OF LANCASTER COUNTY. 23 



at a subsequent page, that almost all the land from the Patuxent and 

 Choptank rivers was sold by the Susquehannocks to the government oi' 

 Maryland, and it is evident from the speech of Canassatego, an Iroquois 

 chief, that the Iroquois had not yet subdued the Susquehannocks, in 1654, 

 for he said: "We have had your deeds interpreted to us, and we ac- 

 knowledge them to be good and valid, and that the Conestogoe or Sas- 

 quehannah Indians had a right to sell those lands to you, for they wero 

 then theirs; but since that time we have conquered them and their 

 country now belongs to us." 



Evans, in his Analysis (!2d ed. A. D. 1755) says that Bell, in the service 

 of Maryland, at the fort, remains of which were still standing in 1755 on 

 the east side of the Susquehanna, about 3 miles below Wright's ferry, 

 (now Columbia) "by the defeat of many hundreds, gave them a blow 

 that they (the Five Nations) never recovered of." 



In 1664 the province of New Netherlands fell under the dominion of 

 the English and assumed its present title of New York; and public in- 

 tercourse Avas then for the first time opened between the English and 

 the Five Nations. A firm alliance was contracted by these parties, 

 which, while it secured the rising power of the English, afforded to the 

 Confederacy a valuable ally against the French of Canada and their 

 Algonquin auxiliaries. Freely supplied with firearms and ammunition, 

 the Iroquois did not rest satisfied with their hostilities on the side of the 

 St. Lawrence, but resumed with renewed vigor, their old enterprises 

 against the Southern tribes. Notwithstanding a treaty of amity con- 

 cluded between Maryland and the Five Nations in 1677, some of the 

 Oneidas, Onandagos and Senecas, who were not present at the time oi' 

 the negotiation, fell upon the Susquehannocks, who were in league with 

 Maryland, killed four of their number, took six prisoners, live of whom, 

 falling to the share of the Senecas, were in conformity with the treaty 

 sent back, but the sixth was detained by the Oneidas. Overtures and 

 remonstrances on the part of Maryland and Virginia proved unavailing, 

 for after a few years hostilities broke out with increased violence, and 

 only ceased with the final overthrow of the Susquehannocks by the Five 

 Nations. 



It appears from a minute examination of imperfect and somewhat 

 ■contradictory data, exhibited at length by Foulke, that the Lancaster 

 lands fell into the power of the Five Nations at sometime between 1677 

 and 1684. The evidence, on the whole, flivors the assertion that the 

 Conestogo Indians and Susquehannocks were members of the same stock, 

 and not of the Iroquois stock, by whom they Avere conquered, and 

 probably supplanted. The process of supplanting falls within the last 

 two decades of the seventeenth century, for the minutes of the Provincial 

 Council, as far back as 1701, show that, on the 23d of the 2d month of 



