one of the Hurons was killed ; and they celebrated their victory on the field of Yates and battle in dancing and singing.

Moulton.

ing

The incursions of the French explorthe very parties may have been

"northern hordes," to resist whom the confederation was formed in the manner

so graphically described in the story of

Hiawatha.

Ifassenaar,

.

vn, 1 1 }

Doc. Hist., in,

35, 51. * Yates and Moulton's Hist.

Ne-w York,

346, 347. *

Hist. Neio JNetherlandt i, 355.

OF HUDSON'S RIVER. his statements are defeated in the

by the association of the Mahicans and by

treaty, by the facts which he subsequently quotes,

the whole tenor of contemporaneous history. In 1659, the Mohawks visited Fort Orange for the first time to ask special favors, and the

first visit

to

them, in an official capacity, was

made by the Dutch soon after.

There is nothing in the pro of either conference establishes any other fact which ceedings than that the Mohawks desired an accommodation which the Dutch were the

prevent

willing to grant only to an extent that should alliance of the former with the tribes then

In 1660, they were included in the threatening hostilities. peace at Esopus, but neither in its negotiation nor its terms

was there distinction made between the parties to that treaty. Three years later Stuyvesant distinctly refused to employ them. The advantage to the Iroquois from their treaty of free trade was great, but it was made so only by the bar which their proxi mity to Fort Orange interposed to the supplying of other nations with whom they were at war.