Seeing this, the Dutchman Min´u-it purchased the whole of Manhattan Island, in 1626, for about twenty-four dollars' worth of beads and trinkets. The town on it was called New Amsterdam, after a great city in Holland, and this sale, which gave the Dutch land for one sixth of a cent an acre, was soon followed by many others. Indeed, they soon owned all the Hudson and Delaware valleys, besides a strip of coast between the mouths of these two rivers.
Under Governor Kieft, the Indians, exasperated by the treatment they received, planned to murder all the Dutch. But a grateful Indian gave a colonist timely warning of the coming danger. Kieft now tried to make friends with the redskins, and appointed a meeting with their chiefs on Long Island. When called upon to state their causes of complaint, the Indians brought forth a bundle of sticks, and laying them down, one after another, related a special wrong for each stick.
Realizing that they had good cause for complaint, Kieft made a treaty with them, which, however, was soon broken. Again farms were attacked and settlers were scalped, and it was only after the number of whites had been greatly reduced, and more than a thousand Indians killed, that peace was finally made, in 1645. It was during this war that Mrs. Hutchinson, who had left Rhode Island and settled in the western part of Connecticut, was slain, with all her children except one, who was carried off into captivity.
To induce people to come and settle in the New Netherlands,—as the Dutch called their share of the New World,—rich settlers, or patroons, were promised a farm of sixteen miles' water front, provided they brought out fifty colonists with the necessary farming tools and stock. The result of this offer was that many comfortable Dutch houses arose in the New Netherlands, which soon had many prosperous settlements, in each of which was a free school, so the children should not grow up ignorant.
These colonists were simple-hearted, jolly, and fond of good things to eat. On their numerous holidays they danced gayly, a pastime which the Puritans considered very wicked, and they often assembled to help one another and have a good time. Their principal festivals were held in honor of St. Nicholas, and on January 1, when they called upon all their friends to wish them a happy New Year.
In 1656, about ten years after the Indian troubles ended, there were about one thousand inhabitants in the city of New Amsterdam, which stood on the lower part of Manhattan Island. Protected on three sides by the waters of the North and East rivers and the Bay, the town was cut off from the rest of the island by a high palisade running from shore to shore. This was called the "Wall," and the place where it once stood is still known as Wall Street. Beyond this palisade were many farms, among others one on Bowery Lane, which belonged to Peter Stuȳ´ves-ant, the fourth governor of the city.
The settlers having been driven away from Fort Nassau, on the Delaware, by the Indians, some Dutch merchants soon sent Swedes to form a colony on the spot where Wil´ming-ton now stands. The country around there was therefore called New Sweden. But the newcomers could not live in peace with the Dutch; so Governor Stuyvesant attacked them, seventeen years later, and took possession of their town, so that New Sweden ceased to exist.
Stuyvesant wanted the People to resist.