So it was that he sought out Samuel Blommaert who, embittered by the failure of his Swanendael patroonship, also felt he had reason for complaint against his former associates in the West India Company. According to Blommaert, it was their parsimonious policies on such matters as the fur trade and military protection for new plantations that had caused the fiasco at Whorekill. Anxious now to show up the stupidity of their management, he was attempting to form a Dutch-Swedish opposition company under Swedish protection for operations in the “West Indies.”
When Minuit came on the scene, with his firsthand knowledge of New Netherland, things began to happen fast. Blommaert’s project quickly crystallized into a fur trading company with the specific intent of colonizing the valley of the South River where the patroon himself had formerly adventured. It remained only for Minuit to offer his expert services as leader of such an expedition to the Swedish crown, and royal sanction and assistance were forthcoming for the venture.
“Pierre” Minuit, for that is what the Hollanders often called him when he was their governor in New Netherland, had been born a French Huguenot in the German city of Wessel. It is not strange that his nationalism was therefore elastic enough to meet almost any demands of his ambition and ability. About the only point at which Minuit might have hesitated in those bigoted times would have been an association with Catholics. Certainly, to serve under the banner of Sweden, a protestant nation allied in the crusade against Spain, required a minimum degree of adaptability, especially as Sweden’s official excuse for a colony in America was that it would provide a base for attacking the common enemy at his weakest spot.
Half the subscriptions for the venture in “New Sweden” were raised in Sweden and half in Holland, with Samuel Blommaert the largest single subscriber. Although the Swedish government furnished two well-armed ships, Kalmar Nyckel and Gripen, as well as all other weapons and ammunition, the cost of the expedition to the company ran to 33,000 florins by the time it sailed from Gothenburg in the closing days of 1637.
If Minuit was lucky however, a single Spanish prize would be enough to cancel out this unexpectedly high debt. Otherwise the New Sweden Company looked to the Indian fur trade to pay it off in a season or two.
Almost half of the invested capital was for cargo that consisted mainly of the merchandise needed for the Indian trade. Axes, hatchets, adzes, knives, tobacco pipes, looking-glasses, cheap trinkets, duffels and other cloth weaved in Holland were purchased by Blommaert and shipped to Sweden where they were loaded aboard the two ships. So were a few tools for farming, as well as some spirituous liquors and wines to be traded either in Virginia or the West Indies for tobacco. The tobacco was to be brought into Sweden where people had lately developed a taste for it. But the furs would be sold in Holland, a better market for foreign skins.
No act of fate guided Peter Minuit to the site he chose for the Swedish beachhead in America. It was on Minquas Kill, a little stream from the west emptying into the estuary of the Delaware River. The Indians from whom the stream acquired its name had often used its course in their raids against the Lenape. Minuit doubtless knew all about Minquas Kill from reports he had received from Dutch traders when he was Governor of New Netherland. He knew it was navigable by small boats almost to the borders of the Minqua country, where a trade might be joined for the rich pelts then finding their way to the English on Chesapeake Bay. Also, he well knew that the site he selected on this stream was a protected though strategic one from which, once fortified and garrisoned properly, further encroachment on the Dutch West India Company’s South River preserves might be safely launched.
For a kettle and other trifles Minuit bought enough land from a local sachem to erect a couple of houses, emplace some cannon and palisade “Fort Christina”—which was named in honor of the Queen of Sweden and which was the beginning of Wilmington, Delaware. Then, he managed to attract a few other Lenape chieftains from up and down the Delaware who were perfectly willing to cede all the land that he wanted for New Sweden in return for the colorful merchandise he offered.
There was some argument later about these “deeds,” that is, after they were “lost.” Not only was their geographical extent challenged, which the Swedes claimed to be the west side of the Delaware from Duck Creek up to the Schuylkill; but other purchasers, in particular the Dutch to whom the Lenape were equally accommodating, laid claim to identical grants from the Indians. The English did too, in at least one case.
Of course the Hollanders came down the river from Fort Nassau, shortly after the Swedes arrived, to find out what was going on. But Minuit, experienced in handling them, gave it out that he was only stopping in Minquas Kill for wood and water on his way to the West Indies. In this he was telling the truth, strictly speaking, for he and both of his ships were moving on to that part of the new world to exchange their liquor for tobacco and to try for Spanish prizes before returning to Europe. What he neglected to say was that he was building a fort to be left garrisoned with 24 men, collecting return cargoes of furs and leaving a sloop on the river to collect more.