USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York in the seventeenth century. Vol. I > Part 22
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pany itself was permitted to send out or to sell - he con- fiscated both ship and cargo.
Declaring now that he was without money or resources and could not pay the enlisted Englishmen Kieft asked the Eight Men to permit him to impose an excise tax. Even the suggestion of such a thing, they said, ought to come from the Company, not from its deputy, and a better plan would be to tax the many wandering traders who were gathering riches in the province while the actual settlers were ruined. Kieft insisting, however, they reluctantly sanctioned his scheme, 'provisionally' until God should grant peace or a sufficient succor should come from Holland; and in June the director and council imposed an excise of one guilder on every beaver skin, of four stivers on each quart of Spanish wine and brandy and two stivers on each quart of French wine, to be paid by the tapster, and of two guilders on each half-barrel of beer, to be paid in equal parts by the brewer and the tapster, 'the burgher who does not retail it to pay half as much.'
In asking the consent of the Eight Men to these, the first internal taxes laid upon the people of the Dutch province, Kieft deferred to that principle of no taxation without rep- resentation which the people of the fatherland had forced their overlord Mary of Burgundy to recognize by the Great Charter of 1477. In the year when they were imposed upon New Netherland the first excise, as it chanced, was imposed in Massachusetts, a tax on liquors sold at retail.
During the month of June reinforcements reached Man- hattan in an unexpected way. A band of Dutch soldiers and colonists from Brazil, where the West India Company was now meeting with reverses, had fled to Curacoa. As the gov- ernor of this island, General Petrus Stuyvesant, was finding it hard to get food for his own troops and people, and as Kieft had asked him for aid, he sent the newcomers on to New Amsterdam. They came in the ship Blue Cock - about two hundred persons, three or four score of them sol- diers. Kieft decided to dismiss politely the 'English aux-
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iliaries,' billeted the soldiers on the settlers, and in August, to supply them with clothes, continued by edict without the consent of the Eight Men the tax provisionally laid on beer, increasing the rate and ordering the brewers to make returns to him of the amount of beer they manufactured. Thus getting its first chance to protest against arbitrary taxation, loudly New Amsterdam protested. The people denounced Kieft's illegal course and the brewers refused to pay the tax, saying that if they consented they would have the Eight Men and the commonalty about their ears - 'on their neck' runs the Dutch idiom. Kieft then summoned them before his court, pronounced judgment against them, and gave their beer 'a prize to the soldiers.'
The governor, it was charged against him, had now, in- cluding fifty Englishmen, more than four hundred and fifty men at his command, yet he did nothing but quarrel and domineer, prosecute persons who spoke against him, and try in pettifogging ways to keep order in and around Fort Am- sterdam. As the farmers whose houses had been burned were afraid to return to their lands, and the soldiers were for the most part unemployed, idleness aided destitution to in- crease disorder and dissension. The English soldiers were accused of cowardice and their leaders of drunken brawling. According to the affidavits of several eye-witnesses, when Kuyter's house on the Muscoota Flats was burned - an arrow tipped with a blue flame ' coming at twenty paces from the house between the dunghill and the cherry door,' falling on the thatch, and in a violent wind immediately wreathing the house in flames - the English soldiers hid in the cellar and would not come out till the danger was past. As for their leaders, one evening when the landlord of the City Tavern was entertaining Domine Bogardus, Dr. Kierstede, and sundry other Dutchmen and their wives, Captain Under- hill appeared with his 'lieutenant' George Baxter (the gov- ernor's English secretary) and Thomas Willett. Bursting the bolts and with their 'drawn swords' breaking the cans that hung on the shelves and hacking the posts and doors,
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they treated the guests with gross insolence, Underhill crying to the minister, 'Clear out of here, for I shall strike at random.' Even when the sheriff was sent for they refused to obey his order to depart, so to prevent more trouble the guests them- selves departed, taking their revenge by lodging with Gov- ernor Kieft a formal complaint against the brawlers.
In truth, evil conditions had inflamed bad passions of every sort. In earlier days Underhill had expressed for the savages a more Christian and pitiful feeling than the average New Englander felt; but after his success on Long Island he killed three of his red captives and brought two to New Amsterdam where they were barbarously tortured and slain in the street in the presence of many lamenting squaws. It was said that Governor Kieft and Councillor La Montagne watched this hideous performance with approval, and that a white woman, Jan Jansen Dam's wife - Van Tienhoven's mother-in-law and the mother of Jan Vinje - kicked before her a severed head. Moreover, in defiance of local custom and sentiment Kieft sent some of his Indian captives as a present to the governor of Bermuda and gave others to certain old soldiers whom he 'improvidently' permitted to return at this time to Holland.
Vile as were these outbreaks of passion there were few American communities that did not witness the like at one time or another. Not only was the selling of captives as slaves a common and lawful practice in New England: after the Pequot War, wrote Edward Johnson in his Wonder Work- ing Providence, some youths and women were brought back as prisoners but the Indian men were thought so guilty that the soldiers 'brought away only their heads'; and in hours of bloody triumph torture was not unknown in New Eng- land even in much later days than Governor Kieft's. The histories of King Philip's War, which broke out in 1675, tell of instances including one when a squaw was thrown to the dogs to be torn in pieces. Philip's head might long be seen set high upon a pole at Plymouth, and in the Bay Colony his hands were shown to the public for money.
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In August, 1644, Cornelis Melyn addressed to the States General a petition setting forth the distressed state of the province, and in October the Eight Men, almost in despair, sent another Memorial, this time to the Amsterdam Chamber of the Company. It rehearsed the story of the war, blaming Kieft alike for its outbreak and for its long continuance. After the 'miraculous' arrival of reënforcements on the Blue Cock, it said, the people expected that he would take the field at once with between three and four hundred men but:
Nothing in the least has been done therein . . . scarce a foot has been moved in the matter nor an oar laid in the water. . . . We understand here that the Director sent . . . by the Blue Cock a book ornamented with various pictures in water colors in which he dilates at length on the origin of the war. On that subject it contains as many lies as lines, as we are informed by the minister and others who have read it; and from our time to his, as few facts as leaves.
Kieft's book, the Eight Men furthermore explained, gave accounts of the animals and the products of New Netherland which he could know very little about as never since he came to the country had he been farther afield than halfway up the island of Manhattan. The document called the Journal of New Netherland is probably a surviving fragment of a copy of this book.
So long, said the Eight Men, had the governor delayed warlike operations that the winter season was now at hand when half-clothed, unshod men could hardly venture forth, least of all such as had been living for years in the hot climate of Brazil. The Memorial blamed for all the troubles it chron- icled not only Director Kieft but also the Company which had put him in power and was doing nothing to aid its colo- nists. The province, it declared,
. . . is no longer of any or much account. Every place is going to ruin; neither counsel nor advice is taken; the only talk here is of princely sovereignty, about which La Montagne argued a few days ago in the tavern, maintaining that the power of the Director here was
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greater, as regards his office and commission, than that of His Highness of Orange in the Netherlands.
This is what we have in the sorrow of our hearts to complain of : That one man who had been sent out, sworn and instructed by his lords and masters to whom he is responsible, should dispose here of our lives and properties at his will and pleasure, in a manner so ar- bitrary that a king dare not legally do the like.
This meant that the governor had dragged his people into an unjust and unnecessary war, had absolutely denied them the right of appeal to the authorities in Holland, had taxed them without their consent, had not called their Board of Eight Men together for six months despite the dangerous state of affairs, and had jeered and sneered at its members for offering him advice. Therefore on behalf of the people the Eight Men asked that Director Kieft be deposed and that a local government be established after the pattern of those in the fatherland:
It is impossible to settle this country until a different system be introduced here and a new governor sent out with more people who will settle in suitable places, one near another, in the form of villages or hamlets, and elect from among themselves a Bailiff or Schout and Schepens who will be empowered to send their deputies and give their votes on public affairs with the Director and Council; so that the entire country may not be hereafter at the whim of one man again reduced to a similar danger.
The petition of the Twelve Men for a voice in the provin- cial government had been addressed only to Governor Kieft. This petition of the Eight Men - written by Andries Hudde, an educated man, the official land surveyor of the province - was the first addressed to the owners and rulers of New Netherland. It was the first overt sign of the awakening of the spirit of resistance. It is a clear, frank, and dignified paper and, by virtue of the signatures attached to it, an in- teresting witness to the democratic temper of New Amster- dam. The representatives of the commonalty who set their names to .it were Isaac Allerton the Pilgrim Father, Thomas
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Hall the ex-bondsman from Virginia, Cornelis Melyn a cul- tivated Netherlander, Jochem Pietersen Kuyter a Danish naval officer, and four humbler Netherlanders, three of whom could sign only with marks.
Before any answer to this appeal could come Director Kieft, reproved and warned by his superiors in Holland, be- stirred himself at last to pacify his province, and one of his helpers was another Captain De Vries - Captain Jan De Vries, or De Fries, the commander of the Blue Cock. By this time the Indians near Manhattan were almost as ex- hausted as the whites, and famine stared all men in the face from the fields that had lain so long untilled. As seed-time came around again, in April, 1645, peace was concluded once more with the neighboring tribes, and some of the Long Island Indians were taken into service with the Dutch troops. Then Kieft left the shelter of his fort and, for the first time since his arrival seven years before, went up the river to Fort Orange. The Mohawks and their hereditary foes the Mohe- gans signed treaties of peace with the white men, and as over- lords of the River Indians the Mohawks promised to induce them to do the same. Kieft returned to Manhattan. On August 29 the inhabitants were summoned by the court messenger to repair to the fort when the bell should ring and the colors be raised, there to hear the articles of the proposed general treaty and freely to offer their advice. All, the mes- senger reported, would attend, for all had answered kindly excepting only Hendrick Hendricksen the tailor. When they assembled no voice was raised against the terms of the treaty and, as its own words run, it was concluded
. . . in the fort under the blue canopy of heaven in presence of the council of New Netherland and the whole community called to- gether, also in presence of the Maquas' ambassadors . . . as mediators.
It was signed by seven sachems, by Governor Kieft, Coun- cillor La Montagne, and Van der Huyckens the schout-fiscal,
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and by the Board of Eight Men which this year included four Netherlanders and four Englishmen - Stoffelsen, Bout, Gys- bert Op Dyck, and Oloff Stevensen, Underhill, Baxter, the Reverend Francis Doughty and Richard Smith.
Roger Williams was misinformed when, in the letter of 1654 that has already been cited, he said that
. . . after vast expenses and mutual slaughters of Dutch, English, and Indians about four years, the Dutch were forced, to save their plantation from ruin, to make up a most unworthy and dishonorable peace with the Indians.
The war had lasted not four years but less than three, and the peace was not dishonorable. The white men and the red met each other upon equal terms and pledged themselves to the same line of conduct - above all, not to avenge individual wrongs individually but to apply for redress to the proper authorities, Dutch or Indian.
Nor, demoralized in many ways though the settlers were by their years of terror and suffering, were all their words and deeds dishonorable while the war lasted. It was in the dread- ful year 1643 that they rescued and succored Father Jogues and Father Bressani. Jogues returned to Europe in the ship that carried the first Memorials of the Eight Men. His evidence regarding the governor's responsibility for the war, as quoted by another Jesuit, Father Buteux, corroborates that of Kieft's own people. Jogues had got the story from a Catholic Irish- man who confessed to him on Manhattan.
Furthermore, one of the articles of the treaty of 1645 laid upon the Indians a solemn obligation to restore the little daughter of Mrs. Hutchinson whom they had carried off when they slew the other members of her household, the Dutchmen guaranteeing the ransom that her friends in Boston had offered. All the pledges written in the treaty were not fulfilled, but this one was. The child was brought to New Amsterdam and sent thence to Boston although, Winthrop relates, she had forgotten her native language and was loth to leave the Indians.
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Through Anne Hutchinson's eldest son, Edward, who had not come with her to New Netherland the whirligig of time brought in revenges. One of his descendants was Thomas Hutchinson who, when the Revolution was impending, bore rule as a loyalist governor over the Bay Colony that had thrust the Antinomian woman from its doors. Then again the wheel turned and, like his ancestress, Thomas Hutchinson ended his life in exile.
REFERENCE NOTES
PRINCIPAL PUBLISHED DOCUMENTS : Col. Docs., I, XIII, XIV (398) ; Cal. Hist. MSS., Dutch (390).
GENERAL AUTHORITIES: De Vries, Voyages (527) ; O'Callaghan, Hist. of New Netherland, I (382); Brodhead, Hist. of New York, I (405); Ruttenber, Indian Tribes of the Hudson River (239) ; histories of Westchester County and of Long Island.
JOGUES (quoted) : his Novum Belgium (430).
LOCKERMANS : Records of New Amsterdam, VI (360) ; Van Tienhoven, Answer to the Remonstrance from New Netherland in Col. Docs., I; Innes, New Amsterdam and its People (357) ; Purple, Ancient Families of New Amsterdam and New York (184); Schuyler, Colonial New York (395).
FAMILY NAMES: Winkler, De Nederlandsche Geslachtsnamen (332) ; Murphy, Family Names among the Dutch Settlers (340) ; Fernow, New Amsterdam Family Names (338) ; Matthes, Van and Von (341); Schuyler, Colonial New York; Riker, Harlem (209); Innes, New Amsterdam and its People; Valentine's Manuals (508). - TEMPLE (quoted) : his Observations on the United Provinces of the Netherlands (353). - BERGEN : see References, Chap. III. - VAN BUREN: Martin Van Buren, with a Sketch of the Van Buren Family in America in N. Y. Genea. and Bio. Record, XXVIII (199); Van Rensselaer Bowier Manuscripts (513). - VAN CORTLANDT: Purple, Ancient Families in New Amsterdam and New York; Schuyler, Colonial New York.
ALLERTON : Bradford, Hist. of Plymouth Plantation (441) ; Allerton, The Allerton Family in the United States (46) ; Bacon, Memoir of Isaac Allerton (47) ; Savage, Genea. Dict. (200); Murphy, The Plymouth Fathers (440) ; Arber, Story of the Pilgrim Fathers (438).
UNDERHILL : Winthrop, Hist. of New England (368) ; Hutchinson, Hist. of Massachusetts-Bay (313) ; Savage, Genea. Dict .; Innes, New Amsterdam and Its People; Thompson (291), Wood (290), and other histories of Long Island; Bunker, Long Island Gene- alogies (201). - His NEWES FROM AMERICA: (369). - His LETTER TO KNOWLES in Thompson, Hist. of Long Island, II, VOL. I. - R 241
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Appendix; other LETTERS in Winthrop Papers in Mass. Hist. Soc. Collections, 4th Series, VII.
WINTHROP ON DEMOCRACY : in Appendix to R. C. Winthrop, Life and Letters of John Winthrop, 2d ed., Boston, 1869.
N. WARD TO WINTHROP: in Winthrop Papers in Mass. Hist. Soc. Collections, 4th Series, VII.
NEW HAVEN LIST: in Records of the Colony and Plantation of New Haven (372).
WINTHROP ABOUT THE WAR: his Hist. of New England.
ROGER WILLIAMS' LETTER : in Rhode Island Hist. Soc. Collections, III. T. WELDE (quoted) : his Rise, Reign and Ruin of the Antinomians in Adams, Antinomianism (58).
UNDERHILL AND ALLERTON AT NEW HAVEN : Records of the Colony and Plantation of New Haven.
MEMORIALS OF THE EIGHT MEN: in Col. Docs., I.
WASSENAER (quoted) : his Historisch Verhael (216).
JOURNAL (or SHORT ACCOUNT) OF NEW NETHERLAND: in Col. Docs., I.
TAXES : Laws and Ordinances of New Netherland (270).
JOHNSON (quoted) : his Wonder Working Providence of Sion's Saviour in New England, 1635-1651; reprinted in Mass. Hist. Soc. Col- lections, 2d Series, II, III, IV, VII, VIII.
KING PHILIP'S WAR: Ellis and Morris, King Philip's War (258) ; histories of New England.
TREATY OF PEACE: in Col. Docs., XIII, and in O'Callaghan, Hostile Conduct of the Barbarous Natives (62).
FATHER BUTEUX (cited) : New York News in 1642 in Historical Maga- zine, 1861 (213).
HUTCHINSON : see Reference Notes, Chap. VI, especially Whitmore, Savage, Hutchinson.
CHAPTER VIII
A NEW START
1642-1648
(GOVERNOR KIEFT, GOVERNOR STUYVESANT)
This country and its position are much better and more convenient than that occupied by the English, and had not self-interest and private speculation been considered, assuredly the North or New England would not have outstripped us so much. - Remonstrance of New Netherland. 1649.
ALTHOUGH the West India Company gave its colonists no aid during the Indian war it was not indifferent to their trials and dangers, or at least to the loss it would suffer thereby. Its neglect was now due, not as in earlier years to absorbing ambitions and triumphs in other quarters, but to poverty and weakness.
It had done a wonderful work in crippling the power of Spain and increasing the wealth of the Republic. But Captain De Vries spoke truly when he said that its success in getting booty by conquest would undermine the founda- tions of legitimate trade. The influx of wealth suddenly and easily gained fostered an almost frantic spirit of speculation, conspicuously displayed in the famous 'tulip mania' that was at its height in 1637. Reaction followed. Then in 1641 Portugal, revolting against Spain, signed with Holland a ten years' truce. This confirmed to the Company its Brazilian possessions but excited their Portuguese inhabitants to hope eventually to free themselves from Dutch control and, of course, lessened the Company's privateering opportunities. As meanwhile it had been declaring reckless dividends, and as it could get but a small part of the subsidies promised by
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the government, it was almost bankrupt when, in 1644, the States General directed it to take prompt action upon the complaints of the Eight Men of New Amsterdam. It replied that it now despaired of getting profit from a province which had cost it half a million guilders in excess of all receipts. It was in honor bound, it said, to keep the province; otherwise it would willingly resign it to the States General. Without aid it could no longer defend or supply any 'distant place'; and the special aid for which it asked, pleading its notable public services, was consolidation with its elder sister the East India Company, now far more prosperous than itself. The charters of both companies were soon to expire. The East India Company had reaped all the permanent advan- tages of the conflict with Spain; the West India Company had borne all the blows and burdens; and the government would have been glad to discharge its great debts to the poorer association by laying them on the shoulders of the richer. But to consolidation the East India Company would not consent.
In the Assembly of the XIX, Van Rensselaer had recently written to Kieft, opinions still greatly differed respecting New Netherland, some going 'on the principle of commerce, others though fewer on the principle of colonization.' But debilitated and divided though it was, the Company could no longer ignore the troubles in the province. Referring all the papers it had received from its agents and its colonists to a board of accounts which it had recently established it received in return a careful advisory report. This condemned the suggestion of Director Kieft that a strong band of soldiers should be sent out 'utterly to exterminate all enemies by force.' Kieft's people, it said, had protested against the 'hasty and severe proceedings' which, taking place 'without their knowl- edge or consent,' had resulted in the slaughter of about a thou- sand Indians and many soldiers and colonists. There could be little hope of peace, it affirmed,
. . . so long as the present rulers remain there, because the Indians
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are in no way to be pacified (as they themselves declare to ours) until the Director is removed thence, calling daily for Wouter, Wouter - meaning Wouter Van Twiller.
Lubbertus Van Dincklagen, the report continued - ignor- ing his long dispute with the Company about his removal from office and the arrears of his pay - ought now to be appointed governor for he was a favorite with the Indians. Properly to support the civil establishment in the province and to repair and garrison Fort Amsterdam the Company should expend somewhat more than 20,000 guilders a year. The Director- general should be assisted by a vice-director and a schout- fiscal and, when criminal cases came before his court, by two 'capable members' of the commonalty. The delegates whom the Charter of Freedoms of 1640 had instructed the patroons to appoint for consultation with the director regarding public affairs ought to be summoned for the purpose twice a year - a plan which would have established a little semi-popular assembly. Negro slaves should be introduced in numbers because, as in earlier days, Dutch farm servants had to be bribed to emigrate 'by a great deal of money and promises.' The colonists should be allowed to trade with the Company's colonies in Brazil, and to them alone should be reserved all traffic with the Indians in their own province; that is, roving traders and hucksters, of whom the settlers had begun to complain since the enlargement of trading privileges, ought not to be allowed to reap hasty harvests of gain and then to sail away, doing nothing to build up the country, bearing none of its burdens, and helping to enrich none of its inhabit- ants. The report also said that Holland and England should agree upon the boundaries of their American lands where the English, it added very truly, were daily encroaching more and more upon the Dutch,
The Pequot War had shown the New Englanders the danger of Indian outbreaks and the need for concord among them- selves in times of trouble. As the mother-country was now in the throes of civil war they knew that they must rely wholly
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upon themselves and, on the other hand, that neither king nor parliament would interfere with anything they might choose to do. Therefore in May, 1643, Massachusetts (which had annexed New Hampshire), Connecticut, New Haven, and Plymouth formed themselves into a confederacy, calling it the United Colonies of New England. Eight commissioners, two chosen by the general court or assembly of each of the colonies, were to manage such public matters as concerned them all and to have the entire control of Indian affairs. The vote of any six commissioners was to be binding upon all four colonies.
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