There they main

tained kindly relations with the Indians, and around their

trading

Nassau, and subsequently Fort Orange, hed neu tral ground between the contending Mahicans and Mohawks*

posts, Fort

But this alliance of friendship did not relieve the Dutch from apprehended attacks on the part of those whom Hudson had Hudson's Journal; ante, p. n. The first, or Fort Nassau, was erected on what was called Castle island, now known as Boyd's island, a short dis1

*

tance

below the Albany

ferry.

It

was

twenty-six feet wide and thirty-six feet long, enclosed by a stockade fifty-eight feet square, and the whole

a

building

surrounded by a moat eighteen feet wide, Its armament consisted of two large guns and eleven swivels, and the garrison of ten or twelve men. The location proved

unfortunate, in consequence of the exposure to the spring freshets, and in 1618

was removed to the banks of the Tawalsontha creek, now called the Norman's kill, from whence it was soon after removed further north and located in the vicinity of what is now South Broadway, Albany, and called Fort Orange, by which name, and that of Beaverwyck, the small settlement which gathered around it, it was known until 1664. it

Ante^ p. 54.

THE INDIAN TRIBES

it was deemed prudent to erect a fort on what was then known as Prince's island, and to garrison it with six

offended, and

teen men for the defense of the river below." 1

Contemporaneous circumstances contributed to keep alive One Jacob Eelkins, 2 who had been in superintend ence of the trade at Fort Nassau, in the summer of 1622 this feeling.