After his return up the river to Carantouan, Brule set out for home. This time he was captured in the country of the Five Nations. When those savages discovered he was a Frenchman, they plucked his beard hair by hair, tore his nails loose with their teeth, and staked him out for fire-brand torture. But then, just before it was too late, Brule mysteriously won their favor, was roundly feted, and in the end was permitted to escape back to Huron lands. In 1618 he made his way to Three Rivers in Canada, where Champlain at the time was driving a trade for beaver pelts with the Indians, and there he reported his discoveries.
However, getting through the Iroquois country to Carantouan—and getting back to Canada—had been a dangerous exploit, one that not many French traders would desire to emulate, not unless Champlain first brought the Five Nations to complete submission by force of arms. That, of course, the great French captain was never able to do; if he had, probably the French would have overrun the valleys of the Susquehanna, the Delaware and the Hudson.
In the meantime, if the three lost Hollanders from Fort Nassau did wander into the Susquehannock stronghold, they managed to get out of it with their whole skins. Maybe, having missed Brule, they posed as friendly Frenchmen, or even as Englishmen with whom the Susquehannocks had previously enjoyed such satisfactory dealings through Captain John Smith. Eventually, however, they were taken by other Susquehannock Indians, or “Minquas,” and ended up on the lower reaches of the Delaware River as captives held for ransom.
From there, it appears, word of their predicament reached Manhattan and Fort Nassau.
At the time, the spring of 1616, the Dutch factors on Hudson’s River were anxious to explore this other great river to the south that Captain Hudson had also discovered. Already investigated were the rivers to the east and north. Captain Cornelis Jacobsen May, a trader in the employ of Hoorn merchants, had sailed east along the coast as far as Martha’s Vineyard. Another trader out of Amsterdam, Captain Adrien Block, went even farther in a small 16-ton yacht called the Onrust which he had built in New Netherland following the loss of his employers’ ship by fire. The little Onrust sailed through Long Island Sound, ascended the Connecticut, explored other streams and the bays along the coasts, and rounded Cape Cod northward to latitudes above present-day Boston.
It was claimed that Captain May had also sailed far enough south to touch at the cape that now bears his name. However, there appears to have been a little hesitancy about making any further discoveries in that direction that might be interpreted as encroaching on the English settlements in Virginia. Maybe the Dutch traders were especially cautious about disturbing the Virginians. It had been in the late fall of 1613 that the fiery tempered Englishman, Captain Samuel Argall, in a 16-gun frigate stopped off at Manhattan supposedly and forced token acknowledgement of the supremacy of the Virginia government. The Hollanders’ trade in Hudson’s River had been going very well; there had been no need to beg trouble abroad.
Now, however, the Dutch felt that their claims were better established by actual occupation on the northern river and no English were yet known to occupy or even trade upon the southern river that Hudson had discovered. Why not explore it with a view toward making further discoveries which under the Hollanders’ charter would give them additional trading privileges? And should they find their lost traders, would not those three have made enough discoveries in the hinterland to provide material for new claims—yes, even a new map of New Netherland?
So, Cornelis Hendricksen who now had the Onrust in his charge went out in that little yacht to investigate the prospects on the “South” River and to see if he might find and ransom the three traders held captive there.
Hendricksen’s voyage was entirely successful. After charting the west shores of Delaware Bay, he entered the river and ascended it possibly as high as present-day Philadelphia. The river’s banks abounded with game, the country was pleasant, and the climate which was “the same as that of Holland” delighted the crew of the Onrust. Above all, there were ample prospects of a great traffic in pelts. On the banks of the Christina where Wilmington now stands and at other places along the shores of the Delaware River, Hendricksen drove a most profitable trade with friendly Indians for “sable,” mink, otter and beaver.
And, meager though his report is in the matter of details, somewhere along the river he was successful in ransoming his three captive countrymen from the Minquas for “kettles, beads, and other merchandize.”