The Iroquois Confederacy (Haudenosaunee, also known as the League of Peace and Power, or Five Nations), and in particular the Mohawk, have come to rely on the trade for the purchase of firearms and other European goods with the establishment in the 1620s of Dutch trading posts in the Hudson Valley.

The League has from 1609 engaged in the Beaver Wars with the French and their Iroquoian-speaking Huron allies.

They also put great pressure on the Algonquian peoples of the Atlantic coast and what is now the boreal Canadian Shield region of Canada.

The Mohawks defeat the Mahicans in 1628 to gain a monopoly in the fur trade with the Dutch at Fort Orange, New Netherland.

The Mohawks will not allow Canadian natives to trade with the Dutch.