(_New York, 1661_)
I
The island of Manhattan, which is now tightly packed with the
office-buildings and houses of New York, was in 1661 the home of a small
number of families who had come across the Atlantic Ocean from the
Netherlands to settle this part of the new world for the Dutch West
India Company. There was a fort at the southern end of the island,
sometimes known as the Battery, and two roads led from it toward the
north. One of these roads followed the line of the street now called
Broadway, running north to a great open field, or common, and, skirting
that, leading on to the settlement of Harlaem. In time this road came to
be known as the Old Post Road to Boston. Another road ran to the east,
and in its neighborhood were the farms of many of the richer Dutch
settlers. Near where Third Avenue and Thirteenth Street now meet was the
bouwery, as the Dutchmen called a farm, of Peter Stuyvesant, the
governor of the colony of New Netherland. It was a large, prosperous
bouwery, with a good-sized house for the governor and his family.
This Dutch governor, sturdy, impetuous, obstinate, had lost a leg while
leading an attack on the Portuguese island of Saint Martin, in 1644, and
now used a wooden stump, which caused him to be nicknamed "Wooden-Legged
Peter." He was a much better governor than the others who had been sent
out by the West India Company to rule New Netherland. He had plenty of
courage, but he had also a very determined will of his own, which often
made him seem a tyrant to the other settlers.
Now there were two distinct classes of people in New Netherland: the
peasants who worked the land, and the landowners, called patroons, who
had bought vast tracts from the West India Company, and lived on them
like European nobles. It was the patroons who brought the peasants over,
paying for their passage, and the peasants worked for them until they
could repay the amount of their passage money, and then took up small
farms on their patroon's estate, paying the rental in crops, as tenants
did to the feudal lords of Europe. The great manors stretched north from
the little town of New Amsterdam at the point of Manhattan Island. Above
Peter Stuyvesant's bouwery was the manor of the Kip family, called Kip's
Bay. In the middle of the island lived the Patroon De Lancey. Opposite,
on Long Island, was the estate of the Laurences. And along the Hudson
were the homes of the powerful families of Van Courtland and of
Phillipse, of Van Rensselaer and of Schuyler. In spite of constant
danger from Indians and their great distance from Europe the patroons
lived in a certain magnificence, and grew in power down to the time of
the Revolution. Farming and fur-trading were the chief sources of profit
of the colony. There were a few storekeepers and mechanics, but they
lived close to the fort and stockade at the Battery. The trades that had
done so much to make the Netherlands in Europe rich played small part in
the life of this New Netherland.
In the year 1661 the West India Company bought Staten Island from its
patroon owner, a man named Cornelius Melyn. A block-house was built
which was armed with two cannon and defended by ten soldiers, and
invited the people of Europe who were called Waldenses and the Huguenots
of France to settle on the island. Fourteen families soon came and took
up farms there south of the Narrows. The West India Company, however,
had broader views on religion than their governor, Peter Stuyvesant,
had. John Brown, an Englishman, moved from Boston to Flushing, on Long
Island, and, having by chance attended a Quaker meeting, invited the
Quakers to meet at his new house. Neighbors told the governor that John
Brown was using his farm as a meeting-place for Quakers, and Stuyvesant
had him arrested. The quiet, unoffending farmer was fined twenty-five
pounds and threatened with banishment, and when he failed to pay, was
imprisoned in New Amsterdam for three months. Then Governor Stuyvesant
issued an order banishing Farmer Brown. "John Brown," so ran the order,
"is to be transported from this province in the first ship ready to
sail, as an example to others." Soon afterward he was sent to Holland in
the _Gilded Fox_, but the officers of the West India Company received
him kindly, rebuked the haughty governor for his severity, and persuaded
John Brown to return to Flushing. When he did go back Stuyvesant showed
by his acts that he was ashamed of what he had done. For the governor,
in spite of his headstrong acts, had sense enough to know that his
little colony needed all the settlers it could find, no matter what
their religion, and that Quakers made as trustworthy settlers as any
other kind.
Early in 1663 an earthquake shook New Netherland and the country round
it. Soon afterward the melting snows and very heavy rains caused a
tremendous freshet, which covered the meadow lands along the rivers, and
ruined all the crops. Then came an outbreak of smallpox, which spread
among the Dutchmen and the Indians like fire in a field of wheat. Over a
thousand of the Iroquois tribe died of the plague. Then, as if these
troubles were not sufficient for the colony, Peter Stuyvesant soon heard
that there was new danger of an Indian uprising against his people.
There had been a truce between the red men and the white, but the former
could not forget that after their last attack on the Dutch fifteen of
their warriors had been sent as slaves to the island of Curaçoa. There
were many Indians near the prosperous settlement of Esopus, up in the
Hudson country, and in the spring of 1663 settlers there sent word to
the governor that they needed more protection from their dark-skinned
neighbors. Stuyvesant replied that he would come himself soon and try to
settle any differences. The Indian chiefs heard of this reply of the
governor and in their turn sent him word that if he were coming to renew
their treaty of friendship they should expect him to come without arms,
and would then gladly meet in a council in the field outside the gate of
Esopus, and smoke the pipe of peace with him.
This was a friendly message, and the settlers at Esopus who lived within
the palisades, as well as those at the little village of Wildwyck, which
had sprung up a short distance from the fort, decided they had been
wrong in suspecting the Indians of intending to harm them, and went on
with their farming as usual. Peter Stuyvesant, busy in New Amsterdam,
had not yet had a chance to go up to Esopus. On the seventh of June, as
on other days, Indians came into the village, chatted with the settlers,
and sold corn and other provisions they had grown.
Then suddenly a war-whoop rang out inside the palisades, and was
instantly followed by a hundred more within and without the gates.
Indian blankets were thrown aside, and tomahawks and long knives
gleamed in the hands of the savages. The settlers were taken completely
by surprise. Each Indian had marked his man. Men, women, and children
were made prisoners or killed. Houses were plundered and set on fire,
and the flames, escaping to the farms, soon made havoc of the prosperous
village.
The settlers fought, and for several hours the savage war-whoops were
answered by the fire of muskets. The chief officer of the village,
called the Schout, Roelof Swartwout by name, rallied a few men around
him, and by desperate fighting at last drove the Indians outside the
palisades and shut the gates against them. But the outer village was in
ashes, the fields were strewn with bodies, and houses smoked to the sky.
Within the palisades matters were not quite so bad, for a change of the
wind had saved part of the buildings from the flames.
Twenty-one settlers had been killed, nine were badly wounded, and
forty-five, most of them women and children, had been taken captive. All
that night the Schout and his men stayed on guard at the gates, while in
the distance they heard the shouts of the triumphant red men.
The news of what had happened at Esopus spread rapidly through the
Hudson country. In the villages the men hurried to strengthen their
palisades, farmers fled with their families to the shelter of the
nearest forts. The news came to Governor Stuyvesant on Manhattan Island,
and he instantly sent forty-two soldiers to Esopus, and offered rewards
to all who would enlist. Some friendly Indians from Long Island joined
his forces, scouts were sent through the woods to find the hostile
Indians' hiding-places. The Mohawks tried to make peace, and capturing
some of the Dutch prisoners, sent them back to the village. The Mohawks
also sent word that the Indians who had gone on the war-path felt they
were only taking a just revenge for the act of the Dutch in sending some
of their chiefs to Curaçoa, that they would return their other prisoners
in exchange for rich presents, and were ready to make a new peace with
the settlers.
But Peter Stuyvesant thought it needful to teach his Indian neighbors a
lesson.
A white woman, Mrs. Van Imbrock, escaped from her captors, and finally
reached Esopus after many hardships. She brought word that the Indians,
some two hundred, had built a strong fort, and sent their prisoners
every night under guard to a distant place in the mountains, intending
to keep them as hostages. When he had heard her account, Stuyvesant sent
out a party of two hundred and ten men, under Captain Crygier, armed
with two small cannon, with which they hoped to make a breach in the
walls of the Indian fort, which were only bulletproof.
This little army set out on the afternoon of July 26th. They made their
way through forests, over high hills, and across rivers. They bivouacked
for the night, and next morning marched on until they were about six
miles from the fort. Half the men were sent on to make a
surprise-attack, while the rest followed in reserve.
Scouts had brought word to the fort of the approach of the Dutch, and
the Indians had gone into the mountains with their prisoners. So Captain
Crygier's men went into the fort and spent the night there, finding it
an unusually well-built and well-protected place. An Indian woman, not
knowing the white men were there, came back for some provisions, was
taken prisoner, and told the direction in which the chiefs had gone.
Next morning twenty-five men were left at the fort, and the others
followed the trail to a mountain, where the squaw said the Indians meant
to camp. There were no red men there, and the squaw told of another camp
yet farther on.
The Dutch soldiers marched all day, but their hunt proved fruitless.
Finally Captain Crygier gave the order to return to the captured fort.
Here they burned the buildings, and carried off all the provisions. Then
they returned to Esopus, to await other news.
Early in September word came that the Indians had built another fort, or
castle, as they called it, thirty-six miles to the southwest. Again
Captain Crygier set out with his men, and on the second day came in view
of the fort. It stood on a height, and was built of two rows of stout
palisades, fifteen feet high. Crygier divided his forces, and one-half
the men crept toward the fort. Then a squaw saw them, and by her cry
warned the Indians. Both parties of the Dutch rushed up the hill,
stormed the palisades, drove their enemies before them, and scattered
them in the fields. Behind the fort was a creek. The Indians waded and
swam it, and made a stand on the opposite bank. But the fire of the
Dutchmen was too much for them, and shortly they were flying wildly into
the wilderness.
The Indian chief, Papoquanchen, and fourteen of his warriors were killed
in the battle, twenty-two white prisoners were rescued, and fourteen
Indians were captured. The fort was plundered of provisions, and the
Dutch found eighty guns, besides, as they reported, "bearskins,
deerskins, blankets, elk hides and peltries sufficient to load a
shallop."
There was great joy at Esopus when the victorious little army returned.
Danger from that particular tribe of Indians seemed at an end, but to
make the matter certain a third expedition was sent out in the fall.
They scouted through the near-by country, but found only a few scattered
red men. Those that were left of the Esopus tribe after that last attack
on their fort had fled south and finally become part of the Minnisincks.
Again peace reigned in the Dutch settlements; the farmers went back to
their fields, and the soldiers returned to the capital at New Amsterdam.
To the north of the Dutch colony lay the English colonies of New
England, and the boundary between New Netherland and its neighbors had
never been fixed. Many Englishmen had settled along the Hudson and on
Long Island, and Governor Stuyvesant thought it was high time to reach
some agreement with the New England governors. So he went to Boston in
September, 1663; but scarcely had he left New Amsterdam when an English
agent, James Christie, arrived on Long Island, and told the people of
Gravesend, Flushing, Hempstead and Jamaica that they were no longer
under Dutch rule, but that their territory had been annexed to the
colony of Connecticut.
Now many of the settlers at Gravesend were English, and most of the
magistrates and officers. When Christie read his announcement to the
people one of the few faithful Dutch magistrates, Sheriff Stillwell,
arrested him on a charge of treason. Then the other magistrates ordered
the arrest of Stillwell in turn, and the public feeling against the
latter was so strong that he had to send word secretly to New Amsterdam,
asking for help. A sergeant and eight soldiers were sent from New
Amsterdam, and they again arrested Christie and placed him under guard
in Sheriff Stillwell's house.
Rumors came that the farmers meant to rescue Christie, so he was taken
at night to the fort on Manhattan Island. Sheriff Stillwell had to fly
from his own house to escape the neighbors, and hurried to New
Amsterdam, where he complained of the illegal acts of the Gravesend
settlers. Excitement ran high. People on Long Island demanded that
Christie be set free; but the Dutch council insisted on keeping him a
prisoner. The council sent an express messenger to Peter Stuyvesant in
Boston, asking him to settle the Long Island difficulties with the
English governor there.
But the officers of New England would not agree to the sturdy Dutchman's
terms. And other English colonists went through the land that belonged
to the Dutch, rousing the farmers against the West India Company.
Richard Panton, armed with sword and pistol, threatened the men of
Flatbush and other villages near by with the pillage of their property
unless they would swear allegiance to the government at Hartford and
fight against the Dutch. Such was the news that greeted Stuyvesant when
he came back to his capital from Boston. He knew that there were not
enough of the Dutch to resist an attack from the English, who had come
swarming in great numbers recently into Massachusetts and Connecticut.
His only hope lay in argument, and so he sent four of his leading men to
Hartford to try to arrange a peaceful settlement.
The four Dutchmen sailed from New Amsterdam, and after two days on the
water landed at Milford. There they took horses and rode to New Haven,
where they spent the night. Next day they went on to Hartford over the
rough roads of the wilderness. They were well received, and John
Winthrop, who was governor of Connecticut and a son of Governor
Winthrop of Massachusetts, admitted that some of the claims of the Dutch
were just. But the rest of the officers at Hartford stoutly insisted
that all that part of the Atlantic seacoast belonged to the king of
England, by right of first discovery and claim. "The opinion of the
governor," said these men, "is but the opinion of one man. The grant of
the king of England includes all the land south of the Boston line to
Virginia and to the Pacific Ocean. We do not know any New Netherland,
unless you can show a patent for it from the king of England."
Apparently the Dutch had no rights there at all; the whole tract between
Massachusetts and Virginia belonged to Connecticut.
Still the Dutchmen tried to reach some sort of friendly agreement. They
proposed that what was known as Westchester, the land lying north of
Manhattan Island, should be considered part of Connecticut, but that the
towns on Long Island should remain under the government of New
Netherland. "We do not know of any province of New Netherland," the
Hartford officers replied. "There is a Dutch governor over a Dutch
plantation on the island of Manhattan. Long Island is included in our
patent, and we shall possess and maintain it."
So the four Dutchmen had to return to Governor Stuyvesant with word that
the Connecticut men would yield none of their claims.
The state of affairs was going from bad to worse. Stuyvesant called a
meeting of men from all the neighboring villages, and the meeting sent
a report to the Dutch government in Europe.
The report had hardly been sent, however, when more startling events
took place in the colony. Two Englishmen, Anthony Waters and John Coe,
with a force of almost one hundred armed men, visited many of the
villages where there were English settlers, and told them they must no
longer pay taxes to the Dutch, as their country belonged to the king of
England. They put their own officers in place of the Dutch officers in
these villages, and then, marching to settlements where most of the
people were Dutch, they tried to make the people there take the oath of
allegiance to the English king.
A month later a party of twenty Englishmen secretly sailed up the
Raritan River in a sloop, called the chiefs of some of the neighboring
Indian tribes together, and tried to buy a large tract of land from
them. They knew all the while that the Dutch West India Company had
bought that same land from the Indians some time before.
As soon as he heard of this Peter Stuyvesant sent Crygier, with some
well-armed men, in a swift yacht, to thwart the English traders. He also
sent a friendly Indian to warn the chiefs against trying to sell land
they no longer owned. The Dutch yacht arrived in time to stop the
Indians from dealing with the English, and the latter, baffled there,
sailed their sloop down the bay to a place between Rensselaer's Hook
and Sandy Hook, where they met other Indians and tried to bargain with
them for land. The Dutch Crygier overtook them.
"You are traitors!" he cried. "You are acting against the government to
which you have taken the oath of fidelity!"
"This whole country," answered the men from the sloop, "has been given
to the English by His Majesty the King of England."
Then the two parties separated, Crygier and his men sailing back to New
Amsterdam.
While matters stood this way in the province of New Netherland an
Englishman, John Scott, petitioned King Charles the Second to grant him
the government of Long Island, which he said the Dutch settlers were
unjustly trying to take away from the king of England. Scott was given
authority to make a report to the English government on the state of
affairs in that part of the New World, and in order to do this he sailed
to America and went to New Haven, where he was warmly welcomed. The
colony of Connecticut gave him the powers of a magistrate throughout
Long Island, and he at once set to work to wrest the island from the
Dutch, whom he upbraided as "cruel and rapacious neighbors who were
enslaving the English settlers."
Some of the villages on Long Island, however, and especially those where
there were many Quakers and Baptists, did not want to come under the
rule of the Puritans. Therefore six towns, Hempstead, Gravesend,
Flushing, Middlebury, Jamaica and Oyster Bay, formed a government of
their own, asking John Scott to act as their president, until the king
of England should establish a permanent government for them. Scott
swelled with pride in his new power. He gathered an armed force of one
hundred and seventy men, horse and foot, and marched out to compel the
neighboring Dutch towns to join his new colony.
First he marched on Brooklyn. There he told the citizens that their land
belonged to the crown of England, and that he now claimed it for the
king. He had so many men with him that the Dutch saw it would be
impossible to arrest him, but one of them, the secretary, Van Ruyven,
suggested that he should cross the river to New Amsterdam and talk with
Peter Stuyvesant. Scott pompously answered, "Let Stuyvesant come here
with a hundred men; I will wait for him and run my sword through his
body!" And he scowled and marched up and down before the stolid Dutchman
like a fierce cock-o'-the-walk.
The Dutchmen of Brooklyn, however, did not seem anxious to exchange the
rule of Governor Peter Stuyvesant for that of Captain John Scott. As he
was strutting up and down Captain Scott spied a boy who looked as if he
would like to use his fists on the Englishman. The boy happened to be a
son of Governor Stuyvesant's faithful officer Crygier. Captain Scott
walked up to the boy, and ordered him to take off his hat and salute the
flag of England. Young Crygier refused, and the quick-tempered captain
struck at him. One of the men standing by called out, "If you have blows
to give, you should strike men, not boys!"
Four of Scott's men jumped at the man who had dared to speak so, and the
latter, picking up an axe, tried to defend himself, but soon found it
best to run. Scott ordered the people of Brooklyn to give the man up,
threatening to burn the town unless they did so. But the man was not
surrendered, and the captain did not dare to carry out his threat.
Instead he marched to Flatbush, and unfurled his flag before the house
of the sheriff. Settlers gathered round to see what was happening, and
Captain Scott made them a speech. "This land," said he to the Dutchmen,
"which you now occupy, belongs to His Majesty, King Charles. He is the
right and lawful lord of all America, from Virginia to Boston. Under his
government you will enjoy more freedom than you ever before possessed.
Hereafter you shall pay no more taxes to the Dutch government, neither
shall you obey Peter Stuyvesant. He is no longer your governor, and you
are not to acknowledge his authority. If you refuse to submit to the
king of England, you know what to expect."
But the men of Flatbush were no more ready to obey the haughty captain
than those of Brooklyn had been. One of the magistrates dared to tell
Scott that he ought to settle this dispute with Peter Stuyvesant.
"Stuyvesant is governor no longer," he retorted. "I will soon go to New
Amsterdam, with a hundred men, and proclaim the supremacy of His
Majesty, King Charles, beneath the very walls of the fort!"
The Dutch would not obey him, but neither would they take up arms
against him. Such treatment angered the fire-eating captain more and
more. He marched his troop to New Utrecht, where the Dutch flag floated
over the block fort, armed with cannon. Meeting no resistance from the
peace-loving settlers Scott hauled down their flag and replaced it with
the flag of England. Then, using the Dutch cannon and Dutch powder he
fired a salute to announce his victory. All those who passed the fort
were ordered to take off their hats and bow before the new banner, and
those who refused were arrested by his men, and some were bound and
beaten.
Peter Stuyvesant, in New Amsterdam, heard of these disturbances on Long
Island, and sent three of his leading men to meet Scott and try to make
some settlement with him. They met the captain at Jamaica, and after
much wrangling, at last reached what they thought might be an agreement.
But as they left Scott fired these words at their backs: "This whole
island belongs to the king of England. He has made a grant of it to his
brother, the Duke of York. He knows that it will yield him an annual
revenue of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. He is soon coming
with an ample force, to take possession of his property. If it is not
surrendered peaceably he is determined to take, not only the whole
island, but also the whole province of New Netherland!"
This was alarming news. Some of the English settlers were rallying to
Scott's command, the Dutch in some of the villages fled to Dutch forts
for shelter. Even the prosperous men in New Amsterdam began to fear lest
the English captain should attack their homes. Fortifications were
hurriedly built, and men enrolled as soldiers.
Peter Stuyvesant, fearful lest he should lose his colony, knowing well
that the English greatly outnumbered the Dutch, found himself in a very
difficult situation. But "Wooden-Legged Peter" was a fighter, quite as
fiery as John Scott when his blood was up.