For about sixty years, friendly and peaceable relations existed with the Indians. The French and Indian war beginning about 1755 changed this. The Indians under French influence withdrew from this region, became hostile, made life perilous--property uncertain, and committed many acts of treachery. Afterwards a few of them returned and remained in the valley until the revolution, when the absence of many of the men and the influence of the cunning Brandt turned them again to be enemies of the whites and led to the invasion of 1777 and 1779. In 1777 the Committee of Safety directed that three forts be built in the "peenpack" neighborhood. The central one near the house of Ezekiel Gumaer was near by the Pioneer's knoll. Surrounding the stone house, on the open land a "picket fort" a stockade was built. Rows of tree trunks, stakes, etc., were planted upright enclosing several acres, an area sufficient to accommodate the nearby families. Around this fort with Capt. Abram Cuddeback in command, many exciting adventures occurred during the revolution. Gumaer states, "that the fort sheltered eleven families, aggregating one hundred and thirteen persons during the greater portion of the years 1778-9." William Cuddeback, the father of Capt. Abram, was there with his family. He was an old man and died soon after the revolution. His son, Benjamin Cuddeback, was at Fort DeWitt, near the present Neversink highway bridge, at the time of the raid and was in charge of its defense. After the invasion, he returned to the "Cuddeback Stone House," "Fort Cuddeback," with his family, where he died about 1782 presumably of typhoid fever. The upper was the neighborhood of Meckheckemeck, while the lower neighborhood embracing the valley from Huguenot, south to the Delaware river was called "Little Minisink Neighborhood." Its forts were--Westfall, Decker, near the Delaware and Van Auken, the latter being east of the Neversink where the stone houses afforded the protection.