NOTES
[1] Bancroft says, “The voyage of DeVries was the cradling of a state, and that Delaware exists as a separate commonwealth is due to the colony he brought and planted on her shore. Though the colony was swept out of existence soon after, this charter, three years before the Maryland patent was granted Lord Baltimore, preserved Delaware.”
[2] Giles Hosset in this position as Director of the Colony may well be called the first Governor of Delaware.
How Once Upon A
Time The Swedes
Built A Fort.
SPRING had come again. The sun shone as bright and clear as when, seven years before, DeVries and his Dutch settlers had sailed up the Delaware and landed on its shores.
That was in 1631. Now it was the year 1638, and two other vessels[1] were sailing up the broad river. But these ships were not Dutch; they carried the colors of Sweden, and the men who crowded to the sides of the vessels to gaze at the unknown shores were Swedes.
Six months before, these men, fifty in all, had started out from Gottenburg to journey across the sea to this new land. For six months they had been tossed and beaten by many storms upon the ocean, but now at last they had reached the promised land.
Slowly they sailed up the river and past the mouth of the Hoornekill.[2] The colonists stared in silence at the spot where the little settlement of Zwannendael had once stood. Nothing marked the place now but a few blackened ruins; and these, wind and storm were slowly eating away.
The Swedes did not stop there, but sailed on up the river. Their commander, Peter Minuit, had once been with the West India Company at New Netherlands, and knew something of the country and had a clear idea of where he wished to start his colony. Some miles above the Hoornekill, Minquas Creek (now our Christiana) emptied into the Delaware. Two and a half miles from its mouth, a point of rocks[3] jutted out into the stream and made a sort of natural wharf. It was upon this point that the Swedes made their landing.
Stores and implements were carried to the shore, and soon the silence of the new land was broken by the sound of the ax and the voices of the settlers talking and calling to one another.
Lonely and deserted as the country had seemed to the new settlers, their coming was quickly known to both the Indians and the Dutch.
The first to visit them was an Indian Chief named Mattahoon. He and some of his braves stalked in among the colonists one day, with silent Indian tread, and stood looking about them with curious, glittering black eyes. Minuit gave them some presents, and they seemed much pleased. Then Mattahoon told Minuit that the land belonged to him and his braves.
Minuit wished to buy it from him, and the Sachem agreed to sell it for a copper kettle and some other small articles. These were given to him, and he and his braves went away, well content with their bargain.
The next visitor to come to them was a messenger from New Amsterdam. He told them that Director General Kieft, the Dutch Governor, had sent him to ask why they had settled on land that belonged to the Dutch. The Dutch had bought it from the Indians long ago, at the time DeVries had settled on the river.
Minuit answered the messenger very civilly. He gave the Dutchman to understand that he and his Swedes were on their way to the West Indies, and had only landed on this shore for rest and refreshment.
The messenger believed what Minuit said, and was quite satisfied, and the next day he returned to New Amsterdam and told Kieft there was nothing to fear from these strangers; they were only passers-by and had no wish to settle upon the river.
However, not long after this, a Dutch ship sailing up the river saw that the strangers were still there. Moreover, they were building houses and something that looked like a fort, and gardens were laid out.
Kieft, the Dutch Governor was very angry when he heard this. Again he sent a messenger in haste, to ask why the Swedes were building, and to demand that they should re-enter their ships and sail away.
Minuit paid but little attention to this second messenger. He was very busy. The fort was almost finished. Reorus Torkillus, a clergyman who had come from Sweden with him, had already held services in it, and had prayed for the welfare of their little settlement of Christinaham, for that was what they had named it. The fort itself was called Fort Christina, in honor of the Swedish Queen, and the name of the creek was changed from Minquas to Christina.
It was of no use for the Dutch to send messengers now. The Swedes were well established. Moreover, they had made friends with the Indians. Minuit had given them a number of presents—kettles, cloth, trinkets, and even fire-arms and ammunition.[4]
With these presents the savages were delighted; and they signed a paper with their marks, giving to the Swedes all the land from Cape Henlopen to Santican, or what is now called the Falls of Trenton. When the Dutch heard this, they were indignant for they claimed that all that land had already been sold to them.
Reorus Torkillus, the Swedish minister for the little settlement, did what he could to keep peace with both the Dutch and the Indians. He was an earnest, pious man, and his great hope was that he might convert the savages to Christianity. He regularly held Divine service in the fort. He also had a plot of ground fenced off to serve as a burying ground when such might be needed.[5]
The Indians understood but little of the teachings of Torkillus; but there was one thing that they did understand, and that was that the Swedes gave them many presents and paid them better for their furs and skins than the Dutch did. Minuit, indeed, was always careful to find out what the Dutch were paying them and then to offer a little more. In this way he secured all the best and choicest of the furs—a cause of fresh anger to the Dutch.
But with all this friendly feeling between the Swedes and the Indians, the settlers were obliged to be on their watch with the savages. The Leni Lenapes, to which the Delaware tribes belonged, were for the most part a peaceful people; but there often appeared among them Indians from another tribe, probably Iroquois, whom the settlers called “Flatheads.”[6] These strange Indians were both cruel and treacherous, and they made it dangerous for a settler to venture out of sight or hearing of the settlement. Often they would hide in the woods and fall upon some lonely wanderer, and kill or stun and then scalp him.
The scalping itself was not always fatal. There is a story of a drunken soldier who fell asleep across his gun. When he awoke, he had a strange feeling in his head. At first he thought it was the effect of what he had drunk, but presently, to his terror, he found he had been scalped. And there is a story too, of a woman who had gone into the forest to gather fire-wood. She was struck down, stunned, and scalped by a Flathead, but she lived many years afterward. Her hair, however, never grew out again, except as a fine down.
There was another thing about the Indians that, as time went on, made the settlers more and more anxious. In order to keep them in good temper, it was necessary to continue to give them presents. At first it was easy for the colonists to do this, for they had brought with them from Sweden a large store of things for that very purpose. But as time went on, their stores dwindled away. They had expected ships from home to bring them a fresh supply, but no ships came.
Week after week and month after month passed by; the home land seemed to have forgotten them. Their cloth was all gone, their clothes were threadbare, and many of their cattle had died. The Indians came to Christinaham, expecting presents, and went away with angry looks and empty hands.
In the year 1640 the Chief Mattahoon called together a great meeting of the sachems and warriors of Delaware. The meeting was held deep in the wood where no white man could come. All the chiefs and braves were gathered there, old and young. They ate and drank. Then Mattahoon spoke to them. He asked them whether it would not be better to kill all the Swedes. He said:
“The Swedes live here upon our land, they have many forts and houses, but they have no goods to sell us. We find nothing in their stores that we want. They have no cloth, red, blue, or brown. They have no kettles, no brass, no lead, no guns, no powder. But the English and the Dutch have many things. Shall we kill all the Swedes or suffer them to remain?”[7]
An Indian warrior answered:
“Why should we kill all the Swedes? They are in friendship with us. We have no complaint to make of them. Presently they will bring here a large ship full of all sorts of good things.”
With this speech all the others agreed. Then Mattahoon said:
“Then we native Indians will love the Swedes, and the Swedes shall be our good friends. We and the Swedes and Dutch shall always trade with each other.”
Soon after this the meeting was dissolved, and all the Indians returned to their own villages.
The Swedish settlers knew nothing of this meeting, but they had felt that they were in danger. It was in March of that year, 1640, that they decided, with sad hearts, to give up their little settlement and remove to New Amsterdam. Preparations were made for abandoning Christinaham. Tools and provisions were packed, and the boats made ready.
The Dutch heard with joy that the little settlement was to be given up. At last they would be rid of their troublesome neighbors.
However, the very day before the Swedes were to leave, a vessel arrived from Sweden, bringing them cattle, seeds, cloths and all the things of which they were so in need. The ship also brought a letter from the wise Swedish Councillor Oxenstiern and his brother. In this letter, the colonists were encouraged in their undertaking and told to keep brave hearts. They were also promised that two more vessels should be sent out to them in the spring.
When the colonists heard this news, they shouted for joy. The household goods which they had packed with such heavy hearts were now unpacked, the houses were opened, and the work of the village was taken up again.
The Indians were greatly pleased. Now they saw how wise they had been to have patience and wait, instead of killing all the Swedes as they had been tempted to do. The Swedes were again their best friends, and the givers of many gifts.
The Dutch were obliged to swallow their disappointment as best they could, for now the Swedes were more firmly settled than ever. Fields were tilled, and orchards planted. Later on they built forts at the mouths of various Creeks, so as to prevent the Dutch from trading with the Indians.
When, in 1643, Lieutenant Printz came out from Sweden to take the position of Governor; he built a handsome house on Tinnicum Island, just above Chester, and also a fort and a church.[8] The principal Swedes built their houses around this fort, and the village that arose back of it was called “Printzdorf.” Thus the capital of New Sweden was removed from Christinaham to Tinnicum Island.
The Governor held absolute power over the little colony, and all matters were decided by him according to his own will.
There were, at this time, two kinds of people upon the Delaware; the freemen, who owned their own land and farmed and traded, and prisoners, who had been sent over from Sweden on the earliest vessels, and who were employed in digging ditches and hewing and building, and were treated as slaves. In fact, there was no lack of laborers in the colony.
Rich cargoes of furs and tobacco were now sent back to Sweden. The Dutch were in despair. They saw all the Indian trade being taken out of their hands; but Sweden was too powerful both at home and abroad for them to dare to interfere with her, and from this time until Stuyvesant came out to be Governor of the New Netherlands the Swedes ruled supreme along the Delaware.
The spot where the Swedes first landed is still preserved, and is marked by a portion of the original rock, placed close to the landing-place on the bank of the Christiana. This rock bears an inscription, and is enclosed by a low iron railing. It may be called the Plymouth Rock of Delaware, for it is taken from the natural wharf of rocks on which the Swedes first stepped, and marks the first permanent settlement made in Delaware.
