In 1661 the small-pox, that scourge of the native tribes, broke out in their town, sweeping off many and enfeebling the nation terribly. War had now begun in earnest with the Five Nations; and though the Susquehannas had some of their people killed near their town (_Hazard’s Annals_, 341–7), they in turn pressed the Cayugas so hard that some of them retreated across Lake Ontario to Canada (_Relation de la Nouvelle France_, 1661, p. 39, 1668, p. 20). They also kept the Senecas in such alarm that they no longer ventured to carry their peltries to New York, except in caravans escorted by six hundred men, who even took a most circuitous route. (_Relation_, 1661, p. 40). A law of Maryland passed May 1, 1661, authorized the governor to aid the Susquehannas. Smarting under constant defeat, the Five Nations solicited French aid (_Relation de la Nouvelle France_, 1662–3, p. 11, 1663–4, p. 33; _Charlevoix_, II, p. 134), but in April, 1663, the Western cantons raised an army of eight hundred men to invest and storm the fort of the Susquehannas. They embarked on Lake Ontario, according to the French account, and then went overland to the Susquehanna. On reaching the fort, however, they found {120} it well defended on the river side, and on the land side with two bastions in European style with cannon mounted and connected by a double curtain of large trees. After some trifling skirmishes the Iroquois had recourse to stratagem. They sent in a party of twenty-five men to treat of peace and ask provisions to enable them to return. The Susquehannas admitted them, but immediately burned them all alive before the eyes of their countrymen. (_Relation de la Nouvelle France_, 1663, p. 10). The Pennsylvania writers, (_Hazard’s Annals of Pennsylvania_, p. 346) make the Iroquois force one thousand six hundred, and that of the Susquehannas only one hundred. They add that when the Iroquois retreated, the Susquehannas pursued them, killing ten and taking as many. After this the war was carried on in small parties, and Susquehanna prisoners were from time to time burned at Oneida, Onondaga, Seneca and Cayuga (_Relations de la Nouvelle France_, 1668 to 1673), and their prisoners doubtless at Canoge on the Susquehanna. In the fall of 1669 the Susquehannas, after defeating the Cayugas, offered peace, but the Cayugas put their ambassador and his nephew to death, after retaining him five or six months; the Oneidas having taken nine Susquehannas and sent some to Cayuga, with forty wampum belts to maintain the war. (_Relation de la Nouvelle France_, 1670, p. 68.)