The patroon was lord of the manor, the owner of all the land and of a fixed share of all the produce of his subjects or tenants, with the right of a pre-emption of all the surplus beyond what was necessary for their support. They took an oath of allegiance to him: they could not hunt or fish or trade or leave the manor without his consent or that of his representative. If they sold their tenant right and improvements, a part of the price was his. His will was the law, for his subjects renounced their right of appeal to the provincial government from his decrees or those of his magistrates. He was an absentee, and measured the merit of his agents by the amount of their remittances. The government of the province as administered at Fort Orange or at Manhattan was as good as could be expected from a trading company, but was odious to men of Van Curler’s enlarged understanding. The firearms of white men at Beverwyck and in Rensselaerswyck began to impair the value of the hunting grounds in their vicinity, and Van Curler learned that the Indians might consent to sell their lands at Schenectady. He looked about for associates in the purchase of the lands and their settlement, and sifted out fourteen. He applied to the Director General or Governor of the province, Peter Stuyvesant—whose real qualities and worth and those of his good subjects the pen of Irving has replaced with the genial travesties of his enduring caricature,—and obtained his reluctant consent to the purchase. He then applied to the Indian chiefs. They too were reluctant. Schonowe was the site of one of their most ancient castles. It had long been their favorite home. Their traditions covered many generations, but no tradition reached back to their first coming. Still they well remembered that Hiawatha had lived here, two centuries or more before. [Illustration: GLEN-SANDERS MANSION, ERECTED 1714.] Hiawatha, the chief, of whom the Great Spirit was an ancestor, and whose wisdom, goodness and valor far surpassed that of other men, was the founder of the confederacy of the Five Nations. He devoted his long life to the good of his people, teaching them to live nobler and better, and finally was borne in the flesh to the Happy Hunting Grounds. Longfellow sings of Hiawatha with no stint of poetic license, but his harmonious numbers do not surpass the Indian estimate of his qualities. No doubt there was such a man, of exceptional wisdom, valor and influence, and that he disappeared without being known to have died. Around his memory tradition, employing the figurative language of the Indians, accumulated myths and magnified them.[16] Van Curler was persistent, and in the end the Indians could not find it in their hearts to deny their “very good friend,” and the deed was formally executed and delivered at Fort Orange, July 2, 1661.