New Sweden.
End of Swedish power on the Delaware.—Stuyvesant determined to get control of the river trade. In 1651 he went to the Delaware with a considerable force. In spite of protests from Printz, lands were purchased from the Indians, and Ft. Casimir was built near the present site of New Castle, the other Dutch forts being abandoned. In 1653 the Swedish crown planned to help New Sweden. In the spring of 1654 about three hundred and fifty colonists were sent over under John Rising. He immediately seized Ft. Casimir. At Ft. Christina a town was laid out, new tracts were purchased from the Indians, and lands were assigned to the colonists. The action of the Swedes in seizing Ft. Casimir angered Stuyvesant, and he urged the West India Company to occupy New Sweden. In September, 1655, a Dutch fleet appeared in the Delaware, and the forts surrendered, thus ending the colony of New Sweden.
ABSORPTION OF NEW NETHERLANDS BY THE ENGLISH
Boundary treaty with New England.—On the eastern frontier Stuyvesant had another difficult problem. English settlers were crowding into the Connecticut Valley and onto Long Island. In 1647 Stuyvesant informed the New England officials that the Dutch claimed all lands between the Connecticut and Delaware rivers, but the New Englanders ignored the claim. In 1650 Stuyvesant visited Hartford, where commissioners were appointed who agreed that Long Island should be divided by a line running along the western part of Oyster Bay; that on the mainland the fine was "to begin at the west side of Greenwich Bay, being four miles from Stamford and so to run a northerly line twenty miles up into the country, and after as it shall be agreed by the two governments of the Dutch and New Haven; provided the said line come not within ten miles of Hudson's River;" and that the Dutch were to keep their holdings at Hartford.
The end of Dutch rule.—In 1659 Massachusetts asserted her claim to a sea to sea grant, and in 1662 the charter of Connecticut extended the bounds of the colony to the Pacific. In 1663 Stuyvesant visited Boston to attempt a settlement of existing difficulties, but to no avail, and upon his return he found that some of the Long Island settlements west of the line claimed to be under the jurisdiction of Connecticut. Dutch commissioners were sent to Hartford, but without result, and the following year Connecticut asserted her rights to the whole of Long Island. In 1664 Charles II granted to his brother, James, the Duke of York, the whole of Long Island and all the lands from the Connecticut River to Delaware Bay. A fleet was despatched to New Amsterdam, which surrendered without bloodshed, and Dutch rule in North America came to an end three years after it had failed in Brazil.
READINGS
THE DUTCH
Blok, P.J., History of the People of the Netherlands, III, 267-303; Brodhead, J.R., History of the State of New York, I; Channing, Edward, History of the United States, I, 438-484; Fiske, John, The Dutch and Quaker Colonies in America, I; Goodwin, M.W., Dutch and English on the Hudson; Innes, J.H., New Amsterdam and its People; Jameson, J.F., ed., Narratives of New Netherlands; Janvier, T.A., Dutch Founding of New York; MacDonald, William, Select Charters. 43-50; O'Callaghan, E.B., History of New Netherlands; Roberts, E.H., New York, I, 10-119; Van Loon, H.W., The Golden Book of the Dutch Navigators.