History of Monmouth County, New Jersey. Pt. 1, Part 10

Author: Ellis, Franklin, 1828-1885
Publication date: 1885
Publisher: Philadelphia : R.T. Peck & Co.
Number of Pages: 974

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HISTORY OF MONMOUTH COUNTY, NEW JERSEY.

the little craft spread her sails to it and began to move northward, nearing the shore. There were some among them, too, who believed that it was the floating house of their great Manito, who had come to visit them from his home in the mysterious land beyond the mighty waters, and messengers were dispatched to warn all the neighboring people, and bring them to the shore to see the strange sight and give the mysterious visitor-whether Manito or demon1-such a reception as circumstances might demand.

Steadily, before the fresh southerly breeze, the little vessel moved on, coming nearer and nearer to the shore, until, about the middle of the afternoon, the savage crowd gathered on the Navesink Highlands saw her pass the northern extremity of Sandy Hook and enter the bay, where, after a while, she became stationary at a point distant from the shore, and remained ' there in quiet until the shadows of night settled down over bay and highland, leaving the alarmed and wondering natives to pass the

1 " When some of them first saw the ship approaching afar off they did not know what to think about her, but stood in deep and solemn amazement, wondering whether it was a spook or apparition, and whether it came from heaven or hell. Others of them supposed that it might be a strange fish or sea-monster. They supposed those on board to be rather devils than human beings. Thus they differed among each other in opinion. A strange report soon spread through their country about thevisit, and cre- ated great talk and comment among all the Indians. This we have heard several Indians testify." -- Van Der Donck's Description of New Netherland.

The missionary, Heckewelder, mentions in his writings that one of the principal traditions which he found among the Indians was this having reference to the coming of the first European vessel-that of Captain Henry Hudson- which many of them firmly believed to be the house or great canoe of the Manito, who was coming to visit them, but whether the visit portended good or evil to them, they re- mained in doubt and fear. In this belief, they sent out runners to notify all the Indians within reach to come to the shore at once to give him as good a reception as possi- ble, and so appease his wrath, if it was in wrath that he was coming. Afterwards, when the vessel came near the shore, and they saw her commander dressed in bright scarlet, with slashings and bands of gold lace, they were confirmed in their belief that it was in reality the Manito. Such is the tradition found by Heckewelder. But it was not long before they discovered that the captain and crew of the little vessel were not the Manito and his attendants, but mortal men, and they soon came to regard them as · enemies.

night with unsatisfied curiosity, waiting for the morning light, which, when it came, showed them the same mysterious object (but now wingless), still quietly floating on the waters of the bay.

This was the first vessel (other than the canoes of the Indians) which ever entered the lower Bay of New York or the adjacent ocean waters.2 She was of Dutch build, high-pooped after the ancient style, of a burden of about forty lasts or eighty tons, and carrying a rig something similar to that of the modern brig- antine. Her name, "The Half-Moon," in Dutch, was painted on her stern, and high above it floated the Dutch colors-orange,3 white and blue. She was, in fact, one of the vessels of the Dutch East India Company, which they had put in commission under command of Captain Henry Hudson, an Englishman, with Robert Juet, also an Englishman, as mate, clerk or supercargo, and with a crew of twenty sailors, partly Dutch and partly English, and had dis-

2 In the spring of 1524, John Verrazano, sailing under the auspices of the King of France, coasted along the shores of Carolina, and sailed thence northeast as far as Newfoundland. On the 8th of July, in that year, he wrote to the King, and in the letter stated that he had " found a very pleasant situation among some steep hills, through which a very large river, deep at its mouth, forces its way to the sea. From the sea to the estuary of the river any ship heavily laden might pass, with the help of the tide, which rises eight feet." Ile also added that he found In- dians, who were delighted to see him, and that the "hills show many indications of minerals."

Some writers have endeavored to convince themselves and their readers that the place referred to by Verrazano was the mouth of the Hudson River, and that consequently he, and not Henry Hudson, was the first navigator who ever entered the Bay of Sandy Hook. But there is nothing to sustain such a supposition. No vessel ever built at that day, or for at least two centuries afterwards, would have had any diffi- culty in entering New York Bay without waiting for " the help of the tide ;" nor do the other particulars noticed by Verrazano correspond with those of the mouth of the Hud- son, while they do with those at the mouth of the Penob- scot, with the lofty and rugged hills of Camden and Rock- land, and of Monhegan Island, opposite the mouth. On that island an attempt was afterwards made to plant a French colony (resulting, perhaps, from Verrazano's ac- count), and there is scarcely a doubt that it was the Penobscot River and hills to which he referred in his letter to the King. 3 At that time the flag of Holland was formed by three horizontal bars,-orange, white and blue, -but in or about the year 1650 the orange bar gave place to one of red.

THE INDIAN OCCUPATION.

patched her from Amsterdam for the purpose of discovering a northeastern or northwestern passage to China and the Indies. The " Half- Moon" left Amsterdam April 4, 1609, and on the 6th she sailed from the Texel. Hudson doubled the Cape of Norway on the 5th of May, but found the sea so full of ice that he was ob- liged to change his course. Early in July, after having cruised farther north, he arrived on the banks of Newfoundland, where he was becalmed long enough to catch more cod than his " small store of salt would cure." He next sailed west, into the Penobscot, where he remained a week cutting timber and making a new foremast. He then stood southward as far as the latitude of the Carolinas : then turned back and coasted northward, passing the Capes of Virginia, and on the 28th of August entered the mouth of Delaware Bay. He did not anchor there, but continued his way northeast, along the coast of Southern New Jersey, but keeping out of sight of land for several days. The incidents of the voyage along the coast of Ocean and Mon- mouth Counties are here given, as found in the journal or log-book kept by Robert Juet, the " underschipper" and supercargo of the " Half- Moon " :

"Sept. 2 .- In the morning close weather, the wind at south in the morning : from twelve un- til two o'clock we steered north-northwest, and had sounding twenty-one fathoms, and in run- ning one glass we had but sixteen fathoms, then seventeen, and so shoaler and shoaler until it came to twelve fathoms. We saw a great fire, but could not see the land ; then we came to ten fathoms, whereupon we brought our tacks aboard and stood to the eastward, east-southeast, four glasses. Then the sun arose and we steered away north again and saw land from the west by north to the northwest by north, all like broken islands, and our soundings were eleven and ten fathoms. Then we luffed in for the shore, and fair by the shore we had seven fathoms. The course along the land we found to be northeast by north. From the land which we first had sight of until we came to a great lake of water [Barnegat Bay], as we could judge it to be, being drowned land, which · made it rise like islands, which was in length

ten leagues. The mouth of the lake hath many shoals, and the sea breaks upon them as it is cast out of the mouth of it. And from that lake or bay the land lies north by east, and we had a great stream out of the bay; and from thence our sounding was ten fathoms, two leagues from land. At five o'clock we anchored, being little wind, and rode in eight fathoms water ; the night was fair. This night I found the land to haul the compass eight degrees. Far to the northward off us we saw high hills [the Navesink Highlands]. This is very good land to fall in with and a pleasant land to see.

"Sept. 3 .- The morning misty until ten o'clock, then it cleared and the wind came to the south-southeast, so we weighed and stood to the northward. The land is very pleasant and high and bold to fall withal. At three o'clock in the afternoon we came to three great rivers. So we stood along the northernmost, thinking to have gone into it, but we found it to have a very shoal bar before it, for we had but ten foot water. Then we cast about to the south- ward and found two fathoms, three fathoms, and three and a quarter, till we came to the southern side of them, then we had five and six fathoms and anchored. So we sent in our boat to sound and they found no less water than four, five, six and seven fathoms, and re- turned in an hour and a half. So we weighed and went in and rode in five fathoms, ooze ground, and saw many salmons and mullets and rays very great. The height is 40° 30'."

The light-house on Sandy Hook is in latitude 40° 27' 30" varying but little from Hudson's observation, which was probably taken after he had passed the extremity of the Hook. Two of the "three great rivers" which Juet mentions in his journal were doubtless the Narrows and Staten Island Sound ; and the third, being the northernmost, with a shoal bar before it, having but ten feet of water, was probably Rockaway Inlet, which De Laet laid down on his map as a river, coming from Long Island. This inlet is barred at its mouth with seven feet of water at low tide. It appears that from this bar Hud- son stood over towards the Hook, where he an- chored and sent his small boat round the point to take soundings, and after it had returned

HISTORY OF MONMOUTH COUNTY, NEW JERSEY.

with a favorable report he weighed anchor and went to a new anchorage in Sandy Hook Bay, where his vessel lay for the night in five fathoms of water.

"Sept. 4 .- . . In the morning, as soon as the day was light, we saw that it was good riding farther up, so we sent our boat to sound and found that it was a very good harbour, and four and five fathoms, two cables' length from the shore. Then we weighed and went . in with our ship. Then our boat went on land with our net to fish and caught ten great mullets of a foot and a half long apiece, and a ray as great as four men could haul into the ship. So we trimmed our boat and laid still all day. At night the wind blew hard at the northwest, and our anchor came home and we drove on shore, but took no hurt, thanked be God, for the ground is soft sand and ooze. This day the people of the country came aboard of us, seem- ing very glad of our coming, and brought green tobacco, and gave us of it for knives and beads. They go in deer-skins loose, well-dressed.1 They have yellow copper. They desire clothes, and are very civil. They have great store of maize, or Indian wheat, whereof they make good bread. The country is full of great and tall oaks."

. This was the first time that the Indians of this region ever saw the faces of. Europeans. On the following day some of Hudson's people went on shore, that being the first time that a white man ever stood on the soil lying within the boundaries of the county of Mon- mouth. It seems that these visits on board and ashore were satisfactory to both savages and sailors ; but the friendly relations between them were soon afterwards broken, as will appear from the continuation of Juet's narrative.

"Sept. 5 .- In the morning, as soon as the day was light, the wind ceased, and the flood came, so we heaved off our ship again into

five fathoms water and sent our boat to sound the bay, and we found that there was three fathoms hard by the southern [Monmouth County ] shore. Our men went on land there, and saw great store of men, women and chil- dren, who gave them tobacco at their coming on land ; so they went up into the woods, and saw great store of very goodly oaks and some currants [probably wild plums], for one of them came aboard and brought some dried, and gave me some, which were sweet and good. This day many of the people came aboard, some in man- tles of feathers and some in skins of divers sorts of good furs. Some women also came to us with hemp. They had red copper tobacco pipes, and other things of copper they did wear about their necks. At night they went on land again, so we rode very quiet, but durst not trust them.

"Sunday, Sept. 6 .- In the morning was fair weather, and our master sent John Col- man, with four other men, in our boat, over to the north side to sound the other river [the Nar- rows], being four leagues from us. They found by the way shoal water, two fathoms; but at the north of the river, eighteen and twenty fathoms, and very good riding for ships, and a narrow river [the Kills] to the westward be- tween two islands. The lands they told us were as pleasant with grass and flowers and goodly trees as ever they had seen, and very sweet smells came from them. So they went in two leagues and saw an open sea [Newark Bay], and returned ; and as they came back they were set upon by two canoes, the one having twelve and the other fourteen men. The night came on and it began to rain so that their match went out, and they had one man slain in the fight, which was an Englishman, named John Colman, with an arrow shot into his throat, and two more hurt. It grew so dark that they could not find the ship that night, but laboured to and fro on their oars. They had so great a stream that their grapnel would not hold them.

" Sept. 7 .- Was fair and by ten o'clock they returned aboard the ship and brought our dead man with them, whom we carried on land and buried, and named the point after his name, Colman's Point. Then we hoisted in our boat

1 " There [in Sandy Hook Bay] they were visited by two savages clothed in elk-skins, who showed them every sign of friendship. On the land they found an abundance of blue plums, and magnificent oaks of a height and thickness that one seldom beholds, together with poplars, linden- trees, and various other kinds of wood useful in ship-build- ing."-De Laet's " New World."

THE INDIAN OCCUPATION.

and raised her side with waist-boards for defence of our men. So we rode still all night, having good regard to our watch."

John Colman, then, was the first white per- son ever buried in the soil of Monmouth County. With regard to the place of his burial, called by Hudson " Colman's Point," there have been many different opinions entertained ; but the one most generally concurred in is that which was expressed by the Rev. Mr. Mar- cellus, that " it is identical with Point Comfort, in Raritan township."

"Sept. 8 .- Was very fair weather; we rode still very quietly. The people came aboard us and brought tobacco and Indian wheat to ex- change for knives and beads, and offered us no violence. So we, fitting up our boat, did mark them to see if they would make any show of the death of our man, which they did not.

"Sept. 9 .- Fair weather. In the morn- ing two great canoes came aboard full of men ; the one with their bows and arrows, and the other in show of buying knives to betray us, but we perceived their intent. We took two of them to have kept them, and put red coats on them, and would not suffer the other [boat] to come near us. So they went on land, and two others came on board in a canoe ; we took the one and let the other go ; but he which we had taken got up and leaped overboard. Then we weighed, and went off into the channel of the river, and anchored there all night."

The preceding entry is the last in Juet's journal which has reference to the stay of the "Half-Moon" and her people in the vicinity of the Monmouth shore. They worked steadily up through the Narrows and the river past where New York City now is, and on the 11th reached a place where, says Juet, " the people of the country came aboard of us, making show of love, and gave us tobacco and Indian wheat, and departed for the night ; but we durst not trust them." In his entry of the following day he says : " This morning, at our first rode in the river, there came eight and twenty canoes full of men, women and children to betray us, but we saw their intent and suffered none of them to come aboard us. At twelve o'clock they de- . parted. They brought with them oysters and

beans, whereof we bought some. They have great tobacco pipes of yellow copper, and pots of earth to dress their meat in.

"Sunday, Sept. 13 .- ... Then there came four canoes aboard, but we suffered none of them to come into our ship. They brought very great store of very good oysters on board, which we bought for trifles.

"Sept. 15 .- This morning our two savages got out of a port and swam away. After we were under sail they called out to us in scorn."

From this point in their passage up to the vicinity of Albany they had no more trouble with the Indians. On their return down the river, at the Highlands of the Hudson, occurred the events mentioned by Juet, as follows :

"Thursday, Oct. 1 .- . . . The people of the mountains came aboard us, wondering at our ship and weapons, We bought some small skins of them for trifles. This afternoon one canoe kept hanging under our stern with one man in it, which we could not keep from thence, who got up by our rudder to the cabin window and stole out my pillow and two shirts and two bandeleeres. Our master's mate shot at him and struck him in the breast and killed him. Whereupon all the rest fled away, some in their canoes and some leaped out of them into the water. We manned our boat and got our things again. Then one of them that swam got hold of our boat, thinking to overthrow it, but our cook took a sword and cut off one of his hands, and he was drowned." The following entry refers to a point nine leagues farther down the river :

"Oct 2 .- . .. The flood was come strong, so we anchored. Then came one of the savages that swam away from us at our going up the river with many others, thinking to betray us. But we perceived their intent and suffered none of them to enter our ship. Whereupon two canoes full of men, with their bows and arrows, shot at us after our stern, in recompense whereof we discharged six muskets, and killed two or three of them. Then above a hundred of them came to a point of land to shoot at us. There I shot a faleon [small cannon] at them and killed two of them, whereupon the rest fled to

HISTORY OF MONMOUTH COUNTY, NEW JERSEY.

the woods. Yet they manned off another canoe with nine or ten men, which came to meet us ; so I shot at it also a falcon, and shot it through and killed one of them. Then our men with their muskets killed three or four more of them, so they went their way."

From this point, in their passage down the river, Hudson and his crew had no more inter- course with the Indians. The " Half-Moon " made no landing below, on river or bay. On the 4th of October she passed Sandy Hook and stood out to sea, and her bold commander never again saw the beautiful river which he had discovered and which now bears his name. From Sandy Hook he made no delay, but laid his course directly across the Atlantic, and on the 7th of November "safely arrived in the range of Dartmouth, in Devonshire, in the yeere 1609."

" In the following year another ship was sent over by the East India Company, and prepa- rations were made to establish posts for the pur- pose of carrying on the fur trade, which at that time and for years afterwards was the prin- cipal object of commercial attraction to this part of the New World. The first posts estab- lished were at New Amsterdam, now New York (located on what is now the Battery), at Albany and at the mouth of Rondout Kill, on the Hud- son. From that time the Dutch held posses- sion of the New Netherlands (including all that is now New Jersey) for more than half a cen- tury, during which time the Indians always continued to exhibit, in a greater or less degree, the hostility which had first been awakened by Hudson and his men in 1609. He and his crew were regarded as Dutchmen by the sav- ages, and for this reason they continued to show some degree of enmity against the Dutch through the more than fifty years of their occupation of the country. 1 From 1629 to

1 Yet it was the Dutch themselves who, prompted by avarice, sold the Indians guns and powder in exchange for furs. A pamphlet description of this country, published in 1648, says :

" They sell by wholesale guns, powder, shot and ammu- nition to the Indians, instructing them in the use of our fights and arms; insomuch as two thousand Indians, by them armed, Mohawks, Raritons and some of Long-Isle, with their own guns so sold them, fell into war with the

1632 they were actively hostile against the Dutch settlements on the Delaware to such an extent that the settlers were compelled to aban- don their homes, though they afterwards re- turned to them. In 1655 they devastated the Dutch settlements on Staten Island and at points on the Hudson River, compelling the people to leave them and seek the pro- tection of the forts at New Amsterdam, Ron- dout and Albany. No such outrages were then committed by them in what is now Monmouth County 2 for the simple reason that there was not a white settler in all this region at that time. And when the English settlers came here to buy their lands, in 1663, the red men treated them with perfect friendliness and continued to do so ever afterwards.

The aborigines whom the earliest white ex- plorers found occupying the valleys of the Delaware and Hudson Rivers, with all the country lying between them,-as, in fact, the entire area now comprised in the States of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania,-were of Algonquin stock, and embraced in two nations, or groups of nations, called by Europeans the Iroquois and the Delawares, the former hav- ing been so named by the French and the latter by the English. The language spoken by both these nations was the Algonquin, but differed materially in dialect as used by the different tribes. The nation to which the English gave the name of Delawares was known in the In- dian tongue as the Lenni Lenape, or simply the Lenape; the Iroquois were, in the same tongue, called the Mengwe, which name became

Dutch, destroyed all their scattering farms and boors, in- forcing them all to retire to their upper fort, forty leagues up that river, and to Manhatas. Three years since their Governor put out his declaration confessing that the neighbour English might well be offended with their selling Indians arms and ammunition, but being a few and so seat - tered they could not live else there, or trade ; the Indians refusing to trade or suffer the Dutch to plow without they would sell them guns."

2 The only Dutchman known to have been killed by In- dians in what is now Monmouth County was Aert Theunis- sin, who went in a boat up the Navesink River on a trading expedition in 1643, and was murdered by the Indians, in October of that year, at a place called by the Dutch " Mis- path's Kill," near Port washington, Whether the murder was committed for robbery or revenge is not known.

THE INDIAN OCCUPATION.

corrupted by the more ignorant white men in " Mingoes," which latter term was adopted to some extent by the Delawares in its contemptu- ous application to their Mengwe neighbors, between whom and themselves feelings of de- testation and hatred existed in no small degree.

The Mengwe, or Iroquois, inhabited the ter- ritory extending from the shores of Lake Erie to those of Champlain and the Hudson River, and from the head-waters of the Delaware, Susquehanna and Alleghany Rivers northward to Lake Ontario; and they even occupied a large scope of country north of the St. Lawrence, thus holding not only the whole of the State of New York, but a part of Canada, which vast territory they figuratively styled their "long council-house," within which the place of kindling the grand council fire of the nation was Onondaga, not far from the present city of Syracuse, N. Y., and at that place, upon occa- sions, representatives of all the Mengwe tribes met together in solemn, deliberative council. These tribes consisted of the Mohawks, Senecas, Cayugas, Onondagas and Oneidas, who collec- tively formed an offensive and defensive con- federation, which has usually been known in English annals as that of the Five Nations.1

The Delawares-the Indian people with which this history has principally to deal-oc- cupied a domain extending along the sea-shore, from the Chesapeake to the country bordering Long Island Sound. Back from the coast it reached beyond the Susquehanna Valley to the foot of the Alleghany Mountains, and on the north it joined the southern frontier of their domineering neighbors, the hated and dreaded Mengwe, or Iroquois. This domain, of course, included not only the county of Monmouth, but all of the State of New Jersey.

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History of Monmouth County, New Jersey. Pt. 1, Part 10

Author: Ellis, Franklin, 1828-1885 Publication date: 1885 Publisher: Philadelphia : R.T. Peck & Co. Number of Pages: 974

Author: Ellis, Franklin, 1828-1885
Publication date: 1885
Publisher: Philadelphia : R.T. Peck & Co.
Number of Pages: 974