Essentially a sedentary, agricultural society, the Hackensacks set up seasonal campsites and practiced companion planting, hunting, trapping, fishing, and shell-fishing.
[3] Nonetheless, due to other events taking place, mostly on Long Island and in the Hudson Valley, hostilities escalated and what became known as Kieft's War continued for another two years.
For nearly ten years the two communities co-existed peacefully, if somewhat tenuously, in some measure due to Oratam's influence in not allowing incidents between the parties to escalate to violent confrontation.
However, in 1655, the murder of a Hackensack woman found stealing peaches from the orchard of a Dutch farmer on Manhattan, opened the flood gates for the release of pent-up frustrations, and once again the colony of Pavonia was raided, requiring settlers there to abandon their farms.
After a year of conflict between the Esopus Indians (Lenape of the Munsee branch) and the New Netherlanders in Ulster County, the sachem of the Warranwonkongs asked Oratam to act as emissary to the government at New Amsterdam.
Petrus Stuyvesant, who had become Director-General of New Netherland, enlisted his support, and Oratam traveled to the territory and organized a "conference" that lead to a treaty which temporarily ended the hostilities.