To further this profitable trade and to encourage discovery in “New Netherland” the States General at The Hague granted a temporary charter of special privileges to merchants of Amsterdam and Hoorn who had formed a western trading association known as the United New Netherland Company.
By 1614 Hendrick Christiansen, a fur factor in the employ of Amsterdam merchants, had established a permanent trading post on Hudson’s River near the present site of Albany. Fort Nassau, as it was called, was well palisaded and moated, equipped with two large guns and eleven swivels, and garrisoned by a dozen armed traders. All were necessary precautions. The trading post was located on the border of the fiercest of all Indian tribes, the dreaded Mohawks of the Iroquois Confederacy.
Relatively peaceful tribes, Algonquian Mohegans and others, occupied most of the Hudson Valley east of the river and south of Fort Nassau along both banks. But the interior to the north and west was the home of the Five Nations, the terrible Iroquois: Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca. From palisaded forts deep in this hinterland their bloodthirsty young warriors sallied forth regularly to terrorize their neighbors.
Humbling every foe they met into complete submission the Iroquois enforced tribute and left a trail of carnage wherever they paddled their war canoes. They carried their conquests to the sea in the east, scourging the valleys of the Hudson and the Connecticut. Their chilling war cries sounded over the Great Lakes among the Eries, in the lower valley of the Delaware where lived the gentle Lenni Lenape, and down the length of the Susquehanna to the waters of Chesapeake Bay. War parties from their ancient forts forayed far to the south in the Valley of Virginia and crossed the Blue Ridge to follow the Piedmont plateau even into Carolina to take Catawba scalps and women.
For many generations the supremacy of the Iroquois had been acknowledged wherever their warriors went in search of victories and their national pride had grown with every conquest.
But now their own country was being invaded, from the north, from New France, by Huron and Algonquin enemies with the help of Champlain’s arquebusiers. And the Five Nations had sworn by the blood of the bear their undying enmity to these Frenchmen who first surprised them at Lake Champlain with their death-dealing firesticks.
It was the Mohawks, the proudest and bravest of the Iroquois and now the near neighbors of the Dutch, who had taken the brunt of that first Iroquois disgrace in 1609. Their portage path coming from the west terminated near Fort Nassau, and the Dutch traders didn’t find it difficult to cultivate them. Rankling with hatred against the French, the Mohawks were in a mood to be friendly with any gun-carrying white men who might become their allies.
Revenge of course is a powerful motive in the savage breast. On the other hand so is self-preservation. The risk of having enemies with the astonishing fireguns on both their flanks no doubt also entered into the Mohawks’ calculations.
In any case it wasn’t long before Dutch traders were fearlessly visiting villages deep in the country of the dreaded Five Nations, peacefully driving a great trade in furs while the savages learned to drink their fire-water and became better acquainted with the awesome weapons they carried.
In the meantime, late in 1615, the Iroquois did gain some satisfaction when Champlain and his Indian allies, after driving deep into their territory by way of Lake Ontario, were forced to withdraw in temporary defeat. A galleried and thickly palisaded fort at Lake Onondaga withstood the arquebuses, even though a movable tower was built by the attackers so that the Frenchmen might shoot down into the fort. Attempts by the Canadian force to fire the stockade proved unsuccessful too, due to contrary winds. And Champlain himself was so badly wounded during the battle that he had to be carried from the field on a litter of wickered branches.