A new system was adopted in 1629. Patroons came, * and women and children were brought to form the basis of a permanent colony. The new domain was called New Netherlands, and the settlement on Manhattan, the germ of the present city of New York, was named New Amsterdam. The chief trade of the people was in the skins of the bear, otter, and raccoon; and soon the New Englanders complained that Dutch trappers were seen even as far eastward as Narraganset Bay. Tales of the beauty and fertility of the New World were poured into the ears of the Dutch and Germans.
Their neighbors, the Swedes, caught the whisper, came over the sea, and seated themselves upon the banks of the Delaware. Jealousy begat feuds, and feuds engendered conflicts, and Christian people spilled each others blood in the sight of the heathen.
When government for the new colony was ordained, Peter Minuits was sent as director general,1625 and during his administration, and that of his successors, Van Twiller and Kieft, the settlements increased, yet trouble with the Swedes and Indians abounded. *** The governors were weak men, as statesmen, and possessed no military talent. Not so the successor of Kieft, Petrus Stuyvesant, a military commander of renown; a man of dignity, honest and true. He conciliated the Indians;**** made honorable treaties respecting boundaries with Necticut, and by a promptly executed military expedition1655 he crushed the rising power of the Swedes on the Delaware, (v)
and warned Lord Baltimore not to attempt an extension of his boundary line too far northward. Yet, with all his virtues, Stuyvesant was an aristocrat. His education and pursuit made him so; and wherever the feeble plant of democracy, which now began to spring up in New Amsterdam, lifted its petals, he planted the heel of arbitrary power the people of Conupon it. Watered by Van der Donck, and a few Puritans who had strayed into the Dutch domain, it flourished, nevertheless, and at length it bore fruit. Two deputies from each village in New Netherlands, chosen by the people, met in council in New AmsterdamNovember 1653, without the governor's permission. This first popular assembly offended the chief magistrate, and for five years animosity was allowed to fester in the public mind, while Stuyvesant opposed the manifest will of the people. They finally resisted taxes, scorned his menaces, and even expressed a willingness to bear English rule for the sake of enjoying English liberty.
* See vol. i., p. 391. The chief patroons, or patrons, who first came, were Killian van Rensselaer, Samuel Godyn, Samuel Bloemart, and Michael Paw. Godyn and Bloemart purchased lands on the Delaware, Van Rensselaer at Albany, and Paw in New Jersey, from Hoboken to the Kills. Livingston, Phillips, Van Cortland, and others, came afterward.
** This year a company of Walloons came from Holland and settled upon the land around the present Navy Yard at Brooklyn. There, on the seventh of June, Sarah Rapelle, the first white child born in New Netherlands, made her advent.
*** Dishonest traders changed friendly Indians to deadly foes. Conflicts ensued, and, to cap the climax of iniquity, Kieft caused scores of men, women, and children, who had asked his protection against the Mohawks, to be murdered at midnight, on the banks of the Hudson, at Hoboken. This act awakened the fierce ire of the tribes far in the wilderness, and caused the settlers vast and complicated trouble.