Traders wherever they went, all the world over, the Dutchmen were at pains to keep peace with the Iroquois. Their dealings with them were on the same lines as the dealings of their countrymen with the Hottentots in the early days of the Cape Colony.[20] They bought and sold, and got good value for their money, paying, for instance, no more than forty florins for Manhattan Island. But the mere fact of paying for what they took was in their favour, for it was a recognition that the natives were the rightful owners of the land. In course of time they came into conflict with the Mohican Indians along the banks of the Hudson; but with the Five Nations, the nearest of whom were the Mohawks, they were ever in friendship. They were not actually in the Mohawk country, but on its borders; they were neighbours, not intruders; they took the furs which the Indians had to barter, giving in exchange European goods, and notably firearms. Thus Albany became a friendly meeting-place between the Iroquois Indians and the white men of the Hudson colony. The two peoples did not clash with one another in any way, but met as friends and equals, and supplied each others' wants. [Footnote 20: See vol. iv of this series, chap. ii, p. 43.] The one object of the Dutch being to trade, and the whole people being traders, a twofold result followed, promoting friendly relations between them and the Mohawks. Not only did the Indians realize that they had nothing to fear, and much to gain, from having for their neighbours Europeans who had no views of war or conquest, and through whose agency they could arm themselves against the more aggressive Europeans on the Canadian side; but also, as we may well suppose, the Dutch traders included the best of the Dutchmen, which was not the case with either the French or the English. At any rate, we read that the Dutch in the Hudson valley 'gained the hearts of the Five Nations by {65} their kind usage',[21] and in memory of a Dutchman named Cuyler, whom the Indians held in special honour, the Iroquois in after years always gave to the British Governor of New York the title of 'Corlaer'.[22] [Footnote 21: Colden, vol. i, p. 34.] [Footnote 22: Parkman's _Count Frontenac_ (1885 ed.), p. 93, note.] [Sidenote: _The English inherited the Iroquois alliance._]