trade, not only with the Indians, but with those hardy pioneers, who, attracted by the fertile lands, or the desire to join the friendly Indians in their hunting expeditions, pushed farther up the valley. The traders at Albany protested against this invasion of their monopoly, and also against the exercise of milling, weaving and tanning privileges, but in a famous law-*suit in the Supreme Court of the province, the Albany monopolists were beaten, and Schenectady's full right to freedom of trade and manufacture was established. Then came Queen Anne's War with the French, lasting from 1701 to 1713, and Schenectady was again in peril, and again garrisoned, for the same reason and much in the same way as before; but, the Iroquois having made a treaty of peace with Canada, the brunt of the war fell upon New England and Schenectady passed safely through it.
From the treaty of Utrecht in 1713 to the "Old French War," 1744-48, peace prevailed. In the latter war many inhabitants of the village were killed in skirmishes or cut down by skulking Indians in the service of the French. In one skirmish, or rather massacre, at Beukendal, three miles northwest of Schenectady,
