What of the Susquehannock's in all this? Their disappearance soon gave Maryland cause to grieve. In 1679 an Indian informant told Lord Baltimore that "the Susquehannock's laugh and jeare at the English saying they cann doe what mischief they please for that the English cannot see them."¹¹⁸   Safely out of reach in their Iroquois sanctuary, the Susquehannock's planned vengeance on the Indians who had helped Maryland and who had blocked the peace negotiations in 1676: the Piscatawas and Mattawomans.¹¹⁹   Iroquois leaders saw advantage in the feud. They ignored their obligations under Coursey's treaty and joined Susquehannock raiding parties on the back country of Maryland and Virginia. As with the beaver wars of previous decades, vengeance and feuding made complications, but a rational policy can be discerned in the superficially confused conflicts. The Iroquois helped the Susquehannock's because the Iroquois could thereby force Maryland's Indians into subjugation. The Iroquois had never conquered the Susquehannock's or the Lenape, but they set out in dead earnest to conquer the Piscatawas and Mattawomans. In the long run, with enthusiastic Susquehannock participation, they succeeded.¹²⁰

Though their heaviest blows fell upon Maryland's Indians, the province's white back settlers inevitably were also hurt. In bewilderment, Protestant backwoodsmen thought they saw a papist plot behind their suffering. Did not the attacking Indians come from the direction of Catholic Canada? And were not Lord Baltimore and the governing gentry of Maryland of the Catholic persuasion? Q.E.D.: Baltimore had called in French Indians to destroy his always considerable Protestant opposition. That opposition fed on such fears until it grew beyond the power of even Baltimore's busy hangmen to control.¹²¹

Maryland's gentry, of course, refused to see just retribution in the Indian raids for their rash and treacherous conduct, though they privately admitted that they had betrayed the Susquehannocks.¹²² They demanded that New York enforce Coursey's treaty by denying trade goods to the Iroquois. The New Yorkers replied that they could not see any good reason for such a drastic step. Baltimore tried to make direct contact with the Iroquois through Jacob Young, whereupon Andros summoned Young to New York for presuming "to Treat with the Indyans within this Government without any Authority, to the Disturbance thereof." Baltimore had no recourse but finally to send his agents to Albany again, and once again they achieved exactly as much as the Albany magistrates would permit. Coursey's treaty in 1677 had ended with illusions, but his new treaty of 1682 left small doubt of where power over Indian affairs would center thereafter. The Iroquois acknowledged their dependence on Albany, but they treated with Maryland as equals, and they did not knuckle under to Maryland's demands. In fact, they converted the peace into a conquest by proclaiming the enlargement of the covenant chain to include Maryland's Indians. This, of course, had been precisely the object of the raids .¹²³