Brief biographies from American history, for the fifth and sixth grades

by Edna Henry Lee Turpin

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.

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.

Under the just, firm rule of the despotic, high-tempered governor, the colony of New Netherlands flourished. Farms were cleared and tended, villages were formed, trade flourished, and immigration increased. But the end of Dutch rule on the Hudson was at hand. In 1664 Charles II., king of England, granted to his brother James, Duke of York, the entire territory claimed and occupied by the Dutch, which he asserted belonged to England. England and Holland were then at peace, but the Duke of York did not hesitate to bring on war. He fitted out four war-ships with four hundred and fifty soldiers and sent them to America under command of Colonel Nicolls. The Dutch were informed that the vessels were going to the colonies in New England. Instead, they sailed to New Amsterdam. Stuyvesant had neither powder nor provisions for a siege, and his soldiers wished to accept English terms. Nicolls informed the council that none of the people’s rights would be interfered with—only the flag and the governor would be changed. Brave sturdy old Stuyvesant tore up the letter offering these terms and wished to fight for the rights of the Company he represented. But the council, soldiers, and citizens would not support him, and he had to yield.

“I had rather be carried to my grave,” he said, as he ordered the surrender.

He went to Holland to prove that he had done his best to uphold the Company’s rights. Having done this, he returned to his home in the New World. He led a quiet, comfortable life in his fine old country home—in what is now the business heart of New York City,—and in the course of time, he and Governor Nicolls became great friends.

The Dutch resented the English seizure of their colony and declared war against England. When peace was made, it was agreed that each nation should keep what it had won. Holland had won the most victories and so gained most territory by this agreement; but the city of New Amsterdam and the colony of New Netherlands—both of which were called New York in honor of their new ruler—remained in English hands. The Dutch inhabitants were secured in their rights and privileges, according to Colonel Nicolls’ promise, and they went on their sober, hard-working way. From them the English, in time, borrowed many Dutch customs and festivals,—such as that of having Easter eggs and of celebrating Christmas with the visit of St. Nicholas or Santa Claus.

Samuel de Champlain
The Father of New France

For years the Portuguese and the Spanish shared between them the trading-posts and commerce of the world. Portugal controlled the ocean route to Asia, and Spain by virtue of her early discoveries and explorations laid claim to the whole of the New World. But as time passed this state of affairs was changed. In the Old World, the Dutch became the successful rivals of the Portuguese; in the New, Spain had to contend with France, England, Holland, and Sweden, all of which were seeking a share of the prize.

For a long time France was the chief rival with which Spain had to reckon. Verrazano, a Florentine sailor, was sent from France in command of four vessels to seek the longed-for westward route to Cathay. Left at last with one ship, he reached in 1524 the coast of North Carolina, “a new land never before seen of any man, ancient or modern,”—for in the opinion of the Europeans the natives counted not at all. Verrazano sailed along the coast, into the Bay of New York and out again, and along the coast of New England to Newfoundland. Provisions giving out, he returned to France and gave the first description of the coast of the United States.

In the wake of Verrazano, followed other Frenchmen. One of these was Jacques Cartier. In 1534 he came to the coast of Newfoundland and sailed up the St. Lawrence River, hoping to find through it an outlet to Cathay. On a second voyage, he entered and named the Bay of St. Lawrence and ascended the great river as far as Montreal. A third voyage he made in 1541, for the purpose of establishing a colony. But a severe winter and much sickness and suffering discouraged the colonists, and the next year they left New France for Old.

Years passed. Civil and religious wars laid France waste, and many earnest men began to look to the New World for an asylum from the Old. A band of French Protestants led by John Ribaut left their native shores to make their home in America. Instead of sailing northward, they landed in 1562 on the shores of Florida, which was the territory of Catholic Spain. The colony was attacked by the Spaniards under Menendez, and men, women, and children were killed. This terrible slaughter was avenged by the French under De Gourges, but the tide of French colonization was turned from the southern coast.

Five years after this massacre, there was born Samuel de Champlain, who won the title of the “Father of New France.” His father was a French ship captain; he himself was trained in the art of navigation and became a captain in the royal navy. “Navigation is the art which has powerfully attracted me ever since my boyhood and has led me to expose myself almost all my life to the impetuous bufferings of the sea,” he said.

Chaplain served awhile in the army; when peace came his adventurous spirit led him to the West Indies. This was Spanish territory and the Frenchman went thither at the risk of his life. He spent two years in America. To him it seemed, as it had seemed to some Spanish and Portuguese officials, that it would be a good plan to cut a canal through the Isthmus of Panama. Champlain wrote, “If the four leagues of land which there are from Panama to the (Chagres) river were cut through, one might pass from the south sea to the ocean on the other side and thus shorten the route by more than fifteen hundred leagues; and from Panama to the Strait of Magellan would be an island and from Panama to the New-found lands would be another island, so that the whole of America would be in two islands.”

Always on his voyages Champlain kept a diary and made maps of the lands he visited. When he returned to France, he gave the king a minute account of the colonies and treasure of Spain. It was shame to France, he thought, that on the New World, discovered more than a century before, only their enemies had a foothold.

A French nobleman who was planning to found a colony in America decided that this enterprising young sailor-soldier would be the man to lead the undertaking. Champlain entered into the plan with enthusiasm. In 1603 he set out to reconnoiter the new land, following the route of Cartier. He sailed up the St. Lawrence River, to the present site of Montreal. During the next four years he made five voyages to the New World, exploring the coast from New England northward. He led a band of colonists who after a winter of hardship and sickness returned in 1607 to France. But Champlain was not discouraged. He was resolved to extend the power of France and of the Catholic religion in the new land, to penetrate the unknown wilds, and to seek a route to the East. He was appointed Lieutenant-governor of the French colony, an office which he held until his death, and came to America in 1608 to establish a settlement on the St. Lawrence River. In July the colonists landed and erected a store-house, the beginning of the city of Quebec.

Five discontented men in the party formed a plot to kill Champlain and turn the fortress over to the Spaniards. One of the men, however, betrayed the plot; the conspirators were arrested, the ringleader was hanged, and the others were sent prisoners to France. The winter of 1609 found the French colony one of three in the New World. At Jamestown, in Virginia, were the English; at St. Augustine, in Florida, were the Spaniards; and far to the north at Quebec in Canada, were the French. No one could then guess which nation would finally become supreme, though the chances seemed in favor of the Spaniards.

The first winter at Quebec was one of hardship and sickness, and when spring opened only eight of the twenty-eight Frenchmen were alive. In 1609 Champlain, ever ready for adventure, accompanied some Algonquins and other Indians on an expedition against their enemies the Iroquois, the Five Nations. He wished to see “a large lake, filled with beautiful islands, and with a fine country surrounding it” of which he had been told. He reached the beautiful lake, which now bears his name; on its banks his firearms turned the battle against the Iroquois and begun the long warfare in which the French were opposed to this great confederation of tribes. The very day that Champlain brought on his nation the enmity of this deadly foe, a little Dutch vessel, the Half Moon, was anchored on the New England coast. A few weeks later it entered the Hudson River,—bearing a crew of English and Dutch—the two peoples who were to be allies of the foe which the Frenchmen made that day and to turn the tide of battle against France.

From 1609 till his death, the time of Champlain was divided between New and Old France. Exploring, fighting, establishing trading-posts, he was busy building up the young colony and developing its resources. In 1620 his young wife, whom he had married ten years before when she was a mere child, came for the first time to Quebec. After four years of hardship, she returned to France and did not again revisit the New World.

The French colony grew and prospered. It was on friendly terms with its Indian neighbors with whom it carried on a flourishing fur trade. Furs were the currency and wealth of the French colony, as of the Dutch colony on Manhattan. The French exported every year to France from fifteen to twenty thousand skins; the Dutch at Manhattan thought business good when they shipped four thousand.

In 1628 the French colony was reduced to sore straits from scarcity of food. This was increased by the English capture of the ships bringing supplies. Winter passed and with spring the suffering increased. “We ate our peas by count,” says Champlain. His heart was wrung by the sufferings of the people, especially of the women and children. “Nevertheless,” he says, “I was patient, having always good courage,—and can say with truth that I aided every one to the utmost that was in my power.” In this extremity in 1629 Quebec was attacked by English war-ships and was forced to surrender.

Champlain was detained awhile as prisoner in England. Afterwards New France was by treaty restored to France and Champlain returned to Quebec where he died Christmas Day, 1635. “Of the pioneers of the North American forests his name stands foremost on the lists,” says Parkman.

Robert de la Salle
The Explorer of the Mississippi River

The Spanish adventurer, De Soto, in his march westward in 1541, was the first white man who reached the Mississippi River. Year after year passed and the Spaniards did not occupy the land along its shores. Instead, they settled the islands and shores to the south and sought silver and gold in Mexico and Peru. While the Spaniards were occupying southern regions, the French were taking possession of northern lands, penetrating inland along the St. Lawrence River.

The French traders and missionaries who went westward heard stories of a mighty river not far distant, which flowed to the sea. In the spring of 1673 two Frenchmen set out in birch canoes to find and explore this river, hoping thus to reach the Pacific Ocean. These Frenchmen were Louis Joliet, an explorer in search of the passage to the Pacific, and Father Marquette, a priest familiar with Indian dialects, who wished to reach the savages of the wilderness. Joliet and Marquette went up the St. Lawrence and through the Great Lakes. They were guided by two Indian boys to the Wisconsin River down which they floated in their canoes. After several days the explorers landed at a settlement of the friendly Indian tribe, the Illinois. The peace pipe was smoked and a banquet was served of Indian meal made into mush, boiled fish, baked dog, and buffalo meat. Again embarking, the adventurers sailed on till they reached the place where the Missouri empties into the Mississippi.

The Indian guides informed them that they could ascend the river and going westward reach a prairie across which their canoes could be carried; then they could embark on a river which flowed southwest into a lake; from this issued a river which flowed into the western sea. The Frenchmen did not follow the course thus pointed out and it was many years before the truth of the statement was verified. But if you look on a map you see the Missouri can be ascended to the Platte River, the source of which is near the Colorado River which flows into the Gulf of California.

The Frenchmen sailed down the Mississippi as far as the mouth of the Arkansas River. They were convinced that the stream entered the Gulf of Mexico and they did not care to encounter the hostile Spaniards or the warlike Indian tribes which they were told dwelt on the banks of the lower Mississippi. So they turned back, going up the Illinois River and passing the marshy prairie which is now the site of the great city of Chicago. After a journey of more than twenty-five hundred miles, they reached in September the mission at Green Bay.

Robert de la Salle, a gentleman of Normandy, was in Canada when Marquette and Joliet returned from their voyage. He was much interested in their discoveries and he determined to go from the St. Lawrence to the mouth of the Mississippi. He wished to take possession of the land in the name of the king of France to whom it was considered that the whole valley of the great river belonged by virtue of the discoveries of Marquette and Joliet; he wished also to establish military and trading posts along the lakes and the river; he hoped that he would find a passage to the Pacific Ocean. The king gave his consent and aid to the plan.

La Salle established a fort on Lake Ontario. Not far from Niagara Falls, he built a vessel which he called the Griffin. This sailed through Lakes Erie and Huron and Michigan and then was sent back richly laden with furs. Unfortunately, it was wrecked on the return voyage with all on board. In the winter of 1680, La Salle returned to the fort on Lake Ontario to get supplies. In August, 1680, La Salle’s party, consisting of twenty-three Frenchmen and thirty-one Indians, set out in birch canoes to explore the Mississippi. Delayed by storms and tempests and Indian wars, the voyagers did not reach the mouth of the Chicago River until January, 1682. The canoes were dragged on sledges down the frozen Chicago River. When they reached the Mississippi, they were detained by the masses of ice on its waters.

As soon as possible the Frenchmen embarked and sailed down the river, stopping to get corn and information from Indian tribes on their way and to give religious instruction. They slept in the wigwams of the savages and won their hearts by just and kind treatment.

They sailed down the mighty river till they came in sight of the open sea. On the ninth of April, 1682, La Salle in the name of King Louis of France took possession of the land which he called Louisiana. The French flag was raised over the valley of the Mississippi—a territory three times as large as France. The return voyage was made in safety, though it was delayed by hostile Indians, want of food and the illness of La Salle. He did not reach Quebec till the autumn of 1683.

He sailed for France that winter to organize a colony for settling the southern country discovered by him. The king entered eagerly into the plan and La Salle was sent with four vessels bearing men and supplies to establish a colony. Ignorant of the coast, the captain went too far west and reached Matagorda Bay in Texas early in the spring of 1685. La Salle wished to seek the mouth of the river, but the captain, impatient to return, landed the stores and sailed away. La Salle made the best of matters and finding the climate pleasant and the Indians friendly, he established a colony there.

Month after month passed, and no supplies were received from France. Therefore he set out, January, 1687, with twenty men to find the Mississippi River and make his way to Canada. There he hoped to get supplies and send letters to France requesting aid for the colony. On the journey some men rebelled against his authority, killed his nephew and a faithful Indian, and later shot La Salle himself. “Thus died our wise commander, constant in adversity, intrepid, generous, engaging, dexterous, skillful, capable of everything.... He died in the prime of life, in the midst of his enterprises, without having seen their success.” He had laid the foundation of French power in the Mississippi valley, and had established it upon a basis of friendship with the natives, which made possible its growth in peace and security.