Page:Archæologia Americana—volume 2, 1836.djvu/90

 54 A SYNOPSIS OF THE INDIAN TRIBES. [iNTROD. we have conquered them and their country now belongs to us ; and the lands we demanded satisfaction for, are no part of the lands comprised in. those deeds ; they are the Cohongorontas [Potomac) lands; those you have not possessed one hundred years, no, nor above ten years, and we made our demands so soon as we knew your people were settled in these parts. These have never been sold, but still remain to be disposed of." The Five Nations agreed in the sequel to sell their claim to the lands in dispute on the Potomac as high up as two miles above the junction of the North and South Branch. It ap- pears therefore that the Susquehannocks, whose territory ex- tended east of the Susquehanna north of the Nanticokes, possessed the country west and southwest of the said river as far as the Potomac. In the course of the conferences at the same treaty, Gachradodow, another Indian chief, in answer to some observations from the Virginia commissioners, said, " Though great things are well remembered among us, yet we don't remember that we were ever conquered by the Great King, or that we have been employed by that Great King to conquer others ; if it was so, it is beyond our memory. We do remember, we were employed by Maryland to conquer the Conestogoes, and that the second time we were at war with them, we carried them all off."* Evans corroborates these facts in the Analysis of his Map. He says that the Iroquois gave the finishing stroke to the Susquehannocks ; but that Bell, in the service of Mary- land, had previously given them a blow, from which they never recovered, by the defeat of many hundred at the fort on the east side of the Susquehanna, three miles below Wright's Ferry (now Columbia). Wherefore, he says, the Iroquois claimed only northwest of a line drawn from Cone- wago Falls to the North Mountain where it crosses the Potomac, and thence along the said mountains to James River. Evans adds, that the Susquehannocks had abandoned the western shore of Maryland before being conquered, and that the Eng- lish found it mostly a derelict. Indians assisted Maryland against the Sanadoa (Oneidas), and he quotes Bacon's Laws, 1661. The British had no intercourse with the Five Nations till after 1664, when they took possession of New York.
 * Chalmers, in his Annals, p. 249, says that, in 1G60, the Susquehanna