USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York, 1609-1909 > Part 5
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Kieft's first international complication came in the establishing of a Swedish settlement on South River by a colony led by Peter Minuit, former Director-General of New Netherland, and Samuel Blommaert, who had for- merly claimed a patroonship on Fresh (Connecticut) River, and had been interested in Swanendael. These Hollanders, in the service of Sweden, brought a large party of traders and colonists, and built a trading post and a fort near the present site of Wilmington, Delaware, which he named Chris- tina, in honor of the Swedish queen. This Swedish colony was successful, and established a large trade in furs, in spite of the protest of Governor Kieft. As they did not heed that protest, he appealed to the company, which in turn made the intrusion of the Swedes into the southern part of New Netherland known to the States-General; but that body did not feel like offending Swe- den, and beyond making a protest did nothing. So the Swedish colony of New Sweden continued and John Prinz became its governor in 1642.
To the north the New Englanders had pushed down to the Connecticut River region and had established themselves at Hartford, New Haven, and
55
DUTCH IMMIGRATION AND LAND GRANTS
elsewhere, and were disputing with the Dutch the possession of the eastern end of Long Island. Kieft disputed the English advance, step by step, but was unable to dislodge the intruders; and the English became so numerous in that region that the States-General did not deem it wise to put much energy into its diplomatic protests.
The company had spent some time in the endeavor to create a plan for the further colonization of New Netherland. Several had been formulated and finally one was promulgated by the company. It was a great improve- ment as a colonizing programme over the patroon system, which had proved a failure, except that at Rensselaerswyck, and that had been of little benefit to any except the patroon. The new charter did away with the company's monopoly in the fur trade, permitting any free person to engage in it on condi- tion of payment of a moderate duty, but retaining a monopoly of transporta- tion to and from New Netherland. Any inhabitant of the Republic or of a friendly country might take up lands, and could carry to the colony (though only in the company's ships) cattle, merchandise and property ; but in addition to freight dues they were to pay in Holland ten per cent. of the value of all merchandise sent from there, and at New Amsterdam fifteen per cent. upon all colonial products exported. As a stimulus to agriculture the director-general was to bestow upon every immigrant as much land as he could properly culti- vate, with a provision for the giving of deeds, and for paying ground rent to the company after the land had been occupied for a specified period.
The effect of this more liberal charter was to stimulate immigration ; no longer entirely confined to Hollanders and Walloons, although these were still the chief additions to the population. Even before the new charter was pro- mulgated, Kieft issued patents to grants made by his predecessor, to which many others were added as the colony grew. De Vries, the explorer and his- torian, again arrived in New Amsterdam in December, 1638, bringing a colony which he settled on Staten Island, and afterward settled on Manhattan Island, two Dutch miles above the fort. Andreas Hudde received a grant of one hundred morgens on the northern end of the island, and was to pay a ground rent of a pair of capons annually, and one-tenth of the increase of the stock after ten years. Van Twiller, greediest of land grabbers, secured a grant at Sapohanican (later, and until recently, called Greenwich Village), on North River, besides leasing one of the company's bouweries. Abraham Isaacksen Planck (or ver Planck) who was a son of the schout of Rensselaers- wyck, obtained a grant for Paulus Hoek, east of Ahasimas (Jersey City), which was a part of the lapsed patroonship of Pavonia, for 550 guilders; and in the same neighborhood Kieft also leased a company farm to Jan Evertsen Bout for a rental of one-fourth of its produce and another to a man named Teunissen, who not only cleared and fenced the land and stocked it liberally
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HISTORY OF NEW YORK
with cattle, hogs, sheep and goats, but also planted orchards and built a brew- house. The secretary of the colony, Van Tienhoven, leased a bouwerie oppo- site Dr. La Montagne's plantation of Vredendael (between Eighth Avenue and the Harlem River).
In 1638 Jochem Pietersen Kuyter, who was a Dane, and who had seen much military service in the East Indies, came to New Amsterdam under a special permit, in an armed ship which he chartered for the occasion, bringing with him his family, many herdsmen and a large number of cattle. He secured a plantation in the neighborhood of the De Forest and La Montagne grants in what was then called Muscoota, but afterward Harlem Flats. He called his grant Zegendall, or "Valley of Blessing." Kuyter brought with him Jonas Bronck, a brother Dane, who was the first settler of the region across the Harlem. He secured a tract of land opposite Kuyter's and extend- ing back to a river which the Indians called Ah-qua-hung, but which soon became known, after its first settler, as the Bronx River. Bronck called his plantation Emmaus, but the settlers soon called it Bronck's Land. This name afterward disappeared in the name Morrisania, but the river is still Bronx, and the same name is attached to the rapidly growing borough of New York City north of the Harlem. He was a Lutheran in religion, and a man of education. He built a stone mansion, with a tile roof, a spacious barn, a tobacco house, and various outhouses, and put his farm in a fine state of cul- tivation. It was in his house where the peace treaty with the Weckquaes- gecks was signed, in 1642.
Cornelis Melyn, a wealthy man who had formerly been in the tanning business in Amsterdam, and who had visited New Netherland as supercargo of a vessel, in order to make inspection of the country, secured, on his return to Holland, permission to settle as a patroon on Staten Island. He brought his family and dependents and a lot of cattle. De Vries, who thought he should have the whole island, objected, but afterward gave his consent that Melyn should have a grant bordering on the Narrows; and later, under orders from Amsterdam, he was given a patent for all of the island except a portion actually covered by De Vries' bouwerie. A patent was also issued to Myndert van der Horst, in 1641, on Achter Col (Newark Bay) which included the Valley of the Hackingsack River, extending north to a plantation which Cap- tain De Vries had established and had named Vriesendall. De Vries, in his narrative, describes this land which he had bought from the Indians as being "a beautiful region called Tappaen, on the west bank of the river, a few miles north of Fort Amsterdam."
Governor Kieft, in 1640, caused an ordinance to be passed requiring every man at and around Fort Amsterdam to supply himself with a gun or a cutlass and side arms and be ready at any moment to report at appointed
57
KIEFT AROUSES RESENTMENT OF RIVER INDIANS
places, with their corporals, for service; this being the first militia regulation for New Netherland. At this time there were only fifty regular soldiers (detached from the Dutch army) at the fort, under command of an ensign, Hendrick van Dyck. In the colony, until the accession of Kieft, a policy of conciliation had been pursued, almost uniformly, by the colonial authorities and people. Kieft's orders from the company were to maintain these good relations, but it was the governor's nature to be harsh and arbitrary, and at the very first opportunity he stirred up trouble with the savages.
Claiming recompense from friendly River Indians on the ground that the Dutch had protected them from the Mohawks, Kieft, falsely stating that he was instructed by the company so to do, tried to collect tribute in corn or service from them; a demand which the affected Indians vigorously contested. In 1840, Kieft, hearing of certain depredations, accused the Raritan Indians of Staten Island, and sent soldiers to demand satisfaction, although the fact was that the ravages were the work of white men. The soldiers killed several Indians and cruelly maltreated others. It was in retaliation for this outrage. that the Raritans destroyed houses and crops on De Vries' plantation the following year, and killed four of his men. Kieft then declared that the entire tribe of the Raritans should be exterminated, trying to incite the River Indians to kill them by offering a bounty for each Raritan head.
The next trouble with the Indians had its origin in a crime which had been committed fifteen years before. In 1626, soon after the arrival of Direc- tor-General Minuit, three of his negro servants robbed and killed an Indian in Manhattan, near the Kalck Hoek ("Collect") Pond. The Indian's tribe, the Weckquaesgecks, demanded satisfaction, but Minuit did not pay blood- money for the Indian's death nor punish the murderers. An Indian boy, nephew of the man who was killed, was present at the murder, and grew up with the purpose of vengeance. From the home of the tribe in what is now Westchester County, he came to Manhattan and killed an old farmer and wheelwright known as Claes Cornelissen Swits ("the Swiss"), who had leased a small farm which was part of Jacob van Corlaer's bouwerie, south of the Harlem River, and then escaped across the river. Kieft sent a message to the sachem of the tribe demanding that the murderer should be surrendered to him for punishment; but that chief replied endorsing the deed of the young brave and expressing regret that he had not killed twenty white men instead of one. This defiant response alarmed Kieft. His attitude toward the Indians had been exactly contrary to the policy of the company. He had run the col- ony and the city autocratically, and the responsibility was therefore his; and now he was accused of attempting to create a condition of war to further his own ends, meanwhile he carefully guarding his own safety, being so cowardly that he had not slept outside the fort for a single night during his residence.
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HISTORY OF NEW YORK
He therefore, as a plan by which he could in a measure relieve himself of responsibility, summoned all heads of families to a meeting at the fort. At this meeting, which was held August 29, 1641, there assembled men from Manhattan, Pavonia, Staten Island and Long Island, who elected twelve men to represent what they called the "Gemeende (or Commonalty) of New Amsterdam." This action is important because it begins the history of repre- sentative government in what is now New York City with the adjacent Jersey side as an integral part of it. The men chosen were: David Pietersen de Vries; Jacques Bentyn (who had served on Van Twiller's council) ; Jan Jan- sen Damen (or Dam), stepfather of Jan Vinje, the first white child born in Manhattan; Hendrick Jansen, a tailor ; Maryn Adriaensen, who had previously been master tobacco inspector for several years at Rensselaerswyck; Abram Pietersen Molenaar; Frederik Lubbertsen, a seaman; Jochem Pietersen Kuy- ter ; Gerrit Dircksen; Joris Rapelje; Abram Planck; and Jacob Stoffelsen, who had served as overseer of negroes and commissary for the company. This body, thereafter known as the Twelve Men, organized by choosing Captain De Vries as president.
As soon as they had organized Kieft laid before them the matter of the murder of Swits, and asking whether it should be avenged by declaring war on the Indians. De Vries argued the impolicy of war at that time. He called attention to the fact that the Dutch settlement was sparse and widely scat- tered, that the settlers had cattle running at pasture in the woods, and farms which were unprotected; that there was nothing to be gained from a war with the Indians, and that Kieft's policies were the cause of his people being mur- dered at the colony which he (De Vries) had started, in 1640, on Staten Island. Furthermore, he contended, the West India Company had enjoined its colonists to keep peace with the Indians. Kieft would not listen to coun- sels of peace, but the Twelve Men persisted that he should make two or three attempts to secure the surrender of the murderer peacefully before they would consent to a declaration of war. Finally, in January, 1642, they consented to an attack on the Weckquaesgecks, if the governor would accompany the expedition to prevent disorder. Then the Twelve Men took up other dis- cussions, demanding as a safeguard against autocracy that the Governor's Council should be increased to at least five persons, of whom four should be members of the Twelve Men; and pointing out that even the smallest village had its elective board of not less than five schepens; and also advocated that as in Holland, two of the councilors should retire annually in accordance with the established custom of the Fatherland for securing rotation in office. They also demanded a proper organization of the militia, and named several commercial regulations which they deemed requisite to the welfare of the Commonalty of New Amsterdam. Then Kieft, while expressing mild approval
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NEW NETHERLAND'S COSMOPOLITAN POPULATION
of some of their proposals (none of which he carried out), showed that he had organized the Twelve Men merely for his own convenience; for he told them that they had only been elected by the Commonalty to advise with him in regard to the murder of Swits. In February he notified the Twelve Men that they must not meet or call any kind of assemblage of the people except at his command. In the matter of the Swits murder he waited until March, when he sent Ensign Van Dyck with eighty men to attack the Weckquaes- gecks. Kieft did not go along as advised by the Twelve Men, and the expe- dition did not reach the Indian village, because the guide lost his way. The eighty men, however, made such a trail that the Indians, coming across it were dismayed and sued for peace, and in the house of Jonas Bronck they made a treaty of peace with the white men. They promised to deliver up the assassin of Swits, and although they never fulfilled that part of the pact, there was peace until the next year.
As the result of the liberalizing of the charter of New Netherland by the West India Company not only many Hollanders, but also people of other nationalities were induced to become settlers in and around New Amsterdam. Father Jogues, the first Jesuit missionary sent from Canada to the Iroquois, who was in New Amsterdam during the administration of Governor Kieft. said that eighteen languages were spoken there, the inhabitants including Dutchmen, Flemings. Walloons, Frenchmen, Danes, Norwegians, Swedes, English, Scotch. Irish, Germans, Poles. Bohemians, Portuguese and Italians.
The English who came to New Netherland largely came from New England, especially Massachusetts, where the Puritans had no tolerance for any religion except their own. Some of the so-called unorthodox had gone to Rhode Island. led by Roger Williams, in 1638. Thence also went Anne Hutchinson and her husband: and she. after her husband's death, became fearful that Massachusetts or Plymouth would absorb Rhode Island, and moved with her household into the tolerant territory of the Dutch. Several others, under ban as Anabaptists or Antinomians in New England, also came. Mrs. Hutchinson settled a place north of Bronck's, at a point then known as Annie's Neck. now Pelham Neck in Pelham Bay Park; Rev. Mr. Throgmor- ton (or Throckmorton ) with thirty-five families of Anabaptist refugees from Salem. Mass., received a plantation (part of the present town of Westchester ) just below Mrs. Hutchinson and northeast from Bronck's land, from which the Throgmorton tract was separated by a plantation settled by Thomas Cor- nell, whose descendants have borne an important place in New York history. including Alonzo B. Cornell, governor from 1880 to 1882. and Ezra Cornell. founder of Cornell University.
Even more of the English settlers made homes on Long Island. Rev. Francis Doughty, with associates, received a large grant at Mespat (now
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HISTORY OF NEW YORK
Newtown, L. I.). Lady Deborah Moody, who had fled from England to Massachusetts, and had been a prominent member of the Church at Salem, was admonished by the Church for expressing doubts as to the validity of infant baptism; and later, being excommunicated for these views, left Massa- chusetts, and with a party of friends came to New Netherland, settling on the site of the present town of Gravesend. John Underhill, who also came to New Amsterdam to escape from the rigorous church discipline, was a valuable acquisition, because he had done efficient service as an officer in the Pequot War and other expeditions against the Indians.
Another English resident of New Amsterdam was Isaac Allerton, who had been one of the passengers on the Mayflower, had served as assistant governor at Plymouth, and engaged as a merchant, owning a large fleet of fishing boats, and founding the town of Marblehead. Commercial losses caused him to remove to New Amsterdam, where he was for ten years engaged as consignee of English vessels that traded in this port, and engaged in the tobacco trade. He had a warehouse near the present site of Fulton Market.
Indian troubles broke out again in January, 1643, when a Hackingsack Indian, having primed himself with liquor, shot and killed a Dutch colonist who was thatching a barn at Van der Horst's plantation, near the Hacking- sack and North Rivers. The sachems of his tribe went to Fort Amsterdam and offered to make a liberal payment of blood-money, but Kieft refused it, saying the matter could only be settled by surrender of the murderer at the fort. The chiefs answered that he had absconded and gone to the Tankitekes, and it was beyond their power to deliver him; and further, blamed the whole trouble on the selling of liquor to the Indians by the Hollanders. Kieft at once made a demand upon the chief of the Tankitekes to deliver up the mur- derer, but the answer was a jeering one.
Not long after, the River Indian tribes were invaded by the Iroquois; about eighty or ninety of whom came down the river, each with a gun on his shoulder, to demand tribute from the Weckquaesgecks of the Westches- ter region and of the other Indians who lived around Captain De Vries' bouwerie at Tappaen. These Indians, less warlike and not nearly so well armed as the invaders, were greatly alarmed, and four or five hundred of them, having great confidence in Captain De Vries, who had been uniformly kind and upright in his dealings with them, fled to his bouwerie, where there were only five white men, while others took refuge in New Amsterdam and were kindly received by the people. De Vries asked Kieft for a guard of sol- diers, but was refused. After about two weeks some fresh alarm scattered the Indians, some of whom went to Pavonia across North River and others to Corlaer's Hook, in the northeast corner of Manhattan on the East River.
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MASSACRE OF INDIANS AT PAVONIA
On February 24, 1643, Captain De Vries was sitting at table with the governor, when Kieft told him that he had a mind to "wipe the mouths" of the Indian fugitives. It appeared that Secretary Van Tienhoven had drawn, and Damen, Andriaensen and Planck of the Twelve Men, had signed a docu- ment (ostensibly the work of the Twelve) asking Kieft to begin the work of retaliation against the Indians. De Vries protested that the three members of the board who had signed this document were not authorized to speak for the Twelve, which board Kieft himself had dissolved a full year before. But although De Vries pressed the matter strongly, and though Coun- cilor La Montagne and Do- mine Bogardus were equally urgent, Kieft was bent on war. He sent one of his sergeants with a troop of soldiers from the fort with orders to destroy the Indians at Pavonia, and ordered Maryn Adriaensen with a band of volunteers to go to Corlaer's Hook and at- tack the refugees assembled there. The soldiers, who went MASSACRE OF INDIANS AT PAVONIA to Pavonia in the dead of night of February 25-26, massacred eighty Indians as they roused them from sleep, took infants from their mothers, hacking them to pieces and throwing them into the river, and doing their work in the most brutal fashion; and the same scenes were enacted on Corlaer's plantation, where is now a park, Adri- aensen's men killing forty Indians. When the soldiers returned from Pavonia Kieft greeted them cordially, thanking them for their work. Some of the settlers on Long Island asked leave to attack the Indians of that region, who had always been friendly, and though Kieft gave orders not to molest those Indians without provocation, parties of lawless Dutch and English took advantage of the conditions and went on a tour of pillage of the wigwams which the Indians had left at Pavonia, and also of the farms of the friendly Long Island Indians.
All these acts coming together so infuriated the red men that eleven tribes, including River Indians and some of those on Long Island united in a retaliatory campaign of open war. Settlers through all the region from the Raritan River north to the Housatonic were killed, their houses burned,
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HISTORY OF NEW YORK
their farms devastated, and their women and children carried off into the forest. Some, warned in time, deserted their farms and flocked into the fort at New Amsterdam, where Governor Kieft had remained all the time in safety.
De Vries was in his house at Tappaen when the Indians destroyed things about his plantation, but his house was spared and the lives of himself and the farmers who had taken refuge with him, because of the pleas to "spare the good chief" from a brave whose life De Vries had saved on a former occasion. Fortunately the Mohegans and the Mohawk had not risen, and there was no trouble at Fort Orange and Rensselaerswyck.
Kieft, who had raised all the trouble, became panic-stricken at the turn affairs had taken, and proclaimed a day of fasting and prayer. He called the settlers together and hired them to serve as soldiers for two months. Feel- ing ran high against him and the citizens threatened to depose him and send him back to Holland. He, to shield himself, tried to charge the responsibility upon those who had advised him in the name of the Commonalty. When this came to the ears of Maryn Adriaensen, whose plantation had been laid waste by the savages, his rage was intense. He rushed into the presence of the governor, pistol in hand, denouncing him for lying accusations, but was dis- armed by the governor's guard and taken to the prison. Two of Andriaen- sen's men, hearing of his arrest, made their way to the fort, and one of them shot at Kieft, missing him, and was immediately shot by a soldier. His head was set upon the gallows as a warning to the people. A delegation of about thirty men came to demand Adriaensen's release, but Kieft said he should be tried by a court of reputable citizens. He, however, sent Adriaensen to Hol- land, to be tried by the authorities there. De Vries semed to be about the only cool person in New Amsterdam at this period. Through his efforts, scarcely aided from any quarter, official or unofficial, first the Long Island Indians, and then the Westchester tribes, the Hackingsacks and the Tappaen Indians were led to desist from further ravages, and to sign a treaty of peace in 1643.
A month or so after this a friendly chief went to warn De Vries of impending trouble, saying that the young men of his tribe wanted to make war against the Dutch, and that there were so many of that mind that he, the chief, feared his power would not prove sufficient to restrain them, though he promised his best efforts to do so. But in August, 1643, an attack was instigated by Pacham, chief of the Tankitekes, and participated in by that tribe and the Wappingers, upon some boats bringing beaver skins from Fort Orange; and in that attack twelve Dutchmen were killed. Kieft, not dar- ing to depend on his own initiative, asked the Commonalty for advice, and they gathered in convention and elected a board of eight men. Of these only two, Jan Jansen Damen and Joachim Pietersen Kuyter, had been members of
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RIVER INDIANS RAID MANY SETTLEMENTS
the Twelve Men of 1641. The others were Gerrit Wolfertsen, Cornelis Melyn, Barent Dircksen, Abraham Pietersen, and the two English tobacco- planters, Thomas Hall and Isaac Allerton. Because he had signed the fraudulent petition in the name of the Twelve Men, the other seven expelled Damen from the board and put in his place Jan Evertsen Bout of Pavonia. Having completed their organization the Eight Men declared in favor of peace with the Long Island tribes, but declared war again the River Indians. With Kieft's cooperation they organized a regular militia establishment, arm- ing and drilling the Dutch colonists, and employing as soldiers more than fifty of the English settlers, who had become so dissatisfied with the way affairs had turned out that they threatened to leave the province. Joachim Pietersen Kuyter was put in command of the Dutch forces, and through Isaac Allerton, John Underhill, who had commanded in the Pequot War, was induced to come from Stamford to head the English contingent. Before these arrangements had been completed, however, the Weckquaesgecks had raided the settlement beyond the Harlem, murdered Anne Hutchinson and her household of sixteen persons, sparing only her little daughter, and also slaying some of the settlers on Throgmorton's and Cornell's plantations.
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