USA > New York > New York County > Harlem > Revised History of Harlem (City of New York): Its Origin and Early Annals. : Prefaced by Home Scenes in the Fatherlands; Or Notices of Its Founders Before Emigration. Also, Sketches of Numerous Families, and the Recovered History of the Land-titles > Part 16
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"The drowsy herdsman now reviews his charge, Unbars his stalls and sets his flocks at large; The ploughboy next comes trudging o'er the plain, With merry heart to yoke his team again; He slowly goads along the lounging pair, As whistling on he goes for want of care. Unconscious of his happier lot below, In thought confined he wields his steady plow;
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And all the joyful train with sickles bright, Now join the harvest fields in gay delight; And as the rustic jest goes jocund round, The rural hour in guileless mirth is crowned; While health does o'er each cheerful visage play, Content and joy beguile their hours away."
Sweet dream of security, it was past! A mortal enmity was brewing between the white and the red man, in the face of every interest which should have bound them in friendship. Though the responsibility lay not with the colonist, but with the authorities, the effects fell heavily on the former. In 1639 Direc- tor Kieft was guilty of a most impolitic act, in attempting to levy a tax upon the several Indian tribes, sending his wily agent Tienhoven to demand their corn, furs, and sewant .* The demand was indignantly spurned, and served only to arouse a hostile feeling toward the Dutch. Montagne's prediction was well made when, seeing the folly of his measure, he said, "A bridge has been built, over which war will soon stalk through the land." Some petty depredations being committed soon after, which were, in part falsely, charged upon the Raritan Indians, the hotheaded Kieft dispatched a body of soldiers to demand satisfaction. They too well executed their mission by a wanton attack on the Indians, July 16th, 1640, killing several, and burning their maize.
The next year, 1641, brought retaliation from the Raritans, who, on September Ist, swept off the settlers upon Staten Island, while Manhattan Island was already smarting under the first stroke of savage vengeance. A Wickquaskeek who from boy- hood had harbored a grudge against the Dutch, because at that time three of Director Minuit's men had slain his uncle and stolen his beavers, could no longer restrain his thirst for revenge. On a day in midsummer he entered the house of Claes Swits, at Turtle Bay, "on the road over which the Indians from Wickquas- ·keck passed daily." Assuming a friendly air, and being known to Swits, for whose son he had worked, he was "well received and supplied with food." Then he wanted to trade some furs for duffels : but while the unsuspecting old man was bending over the chest in which his cloth was kept, the savage, with an axe that lay near, struck him upon the neck, when "he fell down dead
. Sewant. also called wampum, was the Indian money, consisting of tubular beads made from the conch-shell. perforated lengthwise and fastened with thread upon strips of cloth or canvas. For many years it was almost the only money in circulation among the settlers, and for trading with the Indians was preferable to coin. Even the contributions at church were made in sewant. The color of the beads, whether white or black, and the finish determined its value. For an ex- haustive article upon its manufacture, etc., see Munsell's Annals of Albany, vol. ii, pp. 1-8, second edition.
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by the chest." He then stole all the goods and fled into the forest. This cruel murder, at their very doors, aroused the authorities, and a yacht was sent to Wickquaskeek to demand satisfaction from the sachem. He not only refused, but justified the act. "He wished twenty Swannekins (i. e., Dutchmen) had been murdered."
Burning to scourge the savages, but fearing to assume the responsibility, Kieft referred it to the citizens, who at his request came together and chose twelve of their number to decide upon the grave question of making war to avenge the murder of Swits. The twelve men, Kuyter being one, reported their conclusions on the 24th of August. They counseled delay. A better oppor- tunity should be chosen to inflict the blow, for their cattle were now pasturing in the woods, and the settlers were living isolated from each other,-east, west, north and south. Meanwhile an- other demand should be made for the murderer, and repeated, if necessary, "twice or three times." Then, his surrender being still refused, let war begin "at once." "The attack should be made in the harvest, when the Indians were hunting," or deferred "till the maize trade be over, and until an opportunity and God's will be made manifest." These reasonable counsels prevailed ; peace was maintained, and Kuyter and his neighbors pursued their farming work unobstructed, though not without more or less apprehension.
Vredendal and the Otter-spoor, in the year which inaugur- ated these troubles, had yielded profitable returns for the "great expenses" put upon these bouweries, while Kuyter, after " a heavy outlay, much pains, and immense labor" upon his buildings and lands at Zegendal, to complete the one and bring the other under good cultivation, had also realized a valuable crop of tobacco, which being wintered and well cured he was intending to ship during the summer of 1641 to Coenraet Van Keulen, at Amsterdam, who had already made him advances thereon. But his purpose was defeated by the sudden departure of the Oak Tree for Virginia, the vessel in which he had designed to make his shipment, adding to his disappointment and loss the necessity of refunding to his consignee the sum advanced by him. Mon- tagne was hardly as fortunate, for while his crop was being sweated and cured, his tobacco-house, too slightly built, blew down, by which accident the tobacco was injured. He prose- cuted John Morris, the carpenter, for damages, which ended in a compromise. And so, notwithstanding a malicious report which reached Holland, that Montagne "daily filled his pockets with
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ducatoons and jacobuses," his pecuniary affairs really began to wear a discouraging aspect, his domestic horizon being also clouded just at this time by the loss of his wife.
Meanwhile satisfaction for the murder of Swits had been "several times sought for, but in vain." Indeed, it is reported that the savage tribes were combining for a general war upon the colonists; and the killing of two other persons at Staten Island and Hackensack was proof of the hostile spirit animating the savages. All this was very alarming to the inhabitants, especially those upon exposed bouweries, who lived in constant fear, "and not without reason, as the Indians were daily in their houses."
Persuasion having failed, Kieft now felt justified in using force with the savages. He summoned the twelve men, Novem- ber Ist, and asked their opinion. "Mr. Jochem" (Kuyter) ad- vised "to be patient, and to lull the Indians into security"; and most agreed with him. On January 21st, 1642, the twelve men gave their assent to an expedition against the Wickquaskeeks, but (knowing his cowardice) suggested that the director him- self should lead the forces! The latter declined the honor, but began warlike preparations. All being ready, and spies sent to reconnoitre reporting that the Indians "lay in their village sus- pecting nothing," Ensign Hendrick Van Dyck, with eighty men, left Fort Amsterdam early in the month of March for Wickquas- keek. Arriving at the Annepperah, or the Saw Mill Creek, at Yonkers, Willem Bont, who held a subordinate command, bravely passed over with his men and "marched on with the advanced troops," expecting the ensign to follow.# But Van Dyck halted at the creek for more than an hour before he crossed with his com- mand and came up; but now darkness had set in, Tobias Teunis- sen, the guide, lost his way, and the ensign, perplexed and out of temper, ordered a return. The result was more happy, prob- ably, than if they had met the savages, for the latter, noticing by the tracks of the soldiers near their wigwams "that they had narowly escaped discovery," dreaded another visit, and sent messengers to sue for peace. Kieft accordingly sent delegates, including Van Tienhoven, who understood Indian, to meet the chiefs of Wickquaskeek in council at the house of Jonas Bronck, at Emmaus, and here was made a formal treaty, in which, among
* Willem Fredericks Bont, the same year, removed to Fort Orange, and being a "free carpenter" took part in constructing the first church there. Later he was for several years a magistrate, kept tavern, farmed the excise, and acquired property. He married, about 1650, Geertie Nannincks, as her fourth husband; in 1683 both were members of Dominie Delius' Church. Whether he left children is not known.
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other things, the sachems engaged to deliver Swits' murderer to the Dutch.
Under this pledge of peace the spring and summer witnessed considerable labor on the several plantations on the Flats. At the same time Montagne, as a member of the council, was much occupied with official duties, and Kuyter made his debut into public life as a "kermeester," one of those chosen to oversee the erection of a church at New Amsterdam, because Kuyter was "a devout person of the reformed religion, and had good work- men who would quickly prepare the timber." The church was begun forthwith, its walls "laid up with quarry stone," and "built in the fort, to guard against any surprise by the Indians."
Illusory indeed was the hope of living in peace with the natives, now that the old ties of friendship had been ruptured. It so happened that in midwinter following, the Mahicans, who lived below Fort Orange, came down and made war upon the Tappans and Wickquaskeeks, it was said, to force those tribes, whom they had once subjugated, to render them tribute. Nu- merous as were these tribes, they were easily overpowered by the Mahicans, who were well armed with guns, many of the men being slain, the women and children made captives, and a crowd of terror-stricken fugitives forced to take to flight through a deep snow to find shelter in the Dutch settlements. Half dead with cold and hunger, they were kindly received by the people and fed for two weeks, till, gathering courage, they returned to their castles. But soon, another panic seizing them, they again sought the protection of the Dutch. Now Kieft, with no commisera- tion for these wretched beings, thought it his chance to avenge the death of Claes Swits and others. "God hath wholly deliv- ered them into our hands," impiously said Van Tienhoven and other restless spirits, who, simply echoing the sentiments of Kieft, made a formal request for leave to destroy them.
Kuyter and other considerate persons opposed this stoutly, insisting that it would only recoil upon their own heads, bring disaster upon the country, and especially expose the out-planta- tions to the rage of a vindictive and cruel foe. Montagne, having just arrived from Quiet Dale, its stalls of cattle and full garners all endangered, urged his objections with unusual warmth. "We ought first to consider well," he insisted, "whether we shall be able to give protection to those who are living at a distance." But this pertinent suggestion was unheeded, evil counsels prevailed, and Kieft, set in his mad purpose, rashly issued orders. On the night of February 25th, 1643, a party of Dutch soldiers sallied
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forth from the streets of New Amsterdam and made a savage onslaught upon the sleeping Wickquaskeeks, at Curler's Hook, forty of whom were massacred "in cold blood." Another party, crossing the Hudson, slaughtered a band which had sought refuge at Pavonia. Nor did it stop here, for a day or two after several of the friendly Mareckaweeks were basely murdered.
The enraged savages were not slow to resent such treatment, and several tribes joining hands made common cause against the Dutch. Issuing from the woods and thickets, they boldly at- tacked and slew the farmers, both in their dwellings and in the open field, put the firebrand to houses, haystacks, and grain, killed or drove away the stock, and carried off women and children into a painful captivity. Happy they who had the means of defense or timely notice to flee. "The winter passed in confusion and terror." No outdoor labor could be safely done. Kieft, as agent of Van Keulen, had contracted on December 6th for the erection of a fine substantial residence on the Otter-spoor, fifty by one hundred feet on the ground, with porticos front and rear, and all very complete; for whose occupancy we cannot tell, unless for Van Keulen or some of his family, but certainly not for the chicken-hearted director, who kept himself "safely protected in the fort, out of which he had never slept for all the years he had been there." But this work was probably arrested.
At length "the season came for driving out the cattle, which caused many to desire peace; the Indians, on their part, seeing that it was time to plant maize, were not less solicitous for a ces- sation of hostilities ; so, after some negotiation, peace was con- cluded." It was ratified April 22d, 1643, though many doubted its continuance. But the colonists, and especially Kuyter, had met with a sad loss in the recent death of Jonas Bronck. Was it at the hands of the Indians? We judge not, as his property was spared. On May 6th Kuyter and Dominie Bogardus visited Em- maus, and, aided by the widow* and Peter Jonassen Bronck, took an inventory of the estate, of which Kuyter and the dominie had been apointed guardians. Seignior Bronck, as he was styled. must be rated quite above the ordinary colonists, his Danish and Latin library, stored with law history, as also divinity, being indicative of his tastes and culture as well as of his piety.
The bouweries of Montagne and Kuyter were also intact.
* Bronck's widow afterward married Arent Van Curler, of Rensselaerswyck, whom she also survived. She died at Schenectady, December 19. 16-6. as per a letter written from Kingston, twelve days after, by her nephew, Wilhelmus Beeck- man, whom for want of children she named as one of her heirs. Her will was made November 11. 1676; the date of probate being inadvertently given in Pearson's Schenectady ' Settlers as the date of her death.
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Buildings and stock well intrenched within palisades had escaped the general devastation. Montagne had already put twenty-six acres in rye, barley and peas, when, willing to be relieved of a charge so fraught with danger, he leased his bouwery, with the "farm-house," kitchen, out-houses, orchard, stock, and all as it stood, June 14th, to Bout Franssen, from Naerden, for the term of three years. In three months (September 22d), Franssen gave it up, for the Indians, having harvested their maize, began again their bloody work. Terrible scenes ensued. The settlers, compelled to fly, took refuge at Fort Amsterdam, to within sight of which the brutal savages tracked their victims. Montagne "was driven off his land," involving the loss of all he could not carry away; and scarcely a settler remained on the bouweries of Manhattan Island. "Almost every place is abandoned," wrote Kuyter and others, of the popular board of Eight Men, in a letter of November 3d, 1643, imploring aid from the directors in Hol- land. "We wretched people," say they, "with our wives and little ones that still survive, must in our destitution find refuge together in and around the fort at Manhattas, where we are not safe even for an hour, as the Indians daily threaten to overwhelm us. Very little can be planted this autumn, and much less in the spring; so it must come to pass that those of us who may yet save our lives will necessarily perish next year by hunger and grief, as also our wives and children, unless our God have pity on us."
But relief from Holland could not be immediate. The ques- tion of self-preservation now pressed upon the colonists; to re- main inactive was but to die. Their courage rising to the emer- gency, it was resolved to muster in every man able to bear arms, and to take the field with all their available force against the wily and powerful foe. Montagne and Kuyter, however, opposed at first to war, had now no alternative but to second the effort to conquer a peace. The former, appointed to the chief military command, led several expeditions sent out in various directions during the succeeding winter and spring, and in which Kuyter held the captaincy of a burgher company. These forces scoured the Indian country, driving the foe from his rude castles and villages with sword and firebrand.
Thus far Captain Kuyter, by means of a guard of soldiers stationed at Zegendal, under Sergeant Ael, had protected his house and farmers. But on the night of March 5th, when he was absent, the Indians stealthily surrounded his enclosure. The
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guard was sleeping in a cellar or underground hut ;* but two young men in Kuyter's employ, apprehensive of danger, were patrolling around the farm-house. Near two o'clock in the morning these were startled by a blazing arrow, "the flame hav- ing the appearance of brimstone," which darted through the air and fell on the roof of the dwelling. The wind blowing strongly, the thatch at once took fire, and soon the house and contents were burned to the ground. During and after the conflagration the savages made the night hideous by whooping and discharge of guns, to the terror of the two maid-servants, while the sergeant, with the caution of years, kept within the cellar, refusing to expose either himself or his men, though the other persons, and especially the young men, in face of a double danger, saved what they could from the flames.
The Wickquaskeeks were set down as the authors of this villainy. But this was denied by Ponkes, a Mareckweek, to two Dutchman who understood his language, and whom he met but two days after the fire. "It was their way to boast," he said, "whenever they committed any mischief." But not one had he heard boast of this; besides, "it was well known among the In- dians that the Swannekins themselves burned the house, and removed through dread of being killed there!" This piece of Indian logic, evidently invented by the artful savage to shield his tribe from retribution, was too transparent. Kuyter censured "the English soldiers" for not assisting. Kieft, on the other hand, took occasion to throw the blame on Kuyter, charging him with rashly sending away part of his guard just before the fire, leaving to protect the property only "four soldiers and five lab- orers."t This dispute between Kieft and Kuyter betrays a state of feeling which afterward led to very serious results.
Overcome by dread of the savages, neither the planters nor their laborers had courage longer to engage in work upon the Flats; and thus things continued till at length a brighter day dawned upon the colonists. Wearied with "a two years' war," the Indians themselves manifested a wish to bury the hatchet. The sachems of the adjacent tribes upon Long Island and the banks of the Hudson were accordingly invited to a grand council, held in Fort Amsterdam, August 30th, 1645, when was happily
* Underground huts were first made use of by those who at first had no means to build farm houses, and in which they could live "dry and warm for two, three or four years." The method of making them is described by Van Tienhoven, Doc. Hist. N. Y., iv: 31.
t Sergt. Martin Ael and three English soldiers, Thomas Foster, William Gilford and Abraham Newman, with Cornelis Van Houten, Jan Hegeman, Pieter Jansen, Jacob Lambertsen and Derick Gerritsen and the two dairymaids, made eleven persons within the palisades. Three soldiers had left only a few days before the attack.
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concluded, "a solid and durable peace." Some of the powerful Mohawks, with their interpreter, Cornelis Van Slyck, also at- tended and assisted in the negotiations. Little Ape, chief of the Mahicans, spoke in behalf of their tributaries, the Wickquaskeeks, pledging them to the observance of the treaty, by the terms of which the Indians were "not to come with weapons on Manhattan Island, nor in the vicinity of Christian dwellings." The treaty was signed, in the presence of many citizens, by several of the more distinguished, and by the sachems, among the former being La Montagne; and also by the two interpreters, in which capacity the worthy Norman, Claes Carstensen, who later ended his days at Harlem, acted for the colonists.
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CHAPTER IX.
. 1645-1650
LAND PATENTS-KUYTER'S TRIALS.
PEACE thus assured, the planters whom the Indians had driven from the Flats and parts adjacent, again took heart and ventured to return to their desolated bouweries. But, grown wiser since their late expulsion, they had come to realize by how uncertain a tenure they held their lands, having as yet received no patent or groundbrief. By a neglect to secure such patents there was imminent risk of losing whatever they invested, as well as the land itself; and how soon some new contingency might arise, to wrest all from them and their heirs, who could tell? Moreover, in so settled a state of the country the legal seizin by documentary title was a needed stimulus to exertion, an induce- ment to bear the toil, hazard, and hardship involved in a residence upon one of these exposed bouweries. The settlers were led to expect a groundbrief after having held and improved their lands for two years; in most of the cases to be named where such patents were received there had evidently been a much longer occupancy. But meanwhile some new farms had been begun, not as yet noticed, and as will further appear by a brief survey of the progress of settlement at this date.
Sibout Claessen, one of the burghers of New Amsterdam, was from Hoorn, on the Zuyder Zee. He was respected, and as a builder of practical consequence to the community, insomuch that Director Kieft granted him fifty morgen of land "on the Island of Manhattas, beginning at the hook at the Hellegat, where Verken Island ends." With filial affection for his native place, where rested the bones of his father, Claes Sibout, and still lived his brother, Hendrick, and other kinsfolk, Claessen called his new
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possession Hoorn's Hook. It was patented to him June 5th, 1646 .*
The narrow kill called by the Indians Papparinamin, which, winding around the neck of land forming the extreme northerly part of Manhattan, connected the Spuyten Duyvel with the Great Kill, or Harlem River, gave its name as well to the land lying contiguous to it on either side. Papparinamin, as interpreted, Place where the stream is shut, was thus confined neither to the land nor stream, but to the locality, and was certainly well given, as it has ever been the great bar to navigation around Manhattan Island. The noted Dr. Adrian Vander Donck, who owned "a saw mill, bouwery, and plantation," some distance above on the Annepperah, had selected the island on the northerly side of the Papparinamin Creek, "containing some thirty or forty morgen, with a convenient meadow about it," intending, as he himself states, "to go and dwell on the said spot, or to make gradual pre- parations therefor, by building upon it and tilling it, since both his inclination and judgment led him to that place." Having, with Kieft's consent, bought the land from the sachem Tackamack and other Indians, Vander Donck, with his newly-married wife, the daughter of Rev. Francis Doughty, visited Holland, expecting on his return to bring over his "mother, sister, brother, servants, and other members of his family," to make their home at Pappar- inamin. But, offending the directors by acting as a representa- tive of the commonalty of New Netherland in certain charges against Stuyvesant, Vander Donck was restrained for several years from again leaving the fatherland, and then returned to his possessions only to die a year or two later.
But the opposite section of Papparinamin, forming the upper extremity of Manhattan Island, was not less inviting for its arable lands, meadows, and circumambient creeks, and, if we do not mistake De Rasieres, was one of the two places he found at the the north end,-the other Harlem Flats,-where was "good land," ready, with little or no clearing, for tillage. Here another Hol- lander, Matthys Jansen Van Keulen, had obtained a grant of fifty morgen of land from Director Kieft, probably in advance
* Jan Aertsen Van Putten and his two sisters, whose mother, Susannah, had recently married this first proprietor of Hoorn's Hook, were children of Aert Teunissen Van Putten, who, in 1643, was massacred (but not his family, as some say) by Indians at Pavonia. Jan Aertsen chose the trade of a blacksmith, and settled at Esopus, where he joined the church, April 15, 1661, and soon after was made an elder. Having been of the party who attacked the Indians there in 1659, this was too well remembered, for in the vengeful onslaught made by the savages upon that place, June 7, 1663, he was killed in his house. Only a few days before this his wife Grietie Hendricks and little daughter Annetie had reached their home from a visit to Wie by Swolle, in Holland, Grietie's birthplace. The daughter and only child, Annetie, born 1659, afterward married Hendrick Kip, son of Isaac of H., by whom she had sons John, Hendrick, etc. See Du Mont.
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