Had the governor frankly acknowledged that the colonists were in the wrong; had he made full amends, according to the Indian custom, for the great injury inflicted upon them, they would have been more than satisfied. Even more friendly relations than had ever before existed might have been established. But instead of this the governor assumed that the Indians were entirely in the wrong; that they had wantonly commenced a series of murders and burnings without any provocation. The Esopus chiefs were afraid to meet the angry governor with proposals for peace. They therefore employed three Mohegan chiefs as their mediators. They offered to cease all hostilities, to abandon the Esopus country entirely, and surrender it to the Dutch if the Indian captives, whom the Dutch held, might be restored to them. These very honorable proposals were rejected. The Mohegan chiefs were told that the governor could not enter into any treaty of peace with the Esopus Indians unless their own chiefs came to fort Amsterdam to hold a council. And immediately the Indian captives received the awful doom of consignment to life-long slavery with the negroes, upon a tropical island, which was but a glowing sandbank in the Caribbean sea. "On the next day," writes Mr. O'Callaghan, "an order was issued, banishing the Esopus savages, some fifteen or twenty, to the insalubrious climate of Curaçoa, to be employed there or at Buenaire with the negroes in the Company's service. Two or three others were retained at fort Amsterdam to be punished as it should be thought proper. By this harsh policy Stuyvesant laid the foundations of another Esopus war, for the Indians never forgot their banished brethren." It was ascertained that several miles up the Esopus creek the Indians were planting corn. It was the 20th of May, 1660. Ensign Smith took a party of seventy-five men and advanced upon them. The barking of dogs announced his approach just as his band arrived within sight of the wigwams. They all made good their retreat with the exception of one, the oldest and best of their chiefs. His name was Preumaker. We know not whether pride of character or infirmity prevented his escape. It is said, however, that he received the soldiers very haughtily, aiming his gun at them and saying, "What are you doing here, you dogs?" The weapon was easily wrenched from his feeble hands. A consultation was held as to what should be done with the courageous but powerless old chief. "As it was a considerable distance to carry him," writes Ensign Smith, "we struck him down with his own axe." At length the sufferings of the Esopus Indians became so great from the burning of the villages and the trampling down of their cornfields, the loss of their armies and the terrified flight of their starving women and children, that they were constrained to make another effort for peace.