The best of the argument thus far, was manifestly with the Indians. The irascible governor lost his temper. "If any of your young savages," said he, "want to fight, let them come on. I will place man against man. Nay, I will place twenty against forty of your hotheads. It is not manly to threaten farmers and women and children who are not warriors. If this be not stopped I shall be compelled to retaliate on old and young, women and children. I expect of you that you will repair all damages and seize the murderer if he come among you.
The Council was closed with professions of friendship on both sides. The Indians promised to take the suggestions of the governor into careful consideration. The settlers also decided to adopt the counsel of the governor. They agreed unanimously to form themselves into a village, leaving it with Governor Stuyvesant to select the site. He chose a spot at the bend of the creek, where three bides would be surrounded by water. Two hundred and ten yards of palisades formed the sufficient enclosure.
All hands now went to work energetically. While thus employed a band of Indian warriors, in their most showy attire, was seen approaching. It was feared that they were on the war path, and the soldiers immediately stood to their arms. It is undeniable that the Indians seemed ever disposed to cherish kindly feelings when justly treated.
These kind hearted savages fifty in number, notwithstanding all the wrongs which they had endured, came forward and one of them, addressing the governor, said,
The labor of three weeks completed the defences. The buildings were reared within the enclosure. A strong guard-house, sixteen feet by twenty-three, was built in the northeast corner of the village. A bridge was thrown across the creek, and temporary quarters were erected for the soldiers. The energetic governor having accomplished all this in a month, left twenty-four soldiers behind him to guard the village, and returned to Manhattan.
In 1658, the little settlement of New Amstel presented quite a flourishing appearance. It had become a goodly town of about one hundred houses, containing about five hundred inhabitants. As many of these were Waldenses, Swedes and emigrants from other nationalities, they seemed to think themselves independent of the provincial authorities at New Amsterdam. The governor therefore visited the place in person, and called upon all to take the oath of allegiance.
There was great jealousy felt by the governor in reference to the encroachments of the English. They were pressing their claims everywhere. They were establishing small settlements upon territory undeniably belonging to the Dutch. English emigrants were crowding the Dutch colonies and were daily gaining in influence. Though they readily took the oath of allegiance to the Dutch authorities, all their sympathies were with England and the English colonies.
The Directors of the Company wrote to Stuyvesant recommending him
There were many indications that the English were contemplating pressing up from Virginia to the beautiful region of the Delaware. The Directors urged Stuyvesant to purchase immediately from the Indians the tract of land between Cape Henlopen and Bombay Hook. This contained a frontage on Delaware bay of about seventy miles.
"You will perceive," they wrote,
In the autumn of this year a very momentous event occurred. Though it was but the death of a single individual, that individual was Oliver Cromwell. Under his powerful sway England had risen to a position of dignity and power such as the nation had never before attained. A terrible storm swept earth and sky during the night in which his tempestuous earthly life came to a close. The roar of the hurricane appalled all minds, as amid floods of rain trees were torn up by the roots, and houses were unroofed. The friends of the renowned Protector said that nature was weeping and mourning in her loudest accents over the great loss humanity was experiencing in the death of its most illustrious benefactor. The enemies of Cromwell affirmed that the Prince of the Power of the Air had come with all his shrieking demons, to seize the soul of the dying and bear it to its merited doom.
Scarce six months passed away ere the reins of government fell from the feeble hands of Richard, the eldest son and heir of Oliver Cromwell, and Monk marched across the Tweed and paved the way for the restoration of Charles the Second.
To add to the alarm of the Dutch, Massachusetts, taking the ground that the boundary established by the treaty of Hartford, extended only "so far as New Haven had jurisdiction," claimed by virtue of royal grant all of the land north of the forty-second degree of latitude to the Merrimac river, and extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific ocean. The forty-second parallel of latitude crossed the Hudson near Red Hook and Saugerties. This boundary line transferred the whole of the upper Hudson and at least four-fifths of the State of New York to Massachusetts.
In accordance with this claim, Massachusetts granted a large section of land on the east side of the Hudson river, opposite the present site of Albany, to a number of her principal merchants to open energetically a trade with the Indians for their furs. An exploring party was also sent from Hartford to sail up the North river and examine its shores in reference to future settlements. The English could not enter the Hudson and pass fort Amsterdam with their vessels without permission of the Dutch. This permission Stuyvesant persistently refused.
"The Dutch," said the inflexible governor,
The exploring party from Massachusetts, which had ascended the North river, found a region around the Wappinger Kill, a few miles below the present site of Poughkeepsie, which they pronounced to be more beautiful than any spot which they had seen in New England. Here they decided to establish their settlement. Stuyvesant, informed of this, resolved to anticipate them. He wrote immediately to Holland urging the Company to send out at once as many Polish, Lithuanian, Prussian, Dutch and Flemish peasants as possible, "to form a colony there."
It would seem that no experience, however dreadful, could dissuade individuals of the Dutch Colonists from supplying the natives with brandy. At Esopus, in August, 1659, a man by the name of Thomas Chambers employed eight Indians to assist him in husking corn. At the end of their day's work he insanely supplied them with brandy. This led to a midnight carouse in which the poor savages, bereft of reason, howled and shrieked and fired their muskets, though without getting into any quarrel among themselves.
The uproar alarmed the garrison in the blockhouse. The sergeant of the guard was sent out, with a few soldiers, to ascertain the cause of the disorder. He returned with the report that it was only the revelry of a band of drunken savages.
One of the soldiers in the fort, Jansen Stot, called upon some of his comrades to follow him. Ensign Smith, who was in command, forbade them to go. In defiance of his orders they left the fort, and creeping through the underbrush, wantonly took deliberate aim, discharged a volley of bullets upon the inebriated savages, who were harming nobody but themselves. One was killed outright. Others were severely wounded. The soldiers, having performed this insane act, retreated, with the utmost speed to the fort. There never has been any denial that such were the facts in the case. They help to corroborate the remark of Mr. Moulton that "the cruelty of the Indians towards the whites will, when traced, be discovered, in almost every case, to have been provoked by oppression or aggression."
Ensign Smith, finding that he could no longer control his soldiers, indignantly resolved to return down the river to New Amsterdam. The inhabitants of Esopus were greatly alarmed. It was well known that the savages would not allow such an outrage to pass unavenged. The withdrawal of the soldiers would leave them at the mercy of those so justly exasperated. To prevent this the people hired every boat in the neighborhood. Ensign Smith then decided to send an express by land, to inform Governor Stuyvesant of the alarming state of affairs and to solicit his immediate presence.
A party of soldiers was sent to escort the express a few miles down the river banks. As these soldiers were returning, they fell into an ambuscade of the Indians, and thirteen of them were taken prisoners. War, horrible war, was now declared. The war-whoop resounded around the stockade at Esopus from five hundred savage throats. Every house, barn and corn-stack within their reach was burned. Cattle and horses were killed. The fort was so closely invested day and night that not a colonist could step outside of the stockade. The Indians, foiled in all their attempts to set fire to the fortress, and burnt ten of their prisoners at the stake. For three weeks this fierce warfare continued without interruption.
When the tidings of this new war, caused by so dastardly an outrage, reached Manhattan, it created a terrible panic. It could not be doubted that all the Indians would sympathize with their outraged brethren. The farmers, apprehending immediate attack, fled from all directions, with their families, to the fort, abandoning their homes, grain and cattle. Even many villages on Long Island were utterly deserted.
The administrative energies of Governor Stuyvesant were remarkably developed on this occasion. In the following terms, Mr. O'Callaghan, in his admirable history of New Netherland, describes the difficulties he encountered and his mode of surmounting them:
In this way the governor raised a force of one hundred and eighty men. Of this number one hundred were drafted men, sixty-five volunteers, twenty-five of whom were Englishmen, and there were also twenty friendly Indians from Long Island.
With this force the governor embarked on Sunday evening, October 10th, after the second sermon, for the rescue of Esopus. Upon his arrival at that place he found that the savages, unable to penetrate the fort, had raised the siege and retired beyond the possibility of pursuit. They had doubtless watched the river with their scouts, who informed them of the approach of the troops. The governor, leaving a sufficient force to protect the village, returned with the remainder of the expedition to Manhattan.
During the siege the loss of the Dutch was one man killed and five or six wounded. The Indians also succeeded, by means of burning arrows, in firing one dwelling house and several stacks of corn within the palisades. As the troops were re-embarking the governor witnessed an occurrence which he declares "he blushes to mention." As all the troops could not go on board at once, a portion waited until the first division had embarked. Some of the sentinels hearing a dog bark, fired one or two shots. This created a terrible panic. The citizens, whose ears had been pierced by the shrieks of their countrymen, whom the Indians had tortured at the stake, were so terror-stricken that they lost all self-possession. "Many of them threw themselves into the water before they had seen an enemy."
The most friendly relations existed between the Mohawks and the settlers in the vicinity of Albany. A very extensive trade, equally lucrative to both parties, was there in operation. The Indians, being treated justly, were as harmless as lambs. When they heard of the troubles at Esopus they declared that they would take no part in the war. They could not but feel that the Indians had been deeply outraged. But with unexpected intelligence they decided that they would not retaliate by wreaking vengeance upon their long-tried friends. To confirm their friendly alliance, the authorities at fort Orange sent an embassy of twenty-five of their principal inhabitants to the Indian settlement at Caughnawaga. This was about forty miles west of Albany on the north bank of the Mohawk river and near the site of the present shire town of Montgomery county.
A large number of chiefs, from all the neighboring villages, attended. The council fire was lighted, and the calumet of peace was smoked. One of the Dutch delegation thus addressed the assembly!
With this speech there was presented to the chiefs several bundles of wampum, seventy pounds of powder, a hundred pounds of lead, fifteen axes two beavers worth of knives. The chiefs were highly pleased with the presents and eagerly gave their consent that the Dutch should seize the liquor kegs of the Indians.
The authorities at fort Orange, having secured the friendship of the Mohawks, endeavored to obtain an armistice with the Indians at Esopus, and a release of the captives they had taken. Several Mohawk and Mohegan chiefs, as mediators, visited Esopus, on this mission of mercy. They were partially successful. An armistice was reluctantly assented to, and two captives were liberated. The Indians, however, still retained a number of children, they having killed all the adults. Those who had agreed to the armistice were not the principal chiefs, and the spirit of the war remained unbroken.
Under these circumstances Stuyvesant wrote to Holland for aid. In his letter he said,
The Directors wrote back urging him to employ the Mohawks and other friendly tribes against the Esopus Indians. The governor replied,
The governor had a long controversy with the Massachusetts authorities in reference to its claim to the upper valley of the Hudson. In this he expressed very strongly the title of Holland to the North river.
"Printed histories," he writes,
Notwithstanding the undeniable strength of his argument, Governor Stuyvesant felt very uneasy. To his friends he said,
"The power of New England overbalances ours tenfold. To protest against their usurpations would be folly. They would only laugh at us."
As hostilities still continued with the Esopus Indians, Governor Stuyvesant again visited that post, hoping to obtain an interview with the chiefs, and to arrange a peace. Ensign Smith, with a very strong party of forty men, had utterly routed and put to flight two bands of Indians, one containing fifty warriors, the other one hundred. He took twelve warriors prisoners. They were sent to fort Amsterdam. In the mean time Stuyvesant had succeeded in renewing a treaty of alliance with the Indian tribes on Long Island, Staten Island, and at Hackensack, Haverstraw and Weckquaesgeek. The Long Island Indians consented to send some of their children to fort Amsterdam to be educated.
The Esopus Indians were now left in a very deplorable condition. Their brethren, on the upper Hudson, had refused to co-operate with them. Their routed bands were being driven across the mountains and many of their warriors were captives. To use the contemptuous language of the times, "they did nothing now but bawl for peace, peace."
There had never been a more favorable opportunity to secure a lasting peace, and to win back the affections of the Indians. By universal admission the colonists were outrageously in the wrong in provoking the conflict. They had given the Indians brandy until they had become intoxicated. And then half a dozen drunken soldiers had discharged a volley of bullets upon them as they were revelling in noisy but harmless orgies.
Had the governor frankly acknowledged that the colonists were in the wrong; had he made full amends, according to the Indian custom, for the great injury inflicted upon them, they would have been more than satisfied. Even more friendly relations than had ever before existed might have been established.
But instead of this the governor assumed that the Indians were entirely in the wrong; that they had wantonly commenced a series of murders and burnings without any provocation. The Esopus chiefs were afraid to meet the angry governor with proposals for peace. They therefore employed three Mohegan chiefs as their mediators. They offered to cease all hostilities, to abandon the Esopus country entirely, and surrender it to the Dutch if the Indian captives, whom the Dutch held, might be restored to them. These very honorable proposals were rejected. The Mohegan chiefs were told that the governor could not enter into any treaty of peace with the Esopus Indians unless their own chiefs came to fort Amsterdam to hold a council. And immediately the Indian captives received the awful doom of consignment to life-long slavery with the negroes, upon a tropical island, which was but a glowing sandbank in the Caribbean sea.
"On the next day," writes Mr. O'Callaghan,
It was ascertained that several miles up the Esopus creek the Indians were planting corn. It was the 20th of May, 1660. Ensign Smith took a party of seventy-five men and advanced upon them. The barking of dogs announced his approach just as his band arrived within sight of the wigwams. They all made good their retreat with the exception of one, the oldest and best of their chiefs. His name was Preumaker. We know not whether pride of character or infirmity prevented his escape. It is said, however, that he received the soldiers very haughtily, aiming his gun at them and saying, "What are you doing here, you dogs?"
The weapon was easily wrenched from his feeble hands. A consultation was held as to what should be done with the courageous but powerless old chief. "As it was a considerable distance to carry him," writes Ensign Smith, "we struck him down with his own axe."
At length the sufferings of the Esopus Indians became so great from the burning of the villages and the trampling down of their cornfields, the loss of their armies and the terrified flight of their starving women and children, that they were constrained to make another effort for peace.
On the 11th of July, Governor Stuyvesant left New Amsterdam for Esopus. Messengers were dispatched to summon the Esopus chiefs to his presence. Appalled by the fate of their brethren, who had been sent as slaves to the West Indies, they were afraid to come. After waiting several days the governor sent envoys to the chiefs of other tribes, urging them "to bring the Esopus savages to terms."
At length four Esopus chiefs appeared before the gate of the village. Delegates from other tribes also appeared, and a grand council was held. It is very evident from this interview, that many of the more delicate feelings of the civilized man had full sway in the hearts of these poor Indians. Instead of imploring peace themselves, the Esopus Indians employed two chiefs, one of the Mohawk and the other of the Mingua tribe, to make the proposition in their behalf.
Governor Stuyvesant assented to peace upon condition that the Mohawks and the Minguas would stand as security for the faithful observance of the terms exacted. The chiefs of these tribes agreeing to this, in a formal speech admonished the Esopus chiefs to live with the Dutch as brothers. And then, turning to the Dutch, in a speech equally impressive, they warned them not to irritate the Indians by unjust treatment. The Indians were compelled to yield to such terms as Stuyvesant proposed.
All the lands of Esopus were surrendered to the Dutch. The starving Indians were to receive eight hundred schepels of corn as ransom for the captive christians. The Indian warriors sent as slaves to the West Indies, were to be left to their awful fate. The mediators were held responsible for the faithful execution of the treaty. Should the Esopus Indians break it, the mediators were bound to assist the Dutch in punishing them. No spirituous liquors were to be drank near the houses of the Dutch. No armed Indians to approach a Dutch plantation. Murderers were to be mutually surrendered, and damages reciprocally paid for.
Thus were the Esopus Indians driven from their homes, deprived of their independence and virtually ruined. Having thus triumphantly though cruelly settled this difficulty, Stuyvesant went up to fort Orange, where he held another grand council with the chiefs of all the tribes in those regions.
A clergyman was sent to Esopus and a church organized of sixteen members. In September, 1660, Domine Selyus was installed as the clergyman of Brooklyn, where he found one elder, two deacons and twenty-four church members. There were, at that time thirty-one families in Brooklyn, containing a population of one hundred and thirty-four persons. They had no church but worshipped in a barn. Governor Stuyvesant contributed nearly eighty dollars annually to the support of this minister, but upon condition that he should preach every Sunday afternoon, at his farm or bouwery upon Manhattan Island.
The last of May, Charles the Second, the fugitive King of England, was returning from his wanderings on the continent to ascend the throne of his ancestors. He was a weak man, of imperturbable good nature. On his way to London he stopped at the Hague, where he was magnificently entertained. In taking leave of the States-General he was lavish of his expressions of friendship. He declared that he should feel jealous should the Dutch prefer the friendship of any other state to that of Great Britain.
At that time Holland was in commercial enterprise, the most prosperous nation upon the globe; decidedly in advance of England. The British parliament envied Holland her commercial supremacy. "The Convention Parliament," writes Mr. Brodhead,
Immediately after this, Lord Baltimore demanded the surrender of New Amstel and all the lands on the west side of Delaware bay. "All the country," it was said by his envoy,
A very earnest and prolonged discussion ensued. The Dutch Company said,
This was indeed an alarming state of affairs for New Amstel. Various disasters had befallen the colony, so that it now numbered but thirty families. The garrison had been reduced, by desertion, to twenty-five men; and of these but eight or ten were in the principal fort. The English were in such strength upon the Chesapeake, that they could easily send five hundred men to the Delaware. Very earnest diplomatic intercourse was opened between the States-General and the British Parliament upon these questions.
Governor Stuyvesant, whose attention had been somewhat engrossed by the Indian difficulties, now renewed his persecution of the Quakers. Notwithstanding the law against private conventicles, Henry Townsend at Rustdorp, who had been already twice fined, persisted in holding private meetings in his house. He was arrested with two others, and carried to fort Amsterdam. Townsend and Tilton were banished from the colony. Two magistrates were appointed as spies to inform of any future meetings, and some soldiers were stationed in the village to suppress them. Whatever Governor Stuyvesant undertook to do he accomplished very thoroughly. The following paper was drawn up which the inhabitants were required to sign:
A few refused to sign this paper. They were punished by having the soldiers quartered upon them.
Fort Orange was, at this time, the extreme frontier post, in the north and west of New Netherland. Though the country along the Mohawk river had been explored for a considerable distance, there were no settlements there, though one or two huts had been reared in the vicinity of the Cohoes Falls. This whole region had abounded with beavers and wild deer. But the fur trade had been pushed with so much vigor that the country was now almost entirely destitute of peltries. The colonists wished to purchase the fertile lands in the valley of the Mohawk, and the Indians manifested a willingness to sell them.
In the year 1661, the Company purchased of Melyn, the patroon, for about five hundred dollars, all his rights to lands on Staten Island. Thus the whole island became the property of the Company. Grants of lands were immediately issued to individuals. The Waldenses, and the Huguenots from Rochelle in France, were invited to settle upon the island. A block-house was built which was armed with two cannon and garrisoned by ten soldiers. Fourteen families were soon gathered in a little settlement south of the Narrows.
Upon the restoration of Charles the Second, in England, the Royalists and churchmen insisted upon the restoration of the hierarchy. The Restoration was far from being the unanimous act of the nation. The republicans and dissenters, disappointed and persecuted, were disposed in ever increasing numbers, to take refuge in the New World. The West India Company of Holland being in possession of a vast territory, between the Hudson and the Delaware, which was quite uninhabited, save by a few tribes of Indians, availed themselves of this opportunity to endeavor to draw emigrants from all parts of Europe, and especially from England, to form settlements upon their lands.
They issued proclamations inviting settlers and offering them large inducements. The country, which embraced mainly what is now New Jersey, was described in glowing terms as if it were a second Eden. And yet there was no gross exaggeration in the narrative.
"This land," they wrote,
Having presented this view of the region, to which emigrants were invited, and having also announced an exceedingly attractive charter of civil and religious privileges which would be granted them, in the following terms the invitation to emigrate was urged:
Twenty-three families, most of them French, established a settlement on Long Island, at the place now called Bushwick. The village grew rapidly and in two years had forty men able to bear arms.
The proclamation issued by the Company, inviting emigrants to settle upon the lands between the Hudson and the Delaware, attracted much attention in Europe. Committees were sent to examine the lands which it was proposed thus to colonize. The region between New Amstel and Cape Henlopen, being quite unoccupied, attracted much attention. A company, the members of which may be truly called a peculiar people, decided to settle there. An extraordinary document was drawn up, consisting of one hundred and seventeen articles for the government of the association. In this singular agreement it is written:
While the Company in Holland, were inviting emigrants to their territory of the New World, with the fullest promises of religious toleration, their governor, Stuyvesant, was unrelentingly persecuting all who did not sustain the established religion.
A very quiet, thoughtful, inoffensive man, John Brown, an Englishman, moved from Boston to Flushing. He was a plain farmer, very retiring in his habits and a man of but few words. From curiosity he attended a Quaker meeting. His meditative spirit was peculiarly impressed with the simplicity of their worship. He invited them to his house, and soon joined their society. The magistrates informed Stuyvesant that John Brown's house had become a conventicle for Quakers. Being arrested, he did not deny the charge, and was fined twenty-five pounds and threatened with banishment.
The next week a new proclamation was issued, saying,
John Brown, either unable or refusing to pay his fine, was taken to New Amsterdam, where he was imprisoned for three months. An order was then issued announcing his banishment.
"For the welfare," it was written,
He was sent to Holland in the "Gilded Fox." Stuyvesant wrote to the Company, "The contumacious prisoner has been banished as a terror to others who, if not discouraged by this example, will be dealt with still more severely."
The Company in Holland, was not at all in sympathy with its intolerant governor. The exile was received by them respectfully. The following dispatch, condemnatory of the severe measures of Stuyvesant, was forwarded to him: