The Stockade Name:
During the period immediately prior to European settlement in what is now New York (roughly 1615-1640), the Iroquois' Mohawk tribe (often called Maquis) and the Algonquin Mohigan were bitter rivals over land. The Mohigan -- early inhabitants of the area we call Schenectady -- were warring with the Iroquois. European mapmakers indicated the absence or presence of native stockades on maps of the period to infer the war status of native tribes during the period when the maps were drawn. A Mohegan stockaded settlement, shown, was drawn for a 1635 map and reused in a 1657 map.
The map shows twelve homes ordered in two rows of six buildings on either side of a central plaza. It is unclear if a smaller stockade at left with seven buildings is a neighboring settlement or a special use area for the same settlement.
This style of protected settlement was adopted by early Dutch colonial
traders and 
could
be very similar to the first of three stockades built the first Dutch
colonists in Schenectady. The first Dutch stockade enclosed the four
blocks -- 200 "Dutch" feet on a side -- and roughly followed the outline
described by Washington Ave. on the West, Front Street on the North, Ferry
Street on the East and State Street on the South. This was burned when
Schenectady was sacked by the French and Northern Indians in 1690.
By 1704 the Stockade was repaired and expanded to College Street on the East and to Cowhorn creek on the south. A new fort, the queen Anne's or Queens Fort had been built near where the "Lawrence the Indian" statue now stands to garrison troops. Another fort known as the King's fort was built where SCCC now stands. This fort was built to house both white and Indian refugees while the village was rebuilt.
Finally, during the French an Indian War the Queens fort was rebuild and the stockade enlarged once again extending the northern border to the Mohawk River. By the time of the Revolution the Queens fort was in disrepair and was removed and later the last sections of the stockade itself was removed.
Today, excavations may still find buried sections and stubs of the stockade posts.