The messenger believed what Minuit said, and was quite satisfied, and the next day he returned to New Amsterdam and told Kieft there was nothing to fear from these strangers; they were only passers-by and had no wish to settle upon the river.
However, not long after this, a Dutch ship sailing up the river saw that the strangers were still there. Moreover, they were building houses and something that looked like a fort, and gardens were laid out.
Kieft, the Dutch Governor was very angry when he heard this. Again he sent a messenger in haste, to ask why the Swedes were building, and to demand that they should re-enter their ships and sail away.
Minuit paid but little attention to this second messenger. He was very busy. The fort was almost finished. Reorus Torkillus, a clergyman who had come from Sweden with him, had already held services in it, and had prayed for the welfare of their little settlement of Christinaham, for that was what they had named it. The fort itself was called Fort Christina, in honor of the Swedish Queen, and the name of the creek was changed from Minquas to Christina.
It was of no use for the Dutch to send messengers now. The Swedes were well established. Moreover, they had made friends with the Indians. Minuit had given them a number of presents—kettles, cloth, trinkets, and even fire-arms and ammunition.[4]
With these presents the savages were delighted; and they signed a paper with their marks, giving to the Swedes all the land from Cape Henlopen to Santican, or what is now called the Falls of Trenton. When the Dutch heard this, they were indignant for they claimed that all that land had already been sold to them.
Reorus Torkillus, the Swedish minister for the little settlement, did what he could to keep peace with both the Dutch and the Indians. He was an earnest, pious man, and his great hope was that he might convert the savages to Christianity. He regularly held Divine service in the fort. He also had a plot of ground fenced off to serve as a burying ground when such might be needed.[5]
The Indians understood but little of the teachings of Torkillus; but there was one thing that they did understand, and that was that the Swedes gave them many presents and paid them better for their furs and skins than the Dutch did. Minuit, indeed, was always careful to find out what the Dutch were paying them and then to offer a little more. In this way he secured all the best and choicest of the furs—a cause of fresh anger to the Dutch.
But with all this friendly feeling between the Swedes and the Indians, the settlers were obliged to be on their watch with the savages. The Leni Lenapes, to which the Delaware tribes belonged, were for the most part a peaceful people; but there often appeared among them Indians from another tribe, probably Iroquois, whom the settlers called “Flatheads.”[6] These strange Indians were both cruel and treacherous, and they made it dangerous for a settler to venture out of sight or hearing of the settlement. Often they would hide in the woods and fall upon some lonely wanderer, and kill or stun and then scalp him.