In fact at no time, until 1650, did the New Netherlanders give up any part of their claims south of Cape Cod, even though they hadn’t been able to stem the overland flood of English traders and settlers. In 1647 they did seize an Amsterdam ship, trading at New Haven without a license from the Dutch West India Company, and brought her into New Amsterdam where she was confiscated in spite of excited protests from New Haven. On land, however, they were overwhelmingly outnumbered. Furthermore, troubles at home, especially with the savages, kept them close to the valley of the Hudson after 1640. * * * * * Curiously enough, the New Netherlanders’ troubles at home beginning in 1640 sprang largely from their sale of firearms to the distant Iroquois. These lake country Indians, with practically inexhaustible supplies of the finest beaver, thought nothing of offering as many as twenty heavy skins in exchange for a musket. The great profit in this traffic had proved irresistible to the Dutchmen. So the authorities at Manhattan often winked at the illegal purveyance of arms and powder by their traders to such faraway savages. If their consciences bothered them at all, they were comforted by the knowledge that their Iroquois allies maintained a bulwark against competitive traders from French Canada, as well as against the enveloping English. At the same time however, prompted strictly by self-preservation, the New Netherlanders clamped down hard on any “bosch-lopers” who sold arms among their Algonquin neighbors. This was good policy for the Hollanders of course, but it left the river tribes at the complete mercy of their ancient and terrible Iroquois enemies, especially the Mohawks, who descended upon them periodically to collect taxes. Added to this touchy situation was the asininity of a reckless Dutch governor, one William Kieft, who himself attempted to collect taxes from these same river Indians for the support of his fortifications on Manhattan. When he adopted wholesale butchery and the surprise tactics of the Iroquois to enforce his demands for tribute, things became explosive. The Dutch found themselves waging a sanguinary five-year war against local tribes who in turn managed to terrorize Manhattan and the surrounding plantations. This war, though sporadic and spotty, was fought with a thirst for blood on both sides. Massacres and other atrocities were committed by reds and whites alike, as the Indian league against the Hollanders spread up the Hudson above the Highlands. In 1643 a shallop coming down from Fort Orange with four hundred beaver skins taken in trade with the Mohawks was plundered, to signal a general massacre that resulted in the virtual evacuation of all the outlying plantations in the lower valley as surviving colonists fled to Fort Amsterdam.