I would not, if I could, tell you all that followed. It is too cruel a story; it has more to do with murder and death by torture, and with keenest suffering, than would be well for you to hear while we have gathered to listen to my poor tale of how the town of New Amsterdam was built, and how it grew.
It was a time when the bravest man's cheeks might well grow pale; when women and children shrieked with fear, or trembled in silent terror at the slightest unusual sound; when it was as if all the country roundabout had been stained the color of blood; when we could no longer lie down at night, or rise up in the morning, without fear; when we ceased to live the lives of peaceful, honest traders, but were become the same as hunted beasts,—and all through the evil of one man.
Master Kieft was sent for by the West India Company none too soon, and the pity of it is that he ever came to New Amsterdam, with his hatchet-shaped face, to plunge us into a war with the savages, who had all the right on their side.
Hans Braun claimed because of Kieft's having built the great stone tavern, which was the largest and most beautiful in all America, that he had left behind him a monument which would ever keep his memory green. But I question if any one, after Director Stuyvesant turned the building into a town hall, ever cared to remember that it had been built by Wilhelm Kieft.
DIRECTOR PETRUS STUYVESANT
On the eleventh day of May, in the year of our Lord, 1647, a fleet of four large vessels sailed into the harbor of New Amsterdam, bringing the new Director, Petrus Stuyvesant, his family, servants, soldiers, and many laborers.
A one-legged man was Master Stuyvesant, who had been a brave soldier, and, later, a governor of the island of Curaçoa, wherever it may be. That he believed he was of considerable importance in the world, could be told by his manner of moving about and of holding speech with any who was lower in station than himself.
