So it was that at the coming of the Dutch these river Indians welcomed the Europeans’ guns. And the deliberative Hollanders bought land and made trade treaties with them while, at the same time, probing for avenues of trade with the Lenapes’ enemies, too. Although there were muskrat, mink, ordinary otter and some brown beaver on the South River, the Dutch well knew from previous dealings with the Iroquois that there were vast stores of the finer black pelts, both beaver and otter, and valuable “lion skins” cached in the “forts” of the Susquehannocks and their northern relatives. However, on the lower Delaware, it was principally muskrat that the Lenape had to offer, the market value of which was but a fraction of other pelts. The muskrat, a bushy-furred member of the rodent family, resembles nothing so much as a big wharf rat. This was something with which the seagoing Dutchmen were only too familiar. As a matter of practice they referred to the kindred fur bearers in America simply as “rats.” Like the Englishmen they also marketed both the pelts and the musky cods, the fluids of which were useful for perfumes and as demothing agents. Muskrats frequent tidewater marshlands and swamps. Their hind feet are oar-like, being slightly webbed and set obliquely to the legs, permitting a swivel action that propels them through the water. They steer themselves with their tails which are flattened sidewise. The Indians hunted and trapped these animals along their waterside runs very much as they did the beaver. And they often dumped the skinned carcasses of the “rats” into the communal stew pot, much to the disgust of the traders who had to partake of the feast which always preceded barter. In the early days of the Dutch occupation on the South River, as it turned out, the Hollanders were not too successful in opening up trade with the Susquehannocks and their Iroquois relatives of the hinterland. The Susquehannocks were too busy subjugating the Lenni Lenape. By the time things settled down, after most of the lower river Indians had taken flight or been made tributary, the Susquehannocks were bartering in a more convenient market. They were selling pelts at the mouth of their own river among the English in the Chesapeake Bay.