COLONIAL NEIGHBORS
(1643-1652)
Although the successive English colonies--Virginia, Maryland,
Plymouth, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Haven, New
Hampshire, and Maine--each sprang from separate impulses, we have seen
how one depended upon another and how inextricably their history is
connected each with the other. Even the widely separated southern and
northern groups had intercourse and some transmigration. Thus the
history of each colony is a strand in the history of England in
America.
In the same way the history of each colony and of the colonies taken
together is interwoven with that of colonies of other European
nations--the Spaniards, French, and Dutch--planted at first distant
from the English settlements, but gradually expanding into dangerous
proximity. It was from a desire to protect themselves against the
danger of attack by their foreign neighbors and to press their
territorial claims that the New England group of English colonies
afforded the example of the first American confederation.
Danger to the English colonization came first from the Spaniards, who
claimed a monopoly of the whole of North America by virtue of
discovery, the bull of Pope Alexander VI., and prior settlement. When
Sir Francis Drake returned from his expedition in 1580 the Spanish
authorities in demanding the return of the treasure which he took from
their colonies in South America vigorously asserted their pre-emptive
rights to the continent. But the English government made this famous
reply--"that prescription without possession availed nothing, and that
every nation had a right by the law of nature to freely navigate those
seas and transport colonies to those parts where the Spaniards do not
inhabit."[1]
The most northerly settlement of the Spaniards in 1580 was St.
Augustine, in Florida, for, though in 1524 Vasquez de Ayllon had
planted a settlement called San Miguel on James River, starvation,
disease, and Indian tomahawk soon destroyed it. After the defeat of
the Spanish Armada and the subsequent terrible punishment inflicted on
the Spanish marine England was less disposed than ever to listen to
the claims of Spain.[2] Reduced in power, the Spaniards substituted
intrigue for warlike measures, and while they entangled King James in
its web and hastened a change in the form of government for Virginia,
they did not inflict any permanent injury upon the colony.
In 1624 England declared war against Spain, and English emigrants
invaded the West Indies and planted colonies at Barbadoes, St.
Christopher, Nevis, Montserrat, and other islands adjoining the
Spanish settlements. Till the New England Confederation the chief
scene of collision with the Spanish was the West Indies. In 1635 the
Spanish attacked and drove the English from the Tortugas, and
Wormeley, the governor, and many of the inhabitants took refuge in
Virginia.[3]
Because of their proximity the danger from the French colonies was far
more real. Small fishing-vessels from Biscay, Brittany, and Normandy
were in the habit of visiting the coast of Newfoundland and adjacent
waters from as early as 1504. Jean Denys, of Honfleur, visited the
Gulf of St. Lawrence in 1506, and in 1508 Thomas Aubert sailed eighty
leagues up the St. Lawrence River.[4] In 1518 Baron de Lery attempted
to establish a colony on Sable Island, and left there some cattle and
hogs, which multiplied and proved of advantage to later adventurers.
Then followed the great voyage of John Verrazzano, who, in 1524, in a
search for the East Indies, sailed up the coast from thirty-four to
fifty-four degrees. In 1534 Jacques Cartier visited Newfoundland and
advanced up the river St. Lawrence till he reached the western part of
Anticosti Island. The next year Cartier came again and ascended the
great river many miles, visiting Stadaconé (Quebec) and Hochelaga
(Montreal). At Quebec he encamped with his men, and, after a winter
rendered frightful by the cold and the ravages of the scurvy, he
returned in the spring to St. Malo.[5]
No further attempt was made till a short peace ended the third
desperate struggle between Charles V. and Francis I. In 1540 King
Francis created Francis de la Roque, Sieur de Roberval, lord of
Norumbega and viceroy of "Canada, Hochelaga, Saguenay, Newfoundland,
Bell Isle, Carpunt, Labrador, Great Bay, and Baccalaos"; and Cartier
was made "captain-general." The expedition sailed in two divisions,
Cartier commanding the first, which left St. Malo May 23, 1541. Again
he passed a winter of gloom and suffering on the St. Lawrence, and in
June of the following year set out to return.
On the coast of Newfoundland he met Roberval, who had charge of the
second division of the ships and two hundred colonists. The viceroy
ordered him to return, but Cartier slipped past him at night and left
Roberval to hold the country the best he could. Undismayed, Roberval
pursued his way, entered the St. Lawrence, and established his colony
at Quebec. He sent Jean Alefonse to explore Norumbega, a term applied
to the coast of Maine, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland; and he himself
explored the river Saguenay. Lescarbot tells us that in the course of
1543 the king sent out Cartier, who brought home the wretched
survivors of the company.
Then for nearly fifteen years the civil wars in France prevented any
further effort at settlement on the St. Lawrence. Scores of French
vessels, however, visited the region of the northwest for fish and
furs, and as soon as the civil wars were ended the work of
colonization was taken up anew. Failure as of old attended the first
experiments. In 1598 Marquis de la Roche landed forty convicts at
Sable Island, but after seven years the few survivors received a
pardon and returned home. In 1600 Chauvin and Pontgravé promised to
establish a colony on the St. Lawrence, and obtained from King Henry
IV. a grant of the fur trade, but Chauvin died and the undertaking
came to an end.[6]
In 1603 the first systematic effort to found French colonies in
America was made. A company was formed at the head of which was Aymar
de Chastes, governor of Dieppe, who sent over Samuel Champlain. He
visited the St. Lawrence, and after careful exploration returned to
France with a valuable cargo of furs. On his arrival he found De
Chastes dead, but Pierre du Guast, Sieur de Monts, a patriotic
Huguenot, took up the unfinished work. He received from Henry IV. a
patent[7] "to represent our person as lieutenant-general in the
country of Acadia from the fortieth to the forty-sixth degree," with
governmental authority, and the exclusive privileges of traffic with
the Indians.
April 7, 1604, De Monts, accompanied by Champlain, sailed from Havre
de Grace, and May 1 came in sight of Sable Island. They sailed up the
Bay of Fundy and entered a harbor on the north coast of Nova Scotia.
Poutrincourt, one of the leading men, was so pleased with the region
that he obtained a grant of it from De Monts, and named it Port Royal
(now Annapolis). After further exploration De Monts planted his
settlement on the Isle of St. Croix, at the mouth of the St. Croix
River, where he passed the winter; but half the emigrants died from
exposure and scurvy, and in the spring the colony was transferred to
Port Royal. After three years spent in the country, during which time
the coast was explored thoroughly by Champlain and Poutrincourt as far
as Nausett Harbor, the Acadian emigrants went back to France, which
they reached in October, 1607.
The design was not abandoned. Poutrincourt returned in 1610 and
re-established his colony at Port Royal, which he placed in charge of
his son. In 1611 two Jesuit priests, Biard and Masse, came over, under
the patronage of Madame de Guercheville, and in 1613 they planted a
Jesuit station at Mount Desert Island, on the coast of Maine.[8]
Champlain did not return to Port Royal, but was employed in another
direction. In April, 1608, De Monts sent out Champlain and Pontgravé
to establish a colony on the St. Lawrence and traffic with the Indians
of that region. Of this expedition Champlain was constituted
lieutenant-governor, and he was successful in planting a settlement at
Quebec in July, 1608. It was a mere trading-post, and after twenty
years it did not number over one hundred persons. But Champlain looked
to the time when Canada should be a prosperous province of France, and
he was tireless and persistent. Aided by several devout friars of the
Franciscan order, he labored hard to Christianize the Indians and
visited lakes Champlain, Nipissing, Huron, and Ontario. While he made
the fur trade of great value to the merchant company in France, he
committed the fatal mistake of mixing up with Indian quarrels. Between
the Five Nations of New York and the Hurons and their allies, the
Algonquins of the St. Lawrence, perpetual war prevailed, and Champlain
by taking sides against the former incurred for the French the lasting
hatred of those powerful Indians.
The progress of the colony was not satisfactory to Champlain or to the
authorities in France, and in 1627 Cardinal Richelieu dissolved the
company which had charge of affairs, and instituted a new one with
himself at its head. In the spring of 1628 he despatched to Canada
four armed vessels and eighteen transports laden with emigrants,
stores, and cannon, but war had broken out between the English and
French the year before, and on their way the fleet was intercepted and
the ships and goods confiscated.
The English had not recognized the claims of the French to any part of
the North American continent, and the very year that the Jesuit
station was planted at Mount Desert Island Samuel Argall came twice
from Virginia and burned the houses of the intruding French at all of
their settlements in Acadia: Mount Desert Island, Isle de Croix, and
Port Royal. The French rebuilt Port Royal, and at the death of
Poutrincourt's son Biencourt, about the year 1623, his possessions and
claims fell to his friend and companion Claude de la Tour.
Meanwhile, in 1621, Sir William Alexander obtained a grant from King
James for New Scotland, being that part of Acadia now comprising the
provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick;[9] and he sent over from
time to time a few Scotch emigrants. De la Tour and the French
submitted, and English rule seemed firmly established in Acadia when
war was declared in 1628. In February, 1629, Alexander received a
patent for St. Lawrence River and "fifty leagues of bounds on both
sides thereof," and on both sides of its tributary lakes and rivers as
far as the Gulf of California.[10]
After the failure of the expedition sent by Cardinal Richelieu,
Alexander and his partners despatched an English fleet commanded by
David Kirke, which appeared before Quebec in July, 1629. Champlain and
his small garrison were compelled to surrender, and all New France
fell under English power. Unfortunately for Alexander and Kirke, war
between the two nations had ceased, and the articles of peace provided
that all conquests made subsequent to April 24, 1629, should be
restored to the former owner. This insured the loss of Quebec and was
the forerunner of other misfortunes. In 1632 a treaty was made at St.
Germain by which, despite the protest of Sir William Alexander and a
memorial from the Scottish Parliament, King Charles consented "to give
up and restore all the places occupied in New France, Acadia, and
Canada" by his subjects.[11]
In 1632 Champlain returned to his government at Quebec, and with him
arrived a number of zealous Jesuit priests, who began that adventurous
career of exploration which, after Champlain's death in 1635,
connected the fame of their order with the great lakes and the
Mississippi. The king of France appointed Chevalier Razilly governor
of Acadia, who designated as his lieutenants Claude de la Tour's son
Charles, for the portion west of St. Croix; and Charles de Menou,
Sieur d'Aulnay Charmisé, for the portion to the east.[12] They claimed
dominion for France as far as Cape Cod.
Subsequently the two rivals quarrelled, and in 1641 D'Aulnay obtained
an order from the king deposing De la Tour, but the latter refused
obedience and sent an envoy to Boston in November, 1641, to solicit
aid. This envoy was kindly treated, and some of the Puritan merchants
despatched a pinnace to trade with De la Tour; but they met with
D'Aulnay at Pemaquid, who threatened to make prize of any vessel which
he caught engaged in the fur trade in Acadia.[13]
The Dutch claim to America was comparatively recent, as it was not
until 1597 that voyages were undertaken from Holland to the continent.
In 1602 the Dutch East India Company was chartered, and in 1609 sent
out Henry Hudson, an Englishman by birth, to seek a way to India by
the northeast. After sailing to Nova Zembla, where fogs and fields of
ice closed against him the strait of Veigatz, he changed his course
for Newfoundland and coasted southward to Chesapeake Bay. Returning on
his path he entered the Hudson in September, 1609, and stayed four
weeks exploring the river and trafficking with the natives.[14]
The reports brought by him to Europe of a newly discovered country
abounding in fur-bearing animals created much interest, and in 1612
some merchants in Holland sent Christiansen and Blok to the island of
Manhattan, where they built a little fort, which, it is stated, Argall
attacked in 1613. Losing his ship by fire, Blok built a yacht of
sixteen tons at Manhattan, and with this small craft was the first
explorer (1614) of the Connecticut River. He also visited Narragansett
Bay, and gave to its shores the name of Roode Eiland (now Rhode
Island).
After his return home the merchants obtained from the States-General a
charter for three years' monopoly of the trade of New Netherland, as
the present New York was now first formally called. It was defined as
extending between New France and Virginia, from the fortieth to the
forty-fifth degree of north latitude.[15] After this New Netherland
continued to be resorted to by Dutch traders, though no regular
settlement was formed for some years.
In 1619 Thomas Dermer visited the Hudson and brought news to England
of the operations of the Dutch and the value of the fur trade.
Thereupon Captain Samuel Argall, with many English planters, prepared
to make a settlement on the Hudson, and when the Dutch government, in
June, 1621, chartered the Dutch West India Company, the English court,
on Argall's complaint, protested against Dutch intrusion within what
was considered the limits of Virginia. The States-General at first
evaded a reply, but finally declared that they had never authorized
any settlement on the Hudson.[16] The charter,[17] in fact, gave the
company only an exclusive right to trade for twenty-four years on the
coasts of Africa and America.
Nevertheless, the company proceeded to send over, in 1622, a number of
French Walloons, who constituted the first Dutch colony in America.
One party, under the command of Captain Cornelius Jacobson May, the
first Dutch governor, sailed to the South, or Delaware River, where,
four miles below the present Philadelphia, they erected a fort called
Nassau; and another party under Adrian Joris went up the Hudson, and
on the site of Albany built Fort Orange. Peter Minuit succeeded May in
1626, and bought from the Indians the whole of Manhattan Island, and
organized a government with an advisory council.
The population of New Netherland was only two hundred, and though
trade was brisk there was little agriculture. The company met this
difficulty by obtaining a new charter and seeking to promote
emigration by dividing up the country among some great patroons:
Samuel Godyn, Killiaen van Renssalaer, Michael Pauw, David Pieterson
de Vries, and other rich men. In 1631 De Vries settled Swaanendael, on
the South River, as the Dutch called the Delaware; but in a few months
the Indians attacked the place and massacred the settlers.[18] Soon
the patroons became rivals of the West India Company in the fur trade,
and in 1632 Minuit, who favored them, was recalled and Wouter van
Twiller was made governor. His accession marks the first real clash
between the rival claims of the Dutch and English.[19]
In 1632 Lord Baltimore obtained a patent for Maryland which included
all the south side of Delaware Bay and river; and a month later Sir
Edmund Plowden obtained a grant from the English king for "Long Isle
and also forty leagues square of the adjoining continent," including
the very site of Manhattan.[20] In April, 1633, Jacob Eelkens, in
command of an English vessel, forced his way past Fort Amsterdam, on
Manhattan Island, and traded with the Indians, until the incompetent
Van Twiller at length stripped him of his goods and drove him from the
river.[21] The same year Van Twiller, as we have seen, planted a fort
near the site of the present city of Hartford, which served as the
seed of future troubles.
In 1634 Captain Thomas Young visited the Delaware and lorded it over
the Dutch vessels which he found in the river.[22] Then in 1635, while
settlers from Massachusetts poured into Connecticut, and the Council
for New England, preliminary to its dissolution, assigned Long Island,
despite the Dutch claim, to Sir William Alexander, men came from
Virginia to Delaware Bay and seized Fort Nassau, then abandoned by the
Dutch; but Van Twiller soon drove them away.[23] Thus step by step
English progress encroached upon the territories of the Dutch.
In 1638 Van Twiller was recalled and William Kieft was sent over. He
had to deal with Swedes as well as English, for in 1626 King Gustavus
Adolphus was persuaded by Usselinx, an Amsterdam merchant, to form the
Swedish West India Company, and after his death Oxenstierna, his
prime-minister, renewed the scheme. In 1638 he sent out a Swedish
expedition under Peter Minuit, the late governor of New Netherland,
who established a fort on the Delaware near the present Wilmington,
and called it "Christina," and the Swedes paid no attention to the
protest of Governor Kieft.[24]
In 1640 a party of English settlers from New Haven obtained deeds to
the soil on Long Island from Farrett, agent of Sir William Alexander,
and settled at Southold; and another party from Massachusetts, more
daring still, settled at Schouts Bay, almost opposite to Manhattan.
When a force of Dutch troops was sent against them they retired to the
east end of the island and settled Southampton. A more adventuresome
proceeding was attempted in 1641 when another party from New Haven
took the Dutch in the flank by settling on the Delaware. Dutch and
Swedes united to drive the intruders away. As if these were not
troubles enough, Kieft, in 1642, provoked war with the Indians all
along the Hudson.
[Footnote 1: Brown, _Genesis of the United States_, I., 8.]
[Footnote 2: Bourne, _Spain in America_, chap. x.]
[Footnote 3: _Cal. of State Pap., Col._, 1574-1660, pp. 75, 85, 98.]
[Footnote 4: Charlevoix, _New France_ (Shea's ed.), I., 106.]
[Footnote 5: Hakluyt, _Voyages_, III., 250-297; Charlevoix, _New
France_ (Shea's ed.), I., 129-131; cf. Bourne, _Spain in America_,
chap. x.]
[Footnote 6: Parkman, _Pioneers of France in the New World_, 213,
218.]
[Footnote 7: Maine Hist. Soc., _Collections_, 2d series, VII., 2-6.]
[Footnote 8: Charlevoix, _New France_ (Shea's ed.), I., 247-263.]
[Footnote 9: Maine Hist. Soc., _Collections_, 2d series, VII., 57.]
[Footnote 10: Ibid., 82.]
[Footnote 11: _Cal. of State Pap., Col._, 1574-1660, pp. 119, 130.]
[Footnote 12: Hannay, _Acadia_, 140.]
[Footnote 13: Winthrop, _New England_, II., 106, 109.]
[Footnote 14: Purchas, _Pilgrimes_, III., 581-596.]
[Footnote 15: Brodhead, _New York_, I., 57-62.]
[Footnote 16: _N.Y. Docs. Rel. to Col. Hist._, III., 6-8.]
[Footnote 17: Maine Hist. Soc., _Collections_, 2d series, VII.,
53-56.]
[Footnote 18: N.Y. Hist. Soc., _Collections_, 2d series, III., 16,
22.]
[Footnote 19: Brodhead, _New York_, I., 222.]
[Footnote 20: _Cal. of State Pap., Col._, 1574-1660, p. 154.]
[Footnote 21: Brodhead, _New York_, I., 230.]
[Footnote 22: Mass. Hist. Soc., _Collections_, 4th series, IX.,
125-128.]
[Footnote 23: N.Y. Hist. Soc., _Collections_, 2d series, III., 77.]
[Footnote 24: Winsor, _Narr. and Crit. Hist._, IV., 443-452.]
[Illustration: NEW SWEDEN AND NEW NETHERLAND]