As it happened, Coursey was a little late in organizing Maryland's treaty. In March, 1677, two months before Coursey got under way, the Indians had held their own treaty at the Lenape village of Shackamaxon, and their conference had settled most of the substantial issues before Coursey ever started.

The student of Indian affairs has to get used to discovering that source descriptions of really important events have a way of vanishing. Though knowledgeable colonists from the Delaware Bay took part in the Shackamaxon conference for at least four days, they have left no minutes. It is almost certain that they forwarded information to Andros, but the many volumes of New York's colonial documents and Indian records contain no reference to it. Andros himself did not mention the conference in his surviving reports to England. Perhaps nothing but time and carelessness is involved, but it seems likely that there was something else. We have already seen the sort of intrigues that multiplied in the provinces; we ought now to remind ourselves also that conditions in England could never be wholly neglected by provincial officials. Andros' Catholic master, the Duke of York, was in serious political difficulties in Protestant England, and he could not afford to alienate even his Catholic supporters by open conflict with Catholic Lord Baltimore. No matter how obnoxious Baltimore might become, Andros had to manage him with discretion and finesse. Probably Andros quietly destroyed the evidence of his management. We can understand the frustration and suspicions of Maryland's Henry Coursey as he later tried to find out what had happened at Shackamaxon. "I … find a necessity to carry Jacob Young along with mee," he wrote from New Castle, "without whom I can doe nothing, and what truth is to bee had is from him and none else."⁹⁷ However, there are a few dependable scraps of information in the court records of New Castle and Upland (Chester). By combining these with Jacob Young's information to Coursey, we can see the main outline of the Shackamaxon conference.⁹⁸

It started, apparently, as an all Indian affair. In early February, 1677, the Susquehannock's passed by New Castle, without stopping, on their way "up the River." In mid March, some Iroquois ["Sinneco"] Indians came to Shackamaxon "to fetch" the Susquehannock's. The Lenape contested with the Iroquois for Susquehannock allegiance, and the Susquehannock's themselves split into factions. Two of them had previously fled to the Iroquois for sanctuary as the others had come to the Lenape, and these two had accompanied the Iroquois to Shackamaxon, seemingly to plead theIroquois cause. The Lenape appealed to the magistrates at Upland to intervene. Lenape "Emperor" Renowickam suggested to Captain Collier and the magistrates that they join the Shackamaxon conference with a proposal to have Andros arbitrate the issue. The magistrates agreed. Collier and an undisclosed number of the magistrates joined the conference from March 14 to 18, but no indication exists that Renowickam's suggestion of a delegation to Andros was adopted. Perhaps the Iroquois could say that they already knew Andros' mind. Collier surely knew that Andros wanted the Susquehannock's out of the Delaware Bay region.

However that may be, it is clear that the Iroquois did not come with hostile intentions against anybody. They even offered to make peace with Maryland through the agency of Captain Collier. He shrugged them off with the story of what had happened when he had earlier taken Andros' mediation offer to Maryland. The response he had received was that "Maryland would make warr or peace att their own pleasure." Considering Maryland's attitude (and the fact that Andros had been "incensed" by it), Collier would not undertake to speak in Maryland's behalf, not even to accept the offer of peace.

But the main issue at Shackamaxon was the disposition of the Susquehannock's, and it is clear that the Susquehannock's themselves decided it. Some of them agreed to go off with the Iroquois. Others, however, insisted still on remaining with the Lenape. Apparently no group of Susquehannock chiefs existed any longer with sufficient authority to preserve a unitary polity.

This fact of choice must be noted well. As will be shown in following pages, a myth of Iroquois conquest of the Susquehannock's was manufactured in 1683 to serve a political purpose. To examine the process of mythmaking at this point would be premature, but we may profitably look into an immediately relevant factor that has contributed to the myth's durability. Confusion has arisen about supposed Iroquois despotism because of an incident that occurred to the troop returning from Shackamaxon to Iroquoia. It stopped off at the Susquehanna River and picked up thirty more of the "chiefe Warriours." After several days' march, an argument arose over how the Susquehannock's should be divided between the Iroquois communities, and the Susquehannock's were so "displeased" by the arrangements that some of them "got away." Much has been read into Jacob Young's information that the rest were bound up by the Iroquois to travel as captives for the rest of the journey, but the significance of this fact must be interpreted in the light of Coursey's comment on it. "It is judged," he remarked, that the Iroquois desired "not to hurt them, for every one of the [Iroquois] iforts strive what they can to get them to themselves, and Governor Andros to get them to the Mohawks, for it was told me by Capt. Delavall that if they had them they would make warr immediately with the ifrerich." ⁹⁹   Thus the very source that has been used to show the Susquehannock's' "subjection" discloses intentions of the Iroquois far removed from tyranny. We have an echo here of the "subjection" in which the Lenape had been supposed to live previously under the Susquehannock's. But what the Iroquois wanted were reenforcements, not serfs or slaves. The isolated incident of the binding of Susquehannock's en route to Iroquoia was a temporary expedient in an awkward situation. Later records show quite clearly that the Susquehannock's at Iroquoia had full freedom of movement. They looked upon their residence there as security from Maryland, and continued to make war upon enemies of their own choosing in pursuit of their own policies, frequently inducing their supposed conquerors to join them.