AN account of the great Indian war which so desolated the
province of New Netherland, and of some other actions of
Kieft's administration, written from his point of view or
that of his supporters, must be regarded as an important
piece of evidence. It is the more to be welcomed because
on the whole our evidences for New Netherland history come
mainly from opponents of the provincial administration and
of the West India Company. The archives of the company
disappeared almost completely many years ago, the bulk of
them having apparently been sold as waste paper not many
years before Brodhead went to Holland upon his memorable
search. Of Kieft's papers, we may suppose that the greater
part were lost when the Princess was shipwrecked on the Welsh
coast in September, 1647, and the deposed director and all
his possessions were lost.
The document which follows was found by Broadhead in the
Royal Library of the Hague. It is still there and is
designated No. 78 H 32. I has an outside cover forming a
title-page, with ornamental lettering, but it is not the
"book ornamented with water-color drawings" which Kieft is
known to have sent home. A photograph of the first page,
which the editor has procured, does nothing to show the
authorship, for it is written in the hand of a professional
scrivener. Mr. Van Laer, archivist of the State of New York,
assures the editor that it is not the hand of Keift or that
of Cornelis van Tienhoven, the provincial secretary.<1> But
that it was either inspired by Kieft, or emanated from one
of his supporters, is plain not only from its general tone
but from its citations of documents. Of the documents to
which its marginal notes refer, some of those that we can
still trace are noted in the archives of the Netherlands as
"from a copy-book of Director Kieft's." The rest, or the
original copy-book, may have perished with him.
<1> Mr. J.H. Innes tells me that it resembles that of Augustin
Herrman.
The piece was first printed in 1851, in the _Documentary
History of the State of New York_, IV. 1-17. It was printed
for the second time in 1856, in _Documents relating to the
Colonial History of New York_, I. 179-188. For the present
issue this early and imperfect translation has been revised
with great care by Dr. Johannes de Hullu of the National
Archives of the Netherlands, who has used for this purpose
the original manuscript in the Royal Library.