The meeting was set for early in July; and, on the day appointed, the Indians came. They were grave and fierce looking, in spite of their gay paint and feathers. Stuyvesant received them in the hall of his house; and after they had all arrived, they sat down there in council.
The first thing Stuyvesant wished to learn from them was exactly how much land they had sold to the Swedes.
The Indians told him they had not sold any land to the Swedes, except that upon which Fort Christina stood, and ground enough around it for a garden to plant tobacco in.
“Then will you sell the land to us?” asked Stuyvesant.
The Indians were quite willing to do this. They were always willing to sell anything, even if they had already sold it; but what they wished to know was what the Dutch would give. The price finally agreed upon was, if they had only known it, an absurd price indeed; but the Indians were quite content with it. It was;—12 coats of duffels (a kind of cloth), 12 kettles, 12 axes, 12 adzes, 24 knives, 12 bars of lead and 4 guns with some powder; besides this, the Dutch to repair the gun of the Chief Penomennetta when it was out of order, and to give the Indians a few handfuls of maize when they needed it. This was the price for which the Indians sold to the Dutch all the land along the Delaware River, from Fort Christiana to Bombay Hook.
The Indians then went away, very much pleased. Governor Stuyvesant, too, was in high good humor. Now he would show Printz who was the real owner of the land.
In the year 1651, Stuyvesant set about having a fort built at New Amstel, (now New Castle) about five miles south of Fort Christina. The name of it was to be Fort Casimir.[1] This fort was of great value to the Dutch, and Stuyvesant felt that he had taken the first step toward recovering Dutch possession of the Delaware.
Printz, as soon as he knew what Stuyvesant was about, protested against the building of the fort; but he was not strong enough to prevent it. He had grown very unpopular, because of his violent and coarse temper. He was hated not only by the Dutch and the English, but by his own people as well. Things began to grow more and more unpleasant for him, so that at last he begged to be allowed to go back to Sweden; and in 1653 he left the shores of New Sweden and his house on Tinnicum Island, and sailed away not to return.
But Stuyvesant was well pleased. He felt that it was he, with his building of Fort Casimir, who had driven the Swede away. He smiled comfortably to himself as he sat smoking his pipe, and made fresh plans.
But in June, 1654, news came to Governor Stuyvesant that made him leap from his chair and clench his hands and stamp up and down as though he would break his wooden-silver leg to pieces. The Swedes had taken Fort Casimir! And they had taken it without a single blow having been struck by the Dutch. The taking of the fort was in this way:—