USA > Pennsylvania > Pennsylvania, colonial and federal : a history, 1608-1903, Volume One > Part 5
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period, it is said, on Verhulsten's Island, up the Delaware, "near the Falls" (identified as Stacy's Island, near Morrisville), where "three or four families of Walloons" remained for a time, pro- curing furs from the natives.
We note, now, in the year 1626, an isolated fact, whose interest for us will presently appear. This was the appointment, and arrival at Manhattan in that year, May 4, of a new Director- General, Peter Minuit of Wesel. We shall soon hear of him in our field. The affairs of New Netherland, including the South River, were under his direction until the autumn of 1632. It was he who, soon after his arrival, "purchased" the island of Manhat- tan, "eleven thousand morgens," or about twenty-two thousand acres of land, of the Indians who had their gathering place there, "for the value of sixty guilders," say twenty-five dollars of mod- ern money.
Up to 1631 no white man had made a settlement on the west bank of the Delaware. In that year there came to the southern cape, Cornelius, now Henlopen, a party of colonists sent out from Holland by David Peterson DeVries, the finest figure with whom this story of the pioneer time has to deal, a man energetic, humane, and intelligent. We learned little of the Delaware from Hen- dricksen and Mey ; DeVries will furnish us a lucid account.
DeVries's party sailed from the Texel on the 12th of Decem- ber, 1630, in the ship Walrus, commanded by Captain Peter Heyes, or Heyson, of Edam. There were on board "a number of people and a large stock of cattle." They came by the West Indies, the common route for ships in that day, and arriving in the early spring of 1631, landed near where the town of Lewes and the great breakwater now are, built a substantial house, surrounded it with palisades, and began their settlement. They intended to carry on a whale-fishery, and to cultivate "all sorts of grain" and tobacco. A few weeks later. the Walrus sailed on its return to Holland, and Gilles Hosset, or Osset, who had come out as "commissary," was left in charge of the colony.
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Peter Stuyvesant
Governor of New Netherlands when what is now Pennsylvania was owned by Ilolland; born 1602, died 1682
The Pioneer White Men
This was Swanendael-Valley of Swans-first settlement undertaken on the west side of Delaware bay or river, and destined, alas! to a brief and disastrous experience. The year after the settlement was made, DeVries agreed with his associates in Holland, the "patroons" concerned in Swanendael, to go out himself. He was now a man of nearly forty ; he had been born at Rochelle in France, in 1593, of Dutch parents who returned to Hoorn when he was four years old. His home was at Hoorn; he had married at twenty-seven, or earlier, and had made other voyages before this, in which he had proved his skill and courage. With two vessels, a "yacht," the Squirrel, and a larger ship, he now left the Texel May 24, 1632, to be in good time at his colony, for the winter fishery. The whales, he understood, "came in the winter, and remained until March."
As he was leaving Holland bad news reached him-that Swan- endael had been destroyed by the Indians! The expedition pro- ceeded, but the voyage was long. Going by the Madeira islands, Barbadoes, St. Vincent, St. Christopher, it was the 5th of Decem- ber when they reached Cape Cornelius, and found the melancholy report only too true! On the 6th he went ashore to see the deso- late place. The palisaded house "was almost burnt up." "I found," he says, "lying here and there, the skulls and bones of our people, and the heads of the horses and cows which they had brought with them." No Indians were visible, but "the business being undone"-as was sadly plain-he "came on board the boat, and let the gunner fire a shot to see if we could find any trace of them." The next day some appeared.
In the conferences that followed De Vries obtained some ex- planation of the disaster. It seemed to have been the result of misunderstanding, as is often the case when blood is shed. An Indian who was induced to remain on board the yacht all night the 8th of December, rehearsed the story. The Dutch had set up, as the sign of possession, a piece of tin, bearing the Netherland arms. An Indian carried off the tin "for the purpose of making tobacco
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pipes." The Dutch complained of this, and some one or more of the Indians, designing, it would appear, to enforce law and order with vigor, put the offender to death. Then his partisans, totemic brethren, no doubt, executing swiftly the blood revenge, fell upon the settlers when they were unsuspecting and unprepared, and slew them all, thirty-two persons. Was it Commissary Hosset's fault ? He died with the rest. From De Vries's report of the Indian's story there was no reason to blame him. But the colony was ruined.
DeVries did not "chastise" the natives, nor send out "punitive expeditions ;" more bloodshed would not heal the wounds already made. With a view to future fishing, he exchanged some goods with them, and made an engagement of peace. Then, taking six men in the Squirrel, and leaving the ship at anchor inside the cape, on the Ist day of January, 1634,1 he proceeded up the river-on his guard now, as his narrative shows, whenever an Indian was met. On the 6th he was at Fort Nassau, "the little fort," he says, "where formerly some families of the West India Company had dwelt." It was now deserted, except by Indians. Suspicious of these, he received with extreme caution their overtures to trade. Some of them, he mentions, "began to play tunes with reeds," and speaking of a "canoe" he adds, "which is a boat hollowed out of a tree." For four days he remained near the Fort, always wary and watchful. An Indian woman, a Sankitan, warned him not to haul his yacht into the narrow Timmer-kill, lest he should be surprised there, and told him that not long before the Mantes, of "Red Hook" (our Red Bank), had "killed some Englishmen who had gone into Count Ernest's river in a sloop," a story which seemed supported when he found some of the Mantes protected against the January cold by "English jackets" which they wore. Afterward, in Virginia, he heard that a party had been sent from there in September to explore the river, and had not returned.
No one. however, now hurt a hair of the heads of DeVries or his men. It seems doubtful whether the Indians had any hostile 1New Style.
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The Pioneer White Men
intent. They persisted in overtures for friendly trade, and brought him beaver-skins for presents, declining gifts from him, because that would make it a mere exchange. Eventually he traded with them, "duffels, kettles, and axes," for "Indian corn of various colors," and some skins. On the 10th (January), he drifted his yacht off on the ebb-tide, anchored at noon "on the bar at Jacques Island," and on the I Ith reached the Minquas kill (our Christiana ), and on the 13th rejoined his ship at Swanendael.
A second time, however, he ascended the river. Putting some "goods" for trade into the yacht, he sailed again on the 18th, and next day came within a mile of Jacques Island, where he hauled into a creek, with two fathoms of water at high tide. Here ice began to trouble him. But he thought it "a fine country." "Many vines grow wild, so that we gave it the name of Wyngaert's Kill." "Went out daily while here," he adds, "to shoot. Shot many wild turkeys weighing thirty to thirty-six pounds. Their great size and fine flavour are surprising. We were frozen up in this kill from the 19th (January) to the 3d of February. During this time we perceived no Indians, though we saw here and there at times great fires on the land, but we saw neither men nor canoes, because the river was closed by the ice."
Jacques Island has been identified as Little Tinicum, opposite the greater Tinicum which is part of Delaware county. The kill in which he lay was therefore Ridley, or perhaps Chester, creek. In either case we have here a visit to Pennsylvania made definite, and the land itself described.
Getting clear of ice on February 3d, they sailed once more up to the Fort, but found no one, white or red. It "began to freeze again," so a second time DeVries took the Squirrel to the west shore for shelter. They "hauled into a little kill over against the Fort," a stream which must have been within the present limits of Philadelphia, perhaps Hollander's Creek. Here they lay until the 14th. For several days no Indians came, except one woman, who brought maize and beans, of which DeVries bought "a parcel."
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But on the IIth Indians appeared-and an ill-looking party ! They came across the river from the Fort, on the ice, pulling their canoes. There were "full fifty" of them, and they proved to be not the natives of the region about, but dangerous strangers, a war-party of "Minquas," who, DeVries says, "dwell among the English of Virginia"-probably our Susquehannocks, whose hab- itat he was unable to know very exactly. He says they were "six hundred strong;" but perhaps this means the fighting strength of the tribe, not of this particular war-party. DeVries feared they meant him ill, and regarded his escape from them, which he pre- sently effected, as a deliverance to be thankful for-all the more when on the 13th three neighboring Indians came timidly to him, and related their suffering's at the hands of the Minquas. Ninety of the Sankikans, they said, had been killed by them. Next day the weather was milder, the ice in the kill and river softened, and DeVries was glad to get the Squirrel out and away toward the capes. On the 20th he reached there, safely, and soon after sailed for Virginia.
"This is a very fine river," he says in his account, "and the land all beautifully level, full of groves of oak, hickory, ash and chestnut trees, and also vines which grow upon the trees. The river has a great plenty of fish, the same as those in our father- land, perch, roach, pike, sturgeon, and similar fish. We fished once with our seine, and caught at one draught as many as thirty men could eat. In winter time, from Virginia to Swanendael, there are hundreds of thousands of geese, both gray and white. The country is also full of wild turkeys, and has a great many deer."
Five years lay between the departure of DeVries and the arrival of the Swedes. In these years the Dutch continued their trade on South River, practically undisturbed. Controversies between the West India Company and some of its prominent members, the "patroons"-Van Rensselaer, and others-over the great grants of manorial lands which the latter had secured on the
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Henry Hudson
Navigator; entered what is now Delaware bay August 28, 1609; discovered the river called Hudson September 3, 1609; discovered bay bearing his name 1610. No authentic portrait of Hudson exists, but the above is generally believed to be a correct likeness
The Pioneer White Men
Hudson and elsewhere, and on which they claimed freedom of trade with the Indians, in competition with the Company, caused the recall of Minuit to Holland. He left Manhattan in the spring of 1632, and his successor, Wouter Van Twiller, did not arrive for a year. It was in this interval of authority that the South River was neglected, and Fort Nassau left, as DeVries found it, unoccupied. Van Twiller, however, when he reached Manhattan, soon sent over a new "Commissary," Arent Corssen. who arrived within a few weeks after the departure of DeVries. He was in- structed to build a new house, and make repairs, and furthermore to establish a hold on the west bank of the river, where it was now plain that trade with the Indians of the interior must naturally centre.
That the Commissary made such a purchase in that year, 1633, on the west bank, where Philadelphia now stands, was claimed afterward by the Dutch. They produced in 1648 a deed of confirmation, by which Amatehooran, Sinquees, and five other Indians declared they had previously sold "the Schuylkill and ad- joining lands" to Corssen. On the ground thus acquired, Fort Beversrede, which will be mentioned hereafter, was said to have been built.
While the Dutch held the trade of the river, they were not without visitors. Two of these, Englishmen, Captain Thomas Yong, or Young, and his nephew, Robert Evelin, came in July, 1634, in a ship which had left Falmouth, in England, in May. Their voyage appears connected with the curious episode of the grant of "New Albion" to Sir Edmund Plowden, by Charles I., and this story may as well be related here. In many of our his- tories Sir Edmund appears as a mythical personage, a sort of blending of Baron Munchausen and Don Quixote, yet he was a man of actual flesh and blood, and the facts ascertained concerning him can be plainly told. He was of a family in Shropshire, Catholics, and about the time that Charles I. gave Lord Baltimore the Maryland grant, but a little later, he gave to Plowden a grant
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also of a "county palatine," vaguely described, but interpreted to mean a tract lying between Maryland and the Hudson River, partly the country then held by the Dutch. It would have in- cluded, apparently. the whole of the Delaware region, and most of
Portrait of Charles II
On charter granted to Penn; King of England, 1660-1685
New Jersey. A patent, in Latin, making this grant, is on record in Dublin, witnessed by the Deputy-General for Ireland, June 21, 1634.
It is presumed that Sir Edmund Plowden was then living in Ireland. He was one of the Catholic party, probably, in the con- troversies that were gathering about the king. The grant, it seems, had the royal privy-seal, but never "passed" the great seal of crown authority. Upon it Sir Edmund assumed, as far as he
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The Pioneer White Men
could, the dignities of a "lord palatine," and formed and an- nounced large, if vague, plans. In 1641, "Master Robert Eve- lin," who had been to the Delaware with Yong, in 1634, pub-
WILLIANT
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PENSILVAN
PENN
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PROP
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William Penn's autograph and seal on the Charter of 1683
lished in England, a "Direction for Adventurers, and Description of New Albion," in the form of a letter addressed to Sir Edmund's wife, and in 1648 this was republished in a tract, often cited by historians, "Description of New Albion," etc. Evelin seems to have desired to forward the plans of Plowden.
In 1641, Sir Edmund came to America, and for seven years stayed usually in Virginia, coming to the Delaware district in 1643
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certainly, and possibly at other times. His visit in the year named is described particularly in a report of Governor Printz, then the Swedish Governor on the Delaware, who relates also the narrow escape Plowden had from death on an island near Chincoteague, where he had been "marooned" by his ship's crew. But after all nothing practical came of "New Albion." It was a paper state, and nothing more. Plowden never established his claims, either by law or by force, and never entered into possession of his county palatine. Of all the many settlers whom he alleged to be on the way to occupy it, of all the lords, ladies, knights, gentlemen, and adventurers who, he professed, had resolved to remove hither, none actually appeared. In 1648 he returned to England, and in 1655 he made his will, in which he called himself "of Wansted, in the county of Southampton," and also "Lorde, Earle Palatine, Governour, Captaine Generall of the province of New Albion in America"-phrases which did no one any harm, and made the wording of the will sound more impressive. In 1659 he died, but as late as the period of the American Revolution some infatuated persons thought they might secure land in New Jersey on the basis of his "palatine" grant.
We return, now, to Yong and Evelin, and their visit in 1634. It is strongly suggested by all the circumstances that this was a voyage to spy out the land in the interest of Sir Edmund Plowden. The dates point to this. In September, 1633, Charles I. had given Yong a sort of "roving commission" to go forth and discover lands in America, not "actually in the possession of any Christian prince." Coming first to the Chesapeake, Captain Yong appeared at the Delaware capes on the 24th of July, 1634. He may have been unaware of the extent of the Dutch occupation, and very possibly may have heard rumors of the abandonment of Fort Nassau; at any rate, he seems to have thought the region answered the description of his commission. He renamed the river Charles, after the king. Sailing slowly up, he and his com -- panions were at the Schuylkill on the 22d of August, remaining
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The Pioneer White Men
there five days, and on the 20th reached shoal water at the "Falls," near Trenton, where they also encountered some "Hol- landers of Hudson's River," who were inclined not to do them violence, but to impress them that they were trespassers. Later, Evelin is said to have explored the New Jersey coast, and then to have returned and made a further attempt to get up the Dela- ware above the Falls; the old idea of a short passage to China and the Indies seems to have been vaguely in the minds of himself and his uncle. Evelin was a brother of George Evelin, who was connected with Claiborne, the Maryland "rebel," in the settlement and enterprises at Kent Island on the Chesapeake.
Captain Yong made a report to Secretary Windebanke, in England, of his observations on this trip on the Delaware. He thought it a fine river. "The quantity of fowle," he said, "is so great as can hardly be believed, wee tooke at one time 48 par- trices together as they crossed the river chased by wild hawks. There are infinite numbers of wild pigeons, blackbirds, Turkeys, Swans, wild geese, ducks, teals, widgions, brants, herons, cranes, &c., of which there is so great abundance as that the rivers and rockes are covered with them in winter for my part I am confident that the River is the most healthfull, fruitful and commodious River in all the north of America to be planted."
One of the vague and shadowy stories connected with Yong and Evelin is that they built, or began to build, a fort on the Dela- ware, at a place called by them "Eriwomock." In the "New Al- bion" description of 1648 it is said that the Dutch, "hearing that Captain Young and Master Evelin had given over [abandoned] their fort, begun at Eriwomeck," etc., etc. From the descrip- tion, historians of New Jersey would place the fort on the east bank of the river, at the mouth of Pensaukin creek, near Camden. A more probable site is on the west side, within the present limits of Philadelphia. That it existed at all is questionable; that it had no influence of importance upon the course of affairs on the Delaware is quite certain.
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Some of Evelin's descriptions are of interest. He speaks in high praise of the abundant wild life on the bay and river. "I saw there," he says, "an infinite variety of bustards, swans, geese and fowl, covering the shoares, as within the like multitude of pigeons, and store of turkies, of which I tried one to weigh forty and sixe pounds. There is much variety and plenty of delicate
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Arms of Penn
perch and sea-fish, and shell-fish, and whales, or grampus; elks, deere that bring forth three young at a time. . . The barren grounds have four kindes of grapes and many mulberries, with ash, elms, and the tallest and greatest pines and pitch trees that I have seen. There are cedars, cypresse, and sassafras, with wild fruits, pears, wild cherries, pine-apples, and the dainty parseme- nas,"-persimmons, no doubt.
He made an estimate of the number of Indians on the Dela- ware. "I do account," he says, "all the Indians to be eight hun- dred, and are in several factions, and war against the Susquehan- nocks, and are all extreme fearfull of a gun, naked and unarmed
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The Pioneer White Men
against our shot, swords, and pikes. . . Since my return eighteen Swedes are settled there, and so [also] sometimes six Dutch doe in a boat trade without fear of them." He thought it needless to build a fort, "where there is no enemy," and in refer- ence to the danger from the Indians adds: "for note generally twelve English, with five foot calivers, shoot thirty pellets, or dagge shot, and fifty yards' distance, and the naked Indian shoot- eth but one arrow, and not thirty yards' distance. .
. And therefore fair and far off is best with Heathen Indians ; and fit it is to reduce all their trading Posts or Palisadoed trucking-houses, and to kill all straglers and such spies without ransome." Which would seem to indicate that the Indians had no need to wish to exchange their Dutch neighbors for the company of Master Evelin !
More alarming to the Dutch than the visit of Yong and Evelin, or the claims of Sir Edmund Plowden, was a demonstration of force from Virginia. DeVries, when he left the Delaware in 1633, went to Jamestown, and there in conversation with the Gov- ernor, Sir John Harvey, probably disclosed what he had found- or not found-at Fort Nassau. The consequence was that two years later the acting governor of Virginia, Captain West, thought it a good move to send and seize the river. In August, 1635, he dispatched an armed party, about fifteen men, from Old Point Comfort, under Captain George Holmes, who reached Fort Nas- sau, found it practically or entirely undefended, and summarily took possession. One of the party, however, deserted, and hurry- ing across country, bore the startling news to Manhattan. Van Twiller perceived the critical situation and sent an armed vessel with a sufficient force, who promptly retook the place. Holmes and his men were carried prisoners to Manhattan, and thence were sent back to Virginia just in time to stop a second party coming to reinforce them at Fort Nassau.
Had England not been, at this moment, in the political dis- tractions which preceded her Civil War, these occasional spyings
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and surprises would have taken a more definite and systematic form. When Minuit went home from Manhattan in 1632, his ship was driven by bad weather into the English port of Ply- mouth. There she was seized upon the charge of illegal trading within the dominions of King Charles. After earnest protesta- tions from the Dutch, and negotiation for several weeks, the ship was released, but the English ministry then de- clared that England claimed the region occupied by the Dutch, upon a title derived from "first discovery, occupation and posses- sion," that she regarded title from the Indians as of no value, they not being "bona fide possessors" of the land, capable of making a conveyance for it. The Dutch were flatly told that if they would "submit themselves as subjects" to His Majesty, they might re- main in New Netherland, but that otherwise his interests would not permit them to "usurp and encroach upon" his colonies.
This was notice that at a convenient season-which in time came-the stronger power would oust the weaker. The claim of original discovery, from the dubious voyages of the Cabots, cov- ered a vast deal of ground in England's interest.
And here we may close this period of discovery of the Dela- ware. We have seen the river in the possession of its native people, and we have seen the east bank occupied by the Dutch pioneers, with an abortive attempt to occupy the west bank. At the end of 1637 practically nothing had been done toward actual settlement and cultivation; the Holland people had come for trade, and that only. A new period of development was at hand.
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CHAPTER III
THE SWEDES: THE FIRST SETTLEMENT IN PENNSYLVANIA .- 1638-1655
S ENDING out her first expedition to the Delaware in 1637, Sweden expressed in it the partial accomplishment of a cherished plan. Since 1624 she had been desirous to se- cure a trade with the New World, such as Spain had so long pos- sessed, and the Netherlands had lately been acquiring. In the autumn of that year, at Gottenberg, the king, Gustavus Adolphus, gave audience to a somewhat unpractical but very earnest adven- turer, William Usselincx, formerly a merchant of the Nether- lands, and the man who had been there most active in urging the organization of the Dutch West India Company. The outcome of this interview was the king's approval of a Swedish Company for the same general purpose as the Dutch ; a commission issued to Usselincx authorized its organization "for trade to Asia, Africa, America, and Magellanica.'
In this scheme, indicative by its swelling phrase of the men who had designed it, the persistent though ruined Antwerper, and the generous, somewhat romantic monarch, lay the germ of the New Sweden of Delaware and Pennsylvania. In 1628 the first formal charter for the "South Company" was granted.
The undertaking, however, dragged. Usselincx wore out his influence in Sweden, as he had done in the Netherlands, by per- sistent importunity. Sweden was poor; the Thirty Years' War was raging ; Swedish sailors and ships were few, and familiar only
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