This "Sugar land" where our emissaries spent the first night of their journey, and the Sugarland Run passing through and named from it, are frequently referred to in the early records and the mouth of the Run became in 1798 the starting point of Loudoun's corrected southern boundary line with Fairfax. They derived their name from the groves of sugar maples found growing there which, with the use of their sap, were well known to the Indians from earliest times. In 1692 David Strahane "Lieut. of the Rangers of Pottomack" tells in his journal that while patrolling the upper woods, he and his men on the 22nd September "Ranged due North till we came to a great Runn that made into the sugar land, & we marcht down it about 6 miles & ther we lay that night." The wording quite clearly shows that the sugar land was then well known to the whites.
Although, as their report shews, Vandercastel and Harrison reached their goal and duly delivered their message, the Piscataways did not then or later comply with the Governor's pressing invitation. That their attitude was not prompted by defiance but rather by worried caution based on their appreciation of the manifold difficulties of their then relations with the whites, is indicated by the report of two other English envoys who, later in the same year, were sent by the authorities to Conoy. These men, Giles Tillett and David Straughan, kept a journal from which we learn that in November, 1699, they in their turn reached the fort and found that "one Siniker" (i.e. Seneca or Iroquois) was among the Piscataways who had had trouble with "strange Indians" who they called Wittowees and that the "Suscahannes" had captured and brought two of these Wittowees to the fort. The "Emperor" received the Englishmen very kindly and told them that he was then willing to "come to live amongst the English againe but he was afeared the sstrange Indians would follow them and due mischief amongst the English, and he should be blamed for it, soe he must content himselfe to live there." He accused the French of stirring up these "strange Indians" and "presents his services to the Gove'n'r, and thanks him for his Kindness to send men to see him to know how he did."