It was indispensable to maintain a constant guard at all hours, for seven allied tribes, well supplied with muskets, powder and ball, which they had procured from private traders, boldly threatened to attack the dilapidated citadel with all their strength, now amounting to fifteen hundred men.
"So confident had the enemy become, that their scouting parties constantly threatened the advanced sentinels of the garrison.

Ensign Van Dyck, while relieving guard at one of the outposts, was wounded by a musket ball in his arm.

All the forces that the Dutch could now muster, besides the fifty or sixty soldiers in garrison, were about two hundred freemen.

With this handful of men was New Netherland to be defended against the implacable fury of her savage foe." For a time the war which had desolated the region of the lower valley of the Hudson, did not reach fort Nassau, now Albany.

The tribes resident there were at war with the lower river tribes.