The squabbles of small powers had to be conducted within the limits set by greater powers. While Indians and provinces fought and intrigued, Charles II of England "granted" all of New Netherland to his brother James, Duke of York. James commissioned a small fleet of three vessels; it cowed New Amsterdam into capitulation on 27 August, 1664, and won Fort Orange in September; on the first of October, Dutch Fort Amstel on the Delaware Bay surrendered.⁵³   Just as the demise of New Sweden had transformed backwoods diplomacy, so the conquest of New Netherland now restricted even more sharply the number of genuine choices possible for the Indians. In a manner of speaking, the world of the Mohawks might seem to have come to an end with New Netherland. Reduced by disease, beaten in battle, and now deprived of the fundamental prop for their whole system of external politics, they sued for peace. ⁵⁴

Now, surely, peace ought to have come to the embroiled tribes. America was now under English rule from Maine to Carolina; it would seem a simple thing for the conquering Englishmen, after having eliminated their competitors, to stabilize and pacify the tribes. To think so, however, is to reveal the nationalistic preconceptions of our own era. Neither King Charles nor Duke James undertook the reduction of New Netherland just to strew benevolence over the provinces. The King's patent to his brother embraced lands claimed by Connecticut and Massachusetts, and the King instructed his commissioners to investigate a reputed grant by Indians to the Crown of "a large tract of ground about the Narragansetts Bay." If the Indian grant were to prove true, the commissioners were to "seize upon the same in our Name and the same tract of land shall bee hereafter called the King's Province.⁵⁵   At the opposite side of New Netherland, Baltimore's claims on Delaware Bay were also encountered by the English conquerors. The royal commissioners instructed their representative to declare to "my Lord Baltimore's son" that "the reduction of the place being at his Majesties expense, you have commands to keep possession thereof for his Majesties own behoofe and right⁵⁶   It is hardly surprising, under the circumstances, that Puritans and Marylanders greeted the conquest of New Netherland with less than joy. The conquest had not eliminated their powerful competitor so much as it had substituted a still greater power in the same relationship. Though sovereignty changed, the functions and roles of New Netherland continued to be performed by New York.

For the Indians, of course, there could be no question about the necessity of adapting to the newcomers. The Mohawks instantly offered alliance and asked New York's Governor Nicolls to mediate between them and their multitude of enemies. Nicolls agreed to try to make peace for them with "the Naticns down the River," but he could make no guarantees of peace with other provinces .⁵⁷

As things turned out, Nicolls was unable to prevent Indian disruption even within his own province. The Mahicans renewed a dormant ancient feud with the Mohawks, and were able to find a source of European support. Though both the English and the old Dutch inhabitants of Albany combined to enforce Mahican compliance with Mohawk pleas for peace, their edict was obeyed only so long as the time required for the Mahicans to make a new alliance with the French.⁵⁸   As the policies of Charles II had been aimed at eliminating the Dutch power from America, the policies of Louis XIV were aimed at eliminating the Iroquois. French alliance with the Mahicans was only one of Louis's measures. When AngloDutch war was renewed, France joined the Dutch in 1666. The Bourbon monarch also decided "totally to exterminate" the Iroquois, and sent a regiment of veteran troops and reorganized his government of Canada to take the offensive⁵⁹   Once more, the Iroquois were surrounded by enemies. In 1666 a French expeditionary force burned the Mohawk villages and food supply, and the Susquehannocks destroyed an Onondaga army. Meanwhile the Mahicans "infested the roads" of the Iroquois so successfully that an Onondaga sachem pleaded with the French to call them off.⁶⁰    A Jesuit father reported that the Oneidas were continually alarmed in their villages by both Mahicans and Susquehannocks, and "a panic of terror" swept over one village on the mere false rumor that a Susquehannock army was approaching.⁶¹

In the midst of all this the voices of peace were hard to hear. Having once embroiled the tribes with each other, the Europeans found that only united efforts could suppress the tumult. Governor Nicolls of New York attempted to get peace for the Mohawks in the south, but Governor Calvert of Maryland ignored him. Nicolls' successor tried to enlist the support of Connecticut's Governor Winthrop to calm the Mahicans, but negotiations dragged on and on. The Onondagas had been so badly beaten by the Susquehannock's that they made revenge an obsession, and when a Susquehannock chief brought proposals of peace to the Cayugas in 1670 the Onondagas instigated his murder.⁶²   It seemed to be a time exemplifying Thomas Hobbes' "war of all against all," but it was no Hobbesian "state of nature." In the last analysis the Indians remained dependent on European trade goods, and wherever the Europeans could finally submerge their own strife, they had it within their power to stop Indian warfare. In 1670 a Susquehannock sachem dinned this into the heads of some stubborn Lenape "and showed them, here live Christians and there live Christians; declaring to them that as they were surrounded by Christians, if they went to war, where would they get powder and ball?" ⁶³