Thirty families, including one hundred and ten men, women and children, and most of them Walloons, were in the first emigration. Four of the families, young couples who had been married on shipboard, and who, perhaps, concluded that they would get along better apart from the older households, chose to settle on the Delaware, four miles below the site of Philadelphia, where they built a blockhouse and called it Fort Nassau. Eight seamen went with them and formed a part of their colony, which grew and prospered. Others of the emigrants went to Long Island; some founded Albany; some settled on the Connecticut River, and several families made their homes in what is at present Ulster County. The Company sent over Peter Minuit as Governor in 1626, who bought from the natives their title to Manhattan Island, paying therefor trinkets and liquor to the value of twenty-four dollars. Governor Minuit built a fortification at the southern end of the island, and called it New Amsterdam. The States-General constituted the colony a county of Holland, and bestowed on it a seal, being a shield enclosed in a chain, with an escutcheon on which was the figure of a beaver. The crest was the coronet of a count.
In 1629 the Dutch West India Company gave to the settlers a charter of "privileges and exemptions," and sought to encourage immigration by offering as much land as the immigrants could cultivate, with free liberty of hunting and fowling under the direction of the Governor. They also offered to any person who should "discover any shore, bay or other fit place for erecting fisheries or the making of salt pounds" an absolute property in the same. To further promote the settlement of New Netherland the company proposed to grant lands in any part of the colony outside the island of Manhattan, to the extent of sixteen miles along any navigable stream, or four miles if on each shore, and indefinitely in the interior, to any person who should agree to plant a colony of adults within four years; or if he should bring more, his domain to be enlarged in proportion. He was to be the absolute lord of the manor, with the feudal right to hold manorial courts; and if cities should grow up on his domain he was to have power to appoint the magistrates and other officers of such municipalities, and have a deputy to confer with the Governor. Settlers under these lords, who were known as patroons—a term synonymous with the Scottish "laird" and the Swedish "patroon"—were to be exempt for ten years from the payment of taxes and tribute for the support of the colonial government, and for the same period every man, woman and child was bound not to leave the service of the patroon without his written consent. In order to prevent the colonists from building up local manufactures to the detriment of Holland industries and of the Company's trade, the settlers were forbidden to manufacture cloth of any kind under pain of banishment, and the Company agreed to supply settlers with as many African slaves "as they conveniently could," and to protect them against enemies. Each settlement was required to support a minister of the gospel and a schoolmaster. The system thus established contained the seed of evil as well as of good. African slave labor, already introduced in Virginia, where the climate was some excuse for its adoption, worked injury to the New Netherland, where all the conditions were favorable to white labor, and tended to create a servile class. The negroes, both bond and free, were for many years a most obnoxious element in the colony, viewed with apprehension and suspicion even down to the beginning of the present century by the general body of white citizens, and often subjected to most cruel and unjust persecution and punishment on charges that were either baseless or founded only in malice. The restriction on domestic manufactures was another barb in the side of the colonists, and that policy continued by the English successors of the Dutch, had much to do with exciting the War for Independence. The patroons also were an aristocratic element foreign to the prevalent spirit of North American settlement, and their feudal rule, although liberal and patriarchal in some instances, became less tolerable as years rolled on, and the people comprehended the absurdity and injustice of mediæval institutions on American soil. It is fortunate that the patroon system, unlike slavery, was ultimately uprooted without revolution.
Americans should be proud of the fact that Gustavus Adolphus, the great king of Sweden who died on the field of Lutzen in the cause of religious liberty, gave his approval to the project for planting a Swedish colony in America, and by proclamation, while in the midst of his campaign against the Catholic League, recommended the enterprise to his people. Eighteen days later the champion of Protestantism fell in the hour of victory, and a noble monument erected by the German people marks the spot where he gave up his life that Germany might be free. The scheme was carried out by the regency which took charge of the kingdom, and Governor Minuit, recalled from New Netherland, sailed from Gottenburg in 1637 to plant a new colony on the west side of Delaware Bay. The colonists arrived at their destination in the spring of 1638, and Minuit procured from an Indian sachem a deed for a region which, the Swedes claimed, extended from Cape Henlopen to the Falls of the Delaware, where Trenton is now, and an indefinite distance inland. The Dutch protested and threatened, but Minuit built a fort on the site of Wilmington, and called it Fort Christina, in honor of the young queen of Sweden, daughter of Gustavus Adolphus. The colony prospered, and a number of Hollanders settled there with the Swedes. Minuit died in 1641, and the Swedish government proceeded to place the colony on a permanent footing, and called it "New Sweden." The colony was unable to hold its own against the Dutch, and surrendered in 1655 to an expedition led by Peter Stuyvesant.
While New Netherland remained under Dutch rule the people had no voice in the choice of those officers whose duties were more than local in character. The governor was an appointee of the West India Company, and responsible solely to it; though the latter was subject to a certain amount of control from the States-General. That the people desired the privilege of electing their general officers, is shown by a petition sent in 1649 to the States-General from the Nine Men. A request was made in this document for a suitable system of government, and it was accompanied by a sketch of the methods of written proxies used by the New England colonies in selecting their governors. On the other hand, a letter sent two years later by the magistrates of Gravesend to the directors at Amsterdam, stated that it would involve "ruin and destruction" to frequently change the government by allowing the people to elect the governor, partly on account of the numerous factions, and partly because there were no persons in the province capable of filling the office. Nor did the Dutch colonists possess any voice in the making of laws. There was no regular representative assembly, although we find that there were several emergencies when the advice of the people was asked by the governors.[1] ]
Landing of the Pilgrims—Their Abiding Faith in God's Goodness—The Agreement Signed on the Mayflower—A Winter of Hardship—The Indians Help the Settlers—Improved Conditions—The Colony Buys Its Freedom—Priscilla and John Alden—Their Romantic Courtship and Marriage.
It is usual to celebrate the landing day of the Pilgrim Fathers on the bleak shore of New Plymouth, December 11 (22) 1620, as the beginning of New England. It was an event which richly deserves all the commemoration in song and story and banquet-hall which it has received or ever will receive, but the real and substantial foundation of New England was laid about ten years later, when a numerous and well-to-do body of Puritans, under a charter granted by the crown, formed the colony of Massachusetts Bay. The Pilgrim Fathers were merely a handful in number, and as poor as they were loyal and conscientious. Exiles to Holland, they declined an offer from the Dutch West India Company to accept lands in New Netherland. They wished to remain English, and with the aid of some London merchants whose Puritan sympathies were mingled with a desire for gain, the little community procured the means to sail for "the northern parts of Virginia." The Pilgrims were just as true to King James as the settlers of Jamestown, but they did not intend to join that colony, whose members were attached to the Established Church, so far as they had any religion, and where dissenters would have been ill at ease. At the same time the immigrants in the Mayflower did not intend to land so far north as they did. The wearisome voyage, however, made them anxious to get on shore, the land could not be more inhospitable than the winter sea, and they had an abiding faith in God's goodness and providence which enabled them to face with resolution the hardships and dangers of the northern wilderness. The act which the men of the party signed on the Mayflower, previous to landing, showed that they were determined to have an orderly government. It was the first American constitution, and as such deserves to be remembered: "In the name of God, Amen. We, whose names are hereunder written, the loyal subjects of our dread sovereign lord, King James, by the grace of God, of Great Britain, France and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith, etc., having undertaken for the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian Faith, and honor of our King and country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia, do, by these presents, solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God and of one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitution and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the colony, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience. In witness whereof we have hereunto subscribed our names at Cape Cod, the 11th of November (O. S.) in the year of the reign of our sovereign lord, King James of England, France and Ireland, the eighteenth, and of Scotland the fifty-fourth, Anno Domini 1620."
The day of landing was, as already stated, December 11, or according to the new style, December 22. The spot which the Pilgrims selected for settlement was well-watered and promising, and they gave to it the name of the haven where they had taken a final leave of their native land. The winter was fortunately mild, but they had to endure cruel hardships. Their stores were scanty; they had no fishing tackle, and game was not abundant. Fortunately spring came early; but forty-four of the little company succumbed to want and cold, and those who retained their health were hardly equal to the task of nursing the sick and burying the dead. Had the savages been numerous and hostile they could have swept the little settlement out of existence with but small effort; but the country had been wasted not long before by a deadly pestilence and the native tribes were too weak and too much in fear of more powerful enemies of their own race, to make an attack on the strangers. Instead of injuring the newcomers the Indians helped them, brought them game and fish, and taught them how to cultivate corn. In 1623 the colony had, with new arrivals, about one hundred and fifty inhabitants. The first division of land was made this year, and a large crop of corn was harvested. Twelve years after the foundation the people of Plymouth hardly numbered five hundred, and they were soon overshadowed by the large Puritan immigration to Salem and Boston. The poor and struggling settlers of Plymouth did not even have the satisfaction of knowing that the fruits of their toils and sufferings would be their own. They were still bound to the London merchants who had supplied them with the means for emigration, and these partners in the enterprise were impatient of the lack of returns. As the Pilgrims gradually grew better off they were the more anxious to remove the yoke which interfered with their independence, and some members of the community who were richer than the others agreed, in exchange for a monopoly of the Indian trade and the surrender of the accumulated wealth of the colony, to pay its debt to the English shareholders. The colony thus achieved its freedom, and its members were able to proceed in building their settlement according to their own ideas of religion and civil government without restraint from partners who had sought only for worldly profit.
One of the most interesting incidents connected with the early history of the Plymouth Colony was the romantic marriage of Priscilla and John Alden, immortalized in the verse of Longfellow. Captain Miles Standish was a redoubtable soldier, small in person, but of great activity and courage. He came over in the Mayflower, and his wife Rose Standish fell a victim to the privations which attended the first year in America. Another passenger on the Mayflower was Priscilla Mullins, daughter of William Mullins, a maiden of unusual beauty, just blooming into womanhood. The gallant widower fell in love with Priscilla, but for some reason which does not clearly appear, but probably bashfulness, he sent another to do his courting. Standish himself was about thirty-seven years of age, and doubtless showed the effect of his hard service in the wars. Nevertheless, he might have won Priscilla had he gone for her in person, for, as the military leader of the colony, beset as it was by savages who might at any time become hostile, he was a man of importance and desirable for a son-in-law. He made the mistake of choosing as Cupid's messenger a handsome young man named John Alden, a cooper from Southampton, with whom Priscilla was already well acquainted, and with whom she had quite possibly whiled away many hours of the wearisome three months' voyage from old Plymouth. Alden and Priscilla may have been in love with each other already, when Captain Standish sent the youth on his embarrassing mission. Even the rigid rules of Puritanism could not prevent young men and women from falling in love, while their elders were engaged in more sedate occupations. It is to be said for Standish, also, that he evidently did not intend that the young man should state the case to Priscilla, but only to her father. The parent promptly gave his consent, but added that "Priscilla must be consulted." The maiden was called into the room, and a brighter light dawned in her eyes, and a ruddier flush suffused her cheeks, as her gaze met that of the handsome young cooper. John Alden, too, could not remain unaffected, as he repeated his message to the fair young woman, into whose ears he had probably poured sweet nothings many a time while they dreamed, perhaps, of the day when more serious words would be spoken. Priscilla asked why Captain Standish had not come himself. Alden replied that the Captain was too busy. This naturally made the maiden indignant, for she was justified in assuming that no business could be more important than that of asking for her hand. It is also possible that she was glad of an excuse for rejecting the proffered honor. She declared that she would never marry a man who was too busy to court her, adding, in the words of Longfellow: