seemed to be enough Swedes to man farms. The total population
of the colony--soldiers, traders, farmers, servants, women, and
children--amounted to no more than two hundred fifty at any time during
Governor Printz’s tenure. And losses by death were not offset by
reinforcements from home. In the spring of 1648 a census of all male
inhabitants of age counted up to only seventy-nine. These seventy-nine
were not all Swedes by a large number.
When Peter Stuyvesant arrived in America as governor of the Dutch,
the inherent numerical weakness of the Swedes was at once apparent to
him, for he was an experienced soldier. He also knew that because of
changing conditions abroad there was less reason for being so friendly
and neighborly. With the war against the Catholics drawing to a close,
the alliance was breaking up, and Holland was no longer favoring
Swedish shipping. The two countries were becoming bitter competitors.
The new Dutch governor had a personality that was every bit as colorful
as that of his soldier counterpart in New Sweden. Having lost a leg
in action, and being of an arrogant and tyrannical nature, Stuyvesant
stamped about affectedly on a silver-banded pegleg, swishing a
rattan cane to emphasize his commands. But he was also as zealously
nationalistic and as company-minded in the administration of his
colonial post as was Johan Printz.
It was predestined that hot-tempered “Big Belly” and autocratic
“Peg-Leg” would clash. They did--almost immediately.
Printz, it appears, replaced his blockhouse on Province Island with a
much stronger installation, Fort Korsholm, armed with cannon and manned
with a garrison of soldiers. Andries Hudde, who had succeeded Jan
Jansen as Dutch commissary on the South River, reported to Stuyvesant
that he was now absolutely cut off from the Schuylkill and that the
Swedes were “hindering” all other Dutch trade with the Indians in the
river valley.
Furthermore, Hudde said, the Swedes had spoiled the trade anyway,
for the Indians now insisted on two fathoms of white sewan and one
fathom of purple sewan for a beaver. And, since a fathom was commonly
estimated as the span of a man’s outstretched arms, the natives were
sending “the largest and tallest among them to trade with us.” This
made the barter “rather too much against” him, the Dutch commissary
complained, as every fathom amounted “to three ells!”
Stuyvesant, to Hudde’s surprise, instructed him to take the initiative
against the Swedes, telling him it was now well known that the Swedes
could expect no succor from home, and that he should go into the
Schuylkill and erect a stronghold there for his own traders.
Backed by this authority the South River commissary, who was of an
aggressive nature anyway, went into the Schuylkill with enthusiasm. In
May of 1648 he began building a log house surrounded by palisades at
Passyunk, on the lands purchased by Corssen in 1633. He called it Fort
Beversrede (Beaver Road Fort). Located within the limits of present-day
Philadelphia, on the east bank of the Schuylkill, Fort Beversrede not
only challenged the Swedish monopoly of the Schuylkill trade but it
restrained some of Printz’s people who were now probing east and north
of that stream.
Governor Printz reacted violently as might have been expected. He
sent out several chastising expeditions of armed men who tore down
palisades, destroyed surrounding forests and burned houses being built
about the new Dutch trading post. But there doesn’t appear to have been
too much blood shed, and the whole affair ended up amusingly enough
when the Swedes constructed a blockhouse of their own on the riverside
within a dozen feet of the gates to the Dutch fort. Evidently the six
nervous Hollanders who manned Fort Beversrede looked the other way
during this operation. In any case, after the Swedish blockhouse went
up, thirty-five feet in length, the Hollanders in their fort didn’t
have “the sight of the water on the kill” that they were supposed to
dominate.
It is easy to imagine that this was almost too much for Stuyvesant.
However, he was cautioned by his employers in Holland to arm himself
with some patience before using force against the Swedes. But then,
becoming increasingly irritated by further trespasses, the governor
determined to send both ships and troops to the South River as a
convincing show of strength. In 1651 he dispatched eleven ships with
arms and supplies around the coast, while he marched overland with 120
soldiers to Fort Nassau where the fleet met him.
There ensued much on-the-spot argument among the Dutch, the Swedes, and
the Indians, about their overlapping land titles. But it all ended up
with the Dutch becoming the masters of the South River, their troops
being much the most persuasive consideration in the case.
Stuyvesant sailed down the river to a likely site on the west bank just
below Fort Christina, landed two hundred men and erected a commanding
fortification which he named Fort Casimir. Located on a peninsula, near
present New Castle, Fort Casimir was 210 feet long and was mounted
with twelve guns, some of which came from Fort Nassau, now dismantled.
Two warships were also stationed in the river and several English
trading-boats were taken as prizes since England and Holland were at
war. All traders on the South River were now compelled to pay duty to
New Netherland.
Printz’s situation deteriorated rapidly as Dutch trading factors
overran New Sweden, monopolizing the beaver commerce. With pitifully
few remaining subjects, desertions having cut the total population to
less than a hundred souls, the governor had to leave Forts Elfsborg and
Korsholm unmanned and rotting. Now that he was without trade goods even
the Indians turned against him, boldly committing depredations within
the limits of the colony.
The people, growing mutinous, openly accused “Big Belly” of avarice
and brutality. They claimed that by their enforced labor he had filled
his storehouses at Tinicum Island with skins for his personal profit.
But he tore up a petition of their grievances and had their leader
convicted of treason. Then he heatedly dared the others to complain
again.
As to the charge of brutality, things were probably no worse nor any
better than the time a party of Indians was hired in New Sweden to
track down some settlers who deserted. These luckless subjects, who
had first tried unsuccessfully to desert to the Dutch, fled toward
the English settlements on the Chesapeake. The savages did their job
well--and efficiently--bringing back only the heads of those who
resisted capture.
The Swedish governor could only protest the Dutch usurpation of his
life-giving trade in the face of the military odds against him and his
own internal problems. His government was left intact however, and he
bided the time that reinforcements would arrive. But none came, nor
even any word. In the end he asked to be relieved. When there was no
reply to his request Johan Printz, at last disillusioned and completely
frustrated, finally took it on his own authority in 1653 to relinquish
his post and sail for home.
Once, some years earlier when Printz was a young officer in the Army
of Sweden, he had been dismissed from the service for surrendering his
post without authority. When he left America under similar conditions,
it is said that he took the precaution of getting a letter of
recommendation from Peter Stuyvesant to the Dutch West India Company,
just as insurance.
The year after Printz sailed away reinforcements did at long last
arrive in New Sweden, and with them came a new and impetuous governor
named Johan Rising. Finding Fort Casimir in the embarrassing position
of being without gunpowder and greatly underestimating the general
situation of the Dutch in New Netherland, Rising made the mistake of
reducing the fort to Swedish rule and pledging the loyalty of some of
the Dutchmen there.
Infuriated, the Directors of the Dutch West India Company sent a fleet
of ships and two hundred veteran soldiers across the sea to their
governor at New Amsterdam. They ordered him to gather all possible
additional forces before the Swedes could be reinforced and “exert
every nerve to avenge that injury, not only by restoring affairs to
their former situation, but by driving the Swedes from every side of
the river.” Stuyvesant responded with alacrity. In September of 1655 he
was under sail for the South River with a fleet of seven armed ships,
land artillery for besieging batteries, and several hundred soldiers.
Captain Sven Skute who was the commandant at Fort Casimir, now called
Fort Trinity by the Swedes, had greatly strengthened the fortifications
there in anticipation of the attack. Shot and powder were stored in
good supply, as were all other necessities for defense. Skute had
written orders from the Council at Fort Christina not to let the enemy
pass.
But, when the Dutch flotilla sailed up the river and anchored above the
fort, Sven Skute didn’t fire a shot. Stuyvesant was permitted to mount
his batteries ashore without interference. After the Swedish stronghold
had been completely surrounded and cut off, Skute sent out word that
his men were going to defend the position. Governor Stuyvesant replied
that if a single Hollander became a casualty there would be no quarter
for any Swede in the fort. Whereupon Captain Skute capitulated under
terms that permitted him to walk out with his “personal property.” His
men had mutinied, it appears.
Leaving Captain Dirck Smith in command of the fort, now renamed Fort
Amstel, the Dutch moved on to the Christina. There Stuyvesant repeated
his maneuver, investing the fort and the entire Swedish settlement.
While he and Rising parleyed, Dutch soldiers pillaged the countryside
as far north as Tinicum Island, where Johan Printz’s ambitious
daughter, married to a pliable husband, now held forth at Printz Hall
in the style of her father. The Hollanders killed livestock, plundered
houses and left the women “stripped naked” in their beds, or so it was
said.
Governor Rising’s situation was hopeless. He had only a small supply of
ammunition, most of it having been sent to Fort Trinity. He was faced
not only with the Dutch guns pointing at his fort but with increasing
desertions to the enemy. Stuyvesant was demanding complete evacuation
of the position or the oath of loyalty to Holland from all Swedish
subjects.
In the end the Swedish governor could only agree to surrender, with
transportation guaranteed for those who did not wish to remain as Dutch
subjects. The governor himself did not fare too badly. It appears that
his private property, like that of Captain Skute, was respected under
the terms of the capitulation and that it was promised he would be
landed in “England or France.”
New Sweden was no more. No longer did the Dutch at New Amsterdam have
to worry about Swedish competition on their South River, much less the
envelopment of Fort Orange in the north by Swedish penetration of the
hinterland.
What the Dutch had to worry about now, other than the Indians in
the vicinity of Manhattan who were getting a bit out of hand, were
Englishmen--especially the New England traders pressing them in the
north. And that was becoming quite a worry!
XV
_New Netherland Threatened Without and Within_
Nowhere in America was there a better situation for a great fur
emporium than Manhattan Island. There, converging into a protected
harbor which was easily accessible to seagoing ships, were arteries of
fur traffic that tapped both hinterland and coastal trade. Indeed, the
beaver trade that originated at Manhattan in the round-bellied Dutch
ships of the seventeenth century was the genesis of a commerce that was
to make New York the greatest seaport in the world.
But, although the Hollanders at New Amsterdam had this material
advantage and were exploiting it with all their energy, their
occupation of New Netherland was insecure to say the least. In English
eyes they were squatters on English territory, and the English had the
physical means to do something about it whenever they wished.
Logically, of course, the Englishmen had a very poor case. In the light
of their own Elizabethan theory that occupation of a territory was
necessary to back up any claim of possession, the Dutch title to New
Netherland was certainly valid. The Hollanders had searched out and
settled the country. The Englishmen had not bothered to do either. Yet,
stubbornly, they had never once conceded Dutch sovereignty.
Naturally, they had to come up with a new interpretation of Elizabeth’s
historic pronouncement. It took the following line of reasoning. James
I had long since defined Virginia as extending from the 34th to the
45th parallel, and, in fact, had granted it by charter to two great
joint-stock companies of London and Plymouth before Captain Hudson
ever went out to America for the Dutch. Such an act of sovereignty
could be considered equivalent to taking possession of that territory!
Therefore the Dutch were intruders!!
And, a quarter of a century after this “act of sovereignty,” parts of
Dutch New Netherland--Connecticut, Long Island and the west bank of the
Delaware River--were being reconveyed by the original English patentees
or the king himself, all without benefit of having yet been settled by
Englishmen.
That no official action was taken to eject the Hollanders can be
attributed to the alliances of the Thirty Years’ War. However, the
time was not too far away when England and Holland, relieved of their
compacts, were to become deadly rivals. Already, in fact, patriotic
Englishmen smarted with the knowledge that a foreign country which had
to import its timber for shipbuilding, and one which had so recently
been helped to independence by them, was growing rich on a carrying
trade that should be in British bottoms. The ultimate conquest of New
Netherland was a foregone conclusion as far as they were concerned.
Meanwhile, pressure on New Netherland from individual traders with the
backing of London and New England merchants prepared the way for the
anticipated military action.
* * * * *
The pressure on New Netherland began in 1633 when a trading vessel
from England invaded the Hollanders’ North River for furs. Her name
was the _William_. She was the first English ship ever to ascend the
Hudson. At the time, the annual returns there were estimated at 16,000
beaverskins, and no one was better qualified to appreciate this rich
business than the factor in charge of the _William_; for, he was none
other than a former Dutch commissary on the Hudson, Jacob Eelkens,
who himself had driven a great trade with the Indians at Fort Orange.
In 1623 however, after incurring the displeasure of the West India
Company, he had been summarily discharged. Now he was in the employ of
English merchants, William Cloberry and Company of London, and he was
of a mind to square accounts.
Defying both Governor Wouter van Twiller and the threatening guns on
Manhattan, Eelkens proclaimed haughtily that the Hudson River belonged
to England and then proceeded upstream. Van Twiller didn’t fire on him.
In fact, the irresolute Dutch governor broached a cask of wine while
he deliberated on the situation. Not until he had been roundly twitted
for timidity by his drinking companions did he acquire enough spirit to
dispatch three ships with some soldiers after the renegade Hollander.
By the time this force caught up with Eelkens, he was anchored near
Fort Orange, where he had established a well-stocked trucking station
ashore and was enjoying a lucrative trade for beaver with the natives,
all at the expense of the frustrated Dutch commissary there.
Van Twiller’s soldiers, upon their arrival, arrested the turncoat
interloper, and the _William_ was convoyed back down the river to
Manhattan where all the pelts aboard were confiscated. Then Eelkens,
protesting loudly, was escorted with his empty ship out of the Narrows,
never again to bother his countrymen on the Hudson.
But this same year, 1633, there was pressure of a more serious nature
on the Dutch. It came overland, and it was not to be repulsed so easily.
The fur traders of New England hankered for the beaver that abounded in
the valley of the Connecticut River where the Hollanders were taking
annually some 10,000 skins. Of course Dutch Captain Adrien Block
had discovered and explored the Connecticut, or “Fresh Water” as he
called it, in 1614. And since fur traders from New Amsterdam bartered
traditionally on the river, even establishing a temporary trading
post and laying out the foundations of Fort Good Hope near the site
of present-day Hartford in 1623, there was not much question in their
minds about the jurisdiction of New Netherland. Admittedly, however,
they had made no permanent settlements.
Neither had the English who now coveted the valley’s beaver meadows.
However, they had lately done some exploring and liked what they found.
Edward Winslow of New Plymouth went up the river in 1632 and was so
impressed that he selected a site for a house. And John Winthrop of the
Bay Colony let it out that because his colony extended “to the south
sea on the west parte,” the Connecticut River, or the greater part of
it anyway, belonged to Massachusetts under its charter.
So the Hollanders at New Amsterdam, a bit alarmed, bestirred
themselves to complete the fort which had been commenced by them some
ten years earlier. After buying “most of the lands on both sides” of
the Connecticut River from the Indians, they built a strong house of
yellow bricks at their old trading post and set up two cannon there to
secure the river above them.
But, even while their commissary, Jacob van Curler, was building
this fort in 1633, it was being enveloped by the New Englanders. Fur
traders from Massachusetts Bay fought their way straight west through
the wilderness that summer to reach the upper Connecticut valley north
of Fort Good Hope. In the fall a party of Pilgrims from New Plymouth
sailed up the river from the south for the same purpose.
It was John Oldham, an adventurous trader of ten years experience
in New England, who pioneered the way for the English. With three
companions he blazed what was to become known as the “Old Connecticut
Path” from Watertown in Massachusetts to the Connecticut River. On
his return he made an enthusiastic report on the valley and its
beaver meadows, while delegations of Mohegans from the Connecticut
valley offered alliances and otherwise made things most attractive to
prospective settlers. They wanted the men of Massachusetts, or any
other white men with guns, to settle among them. It was the only way
they knew to even scores with their recent conquerors, the Pequots.
There were 4,000 Englishmen clustered about Massachusetts Bay at
the time and quite a few were of a mind to get away. Puritanical
intolerance, given free rein in this new American colony, was making
too much of a strait jacket out of life for many of them. Connecticut
sounded almost too good to be true. Some of the bold ones began making
plans to migrate to the bounteous valley the following year.
In the meantime Winslow’s people at New Plymouth moved more quickly.
With them fresh beaver territory was always a pressing necessity.
Their very survival as a colony depended on their fur exports. They
also sensed profit in taking sides with the Mohegans. Whereas the
Massachusetts men cautiously avoided any complicating alliances with
the Connecticut valley Indians, the Pilgrims in their desperate anxiety
for pelts were quite willing, as usual, to involve themselves in
inter-tribal disputes. In this case it led to most unhappy results for
the traders, the farmers, and their families. Some have claimed that it
was the genesis of the fierce war between the Pequots and the white men
that exploded a few years later.
In any event, by early September of 1633 Captain William Holmes of
New Plymouth, carrying a prefabricated house frame in “a great new
bark,” was on his way up the Connecticut River. Undaunted by the Dutch
fort and the Hollanders, who “threatened [him] hard, yet ... shot
not,” Captain Holmes sailed past Fort Good Hope and erected his house
above it at Windsor. There his people established a trading post that
prospered at once on upriver furs at the expense of the Dutch traders
below them. Strongly palisading this post, Holmes and his company then
stood firm against a force of seventy Hollanders who were sent from New
Amsterdam to eject them.
The Pilgrim coup was short-lived however. Competition from Boston had
even more to do with this than Indian troubles, for in another three
years a wholesale exodus from Massachusetts to the Connecticut was
under way, over 800 people already having moved west to the fruitful
valley. In the forefront of this migration were the fur traders, but
farmers followed them to found Wethersfield and other towns. Invading
Windsor, they swallowed up the small band of their Pilgrim brethren
there.
The Puritans completely surrounded the isolated Dutch trading post
at Hartford. But, although the New Englanders on the Connecticut at
this time outnumbered the population of all New Netherland, they
made no attempt to oust the garrison of Hollanders in their midst.
Some twenty men, sent out by the younger Winthrop from Boston, did
however take possession of the Dutch claims about the mouth of the
Connecticut. There they tore down the arms of the States General which
had been affixed to a tree and contemptuously engraved “a ridiculous
face in their place.” When a Dutch sloop came from New Amsterdam
to dislodge them, it was compelled to withdraw in the face of two
cannon threateningly mounted ashore. The Boston men then went about
constructing fortifications and buildings which they called Fort
Saybrook.
After that the English had control of the river and, as they thought,
easy access also to the beaver trade “of that so pleasant and
commodious country of Erocoise before us.”
One Puritan merchant, William Pynchon, who was to found a great
fortune in the Indian trade, now spearheaded the economic attack on
New Netherland’s northern flank. Because of his relentless search for
fur he did more than any other man to defeat the Dutch traders and to
expand the frontiers of Massachusetts.
William Pynchon was one of the original company of twenty-seven
grantees of Massachusetts. For their concession these adventurers
were committed to pay the crown one-fifth of all the gold and silver
ore found within the limits of the grant. Pynchon, however, wasn’t
interested in ore. He was of a more practical bent of mind. He traded
with the Indians near Boston from the start, supplying them with guns
and ammunition in exchange for their beaver.
Although this trade in guns was carried on with the court’s approval,
Pynchon was severely criticized for doing it, fined in fact. Annoyed
about this, dissatisfied anyway with the dwindling fur trade about the
bay, and not being particularly in sympathy with the rigid Calvinism of
the church he had helped to found there, Pynchon’s eyes turned westward.
This keen-minded, resolute man was probably one of John Oldham’s
financial backers when that extraordinary adventurer pioneered the
Connecticut Path. Pynchon himself made a trip up the Connecticut River
by shallop in 1635 and chose a location for a trading post near the
Indian village of Agawam. Somewhat above the other river towns which
were being laid out, this strategic site was relied upon to intercept
most of the Indian trade from the north and west.
Early in 1636 Pynchon with his son-in-law, Henry Smith, led a group of
traders overland to Agawam. They shipped their goods by water. For 18
fathoms of wampum, and 18 each of coats, hatchets, hoes and knives,
with “two extra coats thrown in for good measure,” land was purchased
from the Indians, and a trading settlement was established. It wasn’t
too long before every one was calling this trading post Springfield, in
honor of its founder’s home town in England.