taxed to support the church, and only men who were church members were
allowed to vote or to hold office as magistrates. Everyone was required
to attend church services. If any one was absent without good reason
the “tithing man” was sent after him. In church men sat on one side
and women on the other; there was a man to keep order and he had a
long stick with which to tap people who slept or children who fidgeted
during the service which lasted two, or three, or even four hours.
Children were whipped and grown people were fined if they talked in
church.
A young clergyman of Salem, Roger Williams, of whom you will hear more
later, thought that these laws were too strict. He thought people ought
to enjoy civil and religious liberty, but Governor Winthrop advised him
to leave the colony as no one with such views was wanted there.
Governor Winthrop spent much of his fortune in helping the colony he
had founded and had the joy of seeing it grow and prosper. He died
March 26, 1649.
In 1692 the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay Colonies were united under
the name of Massachusetts, and thus was founded the colony which in
time became the state of Massachusetts.
Roger Williams
An Advocate of Religious Liberty
You have learned that the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonists
came to America to found colonies governed according to their own
views. This was because they were convinced these views were right, not
because they believed that every man should be free to worship as he
pleased. Liberty of faith and worship, they thought, would destroy all
law and order.
Roger Williams, however, believed in civil freedom and religious
liberty. He was a clever young Welshman who had been educated as a
clergyman and had adopted Baptist views. He and his wife came from
England to America in 1631. For a while he was pastor of a church in
Boston, but his views were so different from those of his congregation
that he did not stay there long. He went to Salem, then to Plymouth,
and then back to Salem. He had much influence and won many people to
his views. The Massachusetts Bay Puritans began to dislike him and to
fear his influence; there were long debates and discussions as to what
should be done about him. They objected to both his political and his
religious beliefs.
Roger Williams thought that the laws of a country should prevent and
punish crime and should not direct religious matters; these, he urged,
should be left to men’s own consciences. He said that every man should
be free to believe what he chose, and that it was wrong to tax people
to support a certain church or to compel them to attend it. He said
that every man ought to be allowed to vote, and that for magistrates
sensible, upright men ought to be chosen without regard to their
church membership. These things were contrary to the belief of the
Massachusetts Bay colony and to its practices.
Williams said, moreover, that the king of England had no right to grant
lands in America to any one; these belonged to the Indians and should
be secured from them. This assertion was regarded as a defiance of the
king’s authority. Finally it was resolved to send Williams away from
the colony, and in January, 1636, the General Court ordered him to come
to Boston to get on a ship that was about to sail to England. Williams
knew well that return to England meant imprisonment or punishment for
his views. Instead of going to Boston, he left his home in Salem one
bleak, snowy day and took refuge in the forest. From his first coming
to the colony he had made friends with the Indians. Now he made his
way to the wigwam of Massasoit, where he spent the winter, trying to
teach the savages the truths of the Christian religion. For weeks he
was “sorely tost in a bitter season, not knowing what bread or bed did
mean.”
He then settled on Seekonk River and planted corn, thinking that he was
beyond the bounds of the Plymouth colony. But he was still within its
limits; in the spring Governor Winthrop informed him that he would be
let alone if he would “steer his course” to Narragansett Bay.
With a few companions who had adopted his views, Williams crossed the
bay in an Indian canoe, made a covenant of peace with the natives, and
established a settlement which he called Providence. This colony became
a place of refuge for people oppressed on account of their religious
views. “I desired it might be a shelter for persons distressed
for conscience,” said Williams. It was to be free to “Baptists,
Protestants, Jews, or Turks,” he said, “to all men of all nations and
countries.”
Among the people who took refuge there was Mrs. Anne Hutchinson. She
was a woman preacher, claiming to have the spirit of prophecy, who had
been driven out from the Massachusetts colony. After some peaceful
years in Rhode Island, she moved westward to a settlement of her own.
Here she, her children, and servants were murdered by Indians.
Roger Williams refused to persecute Quakers who were very unpopular
in all the other colonies. The religious liberty enjoyed in this
colony seems to us to-day, when it is the general custom, entirely
right and reasonable, but it seemed very strange and unreasonable to
people at that time. Among the people of different religious views who
took refuge in Rhode Island, there was a great deal of arguing and
quarreling. It was said “any man who had lost his religion would be
sure to find it again at some village in Rhode Island.”
In 1643, Williams went to England and secured a charter for his colony.
It was called “Rhode Island and Providence Plantations,” and it is to
be remembered as the first colony which by its laws secured entire
religious toleration. The Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth Colonies so
disapproved of the principles on which it was founded that they would
not unite with it in joint action. But the Rhode Island colony was
a great safeguard and protection to them. It was the influence and
friendship of Roger Williams which kept the fierce Narragansetts from
taking up arms against the white men at a time when it would have been
dangerous and perhaps fatal to the struggling young colonies.
The exact date of Roger Williams’ death is uncertain. He is said to
have lived to the age of eighty-four, devoting himself to the interests
of his colony, which he lived to see prosperous and flourishing.
Henry Hudson
As time passed, people became convinced that the land which Columbus
had reached was not the shore of Asia as they had at first thought.
For more than a hundred years, however, they thought that it was only
a narrow body of land and that a passage, or many passages, would be
found connecting the Atlantic with the ocean to the west and opening a
direct route to India. It was not strange that they held this theory.
The early explorers had reached the land at its narrowest part and
beheld from the Isthmus of Panama the great western ocean. They did not
know that the unexplored land broadened into great continents to the
north and south.
As years passed, people became more and more anxious to find a short
passage to India. The Turks controlled and blocked the overland passage
to Asia. The ocean route by way of Africa was long and roundabout;
for the Dutch this had also the disadvantage of making it necessary
for their ships to pass and repass their enemy Spain and their
trade-rival Portugal. The Dutch had, by long and desperate fighting,
freed themselves from Spanish control and they had become the great
sea-traders of the world.
In the beginning of the seventeenth century they had about three
thousand vessels on the seas--more than all the rest of Europe
combined. Most of these were under control of the Dutch East India
Company, the largest and richest trading association in the world. They
traveled the long ocean route south of Africa and brought back tea,
coffee, spices, silks, and dye-woods from Asia. If only they could find
a direct way to Asia how their profits would be increased! Early in the
seventeenth century they heard of a sailor in England who had been to
seek this direct route and they engaged him to make a voyage for them.
This sailor was Henry Hudson.
When and where he was born and what were the events of his early life,
we do not know. He was an Englishman by birth, a brave, energetic man
by nature, a navigator by profession. We first hear of him in 1607,
four days before he started on a voyage for some London merchants, to
seek a northeast passage to India. He had a small vessel with only ten
men, besides himself and his little son John who accompanied him on
all his voyages. Hudson left London in April, 1607. He sailed along
the coast of Greenland and was at last turned back by the ice barrier
between Greenland and Spitzbergen. He made two interesting observations
in these unknown seas--first, the changing color of the sea near
Spitzbergen,--green, blue, dark, transparent,--second, the great number
of whales which afterwards were the source of a profitable industry.
Unable to carry out his purpose, he returned to England after an
absence of four and a half months.
In April of the next year, 1608, the London merchants sent him out
again to seek the northeast passage. He reached Spitzbergen and Nova
Zembla and vainly endeavored to find a passage through the ice; in
August he returned from his unsuccessful voyage. The London merchants
now gave up the scheme--at least for the time.
But the Dutch heard of Hudson and asked him to make a voyage for them.
He agreed to undertake for the Dutch East India Company a third voyage
in search of a northeast passage to India. He set out in April, 1609,
with two vessels, the Half Moon and the Good Hope, and a crew of about
twenty men, some Dutch, some English. As before he sailed to the
northeast, and as before his passage was blocked by ice. The Good Hope
returned to Amsterdam, it is supposed, after a mutiny near Nova Zembla.
But Hudson and the Half Moon did not return. Having for the third time
failed to find the northeast passage he sought, he resolved to look
for one to the northwest. This was probably suggested to him by a
letter and maps which his friend Captain John Smith had sent him. Smith
expressed the opinion that north of the English colony, Virginia, there
was a sea which led into the Western Ocean. Sailing past Greenland,
Newfoundland, and Cape Cod, Hudson reached the coast of Virginia, and
entered the Delaware River.
Turning northward he kept near the shore till he observed an opening
in the land, New York Bay, which he entered. This bay had been entered
before. Verrazano, an Italian sailor in command of a French ship, had
sailed in and out of it. French vessels had afterwards traded there,
but had made no settlements.
Into this bay emptied a river which Hudson thought might connect the
eastern and the western ocean; up this river he sailed about a hundred
and fifty miles, as far as the present site of Albany; then he turned
back, being convinced that the stream did not afford the passage he
sought. He spent a month exploring this river, to which his name was
given. The land was “pleasant with grass and flowers and goodly trees.”
It was, he said, “good ground for corn and other garden herbs, with
great store of goodly oaks.” The natives, he said, were a “sensible
and warlike people.” He carried on trade with the Indians who brought
tobacco, maize, beans, grapes, pumpkins, and skins, to exchange for
knives, beads, and trinkets. There arose disputes and in a fight one
white man and several Indians were killed.
On Hudson’s way back to Holland, he stopped in England to leave some
English sailors; there he was detained, being ordered by the English
government to “stay and serve his own country.” His charts and records
were delivered to the Dutch who laid claim to the country he had found,
calling the Delaware the “South River,” and the Hudson the “Great
North River,” and the country between “New Netherlands.”
In April, 1610, Hudson sailed on his fourth and last voyage, to seek
for English merchants the northwest passage. His little vessel the
Discovery entered the strait and bay which bear his name, and he spent
three months exploring the coast. In November the vessel was frozen
in and the crew spent the winter on the northern sea, suffering from
scarcity of food as well as from the severe climate. When summer came,
Hudson wished to continue his search. He believed that men should, to
use his own words, resolve “To achieve what they have undertaken, or
else to give reason wherefore it will not be.”
His crew wished to return home and mutinied against him. One midsummer
day, they seized him, his son, and seven loyal seamen, and set them
adrift in a boat. The little craft floated off on the summer sea and
nothing more was ever heard of it or of a soul on board. An old Dutch
legend says that Hudson and his men came safe to shore and made their
home in the fair land he had discovered. Years later, when thunder
rumbled in the heights along the Hudson River, the old Dutch folks
would shake their heads and say, “Hendrik Hudson and his crew are
playing ninepins.”
Peter Minuit
A Dutch West India Company was organized on the same plan as the
rich and powerful Dutch East India Company. The western company was
to trade on the coast of Africa and of America from Newfoundland
to Magellan. For convenience in this trade, forts and posts were
established where agents were stationed to carry on trade and collect
furs. A fort and trading-post was established on Manhattan Island.
There was gradually built up a village; this became a town and finally
grew to be a city. At first it was called New Amsterdam; now it is the
wealthy and populous city of New York.
The first directors who were sent to New Amsterdam by the Dutch Company
lacked either ability or character to govern the settlement well. At
last, however, the Company found the right man for the place. This
was Peter Minuit. He was not a Dutchman. He was French by descent and
German by birth; his early manhood had been spent in Germany.
He was appointed director of the council of New Amsterdam and came to
Manhattan in May, 1626. His ship brought seeds, plants, and tools,
for he realized that on agriculture as well as on commerce depended
the success of the colony. He wished to establish it on a foundation
of justice. His first act was to summon the Indian chiefs of the
neighborhood and to buy from them the island of Manhattan. Gay-colored
cloth, beads, knives, and hatchets were displayed, and for goods to the
value of twenty-four dollars the Dutch bought the island of Manhattan
and bought also the good will of the Iroquois. Thus the settlement
was spared, for the most part, the horrors of Indian warfare which
wasted most of the other colonies. Before Penn came to America, the
Dutch leader, Minuit, treated the Indians in fair and humane fashion.
We are not to think that the Indians were defrauded by the small sum
paid for Manhattan. To them it was a mere hands-breadth of their vast
possessions, a place to hunt deer and turkey and build wigwams and till
cornfields.
Minuit tried to establish friendly relations with the English colonies
north of him and sent courteous letters and presents of sugar and Dutch
cheese to Governor Bradford of Plymouth.
Minuit looked after the welfare of the colony and also after the
interests of the Company. A flourishing fur trade was carried on with
the Indians; a large vessel was built and sent to Holland loaded with
furs--beaver, otter, mink, and bear--and with oak and hickory timber.
Furs were the money of this settlement, as tobacco was of Virginia, and
they were used in the payment of salaries and debts. The Indian money,
wampum, was also used in the commerce of the colonies, six pieces of
wampum being equal to one stiver, a small Dutch coin worth about two
cents. Bouweries, or farms, occupied the meadows along East River;
grain was grown, and sheep, cattle, and hogs were raised. The thrifty
Dutch people lived in comfort and plenty.
The colony prospered under Minuit’s management, but his rule came
to an end on account of trouble with the “patroons.” These patroons
were large land-owners along the Hudson. In order to get the colony
settled, the Dutch Company granted land fronting sixteen miles on the
river and extending back to the Atlantic or to the Pacific to persons
who would establish settlements of at least fifty persons within four
years. These patroons had almost absolute power over the settlers on
their land; the only restrictions on their privileges and trade were
that they were forbidden to make cloth, in order to protect Dutch
manufacturers, or to trade in furs, which was the especial privilege of
the Company.
The patroons, however, encroached on the Company’s fur trade, and Peter
Minuit excited their enmity by endeavoring to protect the rights of the
Company which he represented. On the other hand, the Company thought
that he did not check and control the patroons as he should. Between
the two he was recalled. He returned to Holland in the spring of 1632,
having really established the colony of New Amsterdam which he governed
for six years.
Failing to get his wrongs redressed by the Dutch West India Company,
Minuit offered his services to Sweden to establish a colony in the
New World. This plan had already been suggested by William Usselinx,
a Dutch merchant who had projected the Dutch West India Company in
1621. Minuit carried out the plan. He and his friends in Holland bore
half the expense of fitting out an expedition to found a Swedish-Dutch
Company.
Owing to Minuit’s illness, the vessels did not sail till late in 1637.
They reached the shores of the Delaware in March, 1638, and took
possession of the west bank of the river. Minuit had little regard
for the claims of territory made by nations whose wandering ships
had touched the coast and sailed away again. In his opinion the land
belonged to those who purchased it from the Indian inhabitants and
settled there and cultivated the soil. As at Manhattan, he met the
Indian chiefs and formed a treaty never broken by either party. The
Indians of Delaware, like those farther north, belonged to the great
Iroquois Confederacy or Five Nations.
Minuit took possession of the country in the name of the young queen of
Sweden and built a fort called Christina in her honor. He cultivated
friendly relations with the English at Jamestown and with the Dutch
trading-posts on the east bank of the Delaware. A thriving fur trade
was established with the friendly Indians and soon the Dutch West India
Company complained that their trade was greatly injured by Minuit’s
colony. The governor of New Netherlands wrote a letter of protest
against the Swedes occupying this land, but during the three years
that Minuit remained in charge the Dutch confined their protests to
words.
After doing his utmost to establish the colony in peace, strength, and
safety, Minuit left it on a trading expedition. He sailed to the West
Indies to barter for tobacco to carry back to Old Sweden. While he was
guest on a Dutch vessel in the harbor a violent hurricane came up, the
ship was driven to sea and was never heard of more. Thus perished the
first governor of New Sweden, the real founder of New Amsterdam.
Peter Stuyvesant
The Last Dutch Governor of New York
Van Twiller succeeded Minuit as governor of the New Netherlands. He
proved incompetent and was replaced by Kieft, who by cruelty and
injustice provoked the Indians to war. Kieft so mismanaged affairs that
in three years the population of the New Netherlands was reduced from
three thousand to one thousand.
In 1647 Peter Stuyvesant was appointed governor. He was the son of a
Dutch clergyman, but, being fond of fighting and adventure, he had
chosen war as his profession. He took part in several of the battles by
which the Dutch gained mastery over the Spaniards at sea. At one time
he undertook to conquer the Spanish island of St. Martin and lost a leg
in the fight. He was called “Old Silver Leg,” because his lost limb
had been replaced by a wooden stump, ornamented with bands of silver.
He was also called “Headstrong Peter,” a title which he well deserved.
[Illustration: PETER STUYVESANT]
The Dutch West India Company thought that this brave, fearless soldier
would be the very man to control their troublesome colony on the
Hudson. So he was appointed and came to the colony in May, 1647, with a
fleet of four vessels. He told the people, “I shall be in my government
as a father over his children”--a very severe and stern parent he
proved.
A strong man was needed to save the colony from ruin. Enemies
threatened it on all sides.
In the first place, there were the Indians whom Kieft had provoked to
war. Stuyvesant stopped the sale of intoxicating liquors to them; while
stern, he was so just and honest and fearless that he won their respect
and they made and kept peace with him.
In the second place, the encroachments of the New Englanders were a
constant source of annoyance. The Dutch claimed all the land between
the Connecticut and Hudson Rivers by right of Hudson’s discoveries,
and valued it as a field for fur trade. “The land is too good to stand
idle,” said the English, and occupied it with their farms and villages.
The Dutch protested and asserted their claims, but in vain. The English
farmers continued to occupy the land, and more and more came in
conflict with the Dutch.
Stuyvesant decided that a fixed line--even one which yielded some
territory claimed by the Dutch--was better than an unfixed one
constantly advanced by the English. In 1650, therefore, he made an
agreement, surrendering the land already held by the English--which the
Dutch could not have regained--and establishing a fixed line beyond
which the English agreed not to advance. Stuyvesant acted wisely in the
matter, but the West India Company was dissatisfied, thinking that he
ought not to have surrendered the Dutch claims.
In 1652 New Amsterdam was granted a charter as a city. It had then
about three hundred houses and fifteen hundred inhabitants. The city
was to have a council, but, instead of allowing the people to elect the
members, Stuyvesant appointed them and he presided at all meetings of
importance. The sturdy Dutchman was resolved that his will should be
the law of the colony. The people assembled in convention and asked,
among other things, that they might appoint local officers. Stuyvesant
ordered them to disperse, informing them “his authority was from the
West India Company and from God and not from ignorant subjects.”
In the course of time there arose trouble between the Dutch colonists
and the Swedes who had settled along the Delaware on land claimed by
the Dutch. Finally, a Swedish captain took possession of a Dutch fort.
Stuyvesant, with a force of six or seven hundred men and seventeen
ships, set forth to uphold his country’s rights. He went to the
Delaware, or South River, retook the forts, and compelled the Swedes to
swear allegiance to the Netherlands. A Dutch garrison was put in charge
of the fort and thus ended Swedish rule on the Delaware.
While absent on this expedition, Stuyvesant received evil tidings from
Manhattan. An Indian woman had been killed by a Dutchman for stealing
peaches from his garden. To revenge this injury, the Indians during the
absence of the fighting men on the Delaware attacked and burned the
settlement, killed some of the hated whites, and carried off others
as prisoners. Stuyvesant made ready to march against the Indians, but
did not do so as they requested terms of peace and returned their
prisoners. Later, the Indians made another attack and Stuyvesant
promptly punished them by force of arms.