In 1693 a sachem accompanied Young to Maryland's Council to announce the resurrection of the Susquehannock nation. The Council minutes are tersely complete:

Interpreter [Jacob Young]: Says that the Susquehannoh Indians, being reduced to a small number and as it were newly grown up, they desire the Favour of the Governor and Council that they may have liberty to Come and settle upon their own Land at the Susquehannoh Fort and to be taken and treated as Friends and have Liberty of coming among us freely without molestation.

Answer: That their Fort, as they call it, falling within the Limits of another Government, as Pens iivania, this Government can take no cognizance thereof; and if, as they pretend, they are in League with the Mohaukes our Friends, we shall not disturb them so long as they are quiet and peacable.¹³⁹

The "newly grown up" Susquehannock's would contribute actively to the history of another threequarters of a century before a lynch mob massacred the remnants of their people who had dared to remain at Conestoga during Pontiac's Rebellion. Others had gone upriver again into Iroquoia, but our study is now complete and we shall make no effort to look that far ahead. We may allow ourselves no more than a glance at the years of Susquehannock transfiguration at the turn of the eighteenth century. From their new home at Conestoga, the revived Susquehannock's maintained peaceful relations with Maryland, at a wary distance. They hunted and traded as before, but they now traded in a different direction. In 1700 William Penn visited their village and got a deed for all the lands "which are or formerly were the Right of the People or Nation called the Susquehannagh Indians"; and there was no more struggle over the Susquehanna valley during Penn's lifetime. In 1701 he acted as host in Philadelphia and signed a solemn treaty of friendship that won the Indians completely. Gradually, though not in ways that Penn anticipated, Conestoga became an important headquarters for trade and politics; indeed it was from that gateway that the Conestoga wagons soon began to trundle landhungry immigrants to and through the mountains of the west.¹⁴⁰

Only when Indian history is part of it can American history be understood. The issues born of the Indian trade and beaver wars in New Netherland's day continued to agitate provincial politics through the first half of the eighteenth century. The great covenant chain of the Iroquois helped to determine the direction and fate of empires, exerting an influence far out of proportion to the Indians' everdwindling numbers. The land at the head of Chesapeake Bay remained a disputed site where European refugees from quitrents could find happy sanctuary while Penns and Calverts sued and fought. Not until 1763, when Mason and Dixon began to survey their famous line, did the long quarrel end. By a melancholy coincidence, the last of the Susquehannock's at Conestoga met death in the same year.