The New England trade, exhausting itself, was on the decline. It had been blocked from expansion by national and political barriers in the west and by the hostility of the French in the north. Raids and counter raids, with the Indians used as allies on both sides, kept the borders between the French and the New Englanders alive with savage horrors. And, because of the prolonged hostilities in Europe these conditions would continue into the next century, until 1763, long after competition for pelts was no longer a controlling motive in that area. The main fur trade of the colonies in the north after the fall of New Netherland was New York’s hinterland traffic, that which had been inherited from the Dutch. All wilderness paths led to Albany, even those made by the _coureurs des bois_ and their copper-hued families packing their illegal furs to the Hudson when they could not do business with their own countrymen at Montreal. In 1679, it was said, there were over 500 of these French renegades living among the Indians. And to Albany, of course, came not only the beaver of the Five Nations but the peltries of vassal tribes deep in the hinterland for whom the Iroquois acted as middlemen. The Five Nations were jealous enough of their trade and sovereignty to visit swift vengeance on any vassals who tried to deal direct with the white men, as happened to the Illinois in 1680 when those distant natives sold their pelts to La Salle. For the same reason they also tried to keep white pack traders from pushing farther into the west, where they might exchange their wares direct with the less sophisticated natives. It was a losing battle however. * * * * * By the turn of the century, traders from New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia were working the Appalachian passes for beaver and otter. In another twenty years many were squeezing through the more northerly gaps into the valley of the Ohio River. By then, the pressure of immigrant families upon the land east of the mountains had commenced in earnest. Palatine farmers were flowing up the valley of the Mohawk in great numbers, and land-hungry Ulster Scots were scrambling through the Susquehanna valley and southward up the Shenandoah. The fur trader as usual had searched out the country. Then, while he was still exploiting it for his own purposes, he had to make way for the farmer. The two could never blend, not after the frontier began to roll westward. Farmers spoiled the trade. The pioneer traders could only move on to more fertile trading grounds, to open new territory which itself would later be taken up by farmers. Of course, Indian titles had to be extinguished before settlers could legally move into the lands opened up by the fur traders. Some tribes were a bit troublesome about this detail. The Delaware kicked up an especially bloody fuss on the Pennsylvania frontier. They had more than a suspicion that they had been swindled by the “Walking Purchase.”