NOTES
[1] The ships were the Key of Kalmar and the Bird Grip or Griffin.
[2] A landing was made a few miles above the Hoornekill at a point between the Murderkill and Mispillion Creeks, in Kent County, but the Swedes only stopped there for a short time for rest and refreshment. The place was so beautiful that they named it Paradise Point.
[3] This point of rocks marked the foot of what is now Sixth Street, in Wilmington.
[4] Giving or trading fire-arms or ammunition to the Indians was afterward forbidden on pain of death. The arming of the Indians was considered too dangerous.
[5] Upon the site of this burying ground the Old Swedes Church now stands; and somewhere beneath it lie the bones of Reorus Torkillus.
[6] So called from a curious flattening of the crown of the head.
[7] This account is given by Campanius.
[8] The present church of Old Swedes at Wilmington, was not built until 1698, so this church on Tinnicum Island was the first one built by the Swedes. In Minuit’s time, Torkillus had held Divine service in the fort.
How Once Upon A Time
Governor Stuyvesant
Had His Way.
PETER STUYVESANT was a tall, red-faced Dutchman who came out to the New Netherlands in 1647, to take the place of Kieft as Governor of that Province.
Governor Stuyvesant had fought in many battles, and in one of them had lost a leg. When he came out to New Netherlands he had a wooden leg; and as it was fastened together by rings of silver, it was often called “the Governor’s silver leg.” Stuyvesant had also a very violent temper; and, when he was angry, he stamped about with this leg as though it were a club and he were beating the floor with it.
At this time, in 1647, the Swedes claimed all of Delaware as theirs, and called it New Sweden. They had driven many of the Dutch away, had torn down their buildings, and had kept them from trading with the Indians. Every little while news of fresh wrongs to the Dutch was brought from Delaware to Governor Stuyvesant; and every time a letter or messenger arrived, the Governor had a fresh fit of rage. He believed that the Dutch were the real owners of the river; and, if he could, he would have gathered his soldiers together and sailed down to New Sweden, and have done his best to drive every Swede out of the country.
This he could not do, however; for the Directors of the West India Company, who had given him his position as Governor, had told him to keep peace not only with the Indians, but with the Swedes as well.
This was a hard thing for a hot-tempered man like Stuyvesant to do. Now the story would be that the Swedes had destroyed more of the Dutch buildings along the Delaware; again, that the Swedes had incited the Indians to try to surprise and massacre the Dutch; and Hudde, the Dutch commissioner in New Sweden, wrote that a Swedish lieutenant and twenty-four soldiers had come to his house one day and cut down all his trees, even the fruit trees.
Stuyvesant stamped about louder than ever when he heard this. The insult to the Dutch commissioner seemed the worst thing that had yet happened; and he made up his mind to sail down to New Sweden and remonstrate with the Swedish Governor Printz himself.
Governor Printz lived in a very handsome house called Printz Hall, on Tinnicum Island. All about it were fine gardens and an orchard. There was also a pleasure house, and indeed everything that could help to make it comfortable and convenient. Governor Printz received Governor Stuyvesant very politely in the great hall of the house, and presently the two governors sat down and began to talk. Stuyvesant complained bitterly of the treatment the Dutch had received in Delaware. He repeated that by rights the Dutch really owned the land; they had bought it years before from the Indians, and their right to it had been sealed by the blood they had shed upon its soil.
Printz himself was a very violent man, and often gross and abusive; but this time he kept his temper and answered the Dutch Governor civilly. Stuyvesant, though, gained nothing by his visit, and all his talk and reasoning. Printz was determined to keep all the land along the Delaware, and to govern it as he pleased. As to cutting down Hudde’s trees, he said he had had nothing to do with that matter, and was sorry it had happened.
So Stuyvesant went back to his own fine house at New Amsterdam, and the Dutch in New Sweden were no better off.
However, he was not one to let the matter rest at that. He kept it in his mind, and at last, as the result of his thinking, he sent messengers to all the Indian sachems along the Delaware, inviting them to come to a great meeting at the governor’s house in New Amsterdam.
The meeting was set for early in July; and, on the day appointed, the Indians came. They were grave and fierce looking, in spite of their gay paint and feathers. Stuyvesant received them in the hall of his house; and after they had all arrived, they sat down there in council.
The first thing Stuyvesant wished to learn from them was exactly how much land they had sold to the Swedes.
The Indians told him they had not sold any land to the Swedes, except that upon which Fort Christina stood, and ground enough around it for a garden to plant tobacco in.
“Then will you sell the land to us?” asked Stuyvesant.
The Indians were quite willing to do this. They were always willing to sell anything, even if they had already sold it; but what they wished to know was what the Dutch would give. The price finally agreed upon was, if they had only known it, an absurd price indeed; but the Indians were quite content with it. It was;—12 coats of duffels (a kind of cloth), 12 kettles, 12 axes, 12 adzes, 24 knives, 12 bars of lead and 4 guns with some powder; besides this, the Dutch to repair the gun of the Chief Penomennetta when it was out of order, and to give the Indians a few handfuls of maize when they needed it. This was the price for which the Indians sold to the Dutch all the land along the Delaware River, from Fort Christiana to Bombay Hook.
The Indians then went away, very much pleased. Governor Stuyvesant, too, was in high good humor. Now he would show Printz who was the real owner of the land.
In the year 1651, Stuyvesant set about having a fort built at New Amstel, (now New Castle) about five miles south of Fort Christina. The name of it was to be Fort Casimir.[1] This fort was of great value to the Dutch, and Stuyvesant felt that he had taken the first step toward recovering Dutch possession of the Delaware.
Printz, as soon as he knew what Stuyvesant was about, protested against the building of the fort; but he was not strong enough to prevent it. He had grown very unpopular, because of his violent and coarse temper. He was hated not only by the Dutch and the English, but by his own people as well. Things began to grow more and more unpleasant for him, so that at last he begged to be allowed to go back to Sweden; and in 1653 he left the shores of New Sweden and his house on Tinnicum Island, and sailed away not to return.
But Stuyvesant was well pleased. He felt that it was he, with his building of Fort Casimir, who had driven the Swede away. He smiled comfortably to himself as he sat smoking his pipe, and made fresh plans.
But in June, 1654, news came to Governor Stuyvesant that made him leap from his chair and clench his hands and stamp up and down as though he would break his wooden-silver leg to pieces. The Swedes had taken Fort Casimir! And they had taken it without a single blow having been struck by the Dutch. The taking of the fort was in this way:—
Rysing, the new Swedish governor, had arrived at Godwin Bay early in May. He came sailing up the South River in the good ship Aren, and with him came a number of new settlers, bold and resolute men, about two or three hundred in all.
As they came near Fort Casimir they fired a royal salute, dropped their sails, and anchored. This was May 31, 1654. Gerritt Bikker, the commander of the fort, immediately sent to ask their business in these waters. Bikker was a very weak and timid man.
The messengers soon returned, bringing word that it was a Swedish ship with the new Governor, and that he demanded to have Fort Casimir handed over to him, as it was on Swedish land.
Bikker was amazed at this message, and was about to write out an answer when he was told that a boat from the Swedish vessel was coming toward the Fort, with about twenty men.
Bikker thought that they were bringing some further message, and politely went down to the beach to meet them. The gate of the fort was left open.
The Swedes landed; but, instead of stopping on the beach, they marched straight to the open gate and into the fort. Then, drawing their swords, they demanded the surrender of the fort. At the same time two shots were fired from the Swedish vessel, and the Swedes in the fort wrenched the muskets from the hands of the Dutch soldiers. The whole thing was so sudden that the Dutch were unable to make any resistance, and in a moment they had been chased from the fort, and the Swedes had taken possession of everything.
All this happened on Trinity Sunday, so the Swedes now changed the name of the fort from Fort Casimir, to Fort Trinity.
The Dutch living near the fort, took the oath of allegiance to the Swedish crown, and it seemed that Stuyvesant was to lose everything he had just gained in Delaware.
It was felt to be very important at this time to gain the friendship of the Indians, so, very soon after the capture of Fort Casimir, Governor Rysing asked the Delaware sachems to come to a meeting at Printz Hall.
The Indians came to Tinnicum Island in answer to his message as, a short time before, they had gone to New Amsterdam when Stuyvesant sent for them. They were seated in the great hall of the house and waited gravely to hear “a talk made to them.”
Rysing began by telling the Indians how much the Swedes respected them. He reminded them of the gifts they had received from the Swedes—many more than the Dutch had ever given them.
The Indians replied that the Swedes had brought much evil upon them; that many of them had died since the Swedes had come into the country.
Rysing then gave them some presents, and after that the Indians arose and went out.
Presently they returned; and the principal sachem, a chief called Naaman, “made a talk.” He began by saying that the Indians had done wrong in speaking evil of the Swedes; “for the Swedes,” said he, “are a good people; see the presents they have brought us; for these they ask our friendship.” He then stroked his arm three times from the shoulder down, which among the Indians, is a sign of friendship. He promised that the friendship between the Indians and the Swedes should be as close as it had been in Governor Printz’s time.
“The Swedes and the Indians then,” he said, “were as one body and one heart” (and he stroked his breast as he spoke), “and now they shall be as one head,” and he seized his head with both hands and then made a motion as though he were tying a strong knot.
Rysing answered that this should indeed be a strong and lasting friendship, and then the great guns of the fort were fired.
The Indians were delighted at the noise and cried, “Hoo, hoo, hoo; mockirick pickon!” which means, “Hear and believe! The great guns have spoken.”
After more talk great kettles were brought into the hall filled with sappawn, a kind of hasty pudding made of Indian corn, and all sat down and fed heartily, and then the Indians departed to their villages.
Rysing had thought that as soon as Stuyvesant heard that the Swedes had taken Fort Casimir, he would try to recapture it; but day after day and week after week passed peacefully by. Rysing began to believe that Stuyvesant meant to let the matter rest.
But the hot-tempered Dutchman had far other ideas than that. He still remembered that he had been told to keep peace with his neighbors, but he wrote an account of the whole matter to the West India Company at home. Then he had to gather together all his patience and wait, for an answer from across the ocean. What he most feared was that he would be told still to keep the peace.
But when Stuyvesant’s letter telling how the Swedes had taken Fort Casimir reached Holland, the people were aroused at last. The roll of drums sounded in the streets of old Amsterdam. Volunteers were called for. A ship, The Balance, was fitted out with men, arms, ammunition and provisions, and set sail as quickly as possible for New Netherlands.
Great was the joy of Stuyvesant to receive such an answer as this. He too had called for volunteers, and he had gathered together all the vessels he could; he had even hired a French frigate, L’Esperance, which happened to be lying in the harbor of New Amsterdam at that time.
About the middle of August, 1655, the little Dutch fleet sailed out from the harbor of New Amsterdam-seven vessels in all and carrying almost seven hundred men. Stuyvesant himself was in command.
They sailed down to the Delaware Bay, in between the capes, and up the river to a short distance above the fort. Quietly as Styuvesant had moved, the Indians had learned his plans some time before, and had carried the news of them to Rysing.
Rysing had immediately sent what men and ammunition he could spare to Fort Trinity, and had told Captain Sven Schute, its commander, to fire on the Dutch if they attempted to sail past the fort. This, Sven Schute did not do. He allowed the Dutch to pass by without firing a single shot, and so all communication with Fort Christina was cut off.
Stuyvesant landed the Dutch soldiers on Sunday, September 5, 1655, and sent Captain Smith with a drummer to the fort to demand that Captain Schute should surrender it, as it was Dutch property.
Schute, however, asked time to consider, and also to be allowed to write to Rysing.
This was refused; and Schute was again called upon to surrender, and so spare the shedding of innocent blood.
A second time he refused, and a third time he was asked to surrender; and the third time he agreed and opened his gates to the Dutch. So it was that within a short time after leaving New Amsterdam, the Dutch marched to the fort with music playing and banners flying; and so, a second time, Fort Casimir (then Fort Trinity) was captured without a blow having been struck or a drop of blood shed.
After capturing Fort Casimir, Stuyvesant sailed up the river to Fort Christina and surrounded it. Rysing had only thirty men, and around him camped almost seven hundred Dutchmen.
Stuyvesant sent him a message by an Indian, bidding him surrender the fort.
Rysing, by the same Indian, returned a letter begging Stuyvesant to meet him and talk the matter over.
This Stuyvesant agreed to; but he treated Rysing in such an insolent way that it made matters harder than ever for the Swedish governor to bear. Rysing laid before him all the Swedish claims to the river, and begged him to withdraw his soldiers. This, Stuyvesant refused to do, and again demanded the surrender of the fort.
Rysing would not agree to this and so returned.
On the twenty-fourth of September all the Dutch guns were turned upon Fort Christina, and Rysing was again called upon to surrender.
This time, seeing how useless it was to try to defend the fort with his small force, he agreed. Such terms as he could, he made with the Dutch.
He and his troops were allowed to march out with drums beating, fifes playing, and colors flying, and they were also allowed to keep their guns and ammunition and all effects belonging to the Swedish Crown. It was agreed that no Swedes were to be kept there against their will; but any were to be allowed to stay one year if they wished, in order to arrange their affairs. Rysing and his Swedes were also to have a ship to take them back to Gottenburg in Sweden.
Thus, on September 25, 1655, our state became the property of the Dutch, and Swedish power ended forever on the banks of the Delaware.
