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Updated: June 7, 2025
As early as 1629 the Dutch trade was estimated at 50,000 guilders per annum, and the Delaware trade alone produced 10,000 skins yearly in 1663. The English succeeded to this trade, and under Governor Dongan they made particular efforts to extend their operations to the Northwest, using the Iroquois as middlemen.
A New England Calvinist could not have shown more firmness in upholding the English position. Indeed, no governor of Puritan New England had ever equalled Dongan in hostility to Catholic New France. Frontenac's successor, Lefebvre de la Barre, who had served with distinction in the West Indies, arrived at Quebec in September 1682. By the same ship came the new intendant, Meulles.
In 1683 Governor Dongan, yielding to popular demand, established a legislative body consisting of the governor's council and a house of eighteen deputies elected by the freeholders, and the freemen of the corporations of Albany and New York.
Thus Frontenac's task was quite hopeless, if we define it as the effort to overthrow English power in America. But neither he nor any one of that age defined his duties so widely. In 1689 Canada was in extremes, with the Iroquois at Lachine and Dongan threatening an attack from New York. Frontenac's policy was defensive.
In short, the grand scheme of French colonization had begun to declare itself. Dongan entered the lists against them. If his policy should prevail, New France would dwindle to a feeble province on the St. Lawrence: if the French policy should prevail, the English colonies would remain a narrow strip along the sea.
The loss of her lover, and the discovery that attended it, was only wanting to complete the persecution that was raised against her. About this time died Dongan, a gentleman of merit, who was succeeded by Durfort, afterwards Earl of Feversham, in the post of lieutenant of the duke's life guards.
Nevertheless the enlightened few, who really were tired of the war, agreed to send a second deputation to Canada; but when it was about to set out, a special messenger arrived, sent by Andros, successor of Dongan, enjoining the chiefs of the Iroquois confederation not to treat with the French without the participation of his master, and announcing at the same time that the King of Great Britain had taken the Iroquois nations under his protection.
The present building is thought to have been started by Gov. Thos. Dongan, about 1683, as a hunting lodge, an ideal situation on the bank of the Kitchawar, as the Croton River was then known, protected alike from the north and east winds. Irving says of the family at the time of the Revolutionary War:
The French, he adds, have no more right to the country because its streams flow into Lake Ontario than they have to the lands of those who drink claret or brandy. It is clear that Dongan fretted under the restrictions which were imposed upon him by the friendship between England and France. He would have welcomed an order to support his arguments by force.
Dongan, an Irishman of high birth and a Catholic, strenuously opposed the pretensions of the French to sovereignty over the Iroquois. When it was urged that religion required the presence of the Jesuits among them, he denied the allegation, stating that he would provide English priests to take their place.
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