At the marketing end of the Indian trading cycle, the European colonists at the center of everything were the Dutch. New Netherland's whole reason for existence was the Indian trade. When something happened to the Dutch, therefore, whether its source lay in Europe, colonies, or Indian country, its effects reverberated through the tribes. The Susquehannock's were no exception to this rule. If Dutch interests and Dutch activities are examined closely, they reveal the clues needed to understand Susquehannock history.

We may begin with the crisis presented to the traders of New Netherland in 1642. In the background of the crisis lay the fact that so long as the Indians of the far west had had to journey all the way to Three Rivers or Quebec for a French market, the Iroquois could hope to intercept and share in the trade, and the Iroquois would bring their share to Rensselaerswyck. But the French founded Montreal in 1642 and thereby overleaped Iroquois obstruction.²⁵  Since the Mohawks would not permit the western tribes to trade directly with Rensselaerswyck, the effect of the founding of Montreal was to cut off western peltry from the Dutch on the Hudson.²⁶

The trade of the Connecticut valley had been ruined several years previously by trading posts of New Englanders at Windsor and Hartford. Now, coincidentally with the founding of Montreal, the New Sweden Company was reorganized to compete more aggressively for trade at the Delaware Bay. Governor Johan Printz took charge of the Swedish colony and built a series of blockhouses to intercept Susquehannock trade; in 1644 or 1645, he sent an embassy to Susquehannock country to negotiate a monopoly of the trade for Sweden, thus cutting off western peltry from the Dutch on the Delaware.²⁷

At the same time, many of the Indians of the Hudson valley and Long Island grew resentful at Dutch ill treatment, and in 1643 they rose in fierce rebellion. New Netherland was in trouble in every direction. It is no wonder, then, that the Dutch found it politic to make their first treaty of peace and friendship with the Mohawks in 1643, and to renew it in 1645.²⁸ For the Dutch, these treaties bought Mohawk intervention in their Indian war, which in turn brought the belligerents to a peace treaty. For the Mohawks, the treaties gained the right to trade for guns and ammunition on an unprecedented scale. Dutch arms were the decisive factor in the Iroquois triumph over the Hurons in 1649 and 1650, and there can be little doubt that Dutch logistics also supported the Mohawk attack on the Susquehannock's in 1651-1652.²⁹   Though the Dutch mistrusted the Mohawks, fearing lest the latter get out of hand, the essential fact was that the Mohawks were serving Dutch interests by pursuing their own.³⁰   Mohawk peacemaking between the Dutch and the other Indians increased Mohawk prestige.³¹   The Mohawk triumph in Huronia promised to divert some of the western furs to Rensselaerswyck. The Mohawk battle against the Susquehannock's was indirectly a battle against the Swedish backers of the Susquehannock's.

While the Mohawks were thus doing Dutch business, the Susquehannock's compounded their offenses against the Dutch by leaguing with yet another hostile power to strengthen themselves against the Dutchaligned Mohawks. In 1652 the Susquehannock's made a treaty of peace with English Maryland.³²   Now we must remember that 1652 marked the beginning of the first AngloDutch war, and during that war the Delaware Bay Swedes seized their opportunity and the contiguous Dutch real estate.³³   Though the war ended in 1654, the Swedes remained for a while in possession of all of Delaware Bay. They had timed their seizure well, and their Susquehannock allies and trading partners continued to be their main source of strength and profit.

It is not hard to imagine the Dutch being somewhat displeased with the Susquehannock's. Our clue lies in a Swedish document. Governor Johan Rising reported to Sweden that his Lenape neighbors on Delaware Bay had become "very proud"insufferably soand that he could do nothing but appease them unless Sweden would send him troops. Appeasement took the form of giving goods on credit to the Lenape, which they then traded to the Susquehannocks for the latter's peltry; the Lenape completed their brokerage by selling the furs in New Amsterdam for higher prices than the Swedes would pay. That the Susquehannocks did not do their own trading at New Amsterdam bespeaks exclusion from the Dutch market. For the time being, the tributary Lenape (if they still were tributary) had the only access to the best market, and the Susquehannocks' fortunesalready damaged by their Mohawk warcontinued to decline.³⁴

Worse was in store. The Dutch reconquered Delaware Bay in 1655, ending New Sweden forever. The Susquehannocks could no longer sustain themselves independently of Dutch friendship. They showed their capitulation in 1658 when they, like the Mohawks before them, exerted influence to end the renewed wars of the Esopus Indians of Hudson River against the Dutch. Reasoning with tribes whom they called tributaries, the Susquehannocks confessed that they had been forced "to submit to the Dutch or hide.³⁵   Thus it came about that the Mohawks and Susquehannocks could fight fiercely in 1651, pursue parallel policies in 1658, and join together in the same conference in 1660 to pressure the still refractory Esopus Indians into submission. The turnabout of MohawkSusquehannock relations, so mysterious out of context, appears supremely simple against its background. The Mohawks had not won Susquehannock surrender, but the Dutch had.

From 1658 to 1662 was the period of maximum friendship between the Susquehannocks and Mohawks. The two nations then conceived their diplomatic roles in explicitly similar terms. In 1658 the Mohawks reminded the Dutch at Fort Orange "that at the time of the war against the savages they had gone down to the Manhattans and had done their best to preserve peace; therefore we too [the Dutch] were in duty bound to do the same for them while they promise to exert themselves in future as mediators between us and other savages." The Mohawks then demanded help against other Iroquois nations who were trying to break through the Mohawk cordon around Dutch markets.86 In 1662 the Susquehannocks asserted to the Dutch at Delaware Bay that they had "at all times let themselves be employed to mediate in differences between the Christians and the other savages, to which they still consider themselves obliged." They, too, wanted supplies on credit with which to fight their (nonMohawk) enemies among the Iroquois.³⁷   It appears that the Susquehannocks attempted to control the Delaware market as the Mohawks attempted to control the Hudson market, and both had to fight the more distant Iroquois nations that tried to break their monopolies.