“This fact is strange enough to fix our attention; but it is doubly strange when we consider that there was no climatic, political nor economic necessity for such defiance of nature’s laws. We can see why the Mississippi should have been explored from the north, rather than from its mouth, because Canada was settled before Louisiana, and it is easier to float downstream than to pole or cordelle against the current. But why was not the West entered and settled through the obviously easy course of the Mohawk Valley? “Beyond this valley were gentle slopes, and many a route practicable for settlers into the rich country of Ohio. The central trail of the Iroquois, beaten smoother than a wagon-road, ran straight west from Albany, through the fairest portion of New York, to the present site of Buffalo, and thence followed the southern shore of Lake Erie into Ohio. Where it crossed the Genesee, the old war-trail of the Senecas branched off to the south, passing behind the farthermost ramparts of the Alleghanies, to the forks of the Ohio. Moccasined feet traveling over these trails for centuries had worn them from three to twelve inches into the ground, so that they were easy to follow on the darkest night. These were only two of several well-marked routes from ancient Albany to the new West. It was to this easy communication with the country beyond the Appalachians that the Iroquois owed their commanding position on the continent. “These Iroquois were in the way, to be sure; but with them New York had every advantage over her sister provinces. Her policy toward these powerful Indians was conciliatory. She was allied with them against the French. The Six Nations ravaged the frontiers of all the other colonies, from Massachusetts to Carolina, and carried their conquests to the Mississippi, but they spared New York and even invited her to build forts on their border as outposts against the French. New York had the most influential Indian agent of his time in Sir William Johnson, who had married the sister of the Mohawk chief Brant, and by her had several sons who were war-chiefs of the Iroquois. In 1745 the Iroquois even ceded to New York a strip of land sixty miles wide, along the southern shores of lakes Ontario and Erie, extending to the modern Cleveland. It should have been easy for the Knickerbockers to secure passage for their emigrants into the western country had they chosen to ask it.