re was the beginning, and in some measure
doubtless the cause, of a long series of murderous conflicts,
bearing havoc and flame to generations yet unborn." Parkman
estimates that in the period after the Tuscaroras joined the
Iroquois, the Six Nations had a population of about 12,000 with
not more than 2,150 fighting men. It is a matter of some surprise
that so small a fighting force could wield so great a power in
the early days. But Theodore Roosevelt, in speaking of the
Indians as warriors, says: "On their own ground they were far
more formidable than the best European troops. It is to this day
doubtful whether the superb British regulars at Braddock's battle
or the Highlanders at Grant's defeat a few years later, were able
to so much as kill one Indian for every hundred of their own men
who fell." Although up to that time they had been loyal friends
of the colonists, in the War of Independence the Iroquois fought
on the English side, and by repeated battles their power was
nearly destroyed. From very early times a silver "covenant chain"
was used as a symbol of their treaties with the Whites, and each
time a new treaty was signed the covenant chain was renewed or
reburnished. There are perhaps 17,000 descendants of the Iroquois
now living in reservations in New York State, Oklahoma, Wisconsin
and Canada.

[Illustration: Stephen Van Rensselaer

Stephen Van Rensselaer was the eighth patroon and fifth in
descent from Killiaen, the first lord of the Manor. He was
lieutenant governor of N.Y., an ardent promoter of the Erie
Canal, a major general in the War of 1812 (during which he was
defeated in the Battle of Queenstown Heights), and represented
N.Y. in Congress from 1822 to 1829. In 1824 he founded a school
in Troy, which was incorporated two years later as the Rensselaer
Polytechnic institute.]

In 1629 the Dutch government granted to Killiaen van Rensselaer, an
Amsterdam diamond merchant, a tract of land, 24 Sq. M., centering at
Ft. Orange, over which he was given the feudal powers of a patroon.

The patroons, under the Dutch r['e]gime, were members of the Dutch
West India Co., who received large grants of land, called Manors,
in New Netherlands. These grants carried with them semifeudal
rights, and the patroon could exercise practically autocratic
powers in his domain. The f