Their alliance was a crucial component of the English western and northern expansion leading to the French and Indian War (1754–1763). French explorer Jacques Cartier in the 1540s made the first written records of the Indians in America, although French explorers and fishermen had traded in the region near the mouth of the Saint Lawrence River estuary a decade before then for valuable furs. Cartier wrote of encounters with the St. Lawrence Iroquoians, also known as the "Stadaconan" or "Laurentian" people who occupied several fortified villages, including "Stadacona" and "Hochelaga". He recorded an on-going war between the Stadaconans and another tribe known as the "Toudaman". Wars and politics in Europe distracted French efforts at colonization in the St. Lawrence Valley until the beginning of the 17th century, when they founded Quebec in 1608. When the French returned to the area, they found both sites abandoned by the Stadacona and Hochelaga and completely destroyed, and they found no inhabitants in this part of the upper river valley—although the Iroquois and the Huron used it as hunting ground. The causes remain unclear, although some anthropologists and historians have suggested that the Mohawk Nation of the Iroquois Confederacy destroyed or drove out the St. Lawrence Iroquoians. Before 1603, Champlain had formed an alliance against the Iroquois, as he decided that the French would not trade firearms to them. The northern Indians provided the French with valuable furs, and the Iroquois interfered with that trade. The first battle with the Iroquois in 1609 was fought at Champlain's initiative. Champlain wrote, "I had come with no other intention than to make war". He and his Huron and Algonkin allies fought a pitched battle against the Mohawks on the shores of Lake Champlain. Champlain single-handedly killed three chiefs with an "arquebus" despite the war chiefs' "arrowproof body armor made of plaited sticks". In 1610, Champlain and his French companions helped the Algonquins and the Hurons defeat a large Iroquois raiding party. In 1615, he joined a Huron raiding party and took part in a siege on an Iroquois town, probably among the Onondaga south of Lake Ontario in New York. The attack ultimately failed, and Champlain was injured. In 1610-1614, the Dutch established a series of seasonal trading posts on the Hudson and Delaware rivers, including one on Castle Island at the eastern edge of Mohawk territory near Albany.