USA > Delaware > History of the state of Delaware, Volume I > Part 2
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ern corporations will perceive that friction over landmarks was not a rare occurrence.
In 1621 the Dutch West India Company was chartered for a term of twenty-four years, the government of Holland mak- ing the corporation a handsome present, besides buying a large number of shares of stock. The company was given the sole right of trade, so far as the natives of the United Netherlands were concerned, with a large part of Africa, with the West Indies and the American continent, and with por- tions of the East Indies ; it could make treaties and contracts with native princes, build forts, appoint military and judicial officers, plant colonies, and, in short, its powers were very ex- tensive. Yet common sense led the home government to keep a great deal of power in its own hands, and the company was not permitted to deciare war, while it was plainly given to understand that if it engaged in war it must pay a large share of its own expenses. Reports were required, and the new corporation began with a sense of its importance, coupled with a sense of responsibility. Trade was its chief object, yet it was recognized that without colonies great trading opera- tions would be impossible. As there were five branches or chambers in different parts of Holland, it is evident that thrifty merchants expected a large business.
As is always the case, little craft sail before large ones. Hendrickson in the "Onrest " or "Restless" had in 1616 sailed up the Delaware and landed on Delaware soil. He bought three natives, giving in exchange bottles, beads and merchandise. Trading privileges liad been granted to some Dutch navigators, but there is no evidence that they actually carried on commerce along the banks of the Delaware. The charter of 1621 points to a genuine not a fictitious commerce, and human nature being the same then as now, it is not sur- prising that the English immediately began to complain of Dutch encroachments, both commercial and territorial. From the Virginia Company the English protest sounded to their privy council, and from the privy council it was carried by
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Sir Dudley Carleton to the State of Holland. All New York, New Jersey and Delaware, with part of Connecticut, were claimed by the Dutch under the general title of New Nether- lands, but this claim was never acknowledged by the English. Both nations were suspicious, and suspicion often ran into hostility, even as it has since done in South Africa, while the rights of the native Indian were regarded as Boer and Briton have since regarded the rights of the Kaffir.
In 1623 Captain Cornelis Jacobson Mey (after whom Cape May is named), took command of the good ship New Nether- lands, and sailed for the country which he had seen in a former cruise. He planted a settlement on the Delaware, and named his outpost Fort Nassau. Accounts of this fort vary, but all agree that it was built near the mouth of Little Timber Creek, in New Jersey, and that it was not an enduring or successful outpost.
Modern times furnish abundant proofs that a statute may have other objects than those avowed in the preamble, and that corporations chartered for one purpose may achieve an- other. The Dutch West India Company began its existence at a time when Holland was at war with Spain, and privateer- ing yielded larger dividends than faraway colonies. It seemed as if the new company was not much better than a Pirate Trust, Limited, and it even protested against peace on the ground that its privateering enterprises were too lucrative to be surrendered. Nevertheless John De Laet, Killiaen Van Renssalaer, Samuel Godyn, Samuel Blommaert and others held that colonization was better than war. In 1629 they obtained a charter granting land bounties and privileges of various kinds to all who might found settlements in the New Netherlands. From this charter the famous patroon system of New York took its rise. A man who should within four years plant a colony of not less than fifty adults was virtually a feudal baron. He miglit rule a tract of land sixty-four miles in length, or half that long, if on two sides of a navigable river, he had exclusive privileges of fishing, fowling, milling,
DAVID
STEVRIESSLAN I EN INOORDER QUARTIER .META,20. ANNO MD
PIETER Z. DE VRIES, ARTELLERY-MEESTER VAN DE
N DE STATEN
DAVID PETERSON DE VRIES, Commander of the First Colony that Settled in Delaware.
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GENERAL HISTORY OF THE STATE.
founding settlements and appointing officers. Verily the patroon was to be master of all he surveyed, unless a panther seized his throat or ar. Indian his scalp. The home govern- ment was remote, mail communication was often interrupted, and even if a patroon committed a hundred acts of petty tyranny there was not much peril of removal, though, on the other hand, if he carried his despotism too far and a tenant murdered him, the culprit might easily find a lodge in the vast wildness before the news crossed the ocean.
Under the new charter, Samuel Godyn obtained a tract of land including Cape May and the surrounding part of New Jersey, while Samuel Blommaert became lord of a thirty-two mile strip of southeastern Delaware. Shortly after the patroon system began to show itself along the banks of the Hudson, and no name is better known in the annals of American real estate transfers than Van Rensselaer.
Despite occasional land grabbing and many displays of arrogance the old patroons are held in respectful memory, not only because their traditions reached down to Cooper and Irv- ing, but also because they were often broad-minded, open- handed men, with their patriarchal virtues as well as patriar- chal faults. The patroon system was a great improvement on the privateer system, and yet such men as Godyn and Blom- maert were associated with men who encouraged a reckless, frequently a lawless, warfare on the sea. Holland was no worse than France, than England or than New England. For many generations public opinion tolerated on the sea what it refused to tolerate on the land. In Elizabeth's time, and even later, sea captains boldly displayed wealth which could not have been gained by the legitimate profits of their cargoes.
Blommaert set about his Delaware colony as he would have set about planting a new village at home. He bought cattle, farming implements, and all that was necessary for his col- onists, and also made preparations for catching whales, which he supposed were numerous in the Delaware Bay. He desired David Pietersen De Vries, a sailor of high standing, to com-
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GENERAL HISTORY OF THE STATE.
mand his expedition, but De Vries held out for a share of patroonship, with all its honors and profits. In December, 1630, the " Walvis" or " Whale" and a yacht loaded with supplies sailed for America, but although the expedition is still called " the De Vries expedition," the weight of authority indicates that Peter Heyes was in command, and that De Vries remained for sometime longer in Holland.
Four months later the vessels reached the Delaware, and touched land near the sight of Lewes. The stream was named Hoornkill in honor of De Vries, who lived in Hoorn. At a later date there sprang up a tradition that the Indian women had behaved disgracefully, and English documents give the name of the creek as Whorekill, or, in some cases, the Harlot's Creek, but there is no foundation for the legend, which sounds as if it were merely a piece of scurrilous forecastle jesting. The surrounding region was called "Zwaanendael," or " the valley of Swans," those birds then being numerous. A fort was built and called Fort Oplandt ; a treaty was made with the Indians; some land in southern New Jersey was pur- chased ; and in September Heyes sailed away, leaving Giles Ossett or Gillis Hossett in command. Hossett may claim the rank of the first governor of Delaware, but his official honors were not long worn.
Every man in the little colony was massacred, and while the reports are uncertain, the general belief is that the Cau- casians provoked the red men. The accepted version of the affair tells us that the Dutch built a pillar which bore a piece of tin marked with the coat of arms of the United Provinces. One of the chiefs stole the tin, which he probably regarded as almost valueless to the white man ; and Ossett, or one of his subordinates, became enraged. Alarmed at the white man's wrath, the Indian apologized and offered to make amends ; but his entieaties only called forth more harsh nouns and vehement adjectives. It is not at all probable that the chief recognized the Dutch coat of arms, or that he meant to offend the government of a country over the sea ; nevertheless the
LANDING PLACE OF FIRST WHITE SETTLERS AT LEWES, 1631.
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GENERAL HISTORY OF THE STATE.
whites were angry, and the red men were frightened. They probably stood in superstitious fear of persons who understood the use of instruments unknown to them, they certainly wished to bribe the newcomers into good humor, and they did what we might expect-killed the offending chief and brought his scalp to the fort as a token of their friendliness. To their amazement, the white men grew still more angry, the gift was rejected with horror, and the Indians departed, angry in their turn that a peace offering had been spurned. Friends of the murdered chief now seized their weapons, attacked the whites as they labored in the fields, killed them all, captured the fort, butchered the sick man who lay there, and seeing a sur- vivor of the white man's power in a large dog, pierced the poor brute with arrows, and left him as a memorial of Indian vengeance.
This is the Indian story, and no white man remained to question its truth. In 1632, De Vries visited the ruins, and his verdict was that the Indian account was probably true. He showed no resentment, gave the Indians some trifles, and made an attempt at refounding the massacred colony. A few months later, however, it seemed that a little band of white men could not hold their own against so many Indians, and all returned to Holland. Once more the land was ruled by the savage.
It is strange to read that a settlement of thirty men, all of whom perished at the hands of savages, preserved a territory and made possible the identity of a State. Charles the First's patent to Lord Baltimore granted title to lands uncultivated and inhabited by savages ; but could not apply to lands which civilized men had cultivated. Lord Baltimore's claim to Del- aware was rejected simply on the ground that settlers from a civilized and Christian nation had for a time possessed a title by occupancy. It was not their voluntary abandonment of the land, but their bloody fate which re-established Indian supremacy.
At all events the tragedy was complete. Every white man
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perished, and in grim truth no dog could bark at the vengeful Indian. The Delaware Bay seemed to be the property of the native, and these horrors, bad enougli in their literal truth, and certain to be exaggerated in Amsterdam, would keep back further immigration. Five years passed before there was an- other effort to plant civilization on the shores that had wit- nessed the massacre.
It is scarcely possible to open a twentieth century newspaper without reading of a dispute among stockholders of a corpor- ation ; and their quarrels are often fought out at an election, or carried to the courts. There was factional strife in the Dutch West India Company, and 1624, the year that saw Peter Minuit appointed Director of the New Netherlands, saw William Usselincx turn from Holland to Sweden. Usselincx, although the founder of the Dutch West India Company, was out of harmony with its management and pleaded with Gustavus Adolphus, of Sweden, for a new company to trade with Asia, Africa and America, to spread the Doctrines of the Reforma- tion and to enrich the royal coffers. In 1626, the Swedish West India Company was chartered, but it was to be consid- ered as commencing May 1, 1627, and was to continue for twelve years, to be extended at the royal pleasure. Some of the features of the charter remind one of modern building associations. Foreign capitalists were welcomed by the provi- sion that all funds invested were to be free from confiscation even in the event of war between Sweden and the nation to which the investors belonged. Something like our royalties appears in the provision that William Usselincx, of Brabant (Antwerp), was to receive one florin per thousand on all mer- chandise imported or exported.
Patriotism, religion and commerce united in support of the new company, and many subscriptions were made. It does not appear, however, that many Swedes were prepared to risk the chances of life in the New Netherlands. Gustavus Adol- phus fell at Lutzen in 1632, and the death of the king, joined with the uncertainties of the war, retarded settlement. It
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was, however, the settled purpose of Swedish statesmen and merchants to plant colonies in the New World, and the object dear to the heart of Gustavus Adolphus was not forgotten by his daughter Christina. Zwaanendael, a mere ruin, was sold by the patroons to the Dutch West India Company.
For some reason several prominent Dutchmen were dis- pleased with the local administration, and desirous of Swedish favor. Peter Minuit had a quarrel with the Dutch West India Company, and in 1637 he took charge of a Swedish ex- pedition bound for the Delaware. One of his vessels, the Key of Kalmar, was named after a Swedish town; the other, the Griffin, took its name from an old fable. Several of the emi- grants were convicts, for Sweden, like other European powers, was fond of throwing its moral refuse on new soil. In April, 1638, they reached the Delaware, and re-named Minquas Creek Christina in honor of their young queen. Fort Christina, and Christinaham, or Christina Harbor, also bore the royal name which later generations have corrupted into Christiana. This was the beginning of Wilmington, and like most of our early settlements, some friction attended its birth. Mattahorn, the Indian proprietor in whom title appeared to be vested, re- ceived sundry trinkets for his land, but declared that Minuit never gave him some promised tobacco.
Swedish immigration was disapproved by the Dutch admin- istration, and William Kieft, Director General of New Nether- lands, solemnly warned Minuit not to continue his work. Minuit ignored the protest. Fort Christina was built without interruption, and the Swedes subsequently bought from the Indians all the land from Cape Henlopen to the Falls of . Trenton. Blood has flowed for less serious causes of quarrel than those which arose between the Swedes and the Dutch, but the Dutch were calm because they deemed war imprudent. The Dutch Company dared not go to war without the consent of the home government, and if war broke out the States Gen- eral were only bound to furnish half the cost of equipping a defensive squadron, while the expense of maintaining an arma- 2
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ment was to be wholly borne by the company. Sweden and Holland were intensely Protestant, and their common hostility to Spain was stronger than their dislike of each other's Western aggressions.
Monopolies in trade are always unpopular, and few monop- olies are strong enough to prevent all illicit commerce. Under the strictest game laws there will be poaching, and the largest navies in the world have not altogether suppressed illegal fishing. It is in perfect analogy with the life of our own time that the Dutch West India Company should have complained that lawless persons residing in the New Netherlands stole handsome furs, and even exchanged their worst skins for the best skins of the company. While no careful writer would pronounce the term "a skin game" classical, that term is proverbial, and, as Lincoin said of " sugar-coated," people will always know what it means. The early history of this country is full of disputes over skins. Taxes were often paid in skins, and it not unfrequently happened that the peltries brought to the tax office were inferior to those sold to wary merchants. Many a county treasurer denounced the un- patriotic pioneers who made the worse article appear like the better, and who defrauded the revenue by ingenious combina- tions of the tails of high-priced animals and the hides of those of lesser value. Classic fables tell how the ass donned the garb of the lion, and how the jackdaw posed as a peacock ; while sacred history mentions that Jacob's smooth wrists were neatly covered by his deft-handed mother. Early colonial politics fought over the complications of the fur trade as men of later days have contended over poll-tax receipts, legal resi- dence and the many intricacies of the ward caucus. There can be no doubt that the Swedes were active in the fur busi- ness, and it is asserted that in their first year they managed to export thirty thousand skins. Regulations might denounce confiscation of vessel and cargo against him who dared sail on the South River without license, and might even menace with death the man who sold guns and ammunition to the Indians,
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but it was easier to lay down strict rules than to enforce them. If a Swedish trader offered better terms than an agent of tlie Dutch West India Company he made his bargain, and it is possible that servants of the company sometimes winked at transactions by which they themselves profited.
Among the puzzles of history one of the greatest is the per- petual variance between law and fact, statutes and their observance. All the enactments of a code may stand theo- retically on the same basis, but some laws commend them- selves to the majority, others can be enforced by police or military regulation, others are frequently evaded and others are openly scouted, especially by men in office. Old diaries, memoirs, good historical novels and standard dramas owe much of their value to the fact that they reveal social condi- tions, and help us, in some degree, to distinguish between the laws which practically everybody obeyed, the laws which many violated, and the laws of which perhaps the very ex- istence was unknown, except to the educated few.
There must have been dozens of tragedies and comedies of which no historian can ever reproduce one act. Now the Dutch would scare away a timid trader, now an Indian would prefer Swedish bribes to Dutch approval, and the fur hunters went on, gaining or losing as conditions varied. Meanwhile the capitalists in Holland blamed the Dutch authorities over the sea for extravagance in building, and the Dutch colonial officials lamented that it cost a great deal of money to keep the Swedes from stealing away their fur trade.
" Who shall watch the watchers?" is a question older by far than the Roman satirist. It is probable that without con- nivance on the part of some of the Dutch functionaries, the Swedes would have been less successful in their dealings. The history of custom houses, excise legislation and game protection is marked by innumerable alliances between those who profited by violating the law and those who profited by conveniently overlooking the violation. If we had the facts the record of the old fur trade on the Delaware might be as stirring as the tales of the wreckers on the coast of Cornwall.
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GENERAL HISTORY OF THE STATE.
But no trade, however flourishing, can alter the fact that colonists must endure many inconveniences, and the settlers at Fort Christina had their trials and hardships. Some ac- counts deciare that they were on the point of abandoning their settlement, and certainly a few good farmers would have been welcome addition to their number. Minuit left them and per- ished at sea, and they were in depressed spirits when in the spring of 1640 the Fredenburg, Captain Jacob Powelson, arrived, and it is said brought over the new governor, Peter Hollendare. Governor Hollendare brought with him new settlers, cattle and useful supplies of many kinds. With him came Reorus Torkillus, the first Christian pastor Delaware ever knew. The new governor urged on the colonists the im- portance of farming, as well as trading, and recommended them to live in peace with their Dutch neighbors. In his short term, ending in 1643, it is probable that he bought large portions of land reaching as far as Trenton.
Some political or personal grievances must, as has been said, have caused a number of Dutchmen to court the friendship of Sweden. The Fredenburg was a Dutch vessel, with a Dutch crew and Dutch passengers. Usselincx years before had sought the help of the Swedish Crown. Blommaert hoped for the success of the Swedish Company. Spiring's actions hint that he possibly had some grievance against the Dutch West India Company. The arrival of a shipload of men from Holland, every man anxious to put himself under Swedish directions is noteworthy, and soon after, the name of Cornelis Van Vliet, another Dutchman, appears among the agents of Swedish colonization.
New Netherlands embraced New York, New Jersey, Dela- ware and part of Connecticut, while New Sweden referred to Delaware alone, although the Delaware of those days was vague in its boundaries. A Dutch colony in New Sweden was to be planted, and the charter, though first given to others, passed into the hands of Heinrich Houghamer or Henry Hock- hammer. By this charter Hockhammer and his partners were
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FIRST LANDING PLACE OF THE SWEDES. WILMINGTON.
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GENERAL HISTORY OF THE STATE.
to take up lands along the South River, at least five German miles below Fort Christina, under the protection of the Crown of Sweden. The colonists might look forward to Western Nobility, and with their descendants were to exercise a sort of patroonship, and for ten years were to pay a tax scarcely more than nominal, while the commercial, manufacturing, mining and other privileges were tempting. On the other hand, the colonists were to fit out their own expedition, to establish schools and to sustain missions among the Indians. Their commerce was restricted to vessels built in Sweden, and unless in cases of necessity, no colonial merchandise was to be sent to other than Swedish posts. Orthodox Lutheranism marks the charter's preference for the Augsburg Confession, although " the so-called reformed religion " is tolerated.
To-day American statesmen are called on to restrict foreign immigration ; in those days it was difficult to get the neces- sary labor to cut down the trees and turn the unplouglied soil. Europe had its wars, its feudal tyrannies, its religious persecutions, but yet the average European preferred to bear the ills he had rather than to fly to the unknown perils of the New World. The dread of wild beasts and of merciless sav- ages was not unreasonable, and long voyages exposed the traveler to the risk of death or slavery among pirates as well as to the hazards of tempest, fog, darkness and reefs. Sanitary conditions were so bad that many emigrants died at sea.
The reluctance of the average European to enter on a new life in a new land explains and partly excuses the old fashion of sending convicts to America. Swedish policy, milder than that of England, favored transporting disobedient soldiers with their families to New Sweden to be brought back in two years. Efforts were also made to enlist a better class of recruits, and a number were gained, Finns as well as Swedes became colon- ists. Blommaert and other Dutch investors grew jealous of the Swedish Crown, but still retained their interests in the West India Company. By degrees the Swedes grew more confident, and in 1641 the Crown offered to buy out the hold-
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ings of any Dutchman who wished to part with his stock. The Dutchmen who were willing to live in a Swedish colony and obey Swedish laws seem to have been well treated, and the peaceful relations of the Swedes with the Indians show that the white man treated his red brother with courtesy and fairness.
Little is known of the Dutch colony in New Sweden, or of Jost de Bogardt, its governor, but the settlers must have broken ground somewhere near St. Georges Hundred in New Castle County.
From the scanty traditions that still remain Minuit seems to have been a governor of energy and public spirit. Hollen- dare, though less vigorous, was respected by the colonists. But John Printz, the blustering and hard-headed, is still a vivid personality, and his name might be almost as famous as that of Stuyvesant had not Stuyvesant won the homage of Washington Irving. De Vries, who did not like Printz, speaks of his excellency as a man weighing four hundred pounds and taking three drinks at every meal. The four hundred pounds might shrink, but the numberless quarrels of Governor Printz with his Dutch and English neighbors, and the unpar- liamentary expressions in which he now and then indulged, warrant the suspicion that he might have allowed an enemy to enter his mouth and steal away his brains.
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