CHAPTER XXVIII.

COLONIZATION AND CONQUEST OF NEW SWEDEN.

WHILE the New England men were thus encroaching on the Dutch on the east, a new competitor for possessions in America appeared in Delaware Bay.

Gustavus Adolphus, the greatest benefactor of humanity in the line of Swedish kings, had discerned the advantages which might be expected from colonies and widely-extended commerce. His zeal was encouraged by William Wsselinx, a Netherlander, whose mind for many years had been steadily devoted to the subject. At his instance, in 1626, a commercial company, with exclusive privileges to traffic beyond the Straits of Gibraltar, and the right of planting colonies, was sanctioned by the king, and, in May, 1627, was incorporated by the states of Sweden. The stock was open to all Europe for subscription; the king himself pledged 400,000 dollars of the royal treasure on equal risks; the chief place of business was established at Gottenburg; a branch was promised to any city which would embark 300,000 dollars in the undertaking. The government of the future colonies was reserved to a royal council; while it was resolved to invite "colonists from all the nations of Europe." Other nations employed slaves in their colonies; and "slaves," said they, "cost a great deal, labor with reluctance, and soon perish from hard usage; the Swedish nation is laborious and intelligent; and surely we shall gain more by a free people with wives and children." To the Scandinavian imagination, hope painted the New World as a paradise; the proposed colony as a benefit to the persecuted, a security" to the honor of the wives and daughters" of those whom wars and bigotry had made fugitives; a blessing to the “ conmon man," to the "whole Prot

1633.1

OXENSTIERN FAVORS NEW SWEDEN.

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estant world." It may prove the advantage, said Gustavus, of "all oppressed Christendom."

But Protestant Christendom seemed menaced, not with oppression, but ruin. The insurrection against intellectual servitude, of which the reformation was the great expression, appeared in danger of being suppressed, when, in 1630, Gustavus Adolphus resolved to invade Germany, and vindicate the rights of conscience with his sword. The cherished purpose of colonization yielded in the emergency; and the funds of the company were arbitrarily applied as resources in the war. It was a war of revolution; a struggle to secure German liberty by establishing religious toleration; yet even the great events on which the destinies of Germany were suspended, could not wholly drive from the mind of Gustavus his designs in America. They did but enlarge his views; and, in 1632, at Nuremberg, but a few days before the battle of Lützen, where Humanity won one of her most glorious victories, and lost one of her ablest defenders, the enterprise, which still appeared to him as "the jewel of his kingdom," was recommended to the people of Germany.

In 1633, on confirming the invitation to Germany, Oxenstiern declares himself to be but the executor of the wish of Gustavus. The same wise statesman, one of the great men of all time, the serene chancellor, who in the busiest scenes never took a care with him to his couch, renewed the patent of the company, and extended its benefits to Germany; the charter was soon confirmed by the deputies of the four upper circles at Frankfort. "The consequences" of this design, said Oxenstiern," will be favorable to all Christendom, to Europe, to the whole world." And were they not so? The first permanent colonization of the banks of the Delaware is due to Oxenstiern.

Yet more than four years passed away before the design was carried into effect. We have seen Minuits, the first governor of New Amsterdam, forfeit his place amidst the strifes of faction. He now offered the

benefit of his experience to the Swedes; and, leaving Sweden near the close of the year 1637, he sailed for the Bay of Delaware. Two vessels, the Key of Calmar and the Griffin, formed his whole fleet; the care of the Swedish government provided the emigrants with a religious teacher, with provisions, and merchandise for traffic with the natives. Early in the year 1638, the little company of Swedes and Fins arrived in the Delaware Bay; the lands from the southern cape, which the emigrants from hyperborean regions named Paradise Point, to the falls in the river near Trenton, were purchased of the natives; and near the mouth of Christiana Creek, within the limits of the present state of Delaware, Christiana Fort, so called from the little girl who was then queen of Sweden, was erected. Delaware was colonized.

The colony was not unmolested. The records at Albany still preserve the protest, in which Kieft, the third governor of New Netherlands, claimed for the Dutch the country on the Delaware: their possession had long been guarded by forts, and had been sealed by the blood of their countrymen. But at that time, the fame of Swedish arms protected the Swedish flag in the New World; and while Banner and Torstenson were humbling Austria and Denmark, the Dutch did not venture beyond a protest.

Meantime tidings of the loveliness of the country had been borne to Scandinavia, and the peasantry of Sweden and of Finland longed to exchange their lands in Europe for a settlement on the Delaware. Emigration increased; at the last considerable expedition, there were more than a hundred families eager to embark for the land of promise, and unable to obtain a passage in the crowded vessels. The plantations of the Swedes were gradually extended; and, to preserve the ascendency, over the Dutch, who renewed their fort at Nassau, Printz, the governor, in 1643, established his residence in Tinicum, a few miles below Philadelphia. A fort, constructed of vast hemlock logs, defended the

WAR BETWEEN THE DUTCH AND ALGONQUINS. 15

island; and houses began to cluster in its neighborhood. Pennsylvania was, at last, occupied by Europeans; that commonwealth, like Delaware, traces its lineage to the Swedes, who had planted a suburb of Philadelphia before William Penn became its proprietary. The banks of the Delaware, from the ocean to the falls, were known as New Sweden.

While the limits of New Netherlands were narrowed by competitors on the east and on the south, and Long Island was soon to be claimed by the agent of Lord Stirling, the colony was almost annihilated by the vengeance of the neighboring Algonquin tribes. Angry and even bloody quarrels had sometimes arisen between dishonest traders and savages maddened by intoxication. The blameless settlement on Staten Island had, in consequence, been ruined by the blind vengeance of the tribes of New Jersey. The strife continued. A boy, who had been present when, years before, his uncle was robbed and murdered, had vowed revenge, and, now that, in 1641, he was grown to man's estate, remembered and executed the vow of his childhood. A roving but fruitless expedition into the country south of the Hudson, was the consequence. The Raritans were outlawed, and a bounty of ten fathoms of wampum was offered for every member of the tribe. The season of danger brought with it the necessity of consulting the people; and the commons elected a body of twelve to assist the governor. De Vries, the head of the committee of the people, urged the advantage of friendship with the natives. But the traders did not learn humanity, nor the savage forget revenge; and the son of a chief, stung by the conviction of having been defrauded and robbed, aimed an unerring arrow at the first Hollander exposed to his fury. In 1642, a deputation of the River chieftains hastened to express their sorrow, and deplore the alternate, never-ending libations of blood. The murderer they could not deliver up; but, after the custom of the Saxons in the days of Alfred, or the Irish under Elizabeth, in exact correspond

ence with the usages of earliest Greece, they offered to purchase security for the murderer by a fine for blood. Two hundred fathom of the best wampum might console the grief of the widow. "You yourselves," they added, are the cause of this evil; you cannot prevent_mischief, till you cease to sell strong drink to the Indian."

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Kieft

Kieft was inexorable, and demanded the murderer. Just then, a small party of Mohawks from the neighborhood of Fort Orange, armed with muskets, descended from their fastnesses, and claimed the natives round Manhattan as tributaries. At the approach of the formidable warriors of a braver Huron race, the more numerous but cowering Algonquins crowded together in despair, begging assistance of the Dutch. seized the moment for an exterminating massacre. In vain was it foretold that the ruin would light upon the Dutch themselves. In the stillness of a dark winter's night, the soldiers at the fort, joined by freebooters from Dutch privateers, and led by a guide who knew every by-path and nook where the savages nestled, crossed the Hudson, for the purpose of destruction. The naked and unsuspecting tribes could offer little resistance; the noise of musketry mingled with the yell of the victims. Nearly a hundred per

ished in the carnage. Daybreak did not end its horrors; men might be seen, mangled and helpless, suffering from cold and hunger; children were tossed into the stream, and, as their parents plunged to their rescue, the soldiers prevented their landing, that both child and parent might drown.

The massacre was held in detestation by the colonists. For the moment, the governor exulted in his deed of treachery, and greeted the returning troops with exultation. But his joy was short. No sooner was it known that the midnight attack had been made, not by the Mohawks, but by the Dutch, than every Algonquin tribe round Manhattan burned with the frenzy of revenge. The swamps were their hiding.