Графични страници
PDF файл
ePub

CHAPTER
V.

been abandoned. He opened an intercourse with the In- CHA dians, and made peace with them, saying nothing about the past, but we hear not of any further colony. Sub- 1632. sequently he established himself on Staten Island. The settlement at Rensselaerswyk was more permanent, but its increase was very slow. The exports from Fort Amsterdam this year amounted to about $57,000,

Walter Van Twiller, appointed director in Minuet's 1633. place, brought out from Holland an hundred and four soldiers, a schoolmaster, and Bogardus, a clergyman. Little, however, was done toward introducing permanent settlers. Indian trade was still the great object, and almost the sole thing attended to. In this trade a dangerous rivalry was now threatened.

Shortly after Van Twiller's arrival, a London ship ap- April. peared at Manhattan with Jacob Elkins for supercargo, the same person who had established the first trading post up the Hudson. He persisted in ascending the river, and opening a trade with the Indians; but the Dutch at length mustered courage and drove him away. This proceeding occasioned a fresh remonstrance from the English court.

The Dutch had long carried on a profitable trade with the numerous Indians on Fresh or Connecticut River. A small tract of land at the mouth of that river had lately been purchased of the Indians, and the arms of the States-General affixed to a tree. For the better security of this valuable traffic, and with a view to the establishment of a permanent trading house in that region, another tract on the west bank of the river, about sixty miles from its mouth, near the site of the present city of Hartford, was purchased of the Pequods, and a trad- June 8. ing post, called the House of Good Hope, was built upon

it, and fortified with two pieces of cannon. Just about

V.

CHAPTER this time there arrived at New Amsterdam a small bark from the new English colony lately planted on Massa1633. chusetts Bay, the commencement of trade between Boston and New York. She brought letters from Winthrop, the governor of the new colony, informing Van Twiller that the King of England had granted all the country on the Lower Connecticut to certain lords and gentlemen, his subjects, and expressing surprise that he should have Oct. 4. taken possession there. Van Twiller, in reply, proposed to refer the matter to their respective governments, hoping there might be no occasion for the king's majesty of England and the lords the States-General to fall into contention "about a little part or portion of these heathenish countries." Meanwhile, however, the people of Plymouth had taken decisive steps in the matter. They had learned the Connecticut trade from the Dutch, and being determined to maintain their share of it, if not, indeed, to engross the whole, had applied to Massachusetts to unite with them in establishing a post on the river, to which they had been invited by a petty chief of that region, lately driven out by the Pequods. Massachusetts having declined to co-operate on account of the numerous Indians in that neighborhood and the difficulty of entering the river, the Plymouth people undertook the enterprise on their own account. With the frame of a trading house ready prepared, and accompanied by several sachems of that neighborhood, William Holmes, "lieutenant and trader," proceeded coastwise, in a small vessel from Plymouth, and entered the Connecticut. Sept. 16. he approached the Dutch post he was hailed and ordered off, but persisted in his purpose, and, having ascended a mile and a half higher, landed his provisions and goods, set up his house, and sent home the bark. The Dutch Oct. 25. served a written protest on these intruders, and Van

As

V.

Twiller presently sent seventy soldiers to dislodge them. CHAPTER But they stood on their defense, and the Dutch commander did not judge it expedient to use force.

Simultaneously with this struggle for the possession of the Connecticut, Fort Nassau, on the Delaware, was reoccupied, and the commissary at that fort was directed to purchase of the Indians a tract about the mouth of the Schuylkill, upon which a fort, called Beversreede, was presently erected, the seat of a profitable fur trade.

1633.

At New Amsterdam itself Van Twiller undertook va- 1634. rious improvements. The fort was rebuilt, with barracks for the soldiers; a church and parsonage, a house for the director, mills, and other necessary buildings, were erected. On farm or "bowery" number one, the property of the West India Company, including that part of the present city of New York from Wall Street northward, the director caused to be built a dwelling, barn, brewery, and boat-house, and buildings, also, on other boweries belonging to the company.

But continued disputes with the patroons proved a serious obstacle to the advance of the province. The patroons claimed not only freedom of traffic along the unoccupied shores and rivers, but even exclusive trade within their patroonships; and they paid very little attention to agriculture, to which the directors of the West India Company wished to confine them. To get rid of these controversies, it was proposed to buy up the patroonships, and Zwanandal was presently sold back to the Nov. 27. West India Company for 15,600 gilders, or $6240.

While these quarrels retarded the progress of the set- 1635.. tlements, emigrants from Massachusetts, as will be more fully related in a subsequent chapter, established themselves on the Connecticut, in the neighborhood of the Dutch fort. The mouth of the river was also occupied, and a fort built there, on behalf of the English lords

CHAPTER proprietors-proceedings by which the Dutch were threatV. ened with total exclusion from the Fresh River. Nor 1635, were they secure in the rest of their territory. A party

from Plymouth attempted to surprise Fort Nassau, on the Delaware; but they were taken prisoners and sent to Fort Amsterdam, where they became permanent settlers the commencement of an English population which from time to time continued to increase.

1634. A patent, under the great seal of Ireland, issued by June 21. the famous Strafford, then lord lieutenant, had granted to Edward Plowden a province by the name of New Albion, including the peninsula now the State of New Jersey, with all the adjacent islands. This charter recites that a colony of five hundred persons had already been planted. If so, the enterprise must soon have been abandoned, as no other trace of its existence appears. Some slight efforts were subsequently made to occupy this grant, but nothing finally came of it. It serves, however, as one among many proofs that the Dutch title to New Netherland was not recognized by the English..

1636.

Van Twiller, though accused of extravagance and negligence in managing the affairs of the company, did not neglect his own interests. He procured, with several other officials, without asking leave of the directors in Holland, a grant from the Indians of a fertile tract on Long Island, on which the grantees established farms and plantations of their own. Such was the beginning of the village of Flatlands, originally called New Amersfoordt. Van Twiller also procured for himself a grant from the Indians of Governor's Island, south of New Amsterdam, and of two other islands in the Hellgate. But, in consequence of complaints and representations of the fiscal, whom the director had condemned to lose his 1637. pay, and had sent to Holland to give an account of his conduct, Van Twiller himself was presently recalled.

V.

William Kieft, appointed to succeed him, found the CHAPTER company's property in a neglected and ruinous condition, their buildings in decay, their five boweries or farms on 1638. Manhattan Island untenanted and stripped of their stock, March. and the purchase of furs almost engrossed by private traders, whose conduct, in many respects, was loose and licentious. Kieft, who is described by Winthrop as "a sober and discreet man," did what he could, by the issue of orders and proclamations, to remedy these evils. Some additional settlers arrived, and further purchases were made of lands on Long Island. An ordinance was also issued to regulate the cultivation of tobacco, which promised to become a valuable resource. Contrasted, how

ever, with the rapid progress of the rival settlements in New England, the condition of New Netherland was by no means encouraging.

The colony of Rensselaerswyk equaled, perhaps, in population, the rest of the province. The government was vested in two commissaries, one of whom acted as president, and two counselors, assisted by a secretary, Shout-Fiscal, and marshal. The commissaries and counselors composed a court for the trial of all cases civil and criminal, from which, however, an appeal lay to the director and council at Fort Amsterdam. The code of Rensselaerswyk, as of the rest of the province, was the Roman-Dutch law as administered in Holland. Fort Orange was not included in the patroonship, but remained under the exclusive control of the West India Company and their director at Fort Amsterdam. population consisted of farmers who had emigrated at their own expense; other farmers, sent out by the patroon, to establish and cultivate boweries on shares or rent; and farm servants indented for a term of years. Squabbles between the patroon and his tenants commenced with the very foundation of the colony.

The

« ПредишнаНапред »