USA > Pennsylvania > Pennsylvania, colonial and federal : a history, 1608-1903, Volume One > Part 4
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Such were the Pennsylvanians of the lower Susquehanna, in the year 1608, according to Captain John Smith. His story must have the substance of truth, and though somewhat warily we are obliged to accept it as history. The heroic "werowance," the giant Indian with the enormous leg, stands indeed upon Smith's "mappe" to this day, towering over the rude delineation of bay and river, creek and mountain. That the bold captain exagger- ated his proportions somewhat is most probable, yet human skele- tons of extraordinary size have been dug up on the lower Susque- hanna in our day, and may have been frames of such men as came to meet the white strangers in August, 1608.
At the least, we may say with confidence that here was the first contact of white men with the native people of Pennsylvania; if Smith did not actually come within the line of our present State, he saw its inhabitants earliest of all the European pioneers, and the red men, meeting him and his company, beheld for the first time the race that was coming to dispossess them.
Twelve months after Smith's visit to the head of the Chesa- peake it was that by the voyage of Henry Hudson along the Atlantic coast the existence of Delaware Bay became definitely known to the white men, and a new way to Pennsylvania was ready for opening. On the 28th of August, 1609 -- a month later, as has been said in the preceding chapter, than Champlain's momentous encounter with the Mohawks at Ticonderoga-Hud- son's Half Moon, coming slowly up from the Chesapeake Capes, past Chincoteague and the low sand-beaches of Rehoboth, entered the Capes of the Delaware. Hudson was an Englishman, but in the service now of the Dutch. The republic of the Netherlands, after a struggle never surpassed for heroism and constancy, had won a truce with Philip of Spain, and the Dutch merchants had sent the English captain out upon the old quest, a short way to China. He brought his little ship into the bay cautiously. It was about noon. The day was very warm. The place was whol- ly unknown to him, but the broad bay, bringing down its flood of
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waters, encouraged the hope that here at last might be a north- west passage to Cathay. The afternoon was spent in soundings, for shoal ground, now familiar to ship-captains and pilots, dis- couraged incautious movement, and once the Half-Moon touched bottom. Finally, at evening, Hudson cast anchor in eight fathoms of water, and next morning, deciding that "he who would thor- oughly discover this great bay must have a small pinnace to send before him," sailed northward up the New Jersey coast, and a few days later entered the great river that since has borne his name.
Slight as this event seems in the narration, it has great im- portance in the history we are now presenting. Hudson made known thus to his employers, the Dutch East India Company, and to the sea-faring nations of western Europe, the existence of this wide bay, into which, as he perceived, a great river must discharge. His discovery laid the ground for the claim by the Dutch to the country on the Delaware. Exploration followed, then trade, then occupancy, so a new state. We shall find all this following in its time.
But neither John Smith nor Henry Hudson, as we have seen, entered Pennsylvania. They approached or reached the open doorway, but did not come inside. The actual visit of a white man was not made for six years after Hudson's call at the Capes. Apparently the first of white pioneers in Pennsylvania was a Frenchman, who came from Canada, Etienne Brulé, a follower of Champlain, the first Governor of New France. He was Cham- plain's interpreter and guide, "the dauntless woodsman, pioneer of pioneers," Parkman calls him-yet a man, it would appear, of qualities not all heroic.
We are not to forget that the French were in Canada long years before the English were in Virginia, or the Dutch at Man- hattan. It was in 1534 that Jacques Cartier sailed up the St. Lawrence, and from that time there was French trade on that river ; not until 1607 did the Jamestown colonists enter the Chesa- peake, and settlement in that quarter begin. It would not be sur-
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prising, then, if one of Champlain's men, detached on some errand from one of the French excursions or forays into New York, should penetrate the unknown country to the south a little farther, and enter Pennsylvania. This, it seems, is what happened. In the summer of 1615, Champlain sent Brulé southward from Lake Ontario, through the country of the hostile Iroquois, to hasten the march of five hundred Indians of the Susquehanna region who had promised to join him in an attack on an Iroquois stronghold. Brulé went, accompanied by twelve Hurons. It was in the early autumn, the beginning of September. He and his companions made their way stealthily, and not without perilous adventure, southward to an Indian town which Champlain calls, in his narra- tive, Carantouan. It was palisaded ; it could send out eight hun- dred warriors ; its population, by such an estimate-very excessive it would seem-would be four thousand. It was situated "three days distant" from the Iroquois town (probably the place known to us as Nichol's Pond, in the town of Fenner, in Madison county, New York, near Lake Oneida), which Champlain and the Hurons meant to attack, and so must have been near, if not actually within, the limits of Pennsylvania.
Brulé and his five hundred allies arrived before the Iroquois fortress too late to aid Champlain, who had failed, had been wounded, and had retreated to Canada; he returned, therefore. with them, to Carantouan, and according to the account which he gave Champlain when next they met, three years later, he spent the winter, 1615-1616, in a tour of exploration into the regions southward from that place. His adventures are thus recorded in the "Voyages" of Champlain :
"Brulé was obliged to stay and spend the rest of the autumn and all the winter, for lack of company and escort home. While awaiting, he busied himself in exploring the country and visiting the tribes and territories adjacent to that place, and in making a tour along a river that debouches in the direction of Florida, where are many powerful and warlike nations, carrying on wars against
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TH
RTRAICTUER OF CAPTAY ADMIRALL OF NEW ENG
ILLIWS NHOI AN
Thef are the Lines that Thew thy Face; but thofe That Shew thy Grace and Glory brighter bee: Thy Faire-Discoveries and Fowle - Overthrowes of Salvages, much. Civilized by. thee Beft few the Spirit; and to it Glory d'un So,thou art Brafse without, but Golde within. If fo; in Brasse too Soft smiths Acts to beare I fix the Fame , to make Brafse steele out weare.
Thing, as thou art Virtues. Join Dauics. Heref:
John Smith
Born 1580; died 1631
The Pioneer White Men
each other. The climate there is very temperate, and there are great numbers of animals and abundance of small game. But to traverse and reach these regions requires practice, on account of
. the difficulties involved in passing the extensive wastes.
"He continued his course along the river as far as the sea, and to islands, and lands near them, which are inhabited by various tribes and large numbers of savages, who are well disposed and love the French above all nations. But those who know the Dutch complain severely of them, since they treat them very roughly. Among other things he observed that the winter was very temperate, that it snowed very rarely, and that when it did the snow was not a foot deep and melted immediately.
"After traversing the country and observing what was note- worthy, he returned to the village of Carantouan, in order to find an escort for returning to our settlement."
And this is the story of Etienne Brule's entrance upon and exploration of Central Pennsylvania, and the country farther southward. It seems meagre, it must be confessed ; but we are to consider that it is the condensed account, given by Champlain (or the editor of his book), in the midst of matters which seemed to the Frenchman much more important. It exhibits Brulé as not merely coming across the line of Pennsylvania, or venturing a little way within, but traversing the State from the line of New York to the line of Maryland, exploring the valley of the Susque- hanna through most of its length. Presumably he returned through the same region, if not precisely by the same route, to Carantouan, and he had thus gained by observation a knowledge of a large section of Pennsylvania-knowledge which hardly for a century to come any other white man would possess.
And now we return again to the Delaware, for there the ven- turing ships from Europe will presently come into Pennsylvania waters. After Hudson, almost precisely a twelvemonth, there came to the mouth of the bay, as he had done, one of the Virginia adventurers, Captain Samuel Argall, who had left Jamestown in
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June, 1610, on a voyage to seek provisions. He entered the bay on the 27th of August, and gave it the name Delaware, after Lord (le la Warr, then Governor of Virginia. He "came to anchor," he says, "in a very great bay," where he "found great store of people, which were very kind." They promised him that the next day they would bring him "great store of corne," but in the even- ing, the wind suddenly changing, he judged it best to sail away.
The fame of Henry Hudson's voyage, and especially of his discovery of a great river flowing through a land rich with furs, roused the Dutch merchants and seamen, and ships from Holland soon after 1609 began to gather at the island called Manhattes, or Manhattan. Precisely what ships came, and when, in this early period, belongs to the history of New York, and in fact is but vaguely and incompletely known ; but by 1614 there were or had lately been at Manhattan at least five vessels from Dutch ports, seeking cargoes of furs. One of them, it is said, commanded by Cornelius Mey, came that year down the New Jersey coast and entered Delaware bay, where Mey gave to the two capes the names which one of them for a long time, and the other perma- nently kept-Mey, the eastern, and Cornelius, now Henlopen, the western. This voyage may have been made in 1614, or it may not ; it is at least quite as likely that Mey named the capes on a later voyage in 1623, of which we shall speak presently.
Of the ships at Manhattan in 1614, one, the Tiger, commanded by Captain Adrian Block, by some mischance was burned, and thereupon Block built, in the spring of that year, on the shore of Manhattan Island," a little "yacht," to take her place. This was the Onrust-Restless-famous ever since, because by many she has been supposed to be the first sea-going vessel built by white men within the limits of the original Union. Really she was the second, and a mere cock-boat indeed, judged by modern standards, for her length was forty-four and a half feet, her width eleven and a half. and her capacity "eight lasts," about sixteen tons. Yet in craft not much larger mariners ventured on long voyages in those days.
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Gustavus Adolphus
King of Sweden from 1611 to 1632, when he was killed in the battle of Lutzen. Born 1594. Photographed especially for this work by J. F. Sachse from a canvas in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania
The Pioneer White Men
The Onrust was employed, her owners reported in 1616, "during the space of three years"-i. e. 1614, 1615, and 1616- in "looking for new countries, havens, bays and rivers." For such a purpose she served well. Sailing in her from Manhattan in 1614, Captain Block explored the coast eastward as far as Cape Cod, leaving Dutch names on land and water, his own for the small island at the eastern end of Long Island, where it yet re- mains. Then, promptly on completing his trip, he returned to Holland, and the Onrust was left to other commanders.
Two years later, it is supposed, another of the Dutch skippers, Cornelius Hendricksen, "of Munnickendam," brought the Onrust to the Delaware, and ascended in her the bay and river as far as the mouth of the Schuylkill. If he made such a voyage in 1616, it must have been early in the year, for on the 16th of August, that year, the owners of the Onrust petitioned the States-General of The Netherlands for a grant of privileges of trade, on account of the discoveries which they asserted Hendricksen had made in her, and which he, being himself then at The Hague, was called upon, in their behalf, to describe and verify.
It is not of great importance to the history of Pennsylvania whether Hendricksen's voyagings in the Onrust included such a visit to the Delaware or not. Yet in dealing with these begin- nings of the State this episode, accorded respect by nearly all our historical writers, can hardly be passed over. Hendricksen's own statement, drawn up for the States-General, affords no good evi- dence that he ever entered the bay, or even visited the capes. His report, read August 19, 1616, is simply this :
"He hath discovered for his aforesaid Masters and Directors certain lands, a bay and three rivers, situate between 38 and 40 degrees. And did there trade with the inhabitants; said trade consisting of Sables, Furs, Robes and other Skins. He hath found the said country full of trees, to-wit: oaks, hickory, and pines, which trees were in some places covered with vines. He hath seen in the said country bucks and does, turkeys and part-
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ridges. He hath found the climate of the said country very tem- perate, judging it to be as temperate as that of this country, Hol- land. He also traded for and bought from the inhabitants, the Minquas, three persons, being people belonging to this Company, which three persons were employed in the service of the Mohawks and Machicans, giving for them kettles, beads, and merchandise."
It is perplexing to read this report-so vague, so general, so wanting in particulars which would make it certain that Hendrick- sen had really explored the Delaware. But we must take it as it is, and decide, by the study of other evidence, what its significance ought to be. One word in it fixes our attention, "Minquas;" as for the trees, furs, vines, birds, and animals, they might have been found over a wide area of country besides that on the Delaware. Minquas, as we have learned, was the Dutch name for the Indians of the Susquehanna region, who came at times in war-parties to the Delaware. Except for this word it could as readily be be- lieved that Hendricksen's "bay and three rivers" were on the coast of New Jersey, or between Cape Henlopen and Chinco- teague.
But the owners of the Onrust, in their petition, referred to a "carte figurative," a map, which they had placed on file. This, they said, exhibited the field of Hendricksen's discoveries. Let us turn to this. What map was it? In 1841, Mr. John Romeyn Brodhead, agent of the State of New York, searching the Dutch archives at The Hague, found two maps which seemed to have been submitted to the States-General about the time we are con- sidering, one of which was probably the map referred to. One of them, on paper, was larger than the other ; the smaller was hand- somely drawn on parchment. On the face of the paper map, inland, near the word "Minquaas," there is a memorandum, and this vaguely suggests, though it does not perfectly fit, Hendrick- sen's statement that he had ransomed from the Minquas, on his voyage, three employés of "the Company." This memorandum, - translated, runs as follows :
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"N. B. Of what Kleynties and his comrade have commu- nicated to me respecting the locality of the rivers and the position of the tribes which they found in their expedition from the Ma- quaas in to the interior and along the New River downwards to
12 1003 ETATI's.SVA
137
JACOBY'S VI. SCOTLE REX, ET PRIMVS EO NOMINE ANGLIA FRANCIE, ET HIBERNLE MAXIMO APPLAVSV ELECTVS REX Ca
James I King of England, 1603-1625. Photographed especially for this work from a rare print in possession of Charles P. Keith
the Ogehage (that is to say the enemies of the aforesaid Northern tribes), I cannot at present find anything at hand except two rough drafts of maps partly drawn with accuracy. And in delib- erately considering how I can best reconcile this one with the rough drafts communicated, I find that the places of the tribes of the Sennecas, Gachoos, Capitanasses, and Jottecas ought to be marked down considerably further west into the country."
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Obviously this memorandum is the confession of the conscien- tious Dutch map-maker that the materials given him for his inland work are impossible to be brought into satisfactory order. The allusion to "Kleynties and his comrade," or comrades, has interest and probable significance. They made, it seems, an expedition ; it was from the Maquaas-Mohawks-into the interior, then along the New River-a Dutch name, among many, for the Dela- ware-and downward to enemies of the Maquaas. This would reasonably be a trip from the Mohawk country into that of the Lenâpé-Algonkian enemies of the Iroquois-or into the country raided at times by the Susquehannocks.
This larger map, the paper one containing the memorandum, is much more than the other a map of the Delaware bay and lower river, though very incorrectly drawn in many particulars. It shows a bay, unnamed, nearly where the Delaware bay should be ; into its west side, low down, flows a river, which comes from far in the north, where it issues from a large lake, "Versch water," close to a river flowing eastward to the Hudson-evidently the Mohawk. On the west bank of the long river, above the bay, perhaps in the neighborhood of the Christiana, or Schuylkill, are indicated Indian lodges, with the name "Minquaas," attached; again, further up, on the east side, under the memorandum already quoted, this name "Minquaas" appears again.
Was this paper map the one on which the Onrust owners relied ? It is impossible to say.1 Neither of them is dated. The parchment map would naturally be thought the later one, for it presents more geographical detail, and is drawn with more pre- cision. On it the coast-line from middle New Jersey to the Penobscot river is presented with tolerable accuracy, many place
1Mr. Brodhead ("History of New York," I., 757, 758), thinks it was-that it was a new map in 1616, prepared at that time, after Hendricksen's return from the Dela- ware to Holland, for the express purpose of supporting his owners' claims. But it was the parchment map that was attached
to the memorial. And Mr. Brodhead him- self (presumably) has placed on the bottom of the reproduced parchment copy (see "Documents Relating to the Colonial His- tory of New York," I., 13), a memorandum that it was the one that showed Hendrick- sen's discoveries.
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names being given. It embodies, no doubt, the results of Block's cruise eastward from Manhattan, in the Onrust, in 1614. Far down in the left-hand corner, the entrance to Chesapeake bay is shown, and its capes are marked. But as to the lower Delaware it offers nothing which we can identify. Between Sandy Hook and Cape Charles it shows no real bay whatever. It suggests no Delaware capes, and has no names of any-despite Mey's reputed visit to and naming of them in 1614. A short, narrow, straight river, unnamed, is shown coming directly from the west, and entering the sea less than halfway down the New Jersey coast. Higher up on the map, however, there appear the upper reaches of a river. This river ends abruptly ; it is cut squarely off, connected with nothing, its downward course suspended in air. On its bank is the indication of an Indian town and the name "Minquaas." This is nearly westward from Manhattan, and if strictly con- strued should signify the neighborhood north of the Lehigh's junction with the Delaware.
We have dwelt upon these maps because they are the earliest New Netherland cartography. Both show that up to 1616 little was known to the Dutch concerning the Delaware region. The data for it given the draftsman were evidently meagre and confused.
Historical works on Pennsylvania have accepted as conclusive the evidence that Hendricksen ascended the Delaware, "landed at several places, took soundings, drew charts, and discovered the general contour of the bay, and the capabilities of the river." It has also been taken as proved that three white men, employés of the Dutch Company at their fort near Albany, having left the Hudson Valley and reached the headwaters of the Delaware-or Susquehanna-had fallen into the hands of the Minquas (Sus- quehannocks), and being found by Hendricksen on the Delaware, were ransomed by him, at the place where Philadelphia now stands, or at the site of Wilmington.
It can only be said that putting together all the evidence, these statements are probably justified. The report of Hendricksen,
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the memorandum on the map, and the collateral facts, point to such a conclusion as reasonable. It seems probable that the parchment map, notwithstanding its larger scope and fuller geo- graphical detail, was the earlier ; that it was drawn in 1614, upon the return of Adrian Block to Holland, and probably was used then to display his explorations ; while the paper map was drawn in 1616 to show the region of Hendricksen's voyaging. As has already been said, the paper map suggests some knowledge of the lower Delaware, while the parchment one does not.
The States-General, whether on account of their wish not to arouse the English by too obvious a claim to regions which might belong to Virginia; or because the formation of the Dutch West India Company was in view ; or because they doubted the reality or value of Hendricksen's voyage; or for some other rea- son, did not grant the Onrust's owners the trade monopoly they asked to "the bay and three rivers." Their High Mightinesses pondered over the skipper's report and the merchants' petition, postponed action on them, took them up again, postponed them again, looked at them a third time, and finally postponed them once more; and there the record ends.
It is to be said, of course, that if the Company's employés, "Kleynties and his comrade," or comrades, made the journey downward from Albany to the neighborhood of Philadelphia or Wilmington, by a route west of the Delaware, in the spring of 1616, they were nearly the earliest white visitors to Pennsylvania. Brulé probably left Carantouan in the autumn of 1615, and so preceded them but a few months.
Interest in the trade to America increased in the Dutch cities ; the ambition of Netherlands statesmen and merchants for a firm hold in the New World became more definite. In June, 1621, the charter of the West India Company, whose plans had been for some time maturing, was granted by the Dutch government. The Company received by it the sole right, during twenty-four years, to trade to the African coast between the Tropic of Cancer and
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the Cape of Good Hope, and to the American Coast between the Bay of New Foundland and Straits of Magellan.
Under the West India Company's authority, in 1623, Captain Cornelius Mey came again to America, and proceeded to the South River-the Delaware. He certainly ascended the bay and river, for either in that year or 1624 he built at or near where Gloucester now stands, on the New Jersey shore, a trading post, Fort Nassau. His operations doubtless brought him within the waters of Pennsylvania; if we lack confidence in the account of Hendricksen's visit, we must regard Mey as the first of the pioneers to the river front of the State.
Fort Nassau, a log structure, capable of defense against bows and arrows, sufficient for a depot of furs, but badly situated to command the commerce of the river, was the first place definitely occupied by white men on the Delaware. It stood for nearly thirty years, until 1651, and in that time was the center here of Dutch authority and trade. To it the New Jersey and Pennsyl- vania Indians, Lenâpé of many bands and local designations, brought their peltries to exchange for articles that served their use or pleased their fancy, or for rum that made them drunk.
The most careful study of all the shreds of evidence left to us fails to settle with certainty the precise site of Fort Nassau. So also are we unable to say whether it was not, time and again, partly or wholly abandoned in intervals of the fur trade. Man- hattan was the seat of the Dutch authority, the capital of New Netherland, and the colony there seldom had strength to spare from its own affairs. In 1625, we are told by Wassanaar, "the Dutch had determined to abandon it and remove its occupants to New Amsterdam (Manhattan), to strengthen the latter colony, and avoid expense, a resolution they carried out, though they did not relinquish their trade with the Indians, but occasionally sent a yacht to the vicinity of the Fort." Four couples, "who had been married at sea," and eight seamen, were sent from Manhattan to the Fort, in 1623 or later ; and another post was established at that
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