them a keg says, replied by giving of powder, but entreated them to make peace with the Minsis so that the Dutch might " use the road to them in safety." tor Stuyvesant, so the record

Three years

later the

Dutch were in terrible alarm.

A body

of six hundred Senecas attacked the fort of the Minsis on the

Delaware, and were put to flight and pursued northward for Unable to cope with them single-handed, the Sene

two days.

cas solicited the aid of the

the struggle.

Mohawks^ and with them continued

The transition of the province from the Dutch

English found the contest undecided, and not only so but the Mohawks expressly asking the English to make peace " for the Indian as princes with the nations down the river,"

to the

they had pleaded with the governor of Canada for protection In a letter from Governor Lovelace,

against the Mabicans.

February 24, 1665, it is said that negotiations for peace were then pending between the Esopus Indians, the South Indians, and the Novisans, on the one part, and the Senecas and Mohawks

on the other, and that the magistrates of Ulster were directed to encourage the same; and under date of August 13, 1669, the same officer writes that " Perewyn lately made sachem of

" to Hackinsack, Tappen, and Staten Island," had visited him renew and acknowledge the peace between them and the Christ ians ; also, between

them and the Maquas and

Sinnecas, the

which they say they are resolved to keep inviolable." He ordered that the matter be " put on record to be a testimony It was about against those that shall make the first breach." this time that tradition gives the story of a great battle between