USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York, from its earliest settlement to the present time > Part 7
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56
How to obtain them was the question. Kieft, on his part, promised to advance a thousand guilders on the Company's account, and De Vries headed a private sub- scription-list with a hundred more, but this was not nearly sufficient, and the citizens were not in a liberal humor. A little management extricated the projectors from their difficulty. At this juncture, a daughter of Do- mine Bogardus was opportunely married. The principal citizens were invited to the wedding, the wine circulated freely, and all were merry. When the festivity had reached its height, the subscription paper was produced, and the excited guests vied with each other in the amount of their donations. There were some the next morning who would fain have recalled their reckless liberality ; but repentance availed them nothing, the money was subscribed, and the work went on.
A contract was made with John and Richard Ogden of Stamford for the mason-work of a church of rock-
99
CITY OF NEW YORK.
stone, seventy-two feet long, fifty-two wide and sixteen high, at a cost of twenty-five hundred guilders, with a bonus of a hundred more, should the work prove satis- factory. The roof was covered with split oaken shingles, then called wooden slates. In the front wall was inserted a marble slab with the inscription, "Ao. Do. " MDCXLII. W. Kieft Dr. Gr. Heeft de Gerneenten dese "Tempel doen Bouwen ;" which, being translated, gives the somewhat equivocal sentence, " Anno Domini, 1642, " Wilhelm Kieft, Director-General, hath the Common- " alty caused to build this Temple." When the fort was demolished in 1787 to make room for the Government House, the stone was discovered, buried in the earth, and was removed to the belfry of the old Dutch Church in Garden street, where it remained until both were destroyed in the conflagration of 1835. The church was styled the St. Nicholas, in honor of the tutelary saint of New Amsterdam. The town bell was removed to the belfry, whence it regulated all the affairs of the city ; ringing time for laborers, summoning courts of justice, ringing merry peals for weddings, tolling out funeral knells, and calling the people on Sundays to their devo- tions.
Better order, too, was beginning to be observed in the colony. The director had succeeded in part in enforcing his laws, and in restraining contraband trade ; as well as in checking the importation of bad wampum into the colony, which had been a source of serious annoyance to the settlers, by reducing its value from four to six beads for a stuyver. This wampum, or seawant, as it was properly called, merits a more extended notice than
100
HISTORY OF THE
has hitherto been given it. It was of two kinds, the wampum or white, and the suckanhock sucki, or black seawant-the former being made from the stem of the periwinkle, and the latter from the purple coating of the hard clam. These were rounded and polished into beads, and pierced with sharp stones, then strung upon the sinews of animals, and woven into belts of different sizes. The black beads were accounted twice as valuable as the white, the latter being made the standard of valuation. A string a fathom long was worth about four guilders. Although seawant was the generic name of the currency, the wampum, strictly speaking, being only the white beads, among the Dutch and English the lat- ter name was universally applied to it. The best was manufactured on Long Island, called by the aborigines Sewanhacky, or the Isle of Shells. The seawant of the Iroquois and New England Indians was inferior in quality, and rough and badly strung. Indeed, it seems to have been unknown among the New England tribes before 1627, when Isaac de Rasières, the koopman of New Amsterdam, when on an embassy to Plymouth, purchased corn with it from the English settlers. Find- ing it convenient as a circulating medium, the Indians soon learned the art of its manufacture, and it was not long before the cunning New Englanders succeeded in draining New Netherland of its finely polished seawant in payment for their goods, and introducing large quantities of their imperfect beads in turn. Nor was this all ; beads of porcelain were manufactured in Europe and put into circulation among the colonists, and the evil grew so alarming that, in 1641, the council published an ordi-
101
CITY OF NEW YORK.
nance with the sanction of Kieft, declaring that "a great deal of bad seawant, imported from other places, was in circulation, while the good, splendid sewant, usually called Manhattans sewant, was out of sight or exported, which must cause the ruin of the country." To remedy this evil, the ordinance provided that in future all coarse seawant, well stringed, should pass at six for one stuyver ; while the well polished should be valued at four for a stuyver. This ordinance is the first on record for the regulation of the exportation of specie in the colony. In 1627, they were again reduced from six to eight for a stuyver.
About this time, too, the increasing intercourse with the English settlements rendered it necessary that some provision should be made in respect to correspondence in the English language. Dutch was of course the lan- guage of the settlement ; Kieft knew something of Eng- lish, but his officers were ignorant of it, and this was often embarrassing. It was therefore resolved that an English secretary was indispensable ; George Baxter was appointed to the office, with an annual salary of two hundred and fifty guilders ; and the English language was thus first recognized in New Amsterdam.
CHAPTER III.
1642-1664.
The Indian War-Petrus Stuyvesant-New Amsterdam becomes New York.
A CLOUD had long been gathering over the colony , it now burst with terrific fury. At the period in which our chapter opens, the colonists were involved in the horrors of an Indian war-a war which devastated the little settlement, and the bloody tragedies of which were long perpetuated in legends and traditions. To better depict its rise and progress, it will be necessary to re- trace the events of a few years, and to glance briefly at the causes which had thus transformed the friendship of the natives into bitter hostility.
For some years past, an unfriendly feeling had gradu- ally been springing up between the settlers and the Indians. The better to carry on the fur trade, the Dutch had separated from each other, and scattered over the interior of the province, where they had allured the natives to their houses by supplying them with liquor, and treating them with great familiarity ; and had bar- tered guns and ammunition in exchange for their furs, despite the laws to the contrary. The natives thus
102
103
CITY OF NEW YORK.
became well supplied with fire-arms, and also gained a knowledge of the numbers and habits of the settlers. This was especially the case with the Mohawks in the neighborhood of the colony of Rensselaerswyck. In the vicinity of New Amsterdam, stricter regulations were observed, and the colonists were strictly prohibited from selling guns and ammunition to the Indians. This excited the jealousy of the river tribes, who accused the Dutch of partiality to their enemies. The cattle of the settlers often strayed into the unfenced corn-fields of their Indian neighbors, who revenged themselves for the mischief by shooting them down. Many of the natives were at this time employed as house and farm servants in the colony, who often committed petty thefts and ran away, to acquaint their tribes with the domestic arrangements of their masters.
In the midst of the bitter feelings which had been stirred up by these petty aggressions, Kieft rashly deter- mined to levy a tribute of corn, furs and wampum upon the Indians, under the pretext that the government in- curred heavy expenses in protecting them from their enemies. This excited the indignation and contempt of the natives, who well knew that they received no pro- tection from the soldiers at Fort Amsterdam. They could not understand why they should be compelled to support the Dutch because they had suffered them to live peaceably in their country. "The sachem must be a "mean fellow," they said ; "he had come to live among " them without an invitation, and now wanted them to " supply him with maize for nothing."
At this juncture, a party of Dutch, on their way to the
·
104
HISTORY OF THE
-
LOSSING: BARBILI-
Indians bringing Tribute.
South River, landed at Staten Island and stole some hogs belonging to De Vries ; the blame of which was laid on the Raritans, a tribe on the west shore of the Hudson, who were also accused of having attacked a yacht, and stolen a canoe from its crew.
The impetuous Kieft resolved at once to punish the offenders, and, on the 16th of July, 1640, dispatched Koopman Van Tienhoven with seventy men, to demand immediate reparation. On reaching the settlement, Van Tienhoven demanded the restitution of the property. But nothing less than the blood of the natives would
105
CITY OF NEW YORK.
satisfy the men under his command. After vainly re- monstrating, Van Tienhoven left them to their work of destruction, and returned to the fort. The soldiers fell on the innocent Raritans, burned their crops, killed ten . of their warriors, and returned to New Amsterdam, hav- ing lost one of their own men in the encounter. Thus was laid the foundation of a bloody war, which threatened for a time to destroy the infant colony, and which prudent management might easily have averted.
This unprovoked outrage naturally awakened a desire for vengeance in the hearts of the Raritans. While await- ing a fitting moment, they amused the director with over- tures for peace ; then, suddenly falling upon the plantation of De Vries at Staten Island, they burned his dwelling and tobacco house, and killed four of his planters.
Incensed at the consequences of his own folly, the governor determined to exterminate the whole tribe, and allured the river Indians to assist him by offering a bounty of ten fathoms of wampum for the head of every Raritan, and twenty for the heads of the actual murderers. It was not long before Pacham, a chief of the Tankitekes or Haverstraw Indians, came in with the hand of the dead chief of the party as a token that he had earned the price of blood. Terrified at the power of their foes, the Raritans sued for peace, and hostilities were for a time suspended.
But it was only to change the scene of warfare. An Indian never forgets an injury, and the memory of his uncle's murder had long been rankling in the breast of the Weckquaesgeek boy who had witnessed the foul deed in the days of Minuit. The boy had now grown into
106
HISTORY OF THE
a man, and, according to the Indian custom, the duty devolved upon him of offering up a victim to the manes of his murdered kinsman. Twenty years had passed since the murder ; the Dutch, if they had ever known, had forgotten it; but the memory was fresh in the mind of the young Indian, and a harmless old wheelwright, by the name of Claes Smits, who dwelt in a little house near Deutel's Bay, was chosen by him as the victim of his revenge. Stopping at the house of the old man one day, under the pretext of bartering some beaver-skins for blankets, the Indian struck him dead with an axe while he was stooping over the chest in which he kept his goods, then, rifling the house, escaped with his booty.
A judicious governor would have overlooked this offence, heinous as it seems, in view of the consequences. The stern law of Indian justice, blood for blood, had been satisfied, the murder could not be undone, and to seek to avenge it was to endanger the lives of the whole community. But Kieft, who thirsted for the extermina- tion of the Indians, refused to be satisfied with anything less than the blood of the offender, and demanded him of his tribe, who refused to give him up, saying that he had but avenged his kinsman after the custom of the nation. Upon receiving this answer, the first impulse of Kieft was to declare an immediate war. But the people remonstrated-scattered as they were, over the island on their farms and bouweries, such a proceeding menaced them with instant destruction ; and Kieft, perceiving that he would be held responsible for the consequences of such a war, reluctantly called a council of the prin- cipal citizens to consult together in the emergency.
107
CITY OF NEW YORK.
They assembled in the fort on the 28th of August, 1641, and formed the first public assembly that ever convened on the island of Manhattan.
To this assembly, Kieft submitted these propositions : Whether the murder of Claes Smits should not be avenged ?- Whether, in case the tribe refused to surren- der the murderer, the whole village should not be destroyed ?- In what manner and when should this be executed ? and by whom could it be effected ?
The assembly at once chose "Twelve Select Men," to act as their representatives in this matter. These first representatives of the people were Jacques Bentyn, Maryn Adriaensen, Jan Jansen Damen, Hendrick Jan- sen, David Pietersen de Vries, Jacob Stoffelsen, Abram Molenaar, Frederick Subbertsen, Jochem Pietersen Kuy- ter, Gerrit Dircksen, George Rapelje, and Abram Planck ; all Hollanders. Of these, De Vries was chosen president. In answer to the propositions of Kieft, they replied that, while the murder of Smits ought to be avenged, "God and the opportunity " should be taken into consideration. They advised that preparations should be made for war, that coats of mail should be provided for the soldiers, and that two parties, headed by the director in person, should march against the Weckquaesgeek village in the hunting season, if they still refused to deliver up the murderer ; but that, in the meantime, every effort should be made to bring the affair to a peaceful termination, and to avert a war with the natives. De Vries, though he had been the prin- cipal sufferer, having witnessed the destruction of his colonies both at Swaanendael and at Staten Island, was
108
HISTORY OF THE
earnestly opposed to war. The Company, too, was averse to it, and had constantly directed the colonists to keep peace with the natives, as they valued their own safety.
These peaceful counsels did not suit the temper of the vengeful director. But the Twelve Men succeeded in postponing the war for a season, then turned their attention to public affairs. The number of the council being optional with the director, Kieft's consisted only of himself and La Montagne, Kieft having two votes and Montagne one. The Twelve Men demanded that the council should be reorganized and increased at least to five, that four of these should be elected by the people, and that judicial proceedings should only be had before a full board. They also demanded that the militia should be mustered annually, and that the Company should furnish half a pound of powder to each man ; that the people should be allowed to visit vessels arriv- ing from abroad, and to trade freely with neighboring places, subject to the duties of the Company. Besides this, they required that the English should be prohibited from selling cows and goats within the province ; and that a greater increase should be made in the value of the provincial currency.
These bold demands irritated the director beyond expression; but as he could only thus gain their consent to the war that he so ardently desired, he consented to make some concessions. A complete council, he said, was daily expected from Holland ; he was willing, how- ever, that the people should choose four men, two of whom were to be chosen annually, who should be
109
CITY OF NEW YORK.
called into the council when necessary, and should assemble occasionally to consult upon public affairs .. The other demands he granted without much reluctance, refusing only to permit the people to visit vessels from abroad, or to furnish powder to the militia for practice. In return, he wrung from them a reluctant consent to the war, and on the 18th of February, 1642, dissolved the body.
Having at last obtained the formal consent of the peo- ple to commence hostilities, Kieft dispatched a party of eighty men against the Weckquaesgeeks with orders to exterminate them by fire and sword. The party was intrusted to the command of Hendrick Van Dyck, and accompanied by a guide who professed to know the country. Night set in, however, before they reached the Indian village, the guide lost his way and Van Dyck his temper, and the party returned, innocent of the death of a single Indian. The Wecquaesgeeks, discovering from the trail of the white men the danger to which they had been exposed, became terrified and sued for peace, pro- mising to deliver up the murderer of Smits-a promise, by the way, which they never performed.
While these negotiations were pending, a trader made an Indian drunk, and stole from him a dress of beaver skins. On regaining his senses, the incensed savage, meeting De Vries, told him of the theft, and vowed to shoot the first white man he should meet. De Vries tried to dissuade him from his purpose, but in vain. A few days after, he shot an Englishman on Staten Island, and afterwards, a Dutch colonist at Newark Bay.
The frightened sachems hastened to New Amsterdam, and offered two hundred fathoms of wampum as an
110
HISTORY OF THE
indemnity for the murder, which Kieft refused, demand- ing the immediate surrender of the murderer. The sachems pleaded that he was the son of a chief, and that he had gone two days' journey off, among the Tankitekes, whence it was impossible to retake him. " Why do you "sell brandy to our young men ?" said they ; "they are "not used to it, and it makes them crazy. Even your "own men, who are used to it, get drunk sometimes, "and fight with knives. Sell no more fire-water to the " Indians, and you will have no more murders." But this reasoning failed to satisfy the implacable director, and the sachems returned sorrowfully to Vriesendael with their slighted offering, while Kieft sent a messenger to the Tankitekes to demand the head of the fugitive.
Before the Tankitekes had time to accede to the demand of the director, they were attacked by a new foe from an unexpected quarter. A band of Mohawks made a descent upon the river Indians, and, killing and making prisoners of many, forced them to flee from their homes to seek protection from the Dutch. Hundreds of the half naked and homeless savages fled to Manhattan in the depth of winter to implore shelter from their dreaded enemies. More than a thousand encamped at Pavonia. Some, crossing to Manhattan, settled at Cor- laer's Hook, where the more compassionate of the colonists supplied them with food, and counted on the occasion to inspire them with lasting gratitude and friendship for the whites. Despite the jealousies and hostilities which had so lately prevailed, the Indians were not yet estranged from the colonists. They still had a confidence in the superior power of the white man, and
111
CITY OF NEW YORK.
this confidence might have been strengthened by judi- cious policy. But a different spirit prevailed in the councils of the director. At this time, there were two parties in New Amsterdam, the peace party under De Vries, and the war party, headed by Van Tienhoven. At a Shrovetide feast at the house of Jan Jansen Damen, when all were merry with wine, the host, with Adriaen- sen and Planck, presented a petition drawn up by Van Tienhoven to the governor, and, feigning to speak in the name of the Twelve Men, their colleagues, urged him to avenge the murder of Smits by an instant attack on the defenceless Indians whom God had thus delivered into their hands.
The proposal chimed with the wishes of the director, who, drinking a toast to the success of the enterprise, instantly dispatched a party of men under the command of Sergeant Rodolf to Pavonia, and another headed by Maryn Adriaensen to Corlaer's Hook, to destroy the un- armed savages in the name of the commonalty. It was in vain that Domine Bogardus warned Kieft against this violence, that Councillor la Montagne begged him to wait until the arrival of the next ship from Holland, and that Captain De Vries declared that hostilities could not legally be commenced without the consent of the peo- ple ; for his sole reply, Kieft took De Vries aside, and showed him his soldiers, ready to cross over to Pavonia. " The order has gone forth ; it cannot be recalled," said he.
At midnight, on the twenty-fifth of February, 1643, this order was executed, and one of the most terrible tragedies enacted that ever disgraced the annals of a
112
HISTORY OF THE
civilized nation. The Indians, surprised in the midst of their slumbers, were slaughtered without resistance. Chief and warrior, mother and child, old and young, all met the same fate-all were dispatched by the muskets of their enemies, or driven into the river to perish there. Eighty Indians were slaughtered at Pavonia. So sud- den was the attack that they knew not who were their murderers, and died believing themselves slain by the Mohawks. The humane De Vries sat by the kitchen fire at the director's, listening mournfully to the shrieks of the victims that were wafted across the river from Pavonia, when an Indian and squaw who had escaped in a canoe from the scene of the massacre, rushed into the house to implore his protection. " The Fort Orange " Indians have fallen upon us ; we come to hide our- "selves in the fort," said they. "It is no time to hide " yourselves in the fort ; no Indians have done this deed," answered De Vries, pityingly. " It is the work of the
" Swannekens- the Dutch." And he led them from the gate, and watched them until they were hid in the shel- ter of the forest.
In the meantime, a similar massacre was being per- petrated at Corlaer's Hook. The party headed by Maryn Adriaensen, a noted freebooter, had fallen upon the sleeping savages, and murdered them all in cold blood. Daylight ended the tragedy, and the party re- turned to Fort Amsterdam in triumph, with thirty prisoners and the heads of several of their victims, where they were received with joy by the director ; and with sorrow by the citizens, who thus saw the door opened to long and bloody war. On Wilhelm Kieft rests the sole
113
CITY OF NEW YORK.
Massacre of Indians at Pavonia.
responsibility of this atrocious deed, which was neither suggested nor sanctioned by the people of New Amster- dam.
Stimulated by the success of their neighbors, some of the settlers at New Amersfoordt soon after petitioned for leave to attack the Indians in their vicinity. Res- trained by the remonstrances of Bogardus and De Vries, Kieft refused his consent, on the grounds that they had always been friendly to the Dutch, and were hard to con- quer; but added that in case they should prove hostile,
8
114
HISTORY OF THE
every man was at liberty to defend himself as best he could. It was not long before some demonstrations on the part of these Indians were construed into hostilities by the covetous settlers, and made the pretext for rob- bing them of their corn. The natives attempted to defend their property, and in the struggle lost three of their men.
Enraged at this injustice, the Long Island Indians joined with the river tribes in avenging their wrongs. Eleven tribes banded together and proclaimed open war against the colonists. The retribution was terrible. The swamps and morasses of the island were filled with lurk- ing Indians, watching for opportunities to shoot down the colonists while at work in the fields, drive off their cattle, set fire to their houses, and rob, kill, and plun- der. The peaceful and smiling country was quickly transformed into a wilderness. Men were shot down in broad daylight, and women and children carried into captivity ; fences were torn down, trees uprooted, and thrifty bouweries laid waste in the general ruin. The affrighted settlers fled within the walls of the fort, now their only place of safety. Every thicket outside con- cealed a foe, and no place was safe from the bullet of the subtile enemy. The settlements on Long Island, West Chester and the Jersey shores all shared the same fate. Rensselaerswyck alone escaped destruction, sheltered by the friendly Mohawks. The despairing colonists, stripped of their property and fearing for their lives, threatened to quit the fort in a body and return to Hol- land, and Kieft was compelled as a last resort to take them all to serve as soldiers for two months in the pay of the Company.
115
CITY OF NEW YORK.
Amid all the horrors of this savage warfare, an inci- dent occurred which proved that the Indians did not for- get past kindness in their thirst for vengeance. De Vries had always been a firm friend of the Indians, and had enjoyed their confidence, yet his plantation at Vries- endael did not escape the general destruction. A party of Indians made a descent upon the plantation, set fire to the barns, and destroyed the crops and cattle. The planters took refuge in the rudely fortified manor-house, and were preparing to defend their lives to the last extremity, when the Indian whose life De Vries had saved on the night of the Pavonia massacre rushed to the spot, and, telling the story, begged his countrymen to spare the life of "the good chief." The effect was magical. The grateful savages cried out to the planters that they were sorry that they had killed the cattle, but that they would let the brewery stand, though they "longed for the copper kettle to make barbs for their "arrows," and at once departed.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.