the country about the site of Albany. At this Dutch village of Schenectady, the remotest western outpost of civilization, the governor and his retinue made a brief halt. At that fording-place the trail divided, one branch crossing the river, the other following its windings closely upon the southern bank. This southern trail would bring Andros through the three principal Mohawk castles; the first one being on the west bank of Schoharie Creek at its junction with the river, the second at Canajoharie; and the third on the site of the present town absurdly named "Danube," in Herkimer County. Soon after leaving this stronghold the trail passed from the territory of the Mohawks into that of the Oneidas, and there was Andros no other stopping-place until the party the Oneida arrived at a hill around the base of country. which the trail made a very noticeable curve. Here at the Oneida stronghold known as Nundadasis, or "around the hill," hard by the site of the city of Utica, this inland journey came to an end.

arrives in

To this rendezvous in the depths of the primeval forest came chiefs from all the Five Nations, even from the furthest Seneca villages on the southern shore of Lake Erie. There was a grand powwow which lasted for several days. It was the season

1 The meaning of Schenectady is variously rendered. Morgan, whose familiarity was greatest with the Seneca dialect, makes it mean "Beyond-the-openings" (i. e. in the hills); see his League of the Iroquois, Rochester, 1851, p. 415. David Cusick, the Tuscarora (in his History of the Six Nations, Lockport, 1848), makes it mean Beyond-the-pine-plains," and Beauchamp (Indian Names in New York, Fayetteville, 1893) got the same interpretation from some Onondagas.

66

Great con

the Indians.

As

for green succotash and for mallards and teal, with the red man's inevitable gala dish of ference with boiled dog. Solemn speeches were made, wampum belts were exchanged, and many a ring of blue smoke curled from the pipe of peace, as it was made clear to all that the wicked Onontio sought to bring ruin upon the Long House, while the English were its steadfast friends, even as the Dutch had been before them. The Indians' vivid sense of the continuity between these two was shown when they bestowed upon Andros the name of their old friend Corlear. in their minds the Dutch power whose friendship they valued was personified in Corlear, the particular Dutchman with whom they chiefly had dealings on matters of public interest, so now the English power was personified in Andros. Since he stood for exactly the same things as their former ally, he too was Corlear, and by that name the governors of New York were henceforth known in the Long House for more than a hundred years. An immediate result of this auspicious conference with the Five Nations was the organization of a Board of Commissioners of Indian Affairs, with its headquarters at Albany. From that time forth the proximity of Albany to the Long House made it one of the most important towns in English America, as was shown in 1754, when it was selected as the place of meeting for the famous Congress at which Benjamin Franklin's plan for a Federal Union was propounded. For secretary of his Board of Commissioners Andros appointed a young Scotchman, the

The Board of Indian Commission

ers.

scion of a family long famous in Scotland and destined to further fame in America.

Robert Liv

ingston.

ingston was the son of an eminent Presbyterian minister of Roxburghshire, who migrated to Rotterdam soon after Charles II. came to the throne. At about the age of twenty Robert came to America and settled in Albany, where he was almost immediately made town clerk. His appointment within another year to such a respon- Robert Livsible post on the Indian Commission was an early testimony to the ability and force of character that were afterward shown in many ways. In 1679 he married Alida, sister of Peter Schuyler and widow of Dominie Nicholas van Rensselaer, an alliance of three names potent in the history of the New World. Peter Schuyler, who was afterward mayor of Albany, exerted greater influence over the Iroquois than any other man before the arrival of William Johnson in the next century. On the whole, the founding of the Indian Commission was probably the most important act of Andros's administration, and the value of the work accomplished by a little group of able men at Albany is not likely to be overrated.

Andros continued, like his Dutch predecessors, to supply the Iroquois with muskets and ammunition, and this was probably the source of the rumour, which was believed in Boston, that Philip's Indians were supplied with powder at Albany. The governor was naturally indignant at this vile slander. He had left most stringent orders at Albany prohibiting the sale of firearms or powder to any Algonquin, under penalty of £10 fine

Andros's re

New Eng

land.

for every quarter of a pound of powder, or in aggravated cases the offender might even be put to death. Therefore "hee sent two gentlemen to Boston to complaine of such an aspersion, lations with demanding itt might bee made appeare, or falce informer punished; They by a letter cleare the Magistrates butt nott Generalty, still asperced wthout any known cause, complaint, or notice." The "Generalty" of people anywhere in the New England Confederacy were not willing to deprive themselves of any excuse for hating the representative of that "man of sin," James Stuart, and even when Andros sincerely wished to aid them his generosity must reach them through that colony of heretics with which the "lords. brethren" refused to own fellowship. Upon notice of want, though unasked, hee sent six barrels of powder and some match to Roade Island, which they thankfully accepted, and afterward lent part of it to New England fforces in want, att their fight in Narrogansett country." Some of the powder burnt in destroying the swamp fortress on that terrible December Sunday came therefore from the much hated governor of New York.

66

" 1

The New England historians of this war lose sight of King Philip after the Brookfield fight in August, 1675, and he first reappears in Mrs. Rowlandson's narrative for February, 1676. The New York archives show that in November and December he was in the mountains of Berkshire accompanied by 1000 warriors, and on one occa1 New York Colonial Documents, iii. 254.

in the

sion came within forty miles of Albany. His purpose may probably have been to bring King Philip the Mohegans of the Housatonic valley1 Berkshire into the general crusade against the Eng- mountains. lish, and with this large force he may have hoped to destroy Albany.2 The alarm was sent to New York, and the governor at once wrote to Hartford and to Boston for permission to bring a force of

1 The same who had afterward a romantic history under the name of Stockbridge Indians, and are forever associated with the names of John Sergeant, David Brainerd, and Jonathan Edwards. See Davidson, Muh-he-ka-ne-ok: a History of the Stockbridge Nation, Milwaukee, 1893.

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2 Increase Mather credits him with a more Machiavellian purpose: 'We hear that Philip, being this winter entertained in the Mohawk country, made it his design to breed a quarrel between the English and them; to effect which, divers of our returned captives do report that he resolved to kill some scattering Mohawks, and then to say that the English had done it. But one of those whom he thought to have killed was only wounded, and got away to his countrymen, giving them to understand that not the English, but Philip, had killed the men; so that, instead of bringing the Mohawks upon the English, he brought them upon himself. Thus the heathen are sent down into the pit that they made; in the net which they had laid is their own foot taken; the Lord is known by the judgment which he executeth; the wicked is snared in the work of his own hands." Mather's Brief History of the War with the Indians, Boston, 1676, p. 38. I agree with Dr. Palfrey in suspecting this to be a 66 wild story," and I doubt if anything could have induced the Wampanoag chief to risk his scalp in the Mohawk country; nevertheless the diplomacy ascribed to him is characteristically Indian, and the tale may be based upon facts. No such explanation, however, is needed for the Mohawk attack upon Philip, since the Mohawks were in close alliance with the English. My statement (Beginnings of New England, p. 230), "what Philip had been doing, or where he had been since the Brookfield fight in August, was never known," needs some modification. When I wrote it, I knew Mather's story, to which I attached no importance, but I had not seen the paper in the New York archives.