Six months before, these men, fifty in all, had started out from Gottenburg to journey across the sea to this new land. For six months they had been tossed and beaten by many storms upon the ocean, but now at last they had reached the promised land.
Slowly they sailed up the river and past the mouth of the Hoornekill.[2] The colonists stared in silence at the spot where the little settlement of Zwannendael had once stood. Nothing marked the place now but a few blackened ruins; and these, wind and storm were slowly eating away.
The Swedes did not stop there, but sailed on up the river. Their commander, Peter Minuit, had once been with the West India Company at New Netherlands, and knew something of the country and had a clear idea of where he wished to start his colony. Some miles above the Hoornekill, Minquas Creek (now our Christiana) emptied into the Delaware. Two and a half miles from its mouth, a point of rocks[3] jutted out into the stream and made a sort of natural wharf. It was upon this point that the Swedes made their landing.
Stores and implements were carried to the shore, and soon the silence of the new land was broken by the sound of the ax and the voices of the settlers talking and calling to one another.
Lonely and deserted as the country had seemed to the new settlers, their coming was quickly known to both the Indians and the Dutch.
The first to visit them was an Indian Chief named Mattahoon. He and some of his braves stalked in among the colonists one day, with silent Indian tread, and stood looking about them with curious, glittering black eyes. Minuit gave them some presents, and they seemed much pleased. Then Mattahoon told Minuit that the land belonged to him and his braves.
Minuit wished to buy it from him, and the Sachem agreed to sell it for a copper kettle and some other small articles. These were given to him, and he and his braves went away, well content with their bargain.
The next visitor to come to them was a messenger from New Amsterdam. He told them that Director General Kieft, the Dutch Governor, had sent him to ask why they had settled on land that belonged to the Dutch. The Dutch had bought it from the Indians long ago, at the time DeVries had settled on the river.
Minuit answered the messenger very civilly. He gave the Dutchman to understand that he and his Swedes were on their way to the West Indies, and had only landed on this shore for rest and refreshment.