"Turn now to New York, and see what the Indian was under different conditions. The upper Hudson and the valley of the Mohawk were first settled by the Dutch. They simply treated the Indian as a man. Tolerant in religion, they respected his rude faith; truthful among themselves, to him they never broke their word; honest in all their dealings with him, they kept good faith. They suffered from no thefts, because they took nothing except by purchase. Their land titles were respected, because for every tract they had an Indian deed. They were scourged by no massacres, save from the enemy across the border, because they committed no robbery or murder. This was the whole secret of their policy. It is easy to belittle it, as historians have done, by saying that upon no other conditions could they have lived among the natives. Of course it was politic, but the world has discovered that honesty is the best policy, without concluding that it is any the less a Christian virtue. These early settlers in New York were traders, offshoots from what was the greatest commercial nation of the world. They made no pretense of doing missionary work. They were simply in pursuit of gain. But they had learned that the only permanent success in life rests on honesty and justice. This is the lesson that commerce teaches, and because it does so it has been the civilizer of the world. After the English conquest in 1664 the same policy was continued, thanks to the presence of the Dutch, who still formed the majority of the population. The Six Nations then placed their lands under protection of the crown and were recognized as appendant to New York. The burden thus cast upon the province was very heavy. For more than a century New York kept their alliance by heavy subsidies and by contributions of men and money for their defense against the French."[11] The Indian policy of the Dutch has, indeed, been credited with a most important influence upon American history. But sagacious as it may have been as a broad plan of action, there was no way of obviating the difficulties arising from local and individual blunders. Considering the number of special provocations to revolt, it is remarkable that Indian troubles were not more frequent and more serious, and that the storm did not break sooner and more fiercely than it did. Prime remarks that the conduct of the Long Island Indians toward the whites is "without a parallel in the history of the country." "The Indians on Long Island," says Silas Wood, "seem to have been less troublesome to the whites than those north of the Sound.... [They] sometimes committed depredations on the property of the whites.... It does not appear that they ever formed any combination against the first settlers, or materially interrupted the progress of their improvements.... The security of the whites must be ascribed to the means they employed to preserve peace with the Indians."