

Curler continued to live in the area, Canaqueese and Mohawks for the time being continued to

180 Almost all accounts are written from an English perspective and treat the takeover as an inevitable piece of English imperial maturity: Richter, Ordeal of the Longhouse; Koot, Empire at the Periphery, Megan Lindsay Cherry, “The Imperial and Political Motivations behind the English Conquest of New Netherland,” Dutch Crossing vol. 34 (March 2010), 77-94; Lipman, The Saltwater Frontier. For a refreshed look on the takeover that juxtaposes the point of view of New England private interests against that of the metropolitan forces in London, see L. H. Roper, “The Fall of New Netherland and Seventeenth-Century Anglo-American Imperial Formation, 1654-1676” in The New England Quarterly, vol. 87, no. 4 (December 2014), 666-708. Klooster treats the episode as but one instance of Dutch imperial decline in the Atlantic, and one inconsequential compared to other Dutch holdings, The Dutch Moment, 98-99.

181 Klooster, The Dutch Moment, 112.

182 Parmenter, Edge of the Woods, 118.

144 enjoy their longstanding connection to the world arms market that would propel Mohawk war expeditions across the Great Lakes in the subsequent years.183 Formalities aside though, it took time for the relations between the Mohawks and English to smooth over. Demonstrated by

Mohawk demands for future noninterference in their wars with the New England Indians, the

Mohawks had not forgotten that it was the English that empowered their enemies, and many still held the English responsible for Saheda’s death.184 In some ways, the official transfer of power had little effect on the affairs of the Mohawks. From their perspective, Richter concluded,

“things proceeded largely as they had during the final unpleasant years of New Netherland.”185

Conclusion

In October 1665, Stuyvesant–now back in the Dutch Republic–appeared before the States

General to defend his actions in the surrender of New Netherland to the English. The WIC, in dire need of support from the States General, needed a scapegoat.186 Stuyvesant, as shown by the evidence he personally compiled for his report, was determined not to let it be him.His account, the “Report of the Honble Peter Stuyvesant, Late Director-General of New Netherland, on the

Causes Which Led to the Surrender of that Colony to the English,” illustrates in vivid detail his

183 DRCHNY 3: 67-68, 104; Smith, History of the Province of New York, 1: 21-34; ERNY 1: 560-562. On the Mohawk (and Haudenosaunee) wars that followed, see JR 49: 173; 50: 21, 37-43, 307-311; 51: 79; 56: 183-185; Parmenter, Edge of the Woods, 340n131.

184 Richter, Ordeal of the Longhouse, 99.

185 CJVR, 358-367; Richter, Ordeal of the Longhouse, 102; Silverman, Thundersticks, 47-48; Bradley, Before Albany, 183-185.

186 Merwick, Stuyvesant Bound, 113-114.

145 point of view of the colony’s demise.187 One by one, he listed the reasons that compelled him to surrender. First and foremost, Stuyvesant rightly reminded the States General of the overwhelming English presence to the east “who numbered fully 50 to our one, continually encroaching on lands within established bounds,” further allowed by the “default of the

Boundary so repeatedly requested.”188 Second, he recalled the “exceedingly detrimental, land destroying and people-expelling wars” of the Indians that so reduced the state of the colony that upon arrival, Stuyvesant found Fort Amsterdam “resembling more a mole-hill than a fortress, without gates, the walls and bastions trodden under foot by men and cattle.”189 Third, that the inhabitants of New Netherland lacked “a suitable garrison, as necessity demanded, against the deplorable and tragical massacre by the Barbarians, whereby we plunged three times into perilous wars.”190 Lastly, “powder and provisions failing… we were necessitated to come to terms with the enemy, not through treachery or cowardice… but in consequence of an absolute impossibility to defend the fort, much less the city of New Amsterdam, and still less the country.”191 With regard to this final point, Stuyvesant estimated the company store in gunpowder to be less than 2,000 pounds, and less than 600 pounds of that usable, “the remainder old and damaged.”192

187 DRCHNY 2: 365-371.

188 Supported by various references to the Hartford Treaty and the need for its ratification; DRCHNY 2: 365, 384- 401 (relevant appendices).

189 DRCHNY 2: 365.

190 DRCHNY 2: 365-366.

191 DRCHNY 2: 366.

192 DRCHNY 2: 366, For a complete log of the company gunpowder store from May 1661 to the surrender in August 1664, see DRCHNY 2: 460-470.

146 Notwithstanding the lucidity with which Stuyvesant paints a long history of neglect in this account, there are important pieces missing.193 As we have seen in this chapter, the Dutch and the Mohawks suffered their seemingly disparate declines together, their fates permanently intertwined after years of symbiotic relations both sides benefited from. Stuyvesant’s defense– and his employers’ incredulous response to it–narrate a more complicated arch, yielding to another world beyond the trees surrounding New Amsterdam on all sides. New Amsterdam might have fallen to the English, but Ahnowahraake claimed Fort Orange and Rensselaerswijck, where private traders like van Curler always kept sufficient supplies of gunpowder in-store for their Mohawk clients.194 How much gunpowder remained in these stores in August of 1664 is tough to say. The WIC Directors chastised Stuyvesant for his failure to make use of it, but various supplementary depositions suggest the Directors were misinformed.195 Even then, if the

Dutch traders of Beverwijck and Rensselaerswijck did have sufficient quantities of power, the long history of the Mohawk-Dutch partnership suggests the Mohawks were in fact the ones who controlled its use.

This was the half that has never been told. New Netherland might have fallen to the

English in 1664, but it was its ties to Ahnowahraake, and the imperial ambitions of the

Mohawks, that contributed to its ruin most. It was the rise of the Mohawks, not Dutch farmers, that drew the particular ire of English, French, and Swedish colonists. It was the Mohawks who transformed themselves with Dutch gunpowder, overtaking broad swaths of Ahnowahraake as they sought to expand their influence and survive in a world that changed shape with every

193 Merwick, Stuyvesant Bound, 117.

194 DRCHNY 2: 496.

195 DRCHNY 2: 470-488.

147 epidemic and every war. It was with Dutch gunpowder, that Mohawk gunmen made explosive, everlasting impacts across eastern North America. All the while what little gunpowder left in the company stores in Fort Amsterdam and Fort Orange, sat unused until it was useless. No matter how many firearms or pounds of gunpowder or lead the Dutch brought with them to

Ahnowahraake, it was the Mohawks that Europeans and Indians feared the most.

148 CONCLUSION

Jon Parmenter summarized it best: “Europeans arriving on the periphery of Iroquoia during the early seventeenth century found themselves quickly enmeshed in preexisting indigenous conflicts ranging from the St. Lawrence River to the Chesapeake Bay.”1 Identifying the usefulness of the Dutch arms trade from the start, the Mohawks quickly absorbed the Dutch as a trade partner of mutual benefits. The Dutch profited from the fur and contraband trade, while the Mohawks took advantage of their access to arms and gunpowder to subjugate their enemies, or in the case of the Wendats, force them to disperse. This Mohawk-Dutch partnership attracted negative attention from other native groups and European forces until eventually, the tensions boiled over into a full-scale invasion. To make matters worse, the WIC, hobbling by this point, lacked the resources to help the colony.

Having traded away the bulk of the powder to the Indians, and expended most of what was left in the Esopus Wars, the Dutch were ill-prepared to defend their colony from a takeover.

And so without a shot–save for the bloody massacre Colonel Richard Carr carried out against the inhabitants of Swanendael–New Netherland was transferred into English hands.2 Historians have generally characterized Stuyvesant in this event as stubborn, medieval or “authoritarian.”3 Yet, reducing Stuyvesant to a flawed leader at the center of a “Shakespearean” tragedy does little in

1 Parmenter, The Edge of the Woods, 18.

2 According to a report by Stuyvesant, some of the men captured in the attack were sold into slavery in Virginia, but their fates remain unconfirmed; Klooster, The Dutch Moment, 99, 311n179; Roper, “Fall of New Netherland,” 690.

3 Bailyn, The Barbarous Years, 504.

149 reflecting on who the man truly was.4 Stuyvesant knew far better than to end “things the way they ought to end, in good, quenching blood and fire.”5 A close study of the colonial gunpowder trade reveals that he lacked the powder to do so.

Analysis of the colonial gunpowder trade uncovers several intriguing and important themes of colonial development in the Early Modern age of empires. On the one hand, we see the gross mismanagement of a finite resource, while on the other, we develop an understanding of how Dutch colonizers reacted to the volatile environment dictated by Native American competition and European rivalries. How the Dutch operated in New Netherland is better defined by the forces that pulled them rather than the ones they controlled. Naturally, their efforts to maximize the efficiency of the fur trade resulted in pursuing Indian alliances as mutually beneficial partnerships. The Dutch, entering North America as the world leaders in arms trading, carried a massive advantage over their European rivals by having internal connections to goods the Indians desired. Yet, things fell apart. New Netherland never attained the importance that the colonies in the Dutch West Indies or West Africa held. With gunpowder trickling down through markets that involved massive quantities going towards continental conflicts, naval wars, more important colonies, and even other European powers, New Netherland sat at the bottom of the barrel. Perhaps had supply lines to New Netherland been less constricted, the colony may have been better supplied with munitions and soldiers. Nevertheless, such was not the case, and the colony ended up trading away far more gunpowder than it could afford to lose. Even during the war in 1663, Esopus Indians could obtain “whatever powder and lead they wanted,” from the

4 Shorto, Island at the Center of the World, 298.

5 Shorto, Island at the Center of the World, 298.

150 floating flea-market of sloops on the Hudson.6 The Dutch had so little control over their situation, two Mohawks could float down the Hudson in a canoe with an estimated 400 pounds of lead and 300 pounds of powder as freely as they pleased.7 New Netherland always seemed to be a world the Indians controlled.

Complicating things further, the Dutch and Iroquois retained differing ideas of how to develop their partnership in the wake of expansion. Consider the Hartford Treaty of 1650.

Stuyvesant pursued the treaty, and persistently pushed his employers for its official ratification in order to protect the colony’s borders. He lists this failure of settling the border dispute as a predominant factor to the colony’s downfall.8 Stuyvesant conceived the issue in legal boundary jargon by which Native Americans did not abide. While he was trying to solidify New

Netherland’s borders, the Mohawks were trying to expand their spatial outreach without any regard for colony lines. When Iroquois war parties entered New England and New France with guns, they blamed the Dutch for participating in “a dangerous liberty taken by many of yours in selling guns, powder, and shott.”9 Clearly, the Dutch and Iroquois conceived their maps of North

America in very different ways. These outlooks were too embedded within their respective worldviews to be reconciled.10

6 August 17, 1663, DRCHNY 13: 334.

7 DRCHNY 13: 334.

8 “Report on the Surrender of New Netherland, by Peter Stuyvesant, 1665,” in NNN, 459.

9 NNC 11: 9.

10 The Dutch constantly worried of “evil designs” against New Netherland inspired by their relationship with the Mohawks, DRCHNY 13: 355; Stuyvesant believed the wars between the Mohawks and the Northern Indians would be settled when a European boundary line could be firmly drawn, DRCHNY 13: 390.

151 The colony’s trading of gunpowder to the Mohawks as well as their enemies helped cultivate a mutual resentment of the Mohawk-Dutch partnership by English, French, Swedish, and Native forces. It was under these pressures, combined with the seemingly continuous state of war with local Indian groups, that New Netherland collapsed. Its efforts to retain Mohawk allegiance set in motion a current of gunpowder dealings that propelled the colony into the affairs of a powerful Indian Nation that it neither controlled or trusted. The results were disastrous. The dangerous liberty of trading guns, gunpowder, and lead rendered the Dutch woefully unprepared for an impending invasion.

Some may argue the Dutch were incredibly short-sighted for being so tolerant of a trade that put weapons in the hands of their enemies. I would argue however that New Netherland officials had little choice in the matter. Stuyvesant, as evidenced by his post-takeover testimony in the Hague, demonstrated extensive knowledge of the colony’s shortcomings and problems that led to the capitulation.11 Trading away their defensive strength in kegs of powder may not seem advisable, but given the circumstances the colony encountered, it may have been the only option.

The Directors recognized this and thus an official company trade of guns, gunpowder, and lead carried on through the life of the colony. Moreover, private traders like Arent van Curler, Jacob

Reynsen and Jacob Schermerhoorn quickly recognized the lucrative markets available for guns, gunpowder, and lead. Colonial magistrates never truly had the tools to stop them. The WIC shared the same objectives as the private traders they sought to obstruct, connections and profits.

The mismanaged affairs of the colony should come as less of a surprise than that a colony run by

11 NNN, 458-460.

152 motley crew of traders and settlers lasted as long in North America as it did. Perhaps gunpowder was just as influential in the colony’s successes as in its downfall.

Historians of this period, and of Dutch-Indian relations in general, have developed the unfortunate tendency to gravitate around the cultures of violence and conflict that tore the colony apart.12 With undeniable certainty, analysis of the gunpowder trade solidifies many of their claims. Indeed, as David Silverman has profoundly demonstrated, firearms directly contributed to the “violent transformation of Native America.”13 Yet, there is a whole other world that this study of the gunpowder trade uncovers, one of alliances and accomodation. Through the eyes of individuals, both cultural leaders and intercultural brokers, different patterns and themes become clearer and more pronounced. Taking the perspective of Saggodryochta or Arent van Curler, we begin to see the world they shared in more complex ways than what may be reduced to a frontier or borderland. Their worlds overlapped considerably, and historians must continue to work towards reconstructing this shared space.14

* * *

For too long, scholars have written the history of North America with their eyes on the ground. Middle grounds, divided grounds, and native grounds have now been used at length to

12 Trelease, Indian Affairs, 138-174; Merwick, The Shame and the Sorrow, 133-180; Jennings, The Ambiguous Iroquois Empire, 47-57, 113-142; Bailyn, The Barbarous Years, 242-275; Steele, Warpaths, 110-136.

13 Silverman, Thundersticks.

14 A trajectory of this concept is already well underway, see James Axtell, The Invasion Within: The Context of Cultures in Colonial America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985); Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Indians and English: Facing Off in Early America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000); Michael Leroy Oberg, Dominion and Civility: English Imperialism and Native America, 1585-1685 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999); Cynthia Van Zandt; Brothers Among Nations; Fur, Colonialism in the Margins, Hatfield, Atlantic Virginia.

153 describe the intense confluence of entangled histories and borderlands.15 Meanwhile, historians facing eastward have turned their backs on the heart of the continent, a whole other world “far from centers of European population and power,” where “Indians were more often able to determine the form and content of intercultural relations than were their European would-be colonizers.”16 Lastly, historians’ efforts to counter outdated narratives of indigenous declension and dependence by declaring colonial landscapes new worlds for all may have inadvertently glossed over the established strategies by which numerous indigenous adapted to the changes wrought by the arrival of Europeans, their trade goods, and diseases.17 Following the trajectory set in motion by historians of native grounds and imperial entanglement, Ahnowahraake challenges some of these assertions and offers glimpses into a world as seen from within, a volatile and highly-contested space dominated by indigenous quests for independence, sovereignty, and survival.

Looking at the continent from above has its advantages, but also limitations. Historians have become masters of magnification and de-magnification, yet the lens in use always has a center and periphery, producing a vignette with a focus on the center that inevitably blurs the edges. As a result, regional studies of the colonial world–including the Great Lakes, Chesapeake,

Northeast, and Southeast to name a few–commonly fall victim to the analytical vacuum in which outside influences blend into the background, blurred into a landscape that is sophisticated, but incomplete.

15 Richard White, The Middle Ground; Alan Taylor, The Divided Ground; Kathleen DuVal, The Native Ground.

16 DuVal, The Native Ground, 4.

17 Colin Calloway, New Worlds for All: Indians, Europeans, and the Remaking of Early America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997).

154 In many ways, the development of Atlantic history helped to the address some of these issues. In reconnecting Europeans and Africans to their roots on the opposite side of the Atlantic rim, historians transformed the history of colonial North America in substantial–even paradigmatic–ways. But what of Native Americans? How do their origins, histories, and established traditions play into colonial narratives when there is no distant land to reconnect them to? North America was their space, their land, their home, their world. As recent works focused on the heart of the continent–“intact and unconquered”–have shown, the advent of

European goods did not immediately change that.18

With regard to the Haudenosaunee, Richter and Merrell offered profound insight on this issue: “Perhaps future research should shift away from the familiar area of Indian relations with

Europeans and towards contacts, conflicts, and connections among the Five Nations and their native neighbors.”19 It is those contacts, conflicts, and connections that make up Ahnowahraake, a world that does not disconnect from the Atlantic, but rather connects the vast Indian social world of North America to it. We see then in the shared space of Iroquoia and New Netherland, among other regions of intercultural exchange, the confluence of two worlds where continent and ocean collide. Peering down onto a static landscape, in my view, fails to capture such dynamism, the tectonic shifting of peoples, traditions, and ideas that left North America in a constant state of change. Rather than looking down, “A Daingerous Liberty” explores Ahnowahraake through the individuals and communities that made it. Through the eyes of Saggodryochta and Arent van

Curler, or Mohawk warriors and Dutch gunrunners, we see the ever-changing web of contacts,

18 Witgen, An Infinity of Nations, 3.

19 Richter and Merrell, Beyond the Covenant Chain, 6.

155 conflicts, and connections that made up their world, each of their lives immortalized as links in the chain historians continue to “renew” and “make bright.”20

20 Richter, “Rediscovered Links,” 48-49.

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