USA > New York > New York City > History of the New Netherlands, province of New York, and state of New York : to the adoption of the federal Constitution. Vol. I > Part 10
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. Kieft's fame is not so unclouded, After a stormy life he ap- pears to have ended it in a tempest. Again he was involved, and inextricably, in hostility with his savage neighbours : towards the end of his turbulent administration he incurred the displeasure of all the Dutch colonists of any respectability, by an atrocious act intended to destroy or weaken the power of the natives. A party of the Iroquois, probably Mohawks, as they were the nearest of the confederacy to the Dutch settlements, appeared advancing towards Manhattoes in warlike array, for the purpose of collecting tribute from the river Indians, and others in the neighbourhood. The latter unprepared for the visit, had gathered on the west side of the Hudson, seeking protection or mediation from the Dutch: but Kieft, instead of seizing the opportunity to conciliate the neighbouring tribes, took advantage of the occasion to perpetrate
* This name is derived from an owner of the land, Throgmorton. It was famil- iarly called Throgsneck, and after changed to Frogsneck.
t History of Long Island.
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KIEFT'S MASSACRE.
an infamous massacre, by sacrificing the fugitives, With the soldiers of the fort, joined to the worthless and unthinking of the populace, and the privateersmen or others, from the vessels in the harbour, he crossed the Hudson and fell upon the defence- less, unsuspecting natives, and murdered indiscriminately men, women and children, during a night of horrors.
Those who escaped, and the inhabitants of the neighbouring country joined to revenge this gross and faithless deed of blood. Again the innocent cultivators suffered all the miseries attendant upon savage warfare. Kieft was justly and loudly accused as the author of another war. The inhabitants of the colony complained to the authorities at home, and the Director-general was recalled by the Dutch West India Company. He embarked with his riches, for while others suffered, he had accumulated wealth ; but the ship was wrecked on the coast of Wales, and the unhappy governor drowned .*
The colony Kieft had to govern was certainly not composed of the best materials. It neither had the advantages of the puritan settlement of the east, nor the Virginia colony of the south. The Swedes on the Delaware, were of a higher character, and so were, subsequently, the Quakers of Pennsylvania and West Jersey. The colonists of New Netherlands in general, particularly in New Amsterdam, at the first, were mere traders seeking gain ; and in Kieft's time, a motley set of grasping petty merchants, mercenary soldiers, privateersmen and other sailors, with a few planters and very worthy emigrants from Holland, constituted the people. The West India Company, whose servant Kieft was, had little else in view than gain. They threw a negro slave population from their African settlements into the colony. Even in the boasted times of the Georges of England and of the elder Pitt, (Lord Chatham,) colonial policy in Europe was calculated altogether for the profit of the mother country, When Chatham opposed certain oppressive measures adopted by England, it was only because he had the sagacity to see, that by bending the bow too far, it would break, He was willing to strain to the utmost. "Parliament could bind the colonies in all cases. The colonists should not be allowed to manufacture even a hob-nail." If such were the maxims of Eu- ropean governinent in this enlightened time, and with this great
* Sir William Kieft was still in New Amsterdam on the 25th July, 1647 (as ap- pears by a proclamation of Governor Stuyvesant, ) and was acting as one of the Gov. ernor's council, (MISS. translated by Mr. Westbrook for Common Council of New York ) That he sailed from the New Netherlands during that year, we learn from Dr. Vanderdonck, who says " the ship Princess, in which he embarked, deposited him and his treasures at the bottom of the ocean." Albany Records, Vol. 2d : De Vries, Hubbard, Trumbull, &c.
A
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NIEUW AMSTERDAM From Doctor Adrien Von der Dunk's Map Published in amsterdam Mais
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A. The Fort. B. The Church. C. The pole on which to hoist, a flagg on arrivals. E. The Governors house. E. The weigh house. C. Plone of argention . I. The Company's Store houses. K. The Town House.
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KIEFT.
statesman, after the present constitution of Great Britain had given security and liberty to Englishmen, what are we to look for in Kieft's time, when England was involved in the darkness preced- ing her revolution of 1688, and when the true theory of a repre- sentative government was little understood and scarcely practised in other parts of the civilized world. It follows that the colonial government of New Netherland was, in some measure, arbitrary -meant for the benefit of the West India Company. Kieft was pressed upon by the puritans on the eastern border, and by the Swedes on his western : while such English as mingled in his population were ever in opposition to his rule, as they were im- bued with the light of republicanism from New England. Such were his difficulties, and they continued under his successor Stuyvesant, although his superior wisdom and energy redeemed the colony, in a great measure, from the evils which surrounded it."
* Many have been Indian-killers : some have wished to save and instruct them : the teachers have been few indeed.
The pious and generous labours of Elliot and Mayhew to make christians and civil- ized men, have handed down their names with honour to posterity, although the fruits of their cultivation were of little worth. Dr. Dwight represents the scanty remains of the Mohicans in 1820-1, as living upon the land reserved for them in the township of Montville, a lazy, sauntering life, principally subsisting upon the fish of the neigh- - bouring streams. In 1774, there were here 206, in Stonington 237, in Groton 186, in Lyme 104, in Norwich 61, and in Preston 30. Now, I presume (1839) these numbers are reduced to almost nothing. Of the Stockbridge Indians, Dr. Dwight tells us, from undoubted authority, that in 1734, John Sargeant of New Jersey devoted himself to teaching them, and others joined in the labour. Many submitted to bap- tisin. In 1751, Mr. Edwards of New Jersey succeeded Sargeant, and in 1757. the son of Sargeant took charge of the people, and they subsequently removed to New Stockbridge in the state of New York. They are considered as the oldest branch of the Mohicans, and those remaining have the character of being a little superior to other half-civilized Indians. The Indians of Stonington are described by the same author in 1821-2, as a poor degraded miserable race of beings : they are descendants of the heroic Pequots. They live in part on the lands reserved for them, and in part among the neighbouring farmers as servants. Prodigal as lazy, stupid, lying thieves ; dirty, half naked drunkards. A few exceptions occasionally occur. At Cape Cod or its neighbourhood, is a place called Massapee, occupied by Indians, and at Yar- mouth once stood an Indian church. Among the last relics, says Dr. Dwight, of the efforts "successfully made for the conversion of the Indians to christianity," he states that at one time there were in New England " not far from ten thousand pray- ing Indians." But he says that the attempts " which have been made in modern times to spread the influence of the gospel among them, have in a great measure been unsuccessful." This he attributes to the opinion prevalent among them, that the whites are their enemies, and to the general conduct of the whites towards them and each other. In fact, the Indian converts, so called, or praying Indians, did not and could not know or feel any thing of real christianity either in New England or elsewhere ; they were merely deteriorated savages, ready to return to savage life and savage murders at any opportunity ; and by degrees sunk to the state above describ. ed, at Stonington.
In the township of Paris, state of New York, is an Indian reserve six miles square called Brothertown. These Indians are Oneidas, Mohicans, and others. In 1821-2 Dr. Dwight says, there were forty families of agriculturists. Three of them bave framed houses. Their husbandry is of inferior character. A school-house is built for thein by the state, and a quaker was teaching the children.
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SWEDES.
CHAPTER VI.
Swedes on the Delaware - Minuits - Printz - The Stuarts- Colonization of New England-Doctor Vanderdonck-Peter Stuyvesant-Controversy with the commissioners of the united New England Colonies -- Charges against Stuyvesant as con- spiring with the Indians to cut off the English, denied and refuted.
WHILE the thriving colonies of New England occupied the at- tention of Kieft in one direction, and the Indians required all his military force near the Hudson, the art or revenge of Minuits, his predecessor, planted a thorn within his side on the Delaware which he had no power to remove,
John Printz, a Swedish colonel of cavalry, was appointed gov- ernor of New Sweden, and in 1642 arrived in the Delaware, where previous to his coming Jost de Bogadt had ruled, With Colonel Printz came the Rev. John Campancies, the future histo- rian of the new territory. An addition to the colony of several vessels with emigrants had accompanied Printz, and he establish ed himself on the island of Tonnekong, near the mouth of the Schuylkill, which was in 1643, granted to him by the crown of Sweden, and there he built a house for himself, and a fort, which he called New Gottenburgh. His dwelling was somewhat am- bitiously denominated Printz-hoff, but he did not neglect to erect in his neighbourhood a place for public worship. He confirmed the purchase made by Minuits from the natives, added presents to conciliate their good will, and was repaid for his just government by the friendship of the Indians and the prosperity of the Swedes.
Printz, by permission of his sovereign, Christina, resigned his government to John Papegoa, who was succeeded by John Risingh, of whom I shall have occasion to speak hereafter.
The reader of American history can have no just view of his subject without reference to the events in operation at the time in Europe, and to their causes, particularly in England, and as it re- spects New York, in Holland,
When James I. in 1603, escaped from the thraldom of his Scottish Barons, each one of whom felt himself a prince, according to the feudal system, the son of the misguided and probably guilty Mary, found himself a successor to the tyrannic power the Tudors had established in England. James found the people who had served Elizabeth on their knees ready to kneel to him ; and, although his tongue gave him the lie, he said, "I am Eng-
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STUARTS:
land." He was however, a king, and he hated the Netherlanders because they had thrown off the yoke of a tyrant. He called them rebels ; yet from a dread of the power of the house of Austria, he joined with France in establishing that republic to which we owe the foundation of New York.
But the first of the Stuarts found already diffused among his English subjects, though not apparent to his view, a vigorous and youthful spirit that had been cherished by the early reformers, and which was teaching them that they had rights and property ; to secure which they must aim at self-government. The grand- mother of James, had in a moment of passion, declared to the lords of the congregation in Scotland, that " the promises of · princes were only considered binding by them while they favoured their kingly interests ;" and although the descendants of the queen-regent continued to act on this principle, the people of England had not forgotten the caution conveyed by the words.
'To counteract the growing desire for self-government and se- curity of property, James I. cherished the prelacy and listened with delight to the courtly bishop, who, in answer to the king's royal question, "Have I not a right to take the subject's money without his consent ?" said " certainly, sire, for you are the breath of our nostrils."*
That Charles I., so educated, by such teachers, should raise a rampart of prelacy around the throne, the crown and what he had been taught were his rights, to oppose the puritanism of the peo- ple and the liberty of thought, was to be expected. The ray of truth, when it has entered into man, increases until it is a perfect day. Interest, passion, selfishness, are the clouds which obscure it, and around Charles they formed a veil thick as night. That he should stretch the prerogative to breaking ; raise up Laud and the bishops, or any others, as the instruments of his tyranny, and so use them until he brought his head to the scaffold; that he should employ ship-money for the purpose of oppressing the Dutch, and taxing the seas, by making that people pay him for the privilege of taking food from it, may not surprise us. He had been taught and willingly believed that he had a right so to do. But that the people who had sought refuge in the wilds of New Eng- land from kingly and priestly tyranny, should at the same time, be usurping and exercising power over the New Netherlands, and encroaching upon men and their territory with no other pretence or claim than that derived from prelacy and monarchy, is an anomaly that must give us pain.
"Put not your trust in Princes," was the scriptural quotation made use of by Wentworth, Lord Strafford, when he said that Charles I., contrary to' his kingly promise, had signed his death-warrant.
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PURITANS.
Sir William Kieft and the New Netherlanders were accused by New England of " hostile aggression." He very justly compared the accusation to that of the wolf in the fable, who, seeking a quarrel with the lamb, a desirable object for his appetite, charged the devoted victim with having disturbed the waters of the stream from which his wolfship was drinking, at the source, by pre- suming to quench his thirst at an humble distance, lower down.
The English puritans had found hospitality, place of refuge and employment in preference to other foreigners, among the protest- ant republicans of Holland. During their residence among them they learned that the Dutch had found and taken possession of a New Batavia in America, and the English refugees were encour- aged to seek a New England on the same continent beyond the sea, where no king or prelate-no court of high commission or star chamber would seize on their property, or control their con- sciences. The Mayflower arrived at Plymouth, a free constitu- tion for the government.of the voluntary exiles was formed on her deck. They landed on snow-covered rocks, and amidst the wilds founded an empire.
The admiring natives received their visiters as friends ; and, without comprehending their motives for desiring property in the soil, they gave, or sold, their land for what was to them valuable, and to the strangers of little worth. Many and sore were the af- flictions of the little band of republicans, but they were consoled by the purity of their motives and the presence of civil and reli- gious liberty. They established laws. for their own government. 'They founded a seminary for their children's education, as the only security for the laws they established. They increased and pros- pered ; for the good and the wise sought their society. But for the jealousy and fears of the first Charles, those giants, before whom he trembled, Hampden, Hazlerigg, and Cromwell, would have become a peaceful portion of the Plymouth band of brothers : perhaps Pym might have joined them, and the unhappy Went- worth, who deserted the cause of the people for riches, power, and the fatal name of Strafford, might have lived to rivet chains on his country.
It seems strange that Hume could imagine no other motive for John Hampden's desire for a retreat in New England but that of hearing long prayers and long sermons. The historian, when he wrote, knew of the prosperity of the colonies, and even predicted their independence. Could he not have thought and believed that Hampden would have employed himself in promoting that prosperity and laying the foundation of that knowledge which was to preserve and increase it.
Happy and prosperous as the puritans were in New England, they looked with envy on their neighbours of New Netherland,
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KIEFT'S DIFFICULTIES.
who had preceded them in settling on a more genial soil, and be- side rivers greater and better fitted for commerce than had fallen to their lot. The Dutch trading house, on Fresh or Connecticut river, excited their jealousy, and they founded pretensions on the claims made by England to a right over the three great streamns possessed by the Dutch-the Delaware, Hudson, and Connec- ticut. The latter being the nearest, was first invaded: Colonies traversed the wilderness from Massachusetts, first to the Dutch Huy's Goed-kope, and began to build Hartford, and then farther south to New Haven, and even to Delaware .*
Writers, both English and American have endeavoured to cast ridicule upon the complaints of Governor Kieft, made in his pro- tests and remonstrances to the government of New England ; yet the grievances he states are precisely those which a stronger neighbour, intending to drive off a weaker from the soil he co- veted, would inflict upon him. The tiller of the earth is inter- rupted in his labour ; the horses are driven from their accustomed pasture in the meadows ; the servants of the weaker are beaten by
* Several purchases were made of the Indians during Kieft's administration. In 1643 the people of Hempstead bought a large quantity of land from the natives. Ilc entered into articles of agreement with Tachpoussic, chief of the Indians of that name, in 1656, by which they put themselves under the protection of the Dutch go- vernment, with all their lands on Long Island, as far as the Dutch line extended, ac- cording to the treaty of Hartford, promising mutual assistance. This agreement was made at the Fort, in New Amsterdam, March 12, 1656. The year before, the sa- chem of Selasacott (Brookhaven) sold a district of land in that quarter, and the sagamore of Long Island sold Great-neck to the same.
In 1645 Kieft granted the town of Flushing to Thomas Huntington, John Hicks, and others, and empowered them to choose for their own government a scout or con- stable, with the powers of a scout in Holland, or constable in England, they paying one-tenth, if demanded, except for one acre.
The intelligent and patriotic industry of the Hon. Silas Wood, of Huntington, has given us a picture of the state of Long Island about this time. He says that, in 1646, at the first town-meeting held by the people of Gravesend, every inhabitant was (or was ordered) to make twenty polcs of fence, to enclose a common field for corn, and in 1648 a fence was ordered, in like manner, for a calf pasture.
To show that the first settlers in this part of our state were not obliged to ccar their land, but, on the contrary, were anxious to preserve forest trees, we are told that, in 1654, " the town of South Old passed a resolution, that no person should cut trees, or sell wood, from their common lands, for pipe-staves or heading, or other pur poses, to any person not being a townsman. without the town's liberty. And, five years after, the town of Huntington prohibited the cutting timber, for sale, within three miles of the settlement." And, in subsequent years, passed similar resolu- tions. Oysterbay and Newtown made similar laws on this subject.
It was the custom of these carly settlers of Long Island to employ herdsmen, who drove their cattle to pasture. In 1658, and subsequently, the cattle of Hempstead were driven as far as Cow-neck. (So named from the custom. ) The cattle of Hunt- ington were, at times, driven to Horse-neck.
As the Indian mode of clearing was not in use with the settlers, the brush and underwood increased to the diminution of the pasturage, and we find that, in 1672, the governor and court of assize ordered, that the inhabitants of Long Island, from the age of sixteen to that of sixty, should turn out four days in every year to cut down brush and underwood. Similar regulations were made by the towns, at va- rious periods.
VOL. I.
12
90
P. STUYVESANT.
. those of the stronger. This was hard to bear by the first pur- chaser and occupant ; a member of a republic, which had recently thrown off the yoke of Spain, and carried her growing com- merce to the extremes of the earth : and to be borne from the des- cendants of exiles, who, however prosperous, only flourished through the neglect of the mother country, while she was engaged in civil contention .*
Kieft, as we have seen, was unequal to the contest with New England and New Sweden, and left the struggle to be continued by an abler head and a firmer hand.
Peter Stuyvesant is described by tradition, (and by all 1647 our writers,) as brave and honest; recently from Curacoa, where he had been vice-director. He had been wounded in an attack upon St. Martin's, was a soldier and mariner, (ac- cording to the fashion of that day, when both professions were united in the same person, as . in the celebrated Blake and noto- rious Monk,) and was likewise a scholar, of more depth than
* In 1645 Dr. Vanderdonk, who resided here before and after this date, tells us, that the Dutch, immediately upon turning their attention to agriculture, introduced horses and cattle of various breeds. Hogs, that have always had possession of the city, fattened, in Vanderdonk's time, upon acorns, on the same ground where now they precede the street cleaners ; but the best pork was found then, as now, that which was fed upon maize. Sheep were more plentiful in New England than with the Dutch ; and the Yankees already made good use of their wool. Goats were pre- ferred to sheep by the Netherlanders of 1645.
From the same author we inay learn, that Sir William Kieft, in 1645, made a treaty with the Iroquois in Albany. He says, " at the time when we were employ- ed in conjunction with the magistrates and officers of Rensselaerwyck, in negociating a treaty of peace with the Maquas Indians, who were, and still are, the fiercest and strongest Indian nation in the country ; at which treaty the Director-general William Kieft, on the one part, and the chiefs of the Indian nations, of the neighbouring na- tions, on the other part, attended." They had the services of an interpreter, who understood all the dialects of the confederated Iroquois. This Indian interpreter lodged in the same house with Kieft, and one morning, in the presence of the go- vernor and author, commenced his toilet by painting his face, and, upon examining the substance he used, they thought, " from its greasy and shining appearance, that it contained some valuable metal." They purchased a portion of it from the Indian and gave it to a skilful doctor of Medicine, " Johannes de la Montagne, a counsellor of New Netherland."
The lump of mineral paint was put in a crucible and tried by fire. It yielded two pieces of gold worth about three guilders. "This proof," says the doctor, " was kept secret ;" and, when the treaty was concluded, an officer and a few men were sent to the mountain or hill which the Indian interpreter designated as the place from which the paint was taken, and a bucket-full was brought to the gold-seekers. The officer did not observe any indications of a mine having been worked at the place. This yielded as much as the first experiment. The governor sent a speci- men of this paint, mineral, or ore, to the Netherlands, " by Arent Cooper," who took passage from New Haven for England, and was never more heard of.
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When Sir William Kieft sailed from the New Netherlands, which we know was after the last of July, 1647, he took with him, in the ship Princess, specimens of this and . other minerals, which were all deposited at the bottom of the ocean. The gold mountain has never appeared again. I notice this attempt at gold. finding for its his- torical valuc, and not for the worth of the mineral.
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NEW ENGLAND COMMISSIONERS.
either occupation would lead us to expect. He arrived as Go- vernor of New Netherlands, Curacoa and their dependencies, in May 1647. The loss of a leg impressed the colonists with a con- firmation of his valour; and the substitution of a member, en- circled with silver plates, has given rise to the fable of the zilber been, or silver leg.
His successful endeavours to conciliate the Indians was one prominent cause of the jealousy of the neighbouring colonies of New England, and of the atrocious charge which they and some of the Long Island English brought against him, of plotting to employ the savages for their destruction by a general massacre.
I will endeavour to make as plain as possible to my reader the long-continued controversy between the New England commis- sioners and the New Netherlanders, which was necessarily conti- nued, from where Kieft's administration left it, through the greater part of the rule of Petrus Stuyvesant, taking colour more or less from the events passing in Europe, particularly in England and in Hol- land ; at times threatening war between the colonists of those nations, and uniformly keeping them in a state of irritation. 'To be better understood, it will, perhaps, be best to keep this quarrel and its negotiations distinct from other matters.j
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