Page:Archæologia Americana—volume 2, 1836.djvu/79

 SECT. II.] ALGONKTN-LENAPE AND IROQUOIS NATIONS. 43 by the Five Nations, and paid to them some kind of tribute. According to Governor Trumbull, the Indians as far east as the Connecticut River had shared the same fate.* It may be doubted whether this could properly be asserted of all of them. But it is certain that the Long Island Indians did also generally pay tribute ; and we have the irrefragable evidence of an eye- witness, the late Samuel Jones, that, as late as the middle of the seventeenth century, it was collected by Mohawk deputies in Queen's County. Judge Smith, in his " History of New York," published in 1756, says, that, " when the Dutch began the settlement of this country, all the Indians on Long Island and the northern shore of the Sound, on the banks of Connecticut, Hudson's, Delaware, and Susquehanna Rivers, were in subjection to the Five Na- tions, and, within the memory of persons now living, acknowl- edged it by the payment of an annual tribute." f He gives no authority for the early date he assigns to that event. The subsequent protracted wars of the Dutch with the Manhattans and the Long Island Indians, and the continued warfare of the Mohawks against the Connecticut Indians, are inconsistent with that account, which is clearly incorrect with respect to the Mohikander River Indians, or Manhicans. These are men- tioned by De Laet as the mortal enemies of the Maquas. It was undoubtedly the interest of the Dutch to promote any arrange- ment, which, by compelling the Mohicans to remain at peace, would secure their own and increase their trade. If they suc- ceeded at any time, the peace was but temporary. We learn from the Relations of the French Missionaries, that war exist- ed in 1656, between the Mahingans and the Mohawks, and that these experienced a severe check in 1663, in an attack upon a Mahingan fortified village. And Colden states that the contest was not at an end till 1673. " The trade of New York," he says, "was hindered by the war which the Five Nations had at that time with the River Indians ; " and he adds that the Governor of New York " obtained a peace between the Five Nations and the Mahikanders or River Indians." J It is also certain that those Mohikander or River Indians, were not reduced to the same state in which the Delawares f Page 216. He quotes the instance of a small tribe in Orange County which still made a yearly payment of about £ 20 to the Mohawks,
 * Vol. I. p. 56.
 * Colden, chap. ii. p. 35.