We are now arrived at the period of the emigration of the Pilgrim Fathers from Holland to New England; yet, although at this very time religious controversy ran high in Holland, and liberty was outraged in the persons of her best and noblest citizens, Grotius and Olden Barneveld, the former of whom was imprisoned for life, and the latter an old man of threescore and twelve, perished on the scaffold, we do not find that any great impetus, as in England, was given to emigration. The Dutch were traders, and nothing short of trade could make them move. As yet their American settlements had been formed under the auspices of the Dutch East India Company; but in 1621 a Dutch West India Company was incorporated, which held a charter for four-and-twenty years, conferring upon it the exclusive privilege of trafficking and planting colonies “from the straits of Magellan to the remotest north.” There was here scope wide enough to satisfy the most enterprising adventurers. All who now were disposed to leave Holland, from whatever cause it might be, had an opportunity, and accordingly emigration began on a more systematic plan than formerly. In 1623, a number of settlers went out under the command of Cornelius May, who not only visited Manhattan, but entering the Bay of Delaware, ascended the river of that name, which was then called South River. May took possession of the country for the Dutch, built Fort Nassau in the present State of New Jersey, and being strictly just to the natives, left a memory behind him which was long respected by them. The country from the southern shore of the Delaware to Cape Cod was now designated New Netherlands. A colony was established on Manhattan, called New Amsterdam; the Dutch had now homes in the New World, and in 1625, the first child of Dutch parentage was born here.
In 1625, Peter Minuits arrived at Manhattan as governor of New Netherlands, which office he held for six years. It must not be imagined, however, that these settlers, like those of New England, brought with them an inborn spirit of political organisation; all power remained in the hands of the company, and this colony was for many years merely an establishment of trade, where European goods were exchanged for the peltries of the Indian.
In 1627, the governor of the infant Dutch plantation, wishing to be on friendly terms with the Pilgrim settlers of New Plymouth, who had by that time established themselves firmly and were extending their borders, wrote a letter of congratulation to them, on “their prosperity, praiseworthy undertakings, and the government of their colony; offering them good will and service in all friendly kindness, and good neighbourhood;” and very characteristically closing the letter by an offer of “any of their goods for any wares which they might be pleased to deal for.” In return, the Pilgrims expressed their thankful sense of the kindnesses they had received in Holland, and their grateful acceptance of this offered friendship. The following year, therefore, De Rasier, the second in command, arrived at a trading establishment which the Plymouth people had built for their convenience, twenty miles south of Cape Cod, bringing with him divers commodities; and a boat was sent to fetch him to the old colony, where he came “honourably attended by a noise of trumpeters.” A league of friendship and commerce was proposed; but the New England settlers, who doubted the right of the Dutch to the territory they held, which was claimed by England by right of Cabot’s previous discovery, demurred, recommending rather that a treaty should be entered into by their respective nations. Still the utmost harmony prevailed; De Rasier offered the aid of troops, if necessary, against the French; and advised them to leave the barren soil of Plymouth for the fine pasture land on the banks of the Connecticut. When he departed, a number of the colonists accompanied him to his vessel and made considerable purchases from him; and the New England chronicle records that they traded together for several years, to their great mutual benefit. The greatest benefit, however, being, that the Dutch taught the English settlers the value of the trade in wampum: “they told us,” says this old record, “how vendible it is at their fort Orania, and assure us we shall find it so at Kennebeck;” for the Plymouth people had already a trading station on that river: and so in the end it proved, they very soon being hardly able to supply the demand, making great profit by it. The Pilgrims seem to have been very plain-spoken on this occasion, and even while expressing all kind of good wishes for the prosperity of their friends the Dutch, they requested that their ships might not interfere with their trade for beaver-skins in Narragansett Bay.
In 1629, the West India Company being desirous of promoting colonisation, a charter was obtained by what was styled “the College of Nineteen,” which offered to any one who would emigrate as much land as he could cultivate; and any person who should within four years plant a colony of fifty souls, to become lord of the manor, or patron, with absolute possession of all land so colonised, to the extent of sixteen miles, or if on a river, eight miles on each bank, and as far interior as the situation might require; all lands, however, were to be purchased from the Indians; towns and cities were to depend upon the patron for the form of government; yet it was recommended that a schoolmaster and minister should be provided. No manufactures of linen, woollen, or cotton, were permitted, lest the mother-country should suffer. The company, as a sort of boon, engaged to furnish the manors with negroes, provided—stipulated the wary traders—that the “traffic should prove lucrative.”
This charter favoured the appropriation of the best situations for trade by speculative individuals, rather than colonisation. Nevertheless, one of the patrons having purchased the southern portion of the present state of Delaware, a colony was taken out by De Vries, the historian of the voyage, and settled on Staten Island. The Dutch now occupied Delaware, and their claim extended from Cape Henlopen to Cape Cod. After a year’s residence, De Vries returned to Holland, leaving Osset as his deputy; but the new commandant having excited the resentment of the Algonquins, De Vries, on his return, found the fort deserted, the scattered bones of his murdered countrymen testifying of Indian vengeance; and De Vries himself would have perished, had not an Indian woman warned him of his danger. Delaware was once more in the hands of the natives, and before the Dutch could re-assert their claim, they found a competitor in Lord Baltimore, who claimed it under his patent.
De Vries, leaving the melancholy scene of his former labours and hopes, proceeded to Virginia for provisions, and the following spring, on arriving at New Amsterdam, found Peter Minuits, in consequence of quarrels which had broken out, superseded as governor by Wouter van Twiller. A few months before the arrival of Van Twiller, the Dutch had purchased land from the natives on the Connecticut, and as we have already mentioned, established there their trading station of the House of Good Hope. The English, however, claiming the country, colonists from New England poured in, and in defiance of the Dutch, settled themselves down at Windsor and Hartford. The Dutch company retained for many years a feeble hold on the Connecticut, but finally were overwhelmed by the New Englanders, who, carrying with them the very principles of organisation, took forcible and natural root wherever they planted themselves. And now another competitor was within their borders.
As early as the year 1624, the great Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, the hero of his age, and the champion of the Protestant faith in Europe, entertained a design of extended colonisation in the New World. A commercial company, under the patronage of the king, was incorporated in Sweden, the monarch himself pledging 400,000 dollars of the royal treasure for the purposes of its advancement. “Men of every rank were invited to engage in the enterprise, and colonists from all countries of Europe.” Perfectly comprehending the soundest principles of colonisation, the scheme of this emigration rejected slaves, “which,” said they, “cost a great deal, labour with reluctance, and soon perish from hard usage. The Swedish nation, on the contrary, is laborious and intelligent, and we shall gain more by a free people with wives and children.” The thirty years war was then raging, and the great protestant hero looked forward to his proposed colony becoming an “asylum for the wives and daughters of those whom wars and bigotry had made fugitives; a blessing to the common man throughout the whole protestant world.” This noble plan occupied almost the last thoughts of Gustavus; shortly before his death, at the battle of Lutzen, he recommended it to the people of Germany.
When protestantism and humanity lost at Lutzen one of their greatest ornaments, the scheme from which he had hoped so much was not allowed to perish. The great and good Oxenstiern extending, as his master had desired, its benefits to Germany, the charter was confirmed by deputies from the four upper circles at Frankfort.
In 1637, Peter Minuits, the former governor of New Amsterdam having offered his services and his experience to Sweden, conveyed over from that country a company of Swedes and Finns in two vessels, the Key of Calmar and the Griffin, furnished by government with a religious teacher, provisions and merchandise for traffic with the natives. Early the following spring they arrived in Delaware Bay; and so beautiful did the country appear to these natives of a rigid clime, that they called the southern cape Paradise Point. From this cape to the falls of the Delaware near Trenton, the whole territory was purchased from the natives, and called New Sweden; and Christiana Fort, so designated from the youthful queen of their native land, was built.
The Dutch, by no means well pleased to see this new settlement of strangers on a coast which had so lately been in their own possession, asserted their claim, and might have proceeded to enforce it, but that the fame of Swedish valour in Europe was yet too great for them to venture more than a protest. The happy Scandinavians sent to their northern friends such attractive reports of the beautiful land, with its fine pasture grounds and affluent rivers, which was now the home of their adoption, that the desire for emigration was kindled on all hands, especially among the agricultural population of Sweden and Finland. Settlement after settlement extended itself; and finally, in order to maintain their ascendancy over the Dutch, who, to restrict their advance, had rebuilt their fort of Nassau on the Delaware, the Swedish governor, Printz, established himself, and built a fort on Trinicum island, a few miles below Philadelphia. Europeans had now planted themselves on the soil of Pennsylvania. The whole extent of the Delaware banks from the falls to the sea formed the province of New Sweden; and such emigrants from New England as had already penetrated thus far, either were driven out or submitted to the Swedish jurisdiction.