USA > Pennsylvania > The making of Pennsylvania; an analysis of the elements of the population and the formative influences that created one of the greatest of the American states > Part 2
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The Swedes, once established, proved themselves better colonists than the Dutch. They bought from the In- dians some land above Cape May on the Jersey side of the river. But their principal purchase was on the other bank, and has been described as extending from Cape Henlopen to what was afterwards known as the Falls of the Delaware, opposite the present site of Trenton, where the river becomes shoal and rapid. A careful investiga- tion, however, shows this purchase to have been of much
smaller extent. It began at Bombay Hook, some dis- tance above Henlopen, and ended at the Schuylkill. Their intention was to take the land not actually occu- pied by the Dutch ; and so they bought the land which lay between the two Dutch settlements on the west bank, the one at Henlopen and the other on the Schuylkill. They confined themselves almost exclusively to this tract, declaring that it belonged to them, and calling it New Sweden.
They of course had not even the shadow of a title to it. It has been said that Oxenstjerna professed to have secured from Charles I. a document surrendering to Sweden any rights the English might have to the lands on the Delaware. But such a document has never been found. The Swedes were flushed with the recent con- quests and glory of their nation, and were inclined to bear themselves like Romans and take what they wanted. The Dutch protested; declared that the land was theirs
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The Making of Pennsylvania
by discovery, possession, and, in addition to that, had been sealed to them by the blood of their slain. They called on the Swedes to prove their right; and the Swedes haughtily replied by telling the Dutch to go and live within the borders of New Jersey, where they would be unmolested and allowed to worship God as they pleased .*
In 1650 the Dutch, finding Fort Nassau was too high up the river, abandoned it, and established another on the present site of New Castle, calling it Fort Casimir. This was in the midst of the Swedes' tract, and the in- tention evidently was to cut in half their settlements. Four years afterwards the Swedes captured this fort on Trinity Sunday, and called it, in honor of that day, Tre- falldigheet. Afterwards, when the Dutch retook it, they called it New Amstel, and under the subsequent English rule it became New Castle.
The Swedes had pretty much complete control of the west shore. They spread up into Pennsylvania, founding the town of Upland, afterwards called Chester by Wil- liam Penn. Their most northern settlements reached to the present limits of Philadelphia. At Tinicum, now a few miles below the city, Printz, their governor, built a fort of hemlock logs, a commodious mansion house, and
* The Dutch had no more right to the country than the Swedes. The English claimed it by right of the discoveries of John and Sebastian Cabot, who had visited several points on the North American Continent before Hudson reached the Delaware. In 1889 the question came before the Superior Court of the city of New York in a case involving the rights of certain owners of land on the Bowery, and was decided in favor of the English title, in a very learned opinion by Judge Truax. Mortimer vs. N. Y. Elevated R. R., 6 N. Y. Supplement, 898.
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The Dutch and the Swedes
planted an orchard. He also built a pleasure house, whatever that may have been. Tinicum was a curious sort of island formed in the bank of the river by Darby Creek separating into two branches and making a half circle as it flowed into the Delaware. The fort was called New Gottenburg, and the private establishment was long known as Printz's Hall.
Printz was a jolly good fellow; and is described by De Vries, one of the Dutch patroons, as weighing four hundred pounds and taking three drinks at every meal. It may be added, in mitigation of this statement, that Printz was at that time at Fort Elsingborg, lower down the Delaware, where he had fired at De Vries' ship until she surrendered.
Seriously considered, Printz was a man of education and ability. He had been deprived of his rank of lieu- tenant-colonel for surrendering the German town of Chemnitz, but was afterwards restored, and lived to be a general. His government on the Delaware was vigor- ous. He kept both the Dutch and the New Englanders at bay, and managed to live like a gentleman. He added to his amusements a small yacht, which, after he had gone, lay for many years rotting on the shore, a sort of landmark and object of interest to the people. He was certainly the first yachtsman of the Delaware, and probably the first American yachtsman. Tinicum still retains the sporting tendencies which he established. Its little inn has long been the resort of duck and rail shooters; and two of the principal yacht clubs of the city have erected on it their houses and wharves close to the site of Printz's fort and mansion.
Fort Elsingborg, from which Printz had fired on De
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The Making of Pennsylvania
Vries' ship, was the only stronghold the Swedes at- tempted to occupy on the Jersey side. It was situated on a point of land which still bears its name near the present town of Salem. There was considerable style kept up in all these little forts, whether held by Dutch or Swedes. Vessels of the enemy were regularly fired upon and brought to anchor. The smallest sloop was expected to lower her ensign or show some mark of respect in passing a fort. If she failed in this duty, and a shot had to be fired to improve her manners, she might expect to be asked to pay for the powder and ball that had been used. Distinguished persons were suitably entertained, and if poverty or circumstances prevented such entertainment ample apologies were made. Beek- man, one of the Dutch governors, writes in the year 1663 to Stuyvesant, his superior at New York, saying that Lord Baltimore from Maryland was about to visit Altona, as Fort Christina, near Wilmington, was then called, but that there was not a single draught of French wine with which to treat that nobleman. " Send some," says the worthy Beekman, "and charge it to me."
It is a matter of some surprise how these little wooden forts or block-houses were able to control the navigation of the river. The waters were wide both in river and bay, and the forts were usually at the widest places, and in some instances with the main channel on the opposite side. Any one who now stands on the site of one of these ancient strongholds and looks out over the wide expanse naturally concludes that a ship which kept close to the further shore and paid no attention to the fort would have been perfectly safe. But the cannon that were used may have been of better range and accuracy
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The Dutch and the Swedes
than has been generally supposed, or the moral effect of a shot or two and the consciousness that pursuit in open boats was possible may have been enough to bring a prudent captain to anchor.
The Swedes were more within the boundaries of Pennsylvania than the Dutch had been. But their prin- cipal places of abode were within the State of Delaware. Their numbers increased and they drove the Dutch almost entirely out of the fur trade. The first year of their arrival they exported thirty thousand skins, a num- ber which is significant of the immense supply of beaver as well as of the value of the trade to the Dutch.
The importance of the trade became widely known and aroused the keen commercial sense of the Puritan colony in Massachusetts. Always thorough in their methods, whether of trade, religion, or literature, they resolved to strike at the source of the fur supply, which was supposed to be in the neighborhood of a great lake called Lyconia, to which the Delaware would lead them. They sent an expedition up the river, hoping to cut off the beaver from both Dutch and Swedes. But the little forts and their watchful garrisons stopped the Yankee vessel, and she returned to Boston.
The key to the beaver traffic on the Delaware was apparently the possession of the Schuylkill. The reason of this seems to have been that the Indians found it more convenient to meet the white man on the west bank of that stream. The places where they met appear to have been at the highland now occupied by Gray's Ferry Bridge and Bartram's Garden. This was the first natural landing place after passing the low ground and marshes near the river's mouth. Probably the woods
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The Making of Pennsylvania
were of a large growth free from underbrush, and afforded a convenient meeting place. Probably, also, the trails converged to that point. For nearly two hundred years afterwards Gray's Ferry was the natural highway from Philadelphia to the west and south.
Both Swedes and Dutch struggled for the control of this spot. The Dutch built forts and houses and the Swedes tore them down. The Swedes also tried to fore- stall the Dutch by establishing stations some miles in the interior to collect the furs at lower prices before they reached the river. The Dutch are said to have retaliated by furnishing the Indians with guns and am- munition, in the hope that they would be used for the benefit of Holland.
The Swedes were more than traders-they were thrifty and industrious cultivators of the soil, and had flourishing farms along the river. They brought with them their cattle, which grazed the meadows and marshes and roamed through the woods. These herds were very numerous when the Quakers arrived, and probably most of the common cattle of Eastern Penn- sylvania are descended from them. The woods at that time were quite free from underbrush and afforded a short nutritious kind of grass. It was easy to ride on horseback almost anywhere among the trees. But the second growth, which came after cutting or burning the primeval forest, brought on the underbrush and destroyed the woodland pasturage.
The Swedes never attempted to clear the land of trees. They took the country as they found it; occupied the meadows and open lands along the river, diked them, cut the grass, ploughed and sowed, and made no attempt
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The Dutch and the Swedes
to penetrate the interior. But as soon as the Englishman came he attacked the forests with his axe; and that simple instrument with a rifle is the natural coat-of-arms in America for all of British blood. In nothing is the difference in nationality so distinctly shown. The Dutchman builds trading-posts and lies in his ship off shore to collect the furs. The gentle Swede settles on the soft, rich meadow lands, and his cattle wax fat and his barns are full of hay. The Frenchman enters the forest, sympathizes with its inhabitants, and turns half savage to please them. All alike bow before the wilderness and accept it as a fact. But the Englishman destroys it. There is even something significant in the way his old charters gave the land straight across Amer- ica from sea to sea. He grasped at the continent from the beginning, and but for him the oak and the pine would have triumphed and the prairies still be in pos- session of the Indian and the buffalo.
Nevertheless, the Swede seems to have lived a very happy and prosperous life on his meadows and marshes. He was surrounded by an abundance of game and fish and the products of his own thrifty agriculture, of which we can now scarcely conceive. The old accounts of game and birds along the Delaware read like fairy tales. The first settlers saw the meadows covered with huge flocks of white cranes which rose in clouds when a boat approached the shore. The finest varieties of fish could be almost taken with the hand. Ducks and wild geese covered the water, and outrageous stories were told of the number that could be killed at a single shot. The wild swans, now driven far to the south and soon likely to become extinct, were abundant, floating on the water
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The Making of Pennsylvania
like drifted snow. On shore the Indians brought in fat bucks every day, which they sold for a few pipes of tobacco or a measure or two of powder. Turkeys, grouse, and varieties of song-birds which will never be seen again were in the woods and fields. Wild pigeons often filled the air like bees, and there was a famous roosting-place for them in the southern part of Philadel- phia, which is said to have given the Indian name, Moyamensing, to that part of the city.
The Delaware Indians always claimed Pennsylvania as their special hunting-ground, and they had every reason to love it. The river and the country near Phila- delphia seem to have been particularly favorable to wild animal life. All through the colonial period and for many years after the Revolution the game of Pennsyl- vania afforded an important and abundant supply of food and contributed not a little to the prosperity of the province. It might still be a source of profit as well as of pleasure if means had been taken to preserve it. Even as late as the beginning of the Civil War there were still within twenty miles of Philadelphia great quantities of small game, which have now totally dis- appeared, and even the varieties of birds which are not considered game have been largely exterminated.
The Swedes planted peaches and fruit-trees of all kinds, had flourishing gardens, and grew rich selling the prod- ucts when the Quakers arrived. They made wine, beer, or brandy out of sassafras, persimmons, corn, and appar- ently anything that could be made to ferment ; and they imported Madeira. Acrelius, their historian, gives a long list of their drinks, and tells us that they always indulged in four meals a day.
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The Dutch and the Swedes
Their rule, however, lasted only seventeen years. The Dutch, seeing them become of more and more impor- tance, obtained assistance from Holland, overset their authority, and were again in the year 1655 in possession of the Delaware. Before they conquered the Swedes they appear to have bought from the Indians the present site of Philadelphia, and to have set up on it, according to their custom, the arms of Holland, which were promptly removed by the Swedes.
This second control by the Dutch lasted nine years. It was a rather barren conquest ; for the Swedes contin- ued to occupy the land, and there were comparatively few Dutch settlers. The whole population, Dutch and Swede, living at this time along the river and bay is said to have been only about three hundred and sixty-eight souls.
Under the Swedes the form of government, so far as it is known, appears to have been a very simple one. Pretty much everything was in the hands of the governor. Under the Dutch it was more elaborate. The West India Company had become indebted to the city of Am- sterdam in a considerable sum for the expenses of the conquest and other matters, and the city was accordingly given an interest and control in the colony. Officers with strange titles ruled the shores of our river, which now seems as if it could never have been anything but English. There was the schout, who was a combination of sheriff and prosecuting attorney. There were sche- pens, who were inferior judges, something like our mag- istrates. Finally, there were the vice-director and his council, who regulated everybody and told them what to do with their goats and pigs.
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The Making of Pennsylvania
When the Dutch were ousted by the English in 1664, both the Dutch and the Swedish dominion were ended forever, and those nations no longer figure in the history of our State. The Dutch have left behind them a few names, like Henlopen, Schuylkill, and Boomties Hoeck, now called Bombay Hook. Schuylkill meant Hidden creek, a name given because the mouth of the stream could not easily be seen from the river. The Indian name for it was Manaiung, now applied, in the form Manayunk, to a suburb near the Wissahickon. The Swedes, although excellent pioneers and settlers, left very few names of places. Some of the descendants of both nations are still with us. The Swedes are said to have been quite numerous for a long time after the Eng- lish conquest. Sixty years after the arrival of Perin and the Quakers, there are said to have been nearly a thousand persons on the river speaking the Swedish language.
This English conquest of the Dutch in 1664 included also the conquest of the same nation in New York, which with New Jersey and a large part of New Eng- land was immediately given to the Duke of York, brother of Charles II., by a deed which afterwards figured in our history. It was claimed that the deed included Pennsylvania and Delaware. But how it could have reached so far is difficult to understand. After granting large and vaguely described tracts of land in eastern New England, the deed goes on to say, "All the land from the west side of the Connecticut River to the east side of Delaware Bay." By both common sense and law, as ordinarily understood, this could not pos- sibly have given the duke a jurisdiction west of the Delaware. The way in which the grant was made to
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The Dutch and the Swedes
cross the river is best described in the language of those who maintained it. William Penn relied partially on this deed for his title to what is now the State of Delaware. In his lawsuit with Lord Baltimore about the Maryland boundary, his counsel frankly admitted that their claim through this deed was not a strong one. "But," they said, " it was a very large and extensive grant of sev- eral very large tracts and territories in America, and passed, as we say, all lands appertaining to those exten- sive tracts."
The better opinion is that it "passed, as we say," nothing whatever west of the Delaware. Neither Penn nor the duke placed much, if any, reliance on it for their title to either Delaware or Pennsylvania. When Penn, after obtaining his charter for Pennsylvania, decided to buy Delaware as an additional piece of territory, he bought it, it is true, from the duke, but not until the duke had obtained a special grant of it from the Crown, which shows very conclusively that both parties con- sidered the old deed of 1664 worthless so far as con- cerned any land west of the Delaware.
When Penn got his charter for Pennsylvania, he took a release from the duke of any rights he might have in that territory. But this was evidently a measure of abundant precaution to guard against any claims of the duke by reason of his occupancy. It can hardly be called a recognition of the validity of the old deed of 1664 as to land within the present limits of Pennsylvania.
Any occupancy the duke had had of Pennsylvania was very slight. The Swedes, Dutch, and English, over whom he ruled, were nearly all within the present limits of Delaware. New Castle, the head-quarters of his col-
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The Making of Pennsylvania
ony, was a Delaware town. Some of the settlers were scattered north of Delaware along the river as far up as the present site of Philadelphia. But they were com- paratively few.
In 1673 the Dutch reconquered both New York and Pennsylvania, and held them for a few months. But the treaty of peace sent them back again to the English, the great colonizers and the race of destiny for America.
But little need be said of the remainder of this English occupation under the Duke of York. The principal public event was the trial of the Long Finn, a Scandina- vian, professing to be of noble descent, who went about the country attempting to stir up the people to rebellion. He was sentenced to be whipped, branded in the face with the letter R, and sold as a servant in the Barbadoes. New Amstel, called by the Dutch Fort Casimir, was re- named New Castle, and became the head-quarters of the country. While under the duke, the people on the river and bay were considered as an appendix to New York, and were called the Delaware colony and sometimes the New Castle colony.
There were a few Swedes settled within what is now the southern part of Philadelphia. They farmed the rich meadow lands, some of which, until recently, were used for market gardens, and lie in what is called the Neck. In the year 1675 they established a church at a place they called Wiccaco, now near the corner of Christian and Front Streets. The building now long known as the Old Swedes' Church is still standing, and is one of the familiar antiquities of the city. The Swedes built churches of this kind wherever they had an important settlement. The one at Wilmington can be seen from
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The Duke of York
the railroad passing through the town, and, like the others, is of a quaint and interesting type of architecture.
Under the rule of the Duke of York many English emigrants came to the river, increasing the population to two or three thousand at the time of the arrival of Penn. There is a curious story told of one of the ships called the Shield, which was bringing some people to Bur- lington in the year 1678. In beating up the river against the wind, she sailed on one of her tacks close up to the present site of Philadelphia near Walnut or Chestnut Street, where the bank was steep and high and the water deep close to the shore. In turning to go about on the other tack, her rigging touched the branches of an overhanging tree, and the people on board remarked that it was a good place to build a city. It seems hardly possible that the trees should have overhung so far as to touch the rigging of a ship. But the remark may have been made by those people and at that very spot. It was the natural place for a great city, and the best loca- tion that could be found on the river.
Those familiar with the shores of the Delaware know that there are comparatively few spots within a hundred miles of the capes where high land of any great extent comes down to the water's edge with depth sufficient for large ships. The banks are usually marshes or low meadows. The land at Philadelphia was not only high, comparatively level, and of sufficient extent, with unu- sual depth of water in front of it, but its position in the angle between the Delaware and the Schuylkill was by no means unimportant for military purposes. Penn al- ways had an eye for such things, and, though a Quaker, could never forget the soldier days of his youth.
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The Making of Pennsylvania
Ages before Philadelphia became the metropolis of America it had been the metropolis of the Indians. They came to that high land between the rivers to light their council-fires and settle their treaties and politics with the six nations of New York. A glance at the map shows its convenience for them. The Delaware and its bay were natural highways for a long distance north and south. The Chesapeake and its tributaries were near at hand. They could come down the Sus- quehanna to the mouth of the Swatara below Harris- burg, and follow up that stream, whose head-waters would bring them close to the Schuylkill. Trails branched out into the woods in all directions from the site of Philadelphia, and Germantown Avenue follows the line of one of them. It was in recognition of this immemorial meeting place that Penn was supposed to have reserved a small plot of land on the east side of Second Street near Walnut to which the Indians could continue to resort and build their council-fires. But this story of Penn's sentiment for the red men, though at one time widely circulated and generally believed, seems to be without foundation.
As finally made up under the duke the settlements on the Delaware consisted, first of all, of the people at Cape Henlopen, the name of whose abode was changed from Swansdale to Whorekill and afterwards to the modern Lewes. Whorekill was probably a corruption of Hoorn Kill, from the town of Hoorn in Holland. Next in passing up the bay was St. Jones, not far from Dover, and then came Wilmington, New Castle, and Upland, the last a small place within the modern limits of Penn- sylvania. There were courts of law in all these little
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The Duke of York
hamlets. The life of the people turned principally towards the bay and the river, and the attempts to pene- trate inland were few. New Castle was the seat of gov- ernment, and the important point in the opinion of the outside world. Penn fixed upon it as the place from which to calculate the boundaries of Pennsylvania, and it appears to have been the one point of which the exact location was well known in England.
The duke had a set of laws prepared for the govern- ment of all his domains, New York as well as the settle- ments on the Delaware. They were very elaborate, and show considerable ingenuity in the draughtsman. Every- thing was provided for,-branding of cattle, fees of con- stable, viewers of pipe-staves, killing of wolves, and cut- ting of underbrush. They were made up from the laws of the other English colonies, with improvements. They are sometimes quoted in a way likely to mislead. They were not passed by the people of the country, and are not typical of the state of thought and feeling either in Pennsylvania or in Delaware. They are merely the work of some theorizer in England, and should never be relied on to show the condition of the people who lived under them. They were not enforced on the Delaware until 1675, only seven years before the arrival of Penn. Previous to that the English had allowed the people to be governed by the mixture of Swedish and Dutch laws which had long prevailed. The intention of the English was to gradually change these Dutch laws and substitute the laws of the duke. When the duke's laws were adopted they were declared not to apply in matters relating to courts, county rates, and militia, which were left as before.
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