The Five Nations owed their leadership among the Indian tribes not only to superior discipline and method but also to their geographical situation.  The valley of the St Lawrence lay within easy reach, either through Lake Champlain or Lake Ontario.  On the east at their very door lay the valley of the Mohawk and the Hudson.  From the western fringe of their territory they could advance quickly to Lake Erie, or descend the Ohio into the valley of the Mississippi.  It was doubtless due to their prowess rather than to accident that they originally came into possession of this central and favoured position; however, they could now make their force felt throughout the whole north-eastern portion of the continent.

Over seventy years had now passed since Champlain’s attack upon the Iroquois in 1609; but lapse of time had not altered the nature of the savage, nor were the causes of mutual hostility less real than at first.  A ferocious lust for war remained the deepest passion of the Iroquois, to be satisfied at convenient intervals.  It was unfortunate, in their view, that they could not always be at war; but they recognized that there must be breathing times and that it was important to choose the right moment for massacre and pillage.  Daring but sagacious, they followed an opportunist policy.  At times their warriors delighted to lurk in the outskirts of Montreal with tomahawk and scalping-knife and to organize great war-parties, such as that which was arrested by Dollard and his heroic companions at the Long Sault in 1660.  At other times they held fair speech with the governor and permitted the Jesuits to live in their villages, for the French had weapons and means of fighting which inspired respect.

The appearance of the Dutch on the Hudson in 1614 was an event of great importance to the Five Nations.  The Dutch were quite as ready as the French to trade in furs, and it was thus that the Iroquois first procured the firearms which they used in their raids on the French settlements.  That the Iroquois rejoiced at having a European colony on the Hudson may be doubted, but as they were unable to prevent it, they drew what profit they could by putting the French and Dutch in competition, both for their alliance and their neutrality.

But, though the Dutch were heretics and rivals, it was a bad day for New France when the English seized New Amsterdam (1669) and began to establish themselves from Manhattan to Albany.  The inevitable conflict was first foreshadowed in the activities of Sir Edmund Andros, which followed his appointment as governor of New York in 1674.  He visited the Mohawks in their own villages, organized a board of Indian commissioners at Albany, and sought to cement an alliance with the whole confederacy of the Five Nations.  In opposition to this France made the formal claim (1677) that by actual residence in the Iroquois country the Jesuits had brought the Iroquois under French sovereignty.