The pos session of these privileges, however, was not destined to be The Oneidas murdered three Frenchmen (1657), permanent. and the French retaliated by seizing Iroquois. Two years later the missionaries had abandoned the country, and the French

and the Five Nations were again at war.

Finding success hope

stronger military support, the aid of the king of France was invited, and scarcely had the English succeeded in

less without

planting the flag of St. ere the colony of

George on the walls of Fort Orange,

New France was protected by a royal regi

ment, and Courcelles, a veteran French soldier, established as The missionaries now renewed their work, and governor.

its

reestablished themselves

territory of the

in the

Senecas

and

Onondagas, and converted one of the villages of the Mohawks*

The progress of the French soon became more formidable. Serious inroads were made on the territory claimed by the Eng lish,

and the

the Jesuits.

Iroquois

were gradually yielding to the

efforts

of

Except in the valor and good faith of the Indians

more immediately under English

influence,

the province had

The Jesuit fathers became spies, and, in 1682,

no protection. were enabled to advise the governor of Canada, that circum stances had materially changed that they were now accustomed to the woods, were acquainted with all the roads through them, and that the French could, from Fort Frontenac, fall on the Senecas in forty hours and crush them by an unexpected blow. ;

When Colonel Dongan came over, in 1683, as governor of New York, matters wore a threatening aspect indeed. He was under instructions to preserve friendly relations with the French, and besides this, was himself an earnest Catholic ; but he was not blind to the danger which menaced the province, or slow Wherever the French priests to use his power to avert it. traveled