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 5
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The colonists of Virginia, as early as 1629, extended by Nathaniel Basse an invitation to such of the people of New England as preferred a fertile soil and mild climate, to come and settle in the Valley of the
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1415252
NEW HAVEN COLONY ON THE DELAWARE.
Delaware. The matter was discussed among the Puritans, but the first adventurers sent to the Delaware by them were from New Haven, in 1638, the year that colony was founded. The traders of New Haven, George Lamberton and others, led the way. The project of emigra- tion was originated by a few enterprising persons, who soon formed a company that finally sold out its interest to the community at large, which, as a Church, desired to establish a mission among the Dela- wares, and found a prosperous colony where all should live in godly order, and their children after them "should continue to abide under the wings of Christ."
Captain Nathaniel Turner bought of the Indians, for £30, the land along shore from Cape May to Raccoon Creek, Varcken's Kill, Hog Creek, or Salem River; the deed was dated November 24th, 1638. At different times during the next two years additional lands were purchased by and for the New Haven adventurers. They were helped in their negotiations by a refugee sachem of the Pequods, and repre- sented that their lands cost them £600 in all. (N. H. Col. Rec.)
In April, 1641, an expedition of some twenty families, or sixty or more persons, sailed for the Delaware in Lamberton's bark, or ketch, under command of Robert Cogswell. Voyaging by the way of Man- hattan, they were detained by Kieft; but promising allegiance to the Dutch if they settled in Dutch territories, they were allowed to go on. The New Haven people landed on Varcken's Kill, near Salem, New Jersey, and " on the Schuylkill." Trading houses and habitations were erected on Varcken's Kill. The Schuylkill settlement was at or near Fort Eriwomeck, the headquarters of New Albion; the Dutch " Bevers- rede," the Indian Armenveruis, or Passyunk, at Philadelphia. These plantations were to be governed "in combination" with New Haven, and Captain Turner was furloughed from New Haven and authorized to go to the Delaware, "for his own advantage, and the public good in settling the affairs thereof."
Though the New Haven people were intruding upon territories claimed by both the Dutch and Swedes, yet such was the confusion of titles that their claim may have been supposed by them as good as any; besides, they found Sir Edmund Plowden in the bay, with an English grant of New Albion, and gave allegiance to him as Earl Palatine. Kieft, however, considered that Cogswell had purposely deceived him, and the Swedes were ready, as they had agreed, to co- operate to "keep out the English." In May, 1642, two sloops, the Real and Saint Martin, with thirty men, under Jan Jansen Van Ilpen- dam, of Fort Nassau, were sent by Kieft's orders to break up the English settlements on the Delaware. Fort Eriwomeck was first visited; there were some Marylanders at that place of the rougher sort, and accounts differ as to the result of Kieft's proclamation, which was read to them. One author asserts that the English were so
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SCHEYICHBI AND THE STRAND).
violently blasphemous and threatening, that Jansen drew off his sloops and made the best of his way out of the Schuylkill; but others declare the colony there was broken up.
From the Schuylkill Jansen sailed to Varcken's Kill. There, meet- ing no resistance, he burned the English buildings, took possession of all the goods, and bore away most of the people as prisoners to Fort Amsterdam, at Manhattan. Their goods were restored to the New Haven people, and they proceeded home to Connecticut. The colony on Varcken's Kill had been very unfortunate ; the members had come on foot from Boston to New Haven, where they remained but a short time before moving to the Delaware; the winter they spent on Varcken's Kill was excessively cold, and the summer had been very sickly ; their time, their trouble, the cost of their lands, all were lost, as well as damage done their goods. Still the undaunted Lamberton continued to trade in the Delaware from New Haven, though annoyed and interrupted at times; the New Haven people also attempted, though in vain, to renew their colony, being turned back at Manhattan. The records of New Haven for a few years show the public and private loss from the Delaware enterprise. The sufferers applied to the Com- missioners of New England, to Oliver Cromwell, to Richard, his son, and finally, to Nichols,-when he first came out,-for restitution at the expense of the Dutch. Their losses were more than a thousand pounds sterling, but, from one cause and another, nothing was ever realized by them in return.
There was no original and permanent colony from New England on the Delaware until the whalemen, who first appear on record in 1685, settled at Cape May. Although Plowden, who never had many men with him, had been unable to defend his earldom, or protect the people who recognized him as their lord, and although the colony was driven out to return no more, still members of the Calvinistic community were left behind, and the fame of the Delaware was spread abroad by the quarrels which followed. In the settlements of the following generation around the bay, the Yanokies (silent men), as the Mais Tchusaeg, or Massachusetts Indians, called the New Englanders, had their full share of action, influence, and honor, as is usual everywhere. Comparing a record of the early settlers of New Haven and Cape May, about one-fifth of the family names from the Cape May list are inscribed on the older New Haven document.
§ Peter Hollendare remained as the successor of Governer Minuit but eighteen months. On the 15th of February, 1643, after Hollen- dare's return to Sweden, Colonel John Printz arrived at Christina, and at once assumed office by virtue of his commission as Governor for the Queen of Sweden. Governor Printz came out in the ship Fame, attended by the Svan or Stork, and by the Charitas-all armed vessels. The instructions of the new Governor were full and explicit. About a
THE PAVILION.
1875.
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PRE-HISTORIC RUINS IN NEW JERSEY.
hundred soldiers came with him, as well as many colonists, the royal council having appropriated over two million dollars annually for the support of his administration. Printz was directed to keep on good terms with the Dutch and cultivate trade with the English of Virginia, and especially to see that the Indians were treated with consideration and justice, as the original owners of the soil. Still, the Swedes were to assume control of the Delaware, " that the river may be shut," and in case of aggression on the west side they were commanded to " repel force by force ;" Printz was thus "to take care" of his jurisdiction. On Tenacong, now Tinicum Island, Printz built the fort, New Got- tenburg, of " vast logs," and erected Printz Hall for his residence. To shut up the river, a fort was built on Varcken's Kill, called Helsing- borg or Elsingburg; it had three angles, and mounted eight twelve- pound guns.
The Rev. John Campanius, of Stockholm, came with Printz as chaplain; Reorus Torkillus had served in that capacity at Christina from the first. He died the 7th of September following the arrival of his colleague, being but thirty-five years old, still memorable as the first Lutheran missionary in the Delaware Valley, if not in all America.
There is a well-authenticated tradition related by the Swedish botanist, Peter Kalm, in 1748, upon the authority of Moons Keen, one of the ancient Swedes, regarding Fort Helsingborg. When work was begun upon the fort, the builders found traces of ancient occu- pants in certain wells, which were bricked up to a depth of twenty feet or more under ground; there were vessels and fragments of pottery, with broken and displaced brick also found near by, giving unmistakable evidence of the civilization of former residents. The situation of the wells and the position of the other relics was in a meadow near the river, where all the surroundings indicated the absolute antiquity of the pre-historic settlement. The Indians, who had occupied the ground for generations, had no knowledge or tradi- tion of people who dug wells and used bricks and pottery in a civilized manner, but assured the Swedes the relics had certainly been where they found them for more than a hundred and fifty years,-ever since the voyages of Columbus. Were these wells the work of Lief Erik- son, and the Norwegian Christians, A.D. 996 to A.D. 1000? Were they dug by the men who built the round tower at Newport ?
§ In October of 1643, the year Helsingborg was established, De Vries again visited South River, putting in as he was on his way to Virginia. As the craft came abreast of Fort Helsingborg, a gun was fired for her to strike her flag and "come to." Blanck, the schipper, asked advice of De Vries. "If it were my ship I should not strike," said De Vries, "for I am a patroon of New Netherland, and the Swedes are mere intruders in our river." The schipper, however,
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SCHEYICHBI AND THE STRAND.
" had a desire to trade," and lowered his colors. A boat came on board the vessel at once, and she sailed up to Tinicum that after- noon. The Dutch were welcomed to Fort Gottenburg by the Governor, who "was named Captain Printz, a man of brave size, who weighed over four hundred pounds." Being informed of the position of De Vries and his doings on the Delaware, Printz drank his health in "a great romer of Rhine wine." The Dutch traded confectionery and Madeira wine for beaver-skins at the fort for five days, and then visited Fort Nassau, where a garrison of Dutchmen was found. Re- turning to Tinicum, De Vries went with Printz to Fort Christina, " where there were now several houses," and spent the night with the Governor, who " treated him well." On parting from the Swedes the Rotterdam vessel fired a salute in honor of their hospitality, and sailed away for Virginia. Thus De Vries, who forebore his vengeance upon the feeble Nanticokes, and ever counseled justice and peace in dealing with the bow-bearing Indians of Manhattan, was brave enough of himself to defy a battery of cannon in an unarmed vessel, and court- eous enough to win the favor of a supposed enemy and competitor.
Patroon De Vries spent the winter of 1643 in Virginia, and sailed from there for Holland, where he arrived in June, 1644. De Vries had given his best efforts for a dozen years to New Netherland, but the petulance of Hossett, the mismanagement of Van Twiller, and the stub- born folly of Kieft, had thwarted his sagacious endeavors, and to him the memory of his sojourn in the New World was a sad retrospect of losses and tragical disappointments ; he seems never to have revisited America.
David Pietersen De Vries was one of the finest characters of New Netherland history. A man of the people, he was ever a foe to des- potism, injustice, and cruelty. In Manhattan, where he resided so long and honorably, he was, as Chairman of the Citizens' Committee, the acknowledged head of the Dutch democracy. The Indians trusted De Vries as a Swannekin " who never lied like the others," and his influ- ence with the aborigines, with his characteristic tact and discrimination, more than once saved the province from destruction.
To the folly and mismanagement of Van Twiller De Vries opposed the coolness of practical sense and the courage of a hero. When the fool- hardy and barbarous Director Kieft ordered the massacre of his Indian refugee guests, De Vries gave earnest warning, and the revengeful ruin which followed came upon Manhattan despite the protest of the demo- cratic leader. Firm and perhaps overbearing in maintaining his own rights as a citizen and privileged proprietor among his equals, even at the cannon's mouth, he forebore revenge upon the ignorant savage trespasser, and ever counseled and practiced honesty and humanity in all dealings with his Indian neighbors. Wise in council, prudent in action, De Vries stood firm for right, palliated the evils he could not
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TRANSLATION OF THE LUTHERAN CATECHISM.
avert, and constantly manifested that self-control and magnanimity which won the affection of the Indians from Fort Orange to Sandy Hook, and conciliated the barbarians of Swaanendael and Scheyichbi, making smooth and peaceful the ways of his successors on the Dela- ware.
Though filling a merely subordinate position, De Vries was by nature and experience equally commendable as a man, a citizen, a commander, a diplomat, or a statesman. It would be untrue to history and unjust both to him and his creed not to record, in addition, the fact that the first resident patroon and owner of Cape May was a man of religious sentiments, in principle, after the best ideal, a devout and consistent Christian.
§ On the 16th of May, 1648, the Rev. John Campanius returned to Sweden, He had been chaplain of New Sweden since the year 1642, and was a man of much earnestness and application. In addition to his duties as chaplain, Campanius kept a copious journal of his voyage to America and his observations in New Sweden. The Indians fre- quented the house of Campanius, who never wearied in discussing with them the tenets of his Church, and recorded that he found them able to comprehend the doctrines of his creed. Struck with the patience, aptness, and docility of his pupils, Campanius studied their language, and translated the Lutheran Catechism into the Lenni Lenape dialect of the Algonquin tongue. This book was printed by royal command at Stockholm, in Indian and Swedish, in 1696, in one volume, 160 pages, 12mo; to the text a vocabulary is added, with examples, dia- logues, etc.
There is a copy of this Swedish-Indian Lutheran Catechism in the possession of the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, and one was owned by Peter S. DuPonceau, LL.D., of the Pennsylvania Historical Society. Clay, in his Swedish Annals, suggests "that the Swedes may claim the honor of having been the first missionaries among the Indians, at least in Pennsylvania; and that, perhaps, the very first work translated into the Indian language in America was the translation of Luther's Catechism, by Campanius."
Presumably, the author of the " Annals" refers to Protestant mission- aries ; for, not to mention the Spanish priests who came over even with Columbus, and soon made converts, the French Catholics at " Port Royal" (Annapolis, N. S.) began teaching the Micmacs and Abenekis as early as 1605 ; and the Jesuits were there at public expense as mission- aries to the Indians in 1611. De Saussaye founded the mission of St. Sauveur, on the Penobscot, in 1613, which, in August of the same year, Argall, of Virginia, piratically destroyed. There was a mission to the Hurons by Brébeuf, Daniel, and Lallemand, the Jesuit " Fathers," in 1634, and an amply endowed Indians' hospital at Quebec, in 1635. An Indian seminary was founded at Quebec, with money and teachers,
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SCHEYICHBI AND THE STRAND.
the same year, and about the time the Swedes came to "Zuydt River" an Ursuline convent school for Indians was established there."
Five years before Eliot preached to a tribe six miles from Boston, Charles Raymbault and Isaac Jogues, under Jesuit direction, penetrated in 1641 to the outlet of Lake Superior, and preached " Christ and him crucified" to a congregation of two thousand wild aborigines. "Not a cape was turned, nor a river entered," says Bancroft, "but a Jesuit led the way." Dissent is free, thank God! Even dissent from dissent, at last; but history must crown with a just award those to whom, what- ever the dogma, THE CROSS meant obedience, patience, and self-denial,- who bore the symbol of a divine humanity to savage men, and, in the speechless death-agony of Indian tortures, offered their cruel execu- tioners the sign of universal love, mercy, and forgiveness !
Campanius and Eliot began labor in the same field at about the same time, and though the work of Eliot was the greatest and most success- ful, the purpose was identical, and the honor due each is of the same nature. The Swedish chaplain acquired the "Renni Rennappi" lan- guage during the six years of his stay on the Delaware, but his trans- lation of the Lutheran Catechism was not put to press until 1696. Eliot began to preach in Indian October 28th, 1646, the Mohegan New Testament was printed in Boston in 1661, and the whole Bible two years later-fifteen years after Eliot began the translation.
The printer's work on this Mohegan Bible-the first Bible published in America-was slowly done by an Englishman, and John Printer, an Indian youth. The work included a catechism, and the Psalms of David in Indian verse. Fifteen hundred copies were printed, at a cost of two thousand dollars ; several of them, richly bound, being presented to King Charles of England. "Eliot's Bible" may be seen in the Phila- delphia Library, in the library of Harvard College, and a few other like places : few as these copies are, those who can read them are fewer still.
To give an example of the difficulties encountered by Campanius in his translation, it is said that, as the Indians used no bread, he was compelled to translate the Lord's Prayer : "Give us this day a plentiful supply of venison and corn." Eliot, in translating the Biblical account in which the mother of Sisera is described as looking through the "lattice," described a lattice to his Indian assistants, upon whom he was compelled to depend for a word: what must have been his chagrin to find, afterwards, that he had made "the mother of Sisera look out of the window through a wicker-basket trap for eels !" A thorough scholar like Eliot was needed to deal with the synthetical difficulties of a language in which, as no unconverted Indian knelt, the phraes " kneeling down unto him" is of necessity translated and printed Wutappessttukgussunnoohwehtunkguok; yet Eliot translated several works into Mohegan, notably a Mohegan grammar, and an "Indian Logick Primer."
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THE PRAYING INDIANS.
It required the labor of years, says Loskiel, the Moravian mission- ary, to make the Delaware dialect capable of expressing abstract truth. A new language had to be forged out of existing terms, by circumlo- cutions and combinations. "Eliot caught the analogies of nature to convey moral truth in his Indian Bible." Each Indian tongue and dialect was a perfectly organized language, expressive of all material things, but there were few words to express aught else; no terms for continence, justice, gratitude, or holiness. It was impossible to trans- late the doxology into the purely synthetic, absolutely definite Indian tongue, and hence the Onondagas were taught to sing: "Glory be to our Father, and to His Son, and to Their Holy Ghost." Cotton Mather, who based his orthodoxy on witchcraft, gravely stated that he tested the demons around him, who made a pretense of being linguists, with the Indian tongue. These imps, Mather says, frequented his premises, and could well manage Latin, Hebrew, and Greek with ease, but at the Mohegan dialect they shrank back in dismay. The pleas- ing inference is that the Indians were a people unknown in hell; but the cruel old witch-hunter did not tell the story as a compliment to the Mohegans, but honestly as a fact,-one worthy the most fortunate spiritualist.
Both the Mohegans and Delawares were appreciative of the work done for them by their apostles and catechists. Eliot had three thou- sand six hundred praying Indians, whom he led like a flock, until King Philip's Indian war, when the men of Massachusetts, mad with terror and despair, turned upon even the inoffensive, praying Indians, broke up their unarmed civilized towns, and drove their innocent red fellow-Christians through suffering to foreign slavery. So perished the hope of John Eliot. The Swedish missionaries sent out by the King and Church of Sweden to the Delaware in 1696 wrote back : "The Indians and we are as one people. They are also very fond of learning the catechism, which has been printed in their language. They like to have it read to them, and they have engaged Mr. Charles Springer to teach their children to read it." And these same people protested alike to Swedes, Dutch, and English everywhere against the sale of rum to their young men.
Few, if any, of the Indians of the Delaware became Christians in the time of Campanius, but afterwards, when broken as a tribe by contact with the whites, the Moravians became the kindly guardians of a part of their people, and many of them joined that church, and settled peacefully and prosperously at "Conestoga," only to be driven from their last home in Pennsylvania by the murderous " Paxton boys," who, coveting their land, killed many of them in 1762. Under the able leadership of their chief, the educated, pious Isaac Still, the remnant of the Delawares emigrated to the valley of the Wabash, "far away" then, as they desired to be, " from war and rum." The last party of
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SCHEYICHBI AND THE STRAND.
about forty started in the fall of 1775. The great tribe had left the banks of the Poutaxit forever. In 1803 Hanna Hannah, last of the Lenapees in the east, died in Chester County. So passed away the peaceful, wise, and influential "original people." "In their dealings with the white man," says Colonel Wm. B. Sipes, in his sketch of the Pennsylvania Railroad, "they were scrupulously honest, and many of them became strongly attached to the early settlers. The treaties they made, which cost them so much and profited them so little, were never broken, and when they had dwindled away, before the advancing tide of civilization, to a mere remnant of a mighty race, they left the burial places of their fathers in search of new homes without a stain upon their honor."
Regretting that the limits of his work prohibit more extended recog- nition of the faithful Lenni Lenape, the author has chosen a word from their language to grace his title-page, "Scheyichbi" having been the ancient Indian name of New Jersey.
§ The Swedes' Governor, John Printz, writes Governor Winthrop, of New England, in his history, " was a man very furious and passionate, cursing and swearing, and also reviling the English of New Haven as runnigates." The Swedish policy brought Printz into a series of quarrels with the Dutch of Fort Nassau, and they found no exemp- tion from his bad manners. For all that, the Governor of the Swedes was an able man, and not only managed well in the fur trade, but so overslaughed and undermined the power of the Dutch, that in 1649, about ten years after the settlement by Minuit at Paghacking, the Swedes were supreme on the Delaware.
On the IIth of May, 1647, Peter Stuyvesant succeeded Wilhelmus Kieft as Director-General of New Netherland. For several years affairs at Manhattan restrained and preoccupied him, but in 1651 decided measures were taken to reassert the claims of the Dutch on South River, where Stuyvesant proceeded in person. After un- satisfactory negotiations with Printz, the Dutch bought of certain Indians lands five miles below Fort Christina, and at Newcastle, Delaware, they built a fort which they called Kasimir, Fort Nassau being demolished.
Failing to receive the reinforcements he demanded, Printz returned to Sweden, November 7th, 1653, leaving John Papegoia in charge of the colony. But Sweden had not forgotten her colony, but entrusted it to a "General College of Commerce," and in 1653 John Rising, Governor of New Sweden, in command of a strong military force, entered the Delaware, where there had been for some time less than a score of Swedish soldiers. Rising managed to gain possession of Fort Casimir without fighting, and at once fully restablished the power of Sweden, and soon concluded a just peace with the Indians.
When Peter Stuyvesant learned of the " dishonorable surrender of
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CONQUEST OF NEW SWEDEN.
the fort" made by Gerrit Bikker, and of his officers' desertion to the Swedes, with a third of his men, his rage was mighty, and he at once reported the affair to Amsterdam, where his anger was equaled by that of the directors. A Swedish ship, the Golden Shark, entering Man- hattan Bay soon after by mistake, was detained "until a reciprocal restitution shall have been made." Meantime, however, Rising wrote home an account of his success, saying that whereas he found but seventy persons in New Sweden, there were then three hundred and sixty-eight who acknowledged his authority, "including Hollanders and others."
On Sunday, September 5th, 1655, "after the sermon," Peter Stuy- vesant, with seven powerful vessels and about seven hundred men, sailed from Manhattan, under orders from Amsterdam, for the sub- jugation of New Sweden. The next (Monday) afternoon the fleet was off Helsingborg, then in ruins; on the 10th of the month the Dutch forces landed near Casimir, which, being much overpowered, surrendered without defense. Rising shut himself up in Fort Christina, and, though closely invested from the 15th, held out until the 25th of September. The Swedish town having been sacked, New Sweden ravaged, and Christina invested by an overwhelming force, Rising, to avoid an exterminating bombardment, surrendered, and the flag of Sweden, which in defense of freedom had waved victoriously in Europe, sank to rise no more in America.
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