In the spring of 1624 some thirty families, mostly French-speaking Walloons from the lower provinces fleeing persecution by Spanish inquisitors, had come over with Captain May in the _New Netherland_. They came as the plantation’s first real colonists, to raise livestock, to put their spades into the earth. May, as well as his successor, was charged with “spreading out” and more formally occupying New Netherland. It would prevent any further trouble with England about the possession of that country, it was hoped, since the English themselves had expounded the doctrine that “occupancy confers a good title by the laws of nations and nature.” In the case of their North American colony the Hollanders could afford a point of agreement on such a doctrine. A part of this 1624 expedition is said to have been landed on Manhattan Island. Although the evidence has been attacked, it is not at all unlikely that May did promptly put some of the _New Netherland’s_ passengers ashore at Manhattan to begin the replacement of any temporary works there. There must have been a truck house or two, huts and possibly even palisades in need of rehabilitation for permanent, year-round occupancy. The immediate occupation of such a strategic location at the mouth of the river could hardly have been neglected anyway, especially as it was necessary at the time to escort from the harbor a poaching French ship whose captain seemed bent on going ashore to set up the arms of his king and take possession of the country. In any case, some eighteen families were conveyed up the Hudson to a previously selected site a few miles above the redoubt at Norman’s Kill. In this more convenient location a new fort was built, while the Walloons settled around it. Fort Orange, as they called this plantation, was within the limits of present-day Albany, New York. Here the Mohegans, as well as the Iroquois, came immediately with presents of beaver and other peltry to confirm their alliance with the Dutch, and the old trade continued to flourish under the new management of the West India Company. It would appear that about this time a group of May’s people also went up the Connecticut River to establish a trading post near the present site of Hartford and to begin the construction of Fort Good Hope there. But the building of this outpost lagged. It was some years before the fort was completed and manned. When that came about, in 1633, Fort Good Hope had become a focal point of rivalry between the Dutch and the New Englanders for the beaver meadows of the Connecticut valley and a question mark in the matter of resolving jurisdiction over the country. * * * * * At the time of the planting of Fort Orange another part of May’s expedition, including some of the Walloon families, was dispatched to the Delaware, or South River, as the Hollanders now called it to distinguish it from the Hudson, their great North River.