Dutch and English on the Hudson: A Chronicle of Colonial New York

by Maud Wilder Goodwin

The natives in the region of New Amsterdam were increasingly irritated by the encroachments of the whites. They complained that stray cows spoiled their unfenced cornfields and that various other depredations endangered their crops. To add to this irritation Kieft proposed to tax the natives for the protection afforded them by the Fort, which was now being repaired at large expense. The situation, already bad enough, was further complicated by Kieft's clumsy handling of an altercation on Staten Island. Some pigs were stolen, by servants of the Company as appeared later; but the offense was charged to the Raritan Indians. Without waiting to make investigations Kieft sent out a punitive expedition of seventy men, who attacked the innocent natives, killed a number of them, and laid waste their crops. This stupid and wicked attack still further exasperated the Indians, who in the high tide of mid-summer saw their lands laid bare and their homes desolated by the wanton hand of the intruders.

Some months later the trouble between the whites and the red men was brought to a head by an unforeseen tragedy. A savage came to Claes Smits, radenmaker or wheelwright, to trade beaver for duffel cloth. As Claes stooped down to take out the duffel from a chest, the Indian seized an axe which chanced to stand near by and struck the wheelwright on the neck, killing him instantly. The murderer then stole the goods from the chest and fled to the forest.

When Kieft sent to the tribe of the Weckquaesgeecks to inquire the cause of this murder and to demand the slayer, the Indian told the chief that he had seen his uncle robbed and killed at the fort while it was being built; that he himself had escaped and had vowed revenge; and that the unlucky Claes was the first white man upon whom he had a chance to wreak vengeance. The chief then replied to the Director that he was sorry that twenty Christians had not been killed and that the Indian had done only a pious duty in avenging his uncle.

In this emergency Kieft called a meeting at which the prominent burghers chose a committee of twelve to advise the Director. This took place in 1641. The Council was headed by Captain David de Vries, whose portrait with its pointed chin, high forehead, and keen eyes, justifies his reputation as the ablest man in New Netherland. He insisted that it was inadvisable to attack the Indians—not to say hazardous. Besides, the Company had warned them to keep peace. It is interesting to speculate on what would have been the effect on the colony if the Company's choice had fallen upon De Vries instead of on Kieft as Director.

Although restrained for the time, Kieft never relinquished his purpose. On February 24, 1643, he again announced his intention of making a raid upon the Indians, and in spite of further remonstrance from De Vries he sent out his soldiers, who returned after a massacre which disgraced the Director, enraged the natives, and endangered the colony. Kieft was at first proud of his treachery; but as soon as it was known every Algonquin tribe around New Amsterdam started on the warpath. From New Jersey to the Connecticut every farm was in peril. The famous and much-persecuted Anne Hutchinson perished with her family; towns were burned; and men, women, and children fled in panic.

On the approach of spring, when the Indians had to plant their corn or face famine, sachems of the Long Island Indians sought a parley with the Dutch. De Vries and Olfertsen volunteered to meet the savages. In the woods near Rockaway they found nearly three hundred Indians assembled. The chiefs placed the envoys in the center of the circle, and one among them, who had a bundle of sticks, laid down one stick at a time as he recounted the wrongs of his tribe. This orator told how the red men had given food to the settlers and were rewarded by the murder of their people, how they had protected and cherished the traders, and how they had been abused in return. At length De Vries, like the practical man that he was, suggested that they all adjourn to the Fort, promising them presents from the Director.

The chiefs consented to meet the Director and eventually were persuaded to make a treaty of peace; but Kieft's gifts were so niggardly that the savages went away with rancor still in their hearts, and the war of the races continued its bloody course. It is no wonder that when De Vries left the Governor on this occasion, he told Kieft in plain terms of his guilt and predicted that the shedding of so much innocent blood would yet be avenged upon his own head. This prophecy proved a strangely true one. When recalled by the States-General in 1647, Kieft set out for Holland on the ship Princess, carrying with him the sum of four hundred thousand guilders. The ship was wrecked in the Bristol channel and Kieft was drowned.

The evil that Kieft did lived after him and the good, if interred with his bones, would not have occupied much space in the tomb. The only positive advance during his rule—and that was carried through against his will—was the appointment of an advisory committee of the twelve men, representing the householders of the colony, who were called together in the emergency following the murder of Claes Smits, and in 1643 of a similar board of eight men, who protested against his arbitrary measures and later procured his recall.

After the departure of Kieft the most picturesque figure of the period of Dutch rule in America appeared at New Amsterdam, Petrus or Pieter Stuyvesant. We have an authentic portrait in which the whole personality of the man is writ large. The dominant nose, the small, obstinate eyes, the close-set, autocratic mouth, tell the character of the man who was come to be the new and the last Director-General of New Netherland. As Director of the West India Company's colony at Curaçao, Stuyvesant had undertaken the task of reducing the Portuguese island of St. Martin and had lost a leg in the fight. This loss he repaired with a wooden leg, of which he professed himself prouder than of all his other limbs together and which he had decorated with silver bands and nails, thus earning for him the sobriquet of "Old Silver Nails." Still, so the legend runs, Peter Stuyvesant's ghost at night "stumps to and fro with a shadowy wooden leg through the aisles of St. Mark's Church near the spot where his bones lie buried." But many events were to happen before those bones were laid in the family vault of the chapel on his bouwerie.

When Stuyvesant reached the country over which he was to rule, it was noted by the colonists that his bearing was that of a prince. "I shall be as a father over his children," he told the burghers of New Amsterdam, and in this patriarchal capacity he kept the people standing with their heads uncovered for more than an hour, while he wore his hat. How he bore out this first impression we may gather from The Representation of New Netherland, an arraignment of the Director, drawn up and solemnly attested in 1650 by eleven responsible burghers headed by Adrian Van der Donck, and supplemented by much detailed evidence. The witnesses express the earnest wish that Stuyvesant's administration were at an end, for they have suffered from it and know themselves powerless. Whoever opposes the Director "hath as much as the sun and moon against him." In the council he writes an opinion covering several pages and then adds orally: "This is my opinion. If any one have aught to object to it, let him express it!" If any one ventures to make any objection, his Honor flies into a passion and rails in language better fitted to the fish-market than to the council-hall.