Although Bacon and his men, when they took the field in 1676, had thoroughly disciplined the Indians in Virginia, the Iroquois and the Susquehannocks still entered Piedmont and roamed its forests. The Iroquois are believed to have driven out the Manahoacs and their kinsmen prior to 1670 and certainly claimed their lands by conquest; not coveting them for settlement but for hunting and particularly for such furs as they could trap and collect in a land plentiful of beaver and otter. The Virginians built forts at the navigation heads of the great rivers for the protection of settlers; but the northern Indians passed beyond and between them and not only attacked the tributary Virginia Algonquin tribes, from time to time, but were frequently in conflict with the English as well. Lord Howard of Effingham, successor to Colepeper as Governor, met Governor Dongan of New York in July, 1684, and with him closed a treaty with the Iroquois whereby the latter were to call out of Virginia and Maryland "all their young braves who had been sent thither for war; they were to observe profound peace with the friendly Indians; they were to make no incursions upon the whites in either state; and when they marched southward they were not to approach near to the heads of the great rivers on which plantations had been made."[3] But the treaty also contained a provision that the Iroquois, when in Virginia, should "Keep at the Foot of the Mountains" which seemed to acknowledge their right to be there and so continued the Indian menace to such settlers as pushed into Piedmont. Nevertheless the frontier forts of the Virginians were allowed to fall into disuse, the Colony depending on companies of armed and mounted rangers to patrol the back country and keep the Indians in order, and there seemed some prospect of peace though the outlying plantations, long keyed up to Indian alarms, remained alert and watchful. However for awhile there was less Indian trouble in the upper country and then a new alarm occurred, resulting in the first recorded exploration of the present Loudoun.
[3] Howison's _History of Virginia_, I., 387.