In any case it wasn’t long before Dutch traders were fearlessly visiting villages deep in the country of the dreaded Five Nations, peacefully driving a great trade in furs while the savages learned to drink their fire-water and became better acquainted with the awesome weapons they carried. In the meantime, late in 1615, the Iroquois did gain some satisfaction when Champlain and his Indian allies, after driving deep into their territory by way of Lake Ontario, were forced to withdraw in temporary defeat. A galleried and thickly palisaded fort at Lake Onondaga withstood the arquebuses, even though a movable tower was built by the attackers so that the Frenchmen might shoot down into the fort. Attempts by the Canadian force to fire the stockade proved unsuccessful too, due to contrary winds. And Champlain himself was so badly wounded during the battle that he had to be carried from the field on a litter of wickered branches. After Fort Nassau was destroyed by a freshet of ice and water in 1617, a new trading post was established by the Dutch in the same vicinity but in a more secure position. This was on a commanding rise overlooking the Hudson at the mouth of the Tawasentha, later known as Norman’s Kill. It was here, as tradition has it, that the tacit agreement of friendship and trade between the Dutch and the Iroquois was actually formalized as a treaty of alliance and peace. The Mohawks were the prime movers of the pact, sending invitations to a grand council of the sachems of the Five Nations as well as their subjugated neighbors in the east and south. With the smoking of the calumet a binding covenant was made between the factors of the Holland merchants and all the Indian tribes represented at the council. The supremacy of the Five Nations over their aboriginal neighbors was confirmed, and the Dutch promised “firegun” reprisals against any who broke the peace on the frontiers of New Netherland. And there was peace of a sort--while the merchants in Holland filled their coffers and the Indians acquired guns. Only occasionally did armed fur factors find it necessary to enforce the pact and then often to their sorrow. Once, for instance, when a detail from the fort took the part of some offended Mohegans, the Mohawks retaliated fiercely. They managed to kill the Dutch commander and three of his men. Capturing the remainder of the party, they cooked and ate one of them and burned the others. But in the main there was the kind of armed peace that permitted the fur traders to extend the frontiers of New Netherland and by their discoveries gain additional trading privileges under their charter. This they had to do if they were to beat the French and the English to the vast untapped fur stores of the interior.