Once Upon a Time in Delaware

by Katharine Pyle

PETER STUYVESANT was a tall, red-faced Dutchman who came out to the New Netherlands in 1647, to take the place of Kieft as Governor of that Province.

Governor Stuyvesant had fought in many battles, and in one of them had lost a leg. When he came out to New Netherlands he had a wooden leg; and as it was fastened together by rings of silver, it was often called “the Governor’s silver leg.” Stuyvesant had also a very violent temper; and, when he was angry, he stamped about with this leg as though it were a club and he were beating the floor with it.

At this time, in 1647, the Swedes claimed all of Delaware as theirs, and called it New Sweden. They had driven many of the Dutch away, had torn down their buildings, and had kept them from trading with the Indians. Every little while news of fresh wrongs to the Dutch was brought from Delaware to Governor Stuyvesant; and every time a letter or messenger arrived, the Governor had a fresh fit of rage. He believed that the Dutch were the real owners of the river; and, if he could, he would have gathered his soldiers together and sailed down to New Sweden, and have done his best to drive every Swede out of the country.

This he could not do, however; for the Directors of the West India Company, who had given him his position as Governor, had told him to keep peace not only with the Indians, but with the Swedes as well.

This was a hard thing for a hot-tempered man like Stuyvesant to do. Now the story would be that the Swedes had destroyed more of the Dutch buildings along the Delaware; again, that the Swedes had incited the Indians to try to surprise and massacre the Dutch; and Hudde, the Dutch commissioner in New Sweden, wrote that a Swedish lieutenant and twenty-four soldiers had come to his house one day and cut down all his trees, even the fruit trees.

Stuyvesant stamped about louder than ever when he heard this. The insult to the Dutch commissioner seemed the worst thing that had yet happened; and he made up his mind to sail down to New Sweden and remonstrate with the Swedish Governor Printz himself.

Governor Printz lived in a very handsome house called Printz Hall, on Tinnicum Island. All about it were fine gardens and an orchard. There was also a pleasure house, and indeed everything that could help to make it comfortable and convenient. Governor Printz received Governor Stuyvesant very politely in the great hall of the house, and presently the two governors sat down and began to talk. Stuyvesant complained bitterly of the treatment the Dutch had received in Delaware. He repeated that by rights the Dutch really owned the land; they had bought it years before from the Indians, and their right to it had been sealed by the blood they had shed upon its soil.

Printz himself was a very violent man, and often gross and abusive; but this time he kept his temper and answered the Dutch Governor civilly. Stuyvesant, though, gained nothing by his visit, and all his talk and reasoning. Printz was determined to keep all the land along the Delaware, and to govern it as he pleased. As to cutting down Hudde’s trees, he said he had had nothing to do with that matter, and was sorry it had happened.

So Stuyvesant went back to his own fine house at New Amsterdam, and the Dutch in New Sweden were no better off.

However, he was not one to let the matter rest at that. He kept it in his mind, and at last, as the result of his thinking, he sent messengers to all the Indian sachems along the Delaware, inviting them to come to a great meeting at the governor’s house in New Amsterdam.