general court, dressed in the habit of a penitent, to stand upon a platform, and with sighs and tears, and brokenness of heart, and the aspect of sorrow, to beseech the com 1641. Sept. passion of the congregation. In the following year, he removed to New Netherland, and now, with an army of one hundred and twenty men, became the protector of the Dutch settlements. The war continued for two years. At length, the Dutch were weary of danger; the Indians tired of being hunted like beasts. The Mohawks claimed a sovereignty Aug. 30. Over the Algonkins; their ambassador appeared at 1643 to 1645. 1645. Manhattan to negotiate a peace; and in front of Fort Amsterdam, according to Indian usage, under the open sky, on the spot now so beautiful, where the commerce of the world may be watched from shady walks, in the presence of the sun and of the ocean, the sachems of New Jersey, of the River Indians, of the Mohicans, and of Long Island, acknowledging the chiefs of the Five Nations as witnesses and arbitrators, and having around them the director and council of New Netherland, with the whole commonalty of the Dutch, set their marks to a solemn treaty of peace. The joy of the colony broke forth into a general thanksgiving; but infamy attached to the name of Kieft, the author of the carnage; the emigrants desired to reject him as their governor; the Sept. 6. 1648. West India company disclaimed his barbarous policy. 1647. About two years after the peace, he embarked for Europe in a large and richly laden vessel; but the ship in which he sailed was dashed in pieces on the coast of Wales, and the man of blood was overwhelmed by the waves. A better day dawned on New Netherland, when the brave and honest Stuyvesant, recently the vice-director of Curaçao, wounded in the West Indies, in the attack on St. 1646. Martin, a soldier of experience, a scholar of some learning, was promoted for his services, and entered on the government of the province. Sad experience 1647 dictated a system of lenity towards the natives. The interests of New Netherland required free trade; at May 11 1648. first, the department of Amsterdam, which had alone borne the expense of the colony, would tolerate no interlopers. But the monopoly could not be enforced; and export duties were substituted. Manhattan began to prosper, when its merchants obtained freedom to follow the impulses of their own enterprise. The glorious destiny of the city was anticipated. "When your commerce becomes established, and your ships ride on every part of the ocean, throngs that look towards you with eager eyes will be allured to embark for your island." This prophecy was, nearly two centuries ago, addressed by the merchants of Amsterdam to the merchants of Manhattan. At that time, who could have foreseen that the population and wealth of that famed emporium would one day be so far excelled by the settlement that had barely saved its life from the vengeance of the savages? The Island of New York was then chiefly divided among farmers; the large forests which covered the park and the adjacent region long remained a common pasture, where, for yet a quarter of a century, tanners could obtain bark, and boys chestnuts; and the soil was so little valued that Stuyvesant thought it no wrong to his employers to purchase of them at a small price an extensive bowery just beyond the coppices, among which browsed the goats and kine from the village. 1649. A desire grew up for municipal liberties. The company which effected the early settlements of New Netherland introduced the self-perpetuating councils of the Netherlands. The emigrants were scattered on boweries or plantations; and, seeing the evils of this mode of living widely apart, they were advised in 1643 and 1646 by the Dutch authorities to gather into "villages, towns, and hamlets, as the English were in the habit of doing." In 1649, when the province was "in a very poor and most low condition," the commonalty of New Netherland, in a petition addressed to the "states-general," prayed for a suitable municipal government. They referred to the case of New England, saying "neither patroons, lords, nor princes are known there, only the people. Each town, no matter how small, hath its own court and jurisdiction, also a voice in the capitol, and elects its own officers." But the prayer was unheeded. With its feeble population, New Netherland could not 1647. 1649. 1650. protect the eastern boundary. Of what avail were protests against actual settlers? Stuyvesant was instructed to preserve the House of Good Hope at Hartford; but, while he was claiming the country from Cape Cod to Cape Henlopen, there was danger that the New England men would stretch their settlements to the North River, intercept the navigation from Fort Orange, and monopolize the fur-trade. The commercial corporation would not risk a war; the expense would impair its dividends. "War," they declared, "cannot in any event be for our advantage; the New England people are too powerful for us." No issue was left but by nego1650 tiation; Stuyvesant himself repaired as ambassador to Hartford, and was glad to conclude a provisional treaty, which allowed New Netherland to extend on Long Island as far as Oyster Bay, on the main to the neighborhood of Greenwich. This intercolonial treaty was acceptable to the West India company, but was never ratified in England; its conditional approbation by the states-general is the only state paper in which the Dutch government recognised the boundaries of the province on the Hudson. The West India company could never obtain a national guarantee for the integrity of their possessions. Sept. 11. 1651 to The war between the rival republics in Europe did 1654. not extend to America; in England, Roger Williams delayed an armament against New Netherland. It is true Aug. 15. that the West India company, dreading an attack 1652. from New England, had instructed their governor "to engage the Indians in his cause." But the friendship of the Narragansetts for the Puritans could not be shaken. "I am poor," said Mixam, one of their sachems, "but no presents of goods, or of guns, or of powder and shot, shall draw me into a conspiracy against my friends. the English." The naval successes of the Dutch inspired milder counsels; and the news of peace in Europe soon quieted every apprehension. 1653. 1634. The provisionary compact left Connecticut in possession of a moiety of Long Island; the whole had often, but ineffectually, been claimed by Lord Stirling. Near the southern frontier of New Belgium, on Delaware Bay, June 21. the favor of Strafford had also obtained for Sir Edward Ployden a patent for New Albion. The 1641 to county never existed, except on parchment. The lord palatine attempted a settlement; but, for want of a pilot, he entered the Chesapeake; and his people were absorbed in the happy province of Virginia. He was never able to dispossess the Swedes. 1648. 1651. 1654. With the Swedes, therefore, powerful competitors for the tobacco of Virginia and the beaver of the Schuylkill, the Dutch were to contend for the banks of the Delaware. In the vicinity of the river, the Swedish company was more powerful than its rival; but the whole province of New Netherland was tenfold more populous than New Sweden. From motives of commercial security, the Dutch built Fort Casimir, on the site of Newcastle, within five miles of Christiana, near the mouth of the Brandywine. To the Swedes this seemed an encroachment; jealousies ensued; and at last, aided by stratagem and immediate superiority in numbers, Rising, the Swedish governor, overpowered the garrison. The aggression was fatal to the only colony which Sweden had planted. That kingdom was exhausted by a long succession of wars; the statesmen and soldiers whom Gustavus had educated had passed from the public service; Oxenstiern, after adorning retirement by the sublime pursuits of philosophy, was no more; a youthful and licentious queen, greedy of literary distinction, and without capacity for government, had impaired the strength of the kingdom by nursing contending factions, and then capriciously abdicating the throne. Sweden had ceased to awaken fear, and the Dutch company commanded Stuyvesant to "revenge their wrong, to drive the Swedes from the river, or compel their submission." The order was renewed; and in September, 1655, after they had maintained their separate existence 1654. 1655. 1654. Nov. 16. 1655 for a little more than seventeen years, the Dutch governor, collecting a force of more than six hundred men, sailed into the Delaware with the purpose of conquest. Sept. 25. Resistance would have been unavailing. One fort 1655. after another surrendered: to Rising honorable terms were conceded; the colonists were promised the quiet possession of their estates; and, in defiance of protests and the turbulence of the Scandinavians, the jurisdiction of the Dutch was established. Such was the end of New Sweden, the colony that connects our country with Gustavus Adolphus and the nations that dwell on the Gulf of Bothnia. The descendants of the colonists, in the course of generations, widely scattered and blended with emigrants of other lineage, constituted perhaps more than one part in two hundred of the population of our country in the early part of the nineteenth century. At the surrender, they did not much exceed seven hundred souls. Free from ambition, ignorant of the ideas which were convulsing the English mind, it was only as Protestants that they shared the impulse of the age. They cherished the calm earnestness of religious feeling; they reverenced the bonds of family and the purity of morals; their children, under every disadvantage of want of teachers and of Swedish books, were well instructed. With the natives they preserved peace. A love for Sweden, their dear mother country, the abiding sentiment of loyalty towards its sovereign, continued to distinguish them; at Stockholm, they remained for a century the objects of a disinterested and generous regard; affection united them in the New World; and a part of their descendants still preserve their altar and their dwellings round the graves of their fathers. 1656. The conquest of the Swedish settlements was followed by relations bearing a near analogy to the provincial system of Rome. The West India company desired an ally on its southern frontier; the country above Christiana was governed by Stuyvesant's deputy; while the city of Amsterdam became, by purchase, the proprietary of Delaware, from the Brandywine to Bombay Hook; and afterwards, under cessions from Dec. 1658. 1659. |