when he was their governor in New Netherland, had been born a French
Huguenot in the German city of Wessel. It is not strange that his
nationalism was therefore elastic enough to meet almost any demands of
his ambition and ability. About the only point at which Minuit might
have hesitated in those bigoted times would have been an association
with Catholics. Certainly, to serve under the banner of Sweden, a
protestant nation allied in the crusade against Spain, required a
minimum degree of adaptability, especially as Sweden’s official excuse
for a colony in America was that it would provide a base for attacking
the common enemy at his weakest spot.
Half the subscriptions for the venture in “New Sweden” were raised in
Sweden and half in Holland, with Samuel Blommaert the largest single
subscriber. Although the Swedish government furnished two well-armed
ships, _Kalmar Nyckel_ and _Gripen_, as well as all other weapons and
ammunition, the cost of the expedition to the company ran to 33,000
florins by the time it sailed from Gothenburg in the closing days of
1637.
If Minuit was lucky however, a single Spanish prize would be enough
to cancel out this unexpectedly high debt. Otherwise the New Sweden
Company looked to the Indian fur trade to pay it off in a season or two.
Almost half of the invested capital was for cargo that consisted mainly
of the merchandise needed for the Indian trade. Axes, hatchets, adzes,
knives, tobacco pipes, looking-glasses, cheap trinkets, duffels and
other cloth weaved in Holland were purchased by Blommaert and shipped
to Sweden where they were loaded aboard the two ships. So were a few
tools for farming, as well as some spirituous liquors and wines to be
traded either in Virginia or the West Indies for tobacco. The tobacco
was to be brought into Sweden where people had lately developed a taste
for it. But the furs would be sold in Holland, a better market for
foreign skins.
No act of fate guided Peter Minuit to the site he chose for the Swedish
beachhead in America. It was on Minquas Kill, a little stream from
the west emptying into the estuary of the Delaware River. The Indians
from whom the stream acquired its name had often used its course
in their raids against the Lenape. Minuit doubtless knew all about
Minquas Kill from reports he had received from Dutch traders when he
was Governor of New Netherland. He knew it was navigable by small
boats almost to the borders of the Minqua country, where a trade might
be joined for the rich pelts then finding their way to the English on
Chesapeake Bay. Also, he well knew that the site he selected on this
stream was a protected though strategic one from which, once fortified
and garrisoned properly, further encroachment on the Dutch West India
Company’s South River preserves might be safely launched.
For a kettle and other trifles Minuit bought enough land from a local
sachem to erect a couple of houses, emplace some cannon and palisade
“Fort Christina”--which was named in honor of the Queen of Sweden and
which was the beginning of Wilmington, Delaware. Then, he managed to
attract a few other Lenape chieftains from up and down the Delaware
who were perfectly willing to cede all the land that he wanted for New
Sweden in return for the colorful merchandise he offered.
There was some argument later about these “deeds,” that is, after they
were “lost.” Not only was their geographical extent challenged, which
the Swedes claimed to be the west side of the Delaware from Duck Creek
up to the Schuylkill; but other purchasers, in particular the Dutch to
whom the Lenape were equally accommodating, laid claim to identical
grants from the Indians. The English did too, in at least one case.
Of course the Hollanders came down the river from Fort Nassau, shortly
after the Swedes arrived, to find out what was going on. But Minuit,
experienced in handling them, gave it out that he was only stopping in
Minquas Kill for wood and water on his way to the West Indies. In this
he was telling the truth, strictly speaking, for he and both of his
ships were moving on to that part of the new world to exchange their
liquor for tobacco and to try for Spanish prizes before returning to
Europe. What he neglected to say was that he was building a fort to
be left garrisoned with 24 men, collecting return cargoes of furs and
leaving a sloop on the river to collect more.
Peter May, at the time in charge of Fort Nassau during Jan Jansen’s
absence at Fort Amsterdam, learned the truth when Minuit’s little
trading boat tried to slip past the Dutch outpost to barter for pelts.
May wouldn’t let the sloop ascend the river, and he sped Indian
runners overland to Manhattan with news of the Swedish invasion.
Whereupon newly-arrived Governor Kieft dispatched Commissary Jansen
back to his South River headquarters with many loud protests and
threats against the Swedes, but not much in the way of force to back up
his fulminations.
The New Netherland governor even issued a menacing proclamation. In
view of the close political and economic ties between Sweden and his
country, he couldn’t believe that the Swedish queen had authorized
Minuit to build forts “or to trade in peltries on the South River,” but
in any event, he proclaimed, the Dutch West India Company would defend
its rights by bloodshed if the Swedes did not withdraw.
Peter Minuit was undeterred by all of this however. He went about
finishing his fort and collecting his peltries, and there wasn’t really
anything the Dutch could do about it. They claimed that he “drew all
the skins to him by his liberal gifts,” and that as a result of his
“underselling” their losses ran to 30,000 guilders.
While Minuit was still on the Delaware that spring of 1638 he sent
the _Grip_ down to Jamestown to try to barter liquor for tobacco.
However the Governor of Virginia, Sir Francis Wyatt, who probably
looked askance at the usurpation of English claims on the Delaware,
diplomatically found excuses for not trading with the Swedes. He said
he would refer the matter to his king, and that ended it. The _Grip_
returned to Minquas Kill, transferred the liquor to the _Kalmar Nyckel_
and set out in search of a fat Spanish galleon.
Soon thereafter, the _Kalmar Nyckel_ also took aboard 710 beaver,
otter and bear pelts, which had been collected from the Indians, and
laid a course for the West Indies to trade the liquor for tobacco.
Peter Minuit sailed in this ship. He left Mans Kling in command of
Fort Christina, with Hendrick Huygen as commissary in charge of the
provisions, merchandise and Indian trade. Huygen maintained excellent
relations with the Indians and would appear to have opened up trade
with the Minquas. He bartered for food as well as furs, and the first
permanent white settlement in the present State of Delaware was able
to sustain itself for two years before any further relief came from
Sweden.
In the meantime, New Sweden’s founder had lost his life in the West
Indies. While the _Kalmar Nyckel_ was in harbor at St. Christopher’s
Island, Minuit went aboard a ship out of Rotterdam as the guest of its
skipper. A hurricane came up suddenly and drove this ship out to sea.
It was never heard of again.
Peter Minuit’s untimely death was an irreparable loss to the Swedes. He
would have made a capable governor for their colony in America, which
might have turned out quite differently had he remained in charge.
After a fruitless year on the track of the silver fleet the _Grip_
returned to New Sweden in the spring of 1639, took on a miscellaneous
lot of over 1,500 fur skins and sailed for Sweden. All the skins were
reshipped to Holland for merchandising, where the _Kalmar Nyckel_ had
already unloaded its cargo of pelts. Altogether, these first furs from
New Sweden brought 15,426:13:8 florins into the coffers of the company
according to Dr. Amandus Johnson, the American-Swedish historian.
The Dutch West India Company, at last awakening to the perils facing
New Netherland from foreign encroachment, now took more positive steps
to encourage immigration. The directors promised land and free trade
in the colony to private persons and made their promise firm by an
official proclamation. It was announced that anyone could henceforth
trade in pelts, as well as other merchandise, upon payment of fifteen
per cent tax and freight charges on all exports.
This lure to promote individual enterprise under the flag of Holland
quickly brought Dutchmen from the Netherlands as well as “strangers”
from Virginia and New England into the colony. After being on the
verge of economic collapse because of the company’s mismanagement, New
Netherland began to prosper again, especially those parts about the
North River. The newly liberalized policy was too late, however, to
have any effect in offsetting the invasion of the South River under the
Swedish flag.
Swedish reinforcements, men and women, began arriving in 1640. Even
some Hollanders came over and took up land near Fort Christina, their
leader being paid a salary by the Swedish government as the commandant
of his people. Among contingents of new settlers from Sweden itself
were some who came unwillingly. Such were the Finns, those hearty,
pioneering outlaws who had been roving Sweden, poaching game and
destroying forests, and rudely mocking all efforts to curb their
depredations. Many of them were rounded up and “persuaded” to emigrate,
along with some native “criminals” whose most serious offenses appear
to have been unpaid debts, adultery, and draft-dodging.
But these unwilling emigrants quickly adapted themselves after they
arrived in the new country. They rendered good service clearing the
land, hewing trees and building houses. Back of Fort Christina typical
Scandinavian houses went up, the first “log cabins” ever seen in
America, with the timbers notched so that the carefully tailored logs
lay flat and close at the joints. These primitive but highly efficient
cabins soon became the symbol of the American pioneer--the fur trader
as well as the farmer.
The trading limits of New Sweden were extended to the Falls of the
Delaware on the north and to Cape Henlopen on the south by new
purchases from the Indians. Traffic in pelts, always the chief business
of the colony, was prosecuted with real vigor. With the arrival in 1643
of a vigorous new governor, Johan Printz, the Swedes began establishing
trading posts and forts up and down the river in their expanded
territory. And there just weren’t enough Hollanders under the flag of
the Dutch West India Company at Fort Nassau to stop them, no more in
fact than twenty at any time.
The Swedes went out even to the Minqua country in the valley of the
Susquehanna, competing with the Dutch for the luxuriant pelts from the
northern lake country. Traders with Hendrick Huygen penetrated the
northwestern hinterland over 200 miles. Most often however the Minquas,
or Susquehannocks, who no longer went to the Marylanders in Chesapeake
Bay, came with great bundles of their fine pelts to trade at Fort
Christina, for they found that the Swedes were more liberal than either
the Dutch or the English, not only with trade goods but with sewan, or
wampum.
Always the Swedes gave the Minquas generous measures of shell strings
in exchange for beaver. Whether it was common white roanoke made from
the cockle shells found in quantity along some local beaches, valuable
peake strung with purple conch shell, or a variety of the even more
highly prized Long Island wampum, measurements were uniformly generous.
And since fathoms, ells and yards were roughly estimated by using
the length of one’s arm, the giant Susquehannocks did very well for
themselves.
Resourceful as usual, the Dutch began manufacturing false wampum
to meet the competition. But the savages were quick to detect the
counterfeit and wouldn’t accept it.
* * * * *
Meanwhile, some English traders from the New Haven Colony, which was
being hemmed in and cut off from the Indian trade of New England, had
come down to test out the prospects on the Delaware River and were very
much impressed. George Lamberton, Nathaniel Turner and others decided
to form a company to purchase land about the Schuylkill River as well
as the unoccupied country stretching northward from Cape May. As usual
the natives obliged them, regardless of prior deeds, and the New
Englanders soon had a colony at Varkens Kill, now Salem Creek in New
Jersey.
Everything might have been all right if the Englishmen had remained on
the land they bought on the east side of the river. But this was not
destined to be. Although there were some twenty families who cleared
land and planted crops in 1641 at Varkens Kill, these people were
primarily fur traders. They discovered that the east side of the river
was too far from the trading grounds of the Indians. The next year they
established a fort, building dwellings and a truck house, on the west
side of the river at the mouth of the Schuylkill.
This trading post, located on Province Island in present Philadelphia,
was on land claimed by both the Swedes and the Dutch. Actually it must
have incorporated whatever was left of the abandoned Dutch installation
built there originally by Arendt Corssen in 1633. In any case the men
from New Haven, after starting a lively Indian trade, made it clear
that they would countenance no competition within their newly acquired
precincts.
The Swedes and the Dutch, who had been operating under a kind of armed
truce in this area, united promptly in the face of this threat to their
common interest. Two armed sloops were sent out by the Council of New
Netherland, and Jan Jansen with the cooperation of the Swedes attacked
and burned out the interlopers. George Lamberton managed to escape in
his pinnace with a few of his people. But most of the New Englanders
were captured and shipped off to Manhattan as prisoners.
Lamberton, however, like most English traders, was a man of tenacity
and courage. Certainly he was persistent when he thought he saw a good
thing. The very next year he was back in the river again. This time,
unfortunately for him, the atmosphere was even more hostile. That
hot-tempered, national-minded Governor of New Sweden, Johan Printz, had
arrived in the meantime--all four hundred imperious pounds of him!
“Big Belly” Printz, as the Indians called him, came with the fire of
patriotism in his eye. He was not one to stand for any nonsense from
foreigners. As a good diplomat he maintained a neighborly friendship
with the Dutch, as he had been instructed to do, that is, so long as
they were no military threat to New Sweden and so long as they could be
outwitted in the Indian trade. But the English--those aggressive and
stubbornly nationalistic colonizers--were another matter.
So, in 1643, when George Lamberton once more sailed up the Delaware in
his pinnace, he was to find himself in real trouble.
Intercepting some Minquas en route to Fort Christina with their furs,
Lamberton induced them to trade with him. Whereupon the Swedish
governor invited him to dinner in order to arrest him, the charge being
that of having bribed the Minquas with cloth and wampum to massacre the
Swedes and Dutch. For a while it looked as if the Englishman might have
a short life.
But, although “Big Belly” set himself up as inquisitor, prosecutor
and judge, he couldn’t make his accusation stick before a mixed court
of English, Dutch and Swedish commissioners in the face of 400 beaver
skins Lamberton produced as evidence of his peaceful barter. In the
end Printz could only fine the New Englander double duty on the beaver
skins he had taken in trade and let him go. As a parting threat
however, he told Lamberton that his pinnace would be confiscated if
ever he traded again in New Sweden without authorization.
Then the corpulent but vigorous governor turned his full attention to
tightening Swedish control of the river, with a view toward gaining a
monopoly of the fur trade for his company.
On the east side of the Delaware, where he pretended to the same land
claimed by the New Englanders, he constructed a stronghold which he
named Fort Elfsborg. It was an imposing earthwork, emplaced with 8
twelve-pound guns and a mortar. Located on waterside just below Varkens
Kill and garrisoned by thirteen men, Fort Elfsborg not only asserted
Printz’s authority over a sickly remnant of the New Haven Englishmen
still there, but gave him military control of the river. Even Dutch
vessels on their way up to Fort Nassau were compelled to lower their
flags before the guns of the Swedish fort, their skippers no doubt
muttering curses against “Big Belly” who now “held the river locked for
himself.”
On the west side of the river the governor strengthened Fort Christina,
the fur emporium of New Sweden where the general storehouses were
maintained. He moved his own headquarters however to a much grander
manor setting farther upstream at Tinicum Island.
There, on this water-bound river bank, over which sleek airliners now
wing low, in and out of close by Philadelphia Airport, he built a
riverside fort of hemlock logs “laid one upon another” and a princely
“hall” for himself. Fort New Gothenborg, he named this new capital,
which was little more than half a dozen miles from Dutch Fort Nassau
across the river. To Fort New Gothenborg the Swedish governor hoped to
attract most of the Indian traffic that he now shared grudgingly with
the New Netherland traders.
For a while the strategy proved highly successful, especially after
Printz established a trading post on the near-by Schuylkill to control
that important artery of traffic from the hinterland. There, on
Province Island, from which the English had so recently been ousted,
he built a blockhouse of his own and mounted “stone cannon” on it.
These were the vicious little “murderers” of the time, whose broad
iron mouths could be jammed with stones or anything else lethal that
might be handy to spray attackers at close range. Other buildings too
were later erected at Province Island, but in the spring of 1644 the
blockhouse served for stores, and also as quarters for Lieutenant Mans
Kling and the traders stationed there.
The Dutch traders under Jan Jansen at Fort Nassau, frustrated by lack
of numbers as well as by restraining orders from Fort Amsterdam, now
could only stand by watching and biting their nails, while taking
whatever crumbs of the Indian trade their Swedish neighbors deigned to
share with them.
This same year of 1644 some merchants of Boston, with the backing
of Winthrop and the Court of Massachusetts, formed a company to
discover the great Lake of the Iroquois by ascending the Delaware
River. Some dozen years earlier, Captain Walter Neale of the Laconia
Company had failed in his efforts to reach the lake via the rivers of
Maine. At least the Delaware ran in the right direction, toward that
“inexhaustible” supply of beaver, something it was now conceded no
Maine or Massachusetts rivers did.
A well-equipped pinnace was actually sent out to the Delaware. However,
just what happened on the river is vague. Certainly neither the
Swedes nor the Dutch wanted English traders on their “backside.” A
few tentative shots were fired, but apparently some wisely dispensed
liquor accomplished more than force. In any event the New Englanders
were “entertained,” one way or another, first at Fort Elfsborg by the
Swedes and then at Fort Nassau by the Dutch, and in the end they were
persuaded to turn back. They returned to Boston in their pinnace, at
great loss to the chagrined investors in the enterprise.
* * * * *
Under Johan Printz’s able direction Swedish trade flourished throughout
the Delaware valley. Fine cargoes of beaver and other pelts were
shipped across the sea. Some went to Sweden, but the market was never
good there for foreign pelts and most were auctioned in Holland. Great
quantities, however, were sold locally in America for needed supplies.
And, we are told, “otter coats” and “elkskin trousers” were common
articles of dress among the Swedes themselves.
Like the Pilgrims, the Swedes could not have maintained themselves
but for the beaver trade. Their attempts to cultivate tobacco were
unsuccessful. Neither did they grow sufficient food for themselves.
And little enough help came from home. For nearly six years after the
winter of 1647-48 there was no relief ship nor even any official word
from Sweden to its earnest governor in America. A relief expedition
sent out in 1649 was wrecked en route in the Spanish West Indies, its
people tortured and enslaved. Printz had to depend on his Dutch and
English neighbors for supplies. And there was only one thing of value
to give them in exchange for this subsistence--beaver.
The problem of the Swedes was to monopolize the Indian beaver trade
while depending upon competitors not only for subsistence supplies but
for the very trucking merchandise required for the Indian trade. Dutch
traders, as well as English, were therefore welcome on the Delaware so
long as the Swedes could act as middlemen between them and the natives
who had the beaver pelts.
English traders of this type were particularly active in New
Sweden--Virginians and New Englanders, and some roving independents
like Isaac Allerton, the former Pilgrim father who made so much trouble
for his associates at Plymouth. Allerton, as a matter of fact, made his
headquarters at this time with the Dutch at Fort Amsterdam.
John Wilcox and William Cox were among other colonial merchants who
purveyed fowling pieces, sailcloth, duffels, cheese and brandy to
the Swedes in exchange for beaver skins. They also provided Printz
with trucking goods, such as knives, kettles, axes, hoes, cloth, red
coral and sewan, or wampum. Among many such entries in the company
books, reported by Dr. Amandus Johnson, is one for 220 yards of sewan
purchased from an Englishman for 140 beaver skins valued at 800 florins.
William Whiting, a Hartford merchant, collected 1,069¹⁄₂ pounds of
beaver worth 4,277 florins from the Swedes on one trading expedition to
the Delaware in 1644. Captain Turner and Allerton, who made frequent
trips there, purveyed cloth, barley seed and other grain, millstones,
beer, leather and wampum for the Indian trade, all in exchange for the
Swedes’ beaver. Several trading boats were also sold to the Swedes, a
small one being exchanged for 98 skins, and larger barks bringing five
to ten times as many.
Printz frequently sent his own people with beaver to New Amsterdam, and
even to New England, to buy trade goods, livestock, rye, corn, lime,
and other supplies. His chief commissary, Hendrick Huygen, usually
headed up the expeditions to Manhattan. At the Dutch capital the going
rate for corn, which was not always to be obtained direct from the
Indians, was one beaver pelt for three bushels. Evidently the Swedes
found this exchange less onerous than toiling with the plow.
On one trip to the Dutch capital Huygen bought seven oxen for 124
beaver skins valued at 868 florins, a cow for 22 skins worth 154
florins, and 75 bushels of rye for 32 skins valued at seven florins
each. It cost him only ten skins to get this livestock to New Sweden,
five being paid out to two Hollanders who led some of the oxen
cross-country, and five to the Governor of New Netherland whose sloop
delivered the remainder on the Delaware. On another trip, in addition
to oxen, Huygen bought a horse for thirty skins. He even settled for
his expenses at New Amsterdam with beaver, paying out nine skins for
board and five for lodgings to the inn-keeper on one occasion, while
having the storm-torn sails of his boat repaired for another six skins.
The Swedes never did root their colony in agriculture. For one thing,
it was just too easy to rest the entire economy on the beaver trade,
and somehow the habit persisted even after the fur frontier had
passed into the hinterland. A visiting Indian convert from New France
once accused them of being more concerned with fur trading than with
converting his red kinsmen to Christianity. The charge was true enough.
It might have been leveled in fact at almost any colonials of the time.
But probably it wasn’t even of passing interest to the beaver-hungry
Swedes.