In 1627 De Rasières, the secretary of state of the Dutch colony at New Netherland, opened a correspondence with Governor Bradford and assured him of his desire to cultivate friendly relations. Bradford gave a kind reply, but questioned the right of the Dutch on the coast, and invited Rasières to a conference. He accepted the invitation, and in 1628 visited the Puritan settlement. A profitable exchange of merchandise succeeded, and the Dutch taught the Plymouth men the value of wampum in trading for furs, and sold them £50 worth of it. It was found useful both as a currency and commodity, and afterwards the settlers learned to make it from the shells on the sea-shore.[19] It was not till five years later that this peaceful correspondence with the Dutch was disturbed.
Unfriendliness characterized, from the first, the relations with the French. They claimed that Acadia extended as far south as Pemaquid, and one day in 1631, when the manager of the Penobscot factory was away, a French privateer appeared in port and landed its crew. In the story, as told by Bradford, the levity of the French and the solemn seriousness of the Puritans afford a delightful contrast. The Frenchmen were profuse in "compliments" and "congees," but taking the English at a disadvantage forced them to an unconditional surrender. They stripped the factory of its goods, and as they sailed away bade their victims tell the manager when he came back "that the Isle of Rhé gentlemen had been there."[20] In 1633, after Razilly's appointment as governor-general, De la Tour, one of his lieutenants, attacked and drove away the Plymouth men at Machias Bay,[21] and in 1635 D'Aulnay, another lieutenant, dispossessed the English at Penobscot.
The Plymouth people, greatly incensed, sent two armed ships to punish the French, but the expedition proved a failure. Then they appealed to Massachusetts for help, but the great men of that colony, hoping, as Bradford intimates, to arrange a trade with the French on their own account, declined to be at any expense in the matter,[22] and so the Penobscot remained in unfriendly hands for many years.
This appeal to Massachusetts showed that another power had stepped to the front in New England. After John Winthrop set up his government in 1630 on Massachusetts Bay the history of the Plymouth colony ceased to be of first importance, and therefore the remaining events in her annals need not take much space. In 1633 the people of Plymouth established a fort on Connecticut River above the Dutch post, so as to intercept the Indian trade, and in 1639 they renewed the ancient league with Massasoit.[23] In 1640 they had a dispute with Massachusetts over the boundary-line, which was arranged by a compromise, and in 1641 William Bradford deeded to the freemen of the corporation of New Plymouth the patent of 1630, granted by the Council for New England to him as trustee for the colony.[24] Finally, in 1643, Plymouth became a member of the New England confederation.