USA > New York > New York City > A history of New-York : from the beginning of the world to the end of the Dutch dynasty > Part 12
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gown and morocco shoes for Sunday, and deeply skilled in the mystery of making apple sweetmeats, long sauce, and pumpkin pie.
·Having thus provided himself, like a pedler, with a heavy knapsack, wherewith to regale his shoulders through the journey of life, he literally sets out on the peregrination. His whole family, household fur- niture, and farming utensils, are hoisted into a cov- ered cart ; his own and his wife's wardrobe packed up in a firkin-which done, he shoulders his axe, takes staff in hand, whistles " yankee doodle," and trudges off to the woods, as confident of the protec- tion of Providence, and relying as cheerfully upon his own resources, as did ever a patriarch of yore, when he journeyed into a strange country of the Gen- tiles. Having buried himself in the wilderness, he builds himself a log hut, clears away a corn-field and potatoe-patch, and Providence smiling upon his la- bours, is soon surrounded by a snug farm and some half a score of flaxen-headed urchins, who, by their size, seem to have sprung all at once out of the earth, like a crop of toad-stools.
But it is not the nature of this most indefatigable of speculators to rest contented with any state of sublunary enjoyment-improvement is his darling passion, and having thus improved his lands, the next care is to provide a mansion worthy the residence of a landholder. A huge palace of pine boards imme- diately springs up in the midst of the wilderness, large enough for a parish church, and furnished with
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windows of all dimensions, but so rickety and flimsy withal, that every blast gives it a fit of the ague.
By the time the outside of this mighty air castle is completed, either the funds or the zeal of our adven- turer are exhausted, so that he barely manages to half finish one room within, where the whole family burrow together-while the rest of the house is de- voted to the curing of pumpkins, or storing of car- rots and potatoes, and is decorated with fanciful fes- toons of dried apples and peaches. The outside remaining unpainted, grows venerably black with time; the family wardrobe is laid under contribution for old hats, petticoats, and breeches, to stuff into the broken windows, while the four winds of heaven keep up a whistling and howling about this aerial palace, and play as many unruly gambols, as they did of yore in the cave of old Æolus.
The humble log hut, which whilome nestled this improving family snugly within its narrow but com- fortable walls, stands hard by, in ignominious con- trast, degraded into a cow-house or pig-sty; and the whole scene reminds one forcibly of a fable, which I am surprised has never been recorded, of an aspir- ing snail, who abandoned his humble habitation, which he had long filled with great respectability, to crawl into the empty shell of a lobster-where he would no doubt have resided with great style and splendour, the envy and hate of all the pains-taking snails in his neighbourhood, had he not accidentally perished with cold, in one corner of his stupendous mansion.
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Being thus completely settled, and, to use his own words, " to rights," one would imagine that he would begin to enjoy the comforts of his situation, to read newspapers, talk politics, neglect his own business, and attend to the affairs of the nation, like a useful and patriotic citizen ; but now it is that his wayward disposition begins again to operate. He soon grows tired of/ a spot where there is no longer any room for improvement-sells his farm, air castle, petticoat windows and all, reloads his cart, shoulders his axe, puts himself at the head of his family, and wanders away in search of new lands-again to fell trees- again to clear corn-fields-again to build a shingle palace, and again to sell off and wander.
'Such were the people of Connecticut, who bor- dered upon the eastern frontier of Nieuw Neder- landts ; and my readers may easily imagine what ob- noxious neighbours this light-hearted but restless tribe must have been to our tranquil progenitors. If they cannot, I would ask them, if they have ever known one of our regular, well-organized Dutch families, whom it hath pleased Heaven to afflict with the neighbourhood of a French boarding-house ? The honest old burgher cannot take his afternoon's pipe on the bench before his door, but he is persecuted with the scraping of fiddles, the chattering of women, and the squalling of children-he cannot sleep at night for the horrible melodies of some amateur, who chooses to serenade the moon, and display his ter- rible proficiency in execution, on the clarionet, the hautboy, or some other soft-toned instrument-nor
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can he leave the street door open, but his house is defiled by the unsavoury visits of a troop of pug dogs, who even sometimes carry their loathsome ravages into the sanctum sanctorum, the parlour !
If my readers have ever witnessed the sufferings of such a family, so situated, they may form some idea how our worthy ancestors were distressed by their mercurial neighbours of Connecticut.
Gangs of these marauders, we are told, penetrated into the New-Netherland settlements, and threw whole villages into consternation by their unparalleled volubility, and their intolerable inquisitiveness-two evil habits hitherto unknown in those parts, or only known to be abhorred; for our ancestors were noted as being men of truly Spartan taciturnity, and who neither knew nor cared aught about any body's con- cerns but their own. Many enormities were com- mitted on the highways, where several unoffending burghers were brought to a stand, and tortured with questions and guesses, which outrages occasioned as much vexation and heartburning as does the modern right of search on the high seas.
Great jealousy did they likewise stir up, by their intermeddling and successes among the divine sex ; for being a race of brisk, likely, pleasant-tongued varlets, they soon seduced the light affections of the simple damsels from their ponderous Dutch gallants. Among other hideous customs, they attempted to in- troduce among them that of bundling, which the Dutch lasses of the Nederlandts, with that eager pas- sion for novelty and foreign fashions natural to their
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sex, seemed very well inclined to follow, but that their mothers, being more experienced in the world, and better acquainted with men and things, strenu- ously discountenanced all such outlandish innova- tions.
But what chiefly operated to embroil our ances- tors with these strange folk, was an unwarrantable liberty which they occasionally took of entering in hordes into the territories of the New-Netherlands, and settling themselves down, without leave or li- cense, to improve the land, in the manner I have be- fore noticed. This unceremonious mode of taking possession of new land was technically termed squat- ting, and hence is derived the appellation of squat- ters ; a name odious in the ears of all great landholders, and which is given to those enterprising worthies who seize upon land first, and take their chance to make good their title to it afterwards.
All these grievances, and many others which were constantly accumulating, tended to form that dark and portentous cloud, which, as I observed in a for- mer chapter, was slowly gathering over the tranqui. province of New-Netherlands. The pacific cabinet of Van Twiller, however, as will be perceived in the sequel, bore them all with a magnanimity that re- dounds to their immortal credit-becoming by pas- sive endurance inured to this increasing mass of wrongs; like that mighty man of old, who by dint of carrying about a calf from the time it was born, con- tinued to carry it without difficulty when it had grown to be an ox.
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CHAPTER VIII.
How the Fort Goed Hoop was fearfully beleaguered -how the renowned Wouter fell into a profoun doubt, and how he finally evaporated.
By this time, my readers must fully perceive what an arduous task I have undertaken-collecting and collating, with painful minuteness, the chronicles of past times, whose events almost defy the powers of research-exploring a little kind of Herculaneum of history, which had lain nearly for ages buried under the rubbish of years, and almost totally forgotten -. "": raking up the limbs and fragments of disjointed facts, and endeavouring to put them scrupulously together, so as to restore them to their original form and con- nexion-now lugging forth the character of an al- most forgotten hero, like a mutilated statuc-now deciphering a half-defaced inscription, and now lighting upon a mouldering manuscript, which, after painful study, scarce repays the trouble of perusal.
In such case, how much has the reader to depend upon the honour and probity of his author, lest, like a cunning antiquarian, he either impose upon him some spurious fabrication of his own, for a precious relic from antiquity-or else dress up the dismem- bered fragment with such false trappings, that it is scarcely possible to distinguish the truth from the fiction with which it is enveloped ! This is a griev- ance which I have more than once had to lament,
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in the course of my wearisome researches among the works of my fellow-historians, who have strangely disguised and distorted the facts respecting this coun- try; and particularly respecting the great province of New-Netherlands ; as will be perceived by any who will take the trouble to compare their romantic effusions, tricked out in the meretricious gauds of fable, with this authentic history.
I have had more vexations of this kind to encoun- ter, in those parts of my history which treat of the transactions on the eastern border, than in any other, In consequence of the troops of historians who have infested those quarters, and have shown the honest people of Nieuw-Nederlandts no mercy in their works. Among the rest, Mr. Benjamin Trumbull arrogantly declares, that "the Dutch were always mere intruders." Now. to this I shall make no other reply than to proceed in the steady narration of my. history, which will contain not only proofs that the Dutch had clear title and possession in the fair valleys of the Connecticut, and that they were wrongfully dispossessed thereof-but likewise, that they have been scandalously maltreated ever since, by the mis- representations of the crafty historians of New-Eng- land. And in this I shall be guided by a spirit of truth and impartiality, and a regard to immortal fame-for I would not wittingly dishonour my work by a single falsehood, misrepresentation, or preju dice, though it should gain our forefathers the whole country of New-England.
It was at an early period of the province, and pre-
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vious to the arrival. of the renowned Wouter, that the cabinet of Nieuw-Nederlandts purchased the lands about the Connecticut, and established, for their superintendence and protection, a fortified post on the banks of the river, which was called Fort Goed Hoop, and was situated hard by the present fair city of Hartford. The command of this im- portant post, together with the rank, title, and ap- pointment of commissary, were given in charge to the gallant Jacobus Van Curlet, or, as some histo- rians will have it, Van Curlis-a most doughty sol- dier, of that stomachful class of which we have such numbers on parade days-who are famous for eating all they kill. He was of a very soldierlike appear- ance, and would have been an exceeding tall man had his legs been in proportion to his body; but the latter being long, and the former uncommonly short, it gave him the uncouth appearance of a tall man's body mounted upon a little man's legs. He made up for this turnspit construction of body by throwing his legs to such an extent when he marched, that you would have sworn he had on the identical seven- league boots of the far-famed Jack the giant-killer ;_ and so astonishingly high did he tread, on any grea military occasion, that his soldiers were oft times alarmed, lest he should trample himself under foot.
But notwithstanding the erection of this fort, and the appointment of this ugly little man of war as a commander, the intrepid Yankees continued those daring interlopings, which I have hinted at in my last chapter; and taking advantage of the character
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which the cabinet of Wouter Van Twiller soon ac- quired, for profound and phlegmatic tranquillity-did audaciously invade the territories of the Nieuw- Nederlandts, and squat themselves down within the very jurisdiction of Fort Goed Hoop.
On beholding this outrage, the long-bodied Van Curlet proceeded as became a prompt and valiant officer. He immediately protested against these un- warrantable encroachments, in Low Dutch, by way of inspiring more terror, and forthwith despatched a copy of the protest to the governor at New-Amster- dam, together with a long and bitter account of the aggressions of the enemy. This done, he ordered his men, one and all, to be of good cheer-shut the gate of the fort, smoked three pipes, went to bed, and awaited the result with a resolute and intrepid tran- quillity, that greatly animated his adherents, and no doubt struck sore dismay and affright into the hearts of the enemy.
Now it came to pass, that about this time, the re- nowned Wouter Van Twiller, full of years and hon- ours, and council dinners, had reached that period of life and faculty which, according to the great Gulli- ver, entitles a man to admission into the ancient order of Struldbruggs. He employed his time in smoking his Turkish pipe, amid an assembly of sages, equally enlightened, and nearly as venerable as him- self, and who, for their silence, their gravity, their wisdom, and their cautious averseness to coming to any conclusion in business, are only to be equalled by certain profound corporations which I have
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known in my time. Upon reading the protest of the gallant Jacobus Van Curlet, therefore, his excel- lency fell straightway into one of the deepest doubts that ever he was known to encounter; his capacious head gradually drooped on his chest, he closed his eyes, and inclined his ear to one side, as if listening with great attention to the discussion that was going on in his belly ; which all who knew him declared to be the huge court-house, or council chamber of his thoughts ; forming to his head what the House of Representatives do to the Senate. An inarticulate sound, very much resembling a snore, occasionally escaped him-but the nature of this internal cogita- tion was never known, as he never opened his lips on the subject to man, woman, or child. In the mean time, the protest of Van Curlet laid quietly on the table, where it served to light the pipes of the venerable sages assembled in council; and in the great smoke which they raised, the gallant Jacobus, his protest, and his mighty Fort Goed Hoop, were soon as completely beclouded and forgotten, as is a question of emergency swallowed up in the speeches and resolutions of a modern session of Congress.
There are certain emergencies when your pro- found legislators and sage deliberative councils are mightily in the way of a nation; and when an ounce of hairbrained decision is worth a pound of sage doubt and cautious discussion. Such, at least, was the case at present; for while the renowned Wouter Van Twiller was daily battling with his doubts, and his resolution growing weaker and weaker in the
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contest, the enemy pushed farther and farther into his territories, and assumed a most formidable apear- ance in the neighbourhood of Fort Goed Hoop. Here they founded the mighty town of Piquag, or, as it has since been called, Weathersfield, a place which, if we may credit the assertion of that worthy historian, John Josselyn, Gent., " hath been infamous by reason of the witches therein."-And so daring did these men of Piquag become, that they extended those plantations of onions, for which their town is illustrious, under the very noses of the garrison of Fort Goed Hoop-insomuch that the honest Dutch- men could not look toward that quarter without tears in their eyes.
. This crying injustice was regarded with proper indignation by the gallant Jacobus Van Curlet. He absolutely trembled with the amazing violence of his choler, and the exacerbations of his valour; which seemed to be the more turbulent in their workings, from the length of the body in which they were agi- tated. He forthwith proceeded to strengthen his redoubts, heighten his breastworks, deepen his fosse, and fortify his position with a double row of abattis ; after which valiant precautions, he despatched a fresh courier with tremendous accounts of his peril- ous situation.
The courier chosen to bear these alarming des- patches was a fat oily little man, as being least liable to be worn out, or to lose leather on the journey ; and to insure his speed, he was mounted on the fleetest wagon-horse in the garrison, remarkable for his VOL. I. S
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length of limb, largeness of bone, and hardness of trot ; and so tall, that the little messenger was obliged to climb on his back by means of his tail and crupper. Such extraordinary speed did he make, that he ar- rived at Fort Amsterdam in little less than a month, though the distance was full two hundred pipes, or about a hundred and twenty miles.
The extraordinary appearance of this portentous stranger would have thrown the whole town of New- Amsterdam into a quandary, had the good people troubled themselves about any thing more than their domestic affairs. With an appearance of great hurry and business, and smoking a short travelling pipe, he proceeded on a long swing trot through the muddy lanes of the metropolis, demolishing whole batches of dirt pies, which the little Dutch children were making in the road; and for which kind of pastry the children of this city have ever been famous. On arriving at the governor's house, he climbed down from his steed in great trepidation ; roused the gray- headed door-keeper, old Skaats, who, like his lineal descendant and faithful representative, the venerable crier of our court, was nodding at his post-rattled at the door of the council chamber, and startled the members as they were dozing over a plan for cs- tablishing a public market.
At that very moment a gentle grunt, or rather a deep-drawn snore, was heard from the chair of the governor ; a whiff of smoke was at the same instant observed to escape from his lips, and a light cloud to ascend from the bowl of his pipe. The council of
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course supposed him engaged in deep sleep for the good of the community, and, according to custom in all such cases established, every man bawled out si- lence, in order to maintain tranquillity; when, of a sudden, the door flew open, and the little courier strad- dled into the apartment, cased to the middle in a pair of Ilessian boots, which he had got into for the sake of expedition. In his right hand he held forth the omi- nous despatches, and with his left he grasped firmly the waistband of his galligaskins, which had unfortu- nately given way, in the exertion of descending from his horse. He stumped resolutely up to the gov- ernor, and with more hurry than perspicuity, deliv- ered his message. But fortunately his ill tidings came too late to ruffle the tranquillity of this most tranquil of rulers. His venerable excellency had just breathed and smoked his last-his lungs and his pipe having been exhausted together, and his peace- ful soul having escaped in the last whiff that curled from his tobacco-pipe. In a word, the renowned Walter the Doubter, who had so often slumbered with his contemporaries, now slept with his fathers, and Wilhelmus Kieft governed in his stead. 1
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BOOK IV.
CONTAINING THE CHRONICLES OF THE REIGN OF WILLIAM THE TESTY.
CHAPTER I.
Showing the nature of history in general ; containing furthermore the universal acquirements of William the Testy, and how a man may learn so much as to render himself good for nothing.
WHEN the lofty Thucydides is about to enter upon his description of the plague that desolated Athens, one of his modern commentators assures the reader, that the history is now going to be exceeding solemn, serious, and pathetic ; and hints, with that air of chuckling gratulation with which a good dame draws forth a choice morsel from a cupboard to regale a favourite, that this plague will give his history a most . agreeable variety.
In like manner did my heart leap within me, when I came to the dolorous dilemma of Fort Good Hope, which I at once perceived to be the forerunner of a series of great events and entertaining disasters, Such are the true subjects for the historic pen. For what is history, in fact, but a kind of Newgate calen- der, a register of the crimes and miseries that man has inflicted on his fellow-man ? It is a huge libel on
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human nature, to which we industriously add page after page, volume after volume, as if we were build- ing up a monument to the honour, rather than the infamy of our species. If we turn over the pages of these chronicles that man has written of himself, what are the characters dignified by the appellation of great, and held up to the admiration of posterity ? Tyrants, robbers, conquerors, renowned only for the magnitude of their misdeeds, and the stupendous wrongs and miseries they have inflicted on mankind -warriors, who have hired themselves to the trade of blood, not from motives of virtuous patriotism, or to protect the injured and defenceless, but merely to gain the vaunted glory of being adroit and success- ful in massacreing their fellow-beings ! What are the great events that constitute a glorious era ?- The fall of empires-the desolation of happy countries- splendid cities smoking in their ruins-the proudest works of art tumbled in the dust-the shrieks and groans of whole nations ascending unto heaven !
It is thus that historians may be said to thrive on the miseries of mankind, like birds of prey that hover over the field of battle, to fatten on the mighty dead. It was observed by a great projector of in- land lock-navigation, that rivers, lakes, and oceans, were only formed to feed canals. In like manner I am tempted to believe, that plots, conspiracies, wars, victories, and massacres, are ordained by Providence only as food for the historian.
It is a source of great delight to the philosopher in studying the wonderful economy of nature, to
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trace the mutual dependencies of things, how they are created reciprocally for each other, and how the most noxious and apparently unnecessary animal has its uses. Thus those swarms of flies, which are so often execrated as useless vermin, are created for the sustenance of spiders-and spiders, on the other hand, are evidently made to devour flies. So those heroes who have been such scourges to the world, were bounteously provided as themes for the poet and the historian, while the poet and the historian were destined to record the achievements of heroes !
These, and many similar reflections, naturally arose in my mind, as I took up my. pen to commence the reign of William Kieft: for now the stream of our history, which hitherto has rolled in a tranquil cur- rent, is about to depart for ever from its peaceful haunts, and brawl through many a turbulent and rug- ged scene. Like some sleek ox, which, having fed and fattened in a rich clover field, lies sunk in luxu- rious repose, and will bear repeated taunts and blows, before it heaves its unwieldy limbs and clum- sily arouses from its slumbers ; so the province of the Nieuw-Nederlandts, having long thrived and grown corpulent, under the prosperous reign of the Doubter, was reluctantly awakened to a melancholy conviction, that, by patient sufferance, its grievances had become so numerous and aggravating, that it was preferable to repel than endure them. The reader will now witness the manner in which a peaceful community advances towards a state of war; which it is too apt to approach, as a horse
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does a drum, with much prancing and parade, but with little progress-and too often with the wrong end foremost.
WILHELMUS. KIEFT, who in 1634 ascended the gubernatorial chair (to borrow a favourite, though clumsy appellation of modern phraseologists,) was in form, feature, and character, the very reverse of Wouter Van Twiller, his renowned predecessor. He was of very respectable descent, his father be- ing Inspector of Windmills in the ancient town of Saardam ; and our hero, we are told, made very cu- rious investigations into the nature and operations of those machines when a boy, which is one reason why he afterwards came to be so ingenious a gov- ernor. His name, according to the most ingenious etymologists, was a corruption of Kyver, that is to say, wrangler or scolder, and expressed the hereditary disposition of his family; which for nearly two cen- turies had kept the windy town of Saardam in hot water, and produced more tartars and brimstones than any ten families in the placc-and so truly did Wilhelmus Kieft inherit this family endowment, that he had scarcely been a year in the discharge of his government, before he was universally known by the appellation of WILLIAM THE TESTY.
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