troops under Senior Merchant Cornelis Caesar from November 1645 to January 1646. "Quinam" was the Dutch name for the Vietnamese Nguyen Lord ruled Cochinchina (which used in the 17th century to refer to the area around Quang Nam in central Vietnam, (Annam) until in 1860 the French shifted the term Cochinchina to refer to the Mekong Delta in the far south, and Pampang was a place in Java which was ruled by the Dutch East India Company in the East Indies. The Dutch sided with the Trịnh lords of Tonkin (Northern Vietnam) against the Nguyen Lords of Quinam (Cochinchina) during the Trịnh–Nguyễn War and were therefore hostile to Quinam. Taiwanese natives under Dutch Formosa Background Before Dutch settlement in the seventeenth century, Taiwanese aborigines lived in numerous tribal systems uniquely autonomous of each other; with populations between a thousand and a hundred, a census conducted by Dutch colonizers in 1650 surmised that there were below 50,000 natives in the plains area. Despite temporary alliances, similar agricultural practices, and a few inter-marriages, the tribes exhibited distinct linguistic and internal structure differences. These differences coupled with the widespread practice of head-hunting caused Formosan groups to be suspicious and cautious of strangers. Upon arrival, the first indigenous groups the Dutch made contact with were the Sinkang (新港), Backloan (目加溜灣), Soelangh (蕭), and Mattauw (麻豆). The native Taiwanese tribes’ antagonistic predispositions led to an initial hostile relationship with the colonizers, involving several uprisings including the Hamada Yahei incident of 1628 involving the Sinkang people, and the killing of 20 Dutch soldiers in 1629 by the Mattauw tribe. VOC eventually transitioned into a divide-and-conquer strategy, and went on to create an alliance with the Sinkang and Seolangh tribes against Mattauw, simultaneously conquering numerous tribes that did not comply with these commands. This interventionist process included the massacre of the indigenous people inhabiting Lamay Island in 1642 by Dutch forces led by Officer Francois Caron. After these events, the native aborigines eventually were forced into pacification under military domination and were used for a variety of labor activities during the span of Dutch Formosa. According to documents in 1650, Dutch settlers ruled "315 tribal villages with a total population of around 68,600, estimated 40-50% of the entire indigenes of the island". Religion One of the key pillars of the Dutch colonial era was conversion of the natives to Christianity. From the descriptions of the early missionaries,