USA > New Jersey > Scheyichbi and the strand : or, early days along the Delaware ; with an account of recent events at Sea Grove ; containing sketches of the romantic adventures of the pioneer colonists ; the wonderful origin of American society and civilization > Part 4
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Five days after, De Vries again started to coast along the shore and visit Fort Nassau. On the way he was a fortnight frozen into " Vine- yard Creek," where the Dutch shot a multitude of turkeys, "weighing from thirty to thirty-six pounds" each. It was the 3d of February before the yacht could be got up to its destination. By that time a war had broken out between the Minquas and the Sankitans, and no corn could be had. After much trouble from the ice, the yacht was got back to the ship, where a joyous welcome was given the long absent and adventurous voyagers by their anxious shipmates.
Still short of provisions, and ambitious to be the first Hollander to visit the Chesapeake, De Vries sailed on the 5th of March for Virginia. He visited Sir John Harvey, Governor of Virginia, and was courteously entertained by that noble knight. De Vries made Governor Harvey acquainted with the Dutch operations on the Delaware, and was able to identify the English crew whose murder he had heard of at Fort Nassau as one of eight men which Governor Harvey had sent the previous September into the Delaware, in a sloop, "to see if there was a river there." The Governor imagined his men "to have been swal-
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THE FIRST HOUSE IN PHILADELPHIA.
lowed up in the sea," having heard nothing from them until the sad news by De Vries made him acquainted with their fate. The patroon of Swaanendael and Cape May remained a week at Jamestown, and then, with an abundant supply of provisions, and a present of goats for Manhattan, where Governor Harvey had heard there were none, he returned to his fishermen in Zuydt Baai.
Once more warmly welcomed by his company, the patroon learned that several whales had been captured, but more lost after being struck, the harpoons being defective. De Vries had, however, become satisfied that the whale fishery was less profitable than the fur trade, and pro- posed to carry out his original intention of a voyage to Newfoundland and the Saint Lawrence for fish and peltries. Wishing to examine the coast, De Vries sailed on board his yacht for Manhattan the 14th of April, and, coasting northward for two days, arrived safely at Fort Am- sterdam, leaving Swaanendael, Godyn's Baai, and the Arasapha once more to the whales, the savages, and the aboriginal wildness of nature.
§ When De Vries arrived in New Amsterdam, on the 16th of April, 1633, he found the new Director-General, Wouter Van Twiller, on board the ship Soutberg, which had just arrived in the harbor. The information which De Vries gave Van Twiller aroused him to take measures to hold possession of Zuydt Baai, and the fur trade in the country adjoining ; accordingly Arendt Corssen was appointed com- missary, and instructed to purchase a tract of land on the Schuylkill for a plantation and trading post, for both of which purposes the loca- tion there was highly esteemed. Corssen bought " for certain cargoes," from "the right owners and Indian chiefs," a tract called " Armen- veruis," lying about and on the Schuylkill. The Indian title being thus secured, the Dutch took formal possession of Pennsylvania, and established a trading house there, which, though soon abandoned for a time, was afterwards enlarged to a post or station and called Bevers- rede, being situated within the present bounds of Philadelphia.
Among the improvements ordered by Van Twiller for the year 1633 was " one large house," to be built at Fort Nassau on the Delaware. The work must have been neglected, for in 1635 a small party of Eng- lish from Point Comfort, Va., under the leadership of Captain George Holmes, and, as some have said, in the interest of Sir Edmund Plowden and his associates, took possession of Fort Nassau, which they found vacant. Thomas Hall, one of Holmes's men, deserted at Fort Nassau, and, reaching Manhattan, gave information to Van Twiller. A Dutch force soon captured Holmes and his party, and took them to Fort Amsterdam, from whence they were sent, " pack and baggage," back to Virginia. The Dutch, after the affair with Holmes, repaired and gar- risoned Fort Nassau, and gave more attention to the valley of the Dela- ware. The administration of Wouter Van Twiller ended early in the spring of 1638, he being superseded by William Kieft.
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§ Although the Dutch were the first to "occupy" the Delaware, Governor Sir John Harvey, of Virginia, had sent an unfortunate expe- dition there in 1632; and before the patent for Maryland was sealed that year, Sir John Lawrence, Sir Edmund Plowden, and others applied to King Charles I., of England, for a grant of Long Island and thirty miles square on the mainland, which they proposed to call "Syon." After the death of the first Lord Baltimore, before the full execution of the formalities of the grant of Maryland made to him, Plowden and his associates made a second application ; this time asking for Long Island, and the small isles between the thirtieth and fortieth degrees of north latitude, within six leagues from the mainland near Delaware Bay, and forty leagues square of the adjoining coast; to be held as a County Palatine, and called New Albion, "with the privileges as heretofore granted to Sir George Calvert, late Lord Baltimore, in Newfoundland." The king confirmed the grant made Lord Baltimore to his son and heir, but one month after the sealing of the Maryland patent the king (says Neill), on July 24th, 1632, ordered Sir John Coke to issue a patent for Long Island and the adjacent country to Plowden and his asso- ciates.
On the 23d of September, 1633, Captain Thomas Young, gentleman, received a special commission from the King of England to organ- ize an expedition and explore in America. This expedition sailed in the spring of 1634, and with it came Master Robert Evelyn, Captain Young's nephew, as lieutenant. The voyage of Captain Young was in connection with the enterprise of Plowden for the settlement of New Albion, but from stress of weather, or lack of a pilot, his course led him into the Chesapeake; there desertion weakened the company, but Young fitted out a shallop or pinnace at Jamestown, in July, and sailing to the Delaware with about fifteen men, established as the head- quarters of New Albion a post he called Eriwomeck, near the mouth of the Schuylkill, at Fort Beversrede, which the Dutch had just aban- doned. In September, as has been noted, George Holmes seized for the New Albion Company the vacant Fort Nassau, from which he was soon ousted by the Dutch. Lieutenant or " Master" Robert Evelyn went to England, early in 1635, upon some errand from which he soon returned; in 1637, he was appointed a surveyor by the Governor and Council of Virginia, but missed confirmation ; he was afterwards proxy for St. George's Hundred, in the Maryland Assembly, but was again in England in 1641. At that time Evelyn and others published "a card," describing the valley of the Delaware as a fine place, where the English had traded since 1527, and where Evelyn himself had been stationed for four years with fifteen men, trading and exploring in safety. On Evelyn's return from England he was commissioned, June 23d, 1642, to command and drill the militia, at Piscataway, four miles below Washington. The identity and character of Evelyn are
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NANINGZN SMY GER
LAKE LILY, FROM THE NORTH.
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PLOWDEN AND NEW ALBION.
important in this history, as he was the first recorded explorer and geographical describer of Sea Grove and Cape May, as is elsewhere related.
Captain Young continued his explorations about the Delaware for about eighteen months, hoping to find there the entrance of a passage to India; he became satisfied of the importance of the inland or back country, and, in 1636 or the year after, returned to England and asked for himself and his company a grant of whatever inland regions he might discover and explore. Sir Edmund Plowden remained in America until 1648, trying to settle the territories of New Albion, of which he was Earl Palatine; he did not succeed in this, owing to the opposition of the Dutch and others along the Delaware. Having ex- hausted his fortune during his stay of "about seven years" in this country, Plowden returned to England, by the way of New Amsterdam and Boston, "for supply." In London, in 1648, under the name of Beauchamp Plantagenet, Plowden published his "Description of New Albion," an inaccurate pamphlet, a copy of which remains in the Phila- delphia Library.
Beyond elaborating and publishing a remarkably liberal, just, and worthy plan of government, the enterprise of the New Albion asso- ciates achieved nothing of note. Sir Edmund Plowden himself was the descendant of an eminent jurist; he was as unhappy in domestic life as unfortunate in business; his wife Mabel, daughter of Peter Mariner, of Wanstead, Hampshire, England, left him after a married life of twenty-five years, alleging abuse as her cause. Sir Edmund came to Virginia, and was at Eriwomeck, as Earl Palatine of Albion, in 1642,- "the fort given over by Captain Young and Master Evelyn." He was visited in London by some Marylanders in 1652, but he never left England again. Made poor by his outlay in behalf of his scheme of colonization, Plowden's fortunes became desperate; he was arrested for debt, and died in the debtors' prison in 1655. There is a pathos about . the fate of the earnest Palatine of New Albion, which is made more effective by a statement of the social ideas by which he and his asso- ciates proposed to be governed.
The pioneers of New Albion raised less tobacco and sold less rum for beaver-skins than their neighbors, but they were the first to com- prehend the vast width of the continent; and in evidence of their culture and character, they presented the world with an illustrious example of political sagacity in a model form of free and liberal government. While kings and ecclesiastics conspired in Europe to enslave the bodies and the souls of men, while Boston and New Haven fostered despotism, and called it theocracy, Roger Williams, dividing his land with all who needed, founded a state purely on the will of the majority, with God alone as the Ruler of Conscience; and Sir Edmund Plowden, beside the Delaware, sought to establish a more liberal, wise, and perfect
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SCHEYICHBI AND THE STRAND.
organization of society than the world had ever known. Rhode Island became a more complete "Democracie," and fortunate Connecticut grew to love freedom by experience, but New Albion formulated the principles of political order, and put forward her ideal proposition, at once and entire. Of little consequence now are the "Manors, dignified by well chosen names, giving titles to each of the Earl's family"; of less account, the "Albion Knights of the Conversion of the Twenty- three Kings"; less still the mere ghost of an established church, barely provided for in a document which might have been quoted as the death warrant of state religions!
Guarding against demagogue usurpation, the institution of New Albion enfranchised the people, and deferred to popular intelligence; obedient to British usages, it still insisted upon independence and freedom, and thereto obtained the sanction of the throne. Mildness, humanity, and justice were characteristics of the whole constitution of the intended state, and, most glorious of all, entire religious freedom was guaranteed ; dissent was not amenable for punishment, and heresy to be proceeded against only by education; with the proviso, that " this argument or persuasion in religion, ceremonies, or church discipline, should be acted in mildness, love, charity, and gentle language !"
§ As early as 1626, Gustavus Adolphus, the illustrious King of Sweden, the champion of Protestantism in his time, undertook to found a Swedish colony on the shores of the Delaware; this was first suggested to him by the same William Usselinx, of Holland, who in 1590 proposed the Dutch West India Company to his countrymen. Usselinx waited upon Gustavus, and being a learned man, unusually well informed upon matters in America, he convinced the king and his nobles of the desirability of a Swedish-American colony, and of the feasibility of a great Swedish trading corporation to establish such a province.
The company was organized duly, "to trade to Asia, Africa, and the Straits of Magellan," and on July 2d, 1626, the king issued an edict at Stockholm, " in which he offered to people of all conditions liberty of shares by subscription, according to their ability or inclina- tions. The proposal was received with general satisfaction," say the "Annals of the Swedes." Gustavus took for himself stock to the amount of four hundred thousand dollars, at equal risk. The king's mother, and Prince John Cassimir, his brother-in-law; the members of his majesty's council ; many civil and military officers of high rank; the bishops and other clergymen; many merchants and citizens ; country gentlemen and farmers, became subscribers ; ships were fitted out, and all requisites for trade and a colony provided ; an admiral, vice-admiral, commissioners, merchants, and other proper persons were appointed, and a few vessels started for America.
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The Swedish cannon were the speakers and champions whose elo-
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GUSTAVUS, HIS CANNON AND COLONIES.
quence clinched the arguments of the Lutheran Reformation, and recast the destinies of a thousand years; but for Gustavus and his guns, the Protestant movement would have ended in the beginning. This hero king and philanthropist, whose mind was as practical as it was comprehensive and brilliant, who in defense of religious freedom invented and victoriously used modern artillery, was not inclined to hesitate in an enterprise which he declared to be "for the benefit of the persecuted," for the security of "the honor of the wives and daughters" of those made fugitives by war and bigotry, for "the good of the common man," for the blessing of "the whole Protestant world," and "the advantage of all oppressed Christendom," through undue deference to the dubious and conflicting claims of ambitious potentates, or the greed and avarice of monopolizing corporations.
Neither was the King of Sweden careful, like the States General of Holland, to avoid direct responsibility for colonies. "Every inch a king," after the best manner of his times, his charter declared that " politics lie beyond the profession of merchants," and reserved the government of all future Swedish colonies to a Royal Council. Thus the formidable cannon of Sweden and the invincible sword of Gustavus were pledged to the protection of the emigrant. The privileges of the Swedish Company were open to all, and colonists were invited from every nation of Europe; slaves were discarded, as a laborious and intelligent Swedish population, with wives and children, it was wisely thought, would be quite as profitable and more to the honor of the state. In Sweden all was in readiness for the colony, when, through the influence of the papal power, war was provoked, and broke forth suddenly. Gustavus found himself compelled to invade Germany " to vindicate the rights of conscience," establish toleration, and se- cure German liberty by defending the principles of the Reformation. The fight was for the safety of Protestant Christendom. In the emer- gency the funds of the new trading company were, as a military necessity, diverted for a time to the purposes of war; yet the king abated not at all his zeal for the American enterprise even on the field and in camp, and from Nuremberg, October 16th, 1632, he communi- cated to Oxenstiern, his great minister, enlarged and most liberal plans for the proper setting of that "jewel of his kingdom," even in case of his death.
At the battle of Lutzen, November 3d, 1632, Gustavus fell. His death changed the course of European politics; the project of Swedish colonies was temporarily postponed. The little squadron which left Sweden for America, perhaps on private account, about the time of the formation of the Swedish Commercial Company, as Swedish ships may have done before, was attacked at sea by Spaniards, some of the ships being captured ; but there is reason to believe that others escaped and reached the Delaware, where their factors engaged in trade with the
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SCHEYICHBI AND THE STRAND.
Indians, and that from that time there were always a few Swedes and Finns in the valley, who finally located among the aborigines, well up the river.
Peter Minuit, finding partisan influence too strong for justice in the Dutch West India Company, visited Oxenstiern and the court of Sweden, and offered to conduct a Swedish colony to the unoccupied west shore of the Delaware. In the spring of 1638, a man-of-war, named the Key of Calmar, and a tender, the Griffin, from Gottenburg, Sweden, with about fifty emigrants, under command of Peter Minuit, as Governor by commission of Queen Christina, put in at Jamestown, Virginia, to "refresh with wood and water," being bound for Delaware Bay, which is the confines of Virginia and "New England," "to make a plantation." The Treasurer of Virginia desired to have a copy of Minuit's commission, but the Swedish Governor declined to show his charter, unless he could arrange for the purchase of tobacco for ship- ment to Sweden ; but the colonial laws of England did not permit such a traffic, and so Minuit, after spending ten days in the Chesapeake, pursued his voyage, and entered "Zuydt Baai" early in April. The Swedes soon after disembarked at Missipillion Point, twenty miles up the bay, on the western shore.
Emigrating from an almost arctic climate, the Swedes were delighted by the Eden-like airs which, in April, are the atmosphere of the capes of Delaware, and which linger over them through the balmy summers. Enchanted with the climate, and charmed by the scene, they gave their landing-place the name of " Point Paradise." It may have been an ex- travagant appellation ; but as the lover of natural beauty sits quietly at Sea Grove, and sees the glorious summer sun sink amid his clouds, in the waters of the bay, above Henlopen and far-away Missipillion, he need not be a poet to imagine that the scene is somewhat too fair to be all of earth.
§ When, in 1623, the French attempted to take possession of the Del- aware, they were prevented "by the Dutch settlers there ;" so, in 1635, the Dutch from Manhattan ousted the party of English under Holmes. In 1638 they were in the river, and equally ready to repel the Swedes. Soon after the Swedes arrived in the Delaware they were visited by some officials of the Dutch West India Company, who notified them of the claims of Holland thereabouts, and warned them out of the bay. The Swedes, in answer to this challenge, stated that they were on their way to one of the West India islands, and had put into Zuydt Baai but for refreshment after a prolonged and stormy voyage, which they should continue as soon as they supplied themselves with fresh meat, water, wood, and a few necessaries. Not inhospitable, the Dutch con- sented to this delay, trusting to the representations which had been made to them.
But Minuit, who well understood the Dutch policy and the extent
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THE FIRST GARDEN IN DELAWARE.
of their jurisdiction, merely moved his expedition up stream, beyond the limits of that which had been Godyn and Blommaert's purchase in 1629, and at Paghacking, or Minquas, Creek, near Wilmington, Dela- ware, made a second landing. There, from a local sachem, named Matteehoorn, a plantation was bought, "between six trees," "a kettle and a few trifles" being paid in consideration. The Swedes won Mat- teehoorn by the promise of the half of a crop of tobacco, to be raised on the ground he conveyed to them. Between Matteehoorn and the Swedes some document, memorandum, or deed was drawn up; "as no Swede could yet interpret Indian," and no Indian understand Swedish, the paper "was written in low Dutch." The Indians could read neither language, and were, it seems, induced to sign a deed of the land from Cape Henlopen to Trenton, or " Sankekan" Falls, and as far inland as thé Swedes might gradually require, under the impression they were conveying a mere patch of ground to raise tobacco on "at halves." The Swedes, says Indian tradition, never divided the tobacco, but held the Indians to the letter of the fraudulent deed.
The mouth of the Paghacking was but twenty-five miles from the Dutch Fort Nassau, and messengers were soon sent to learn Minuit's intentions ; these he cajoled with courtesy and fine words, and they went back to their fort. In a few days the people of Fort Nassau came down again, and found the Swedes " had done more,"-buildings were begun, goods disembarked, and a small garden made. The Dutch asking what it meant, Minuit made various excuses and pretenses, still declaring his intention to soon depart. As soon as the Swedish colony was safely established, Minuit revealed his purpose by sending his small vessel, the Griffin, up the river for Indian trade. She was not allowed to pass Fort Nassau, and Peter May, the sub-commissary, boarded her and demanded her commission. The Swedish master re- fused to show his papers, and defended the establishment of a Swedish colony on the Delaware, saying his queen had as good a right to build a fort there as the Dutch West India Company. Of all this the people at Fort Nassau took note, and at once forwarded the particulars to Manhattan. Director-General Kieft protested against the Swedish colony, and warned them to depart at once, as all that part of the world, especially the Delaware, belonged to the Hollanders, it having been for a long time "beset with forts and sealed with the blood of the Dutch." But the epistle had little influence with Minuit, and Kieft, who was as " economical" as he was "testy," was too prudent to attack the colony of a nation as gallant and victorious as the Swedes.
There were but fifty souls in the first expedition under Minuit, and of these many were " bandits," condemned to penal servitude. Yet, notwithstanding the opposition from the Hollanders, the little colony "between six trees" was prosperous. On the north bank of the Paghacking, two miles from the Delaware, a fort was erected, and the
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SCHEYICHBI AND THE STRAND.
name of Christina given to it and the creek,-the arms of Sweden being carved with the royal monogram on the boundary posts of the station. Besides, a plantation was made, where corn, beans, squashes, and the profitable tobacco, grew as they long had grown in the same region, except that they showed, by their unexampled productiveness, the difference between the bone paddle of the overtaxed squaw and the heavy steel mattock of the athletic Scandinavian. Not only were all the Indian products improved by Swedish culture, but the seeds of Europe were introduced, and soon made evident, by prolific increase, the proverbial fertility of the soil of Delaware and the influence of a genial climate. Meantime, commerce was not neglected; the goods brought for barter were soon disposed of, for the Swedes undersold the Dutch, and it is recorded that the beaver-skins taken to Sweden the first year of Minuit's administration damaged the Dutch trade on the Delaware more than thirty thousand guilders.
About midsummer the vessels which brought the colony returned to Sweden, but Minuit and twenty-four men, with a good supply of mer- chandise and provisions, remained at Fort Christina. There was great delay in the coming of further supplies from Sweden, and in the win- ter of 1640 the Swedes were so much in want they decided to abandon their plantation, and merge themselves in the settlement at Manhattan. But early in the spring, the day before the Swedes had decided to give up Fort Christina, a ship named the Fredenburg, Captain Jacob Powel- son, of Utrecht, Holland, arrived with a company of Hollanders, who, under the Dutchman Joost De Bogaredt as a commander for Sweden, had been sent out by Henry Hockhammer, according to grant and agreement with the Swedish Government, to settle as Swedish colonists on the Delaware. The distress of the resident Swedes was relieved by De Bogaredt, and they continued at Fort Christina. Another colony was begun a few miles below, and soon the trade of the Dutch West India Company on the South River was " entirely ruined."
In the fall of 1640 Peter Hollendare came from Gottenburg to Fort Christina as Deputy Governor of the Swedes in America ; two vessels soon followed, and "a new treaty was made with the Indians for more land." The Swedes called their territory Nya Swerige, or New Sweden, and to Zuydt Riviere they gave the title of New Swedeland Stream. Nye Swerige was more fortunate than Swaanendael; it had become a successful colony,-the first permanent settlement on the Delaware. Minuit had proved a good guide and a sagacious, even if crafty, commandant ; but his work was done. In 1641, according to Acrelius, the Swedish historian, he died at Fort Christina, while Peter Hollendare continued the government.
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