Captain Claiborne’s crowning business achievement at this time was the establishment of trading relations with the giant Susquehannocks who had previously bartered their fine pelts with Captain John Smith. These proud and intelligent savages, Iroquois by blood, inhabited the valley of the Susquehanna River through which the Englishmen hoped to gain access to the northern lake regions. Claiborne made trading pacts with their great chief in 1629, the meetings taking place at the mouth of the river on the mountainous little island which today serves as a bridge anchor for fast trains and automobiles speeding over the Susquehanna River between Philadelphia and Baltimore. Indeed, the Secretary of Virginia was well on his way to consummating his grand plan for a Virginia Hundred in the upper Chesapeake as the hub of a great fur-trading empire, when Lord Baltimore appeared on the scene. Now, obviously, the English baron had much the same idea as the Virginians, except in one important respect. He didn’t plan to come under Virginia’s jurisdiction. He intended to have a province of his own--and that a slice of Virginia territory--over which he would rule independently and for which he would be answerable to no one except the king. It was an impossible situation for the Virginians. But not for George Calvert. The First Baron of Baltimore felt that he knew well enough how to get things done at the English court, and he didn’t intend to let any muddy colonials stand in his way! XII _Kent Island and the Backside of Virginia_ At the time of Lord Baltimore’s arrival the Virginians were already suffering from mass hypertension induced by fear. Early in the summer of 1629 there had been another massacre along the James River, and no sooner had this Indian uprising been quelled than rumors were rife that the Spaniards were about to attack. Captain Claiborne led the colonial forces against the offending Pamunkeys of the Powhatan Confederacy in an effort to “utterly exterpate” them, that being the settled policy of the colony. No thought had been given to any further trade with these neighboring savages since the first bloody massacre they committed in 1622. The Pamunkeys were fair game and in 1629 the English soldiers “obtained more spoil and revenge than they had done since the great massacre.” But even more pressing than the Indian war that year was the feverish urgency about rebuilding and fortifying the fort at Point Comfort to protect the plantations against a surprise attack from Florida. Nervously on the alert for Spanish spies and treachery, the protestant Virginians not only didn’t trust the intentions of their Catholic neighbors to the south, they didn’t trust their own king. After all, they no doubt reasoned, Charles did have a Catholic wife! And didn’t he have as his new advisor, William Laud, the Bishop of London, who everyone knew was trying to reconcile the English Church to Rome?