An Indian war.
The singular lack of tact displayed by Governor Kieft led to an Algonquian Indian uprising (1643-45), which resulted in the death of sixteen hundred savages, but left the border settlements in ruins, and seriously checked colonial growth for several years. The Algonkins being enemies of the Iroquois, the friendship originally formed between the Dutch and the latter was not disturbed by this outbreak.
Attempts to foster colonization.
In 1640 the company fixed the limits of a patroon's estate at one mile along the river front and two miles in depth, but did not disturb the feudal privileges. As a counter-influence, a new class of settlers was provided for. Any one going to New Netherland with five other emigrants might take two hundred acres of land as a bounty and be independent of the patroons. A species of local self-government was also provided for at this time, the officers of each town or village being chosen by the directors of the company from a list made up by the inhabitants. These inducements do not seem to have attracted many colonists, for when Peter Stuyvesant came out as governor (1647), and strutted about Manhattan "like a peacock,—as if he were the Czar of Muscovy," there were only three hundred fighting men in the entire province.
Up to this time the people had been obliged to rely chiefly on petitions as a means of presenting their political grievances. |The colonists struggling for political rights.| In 1641 Kieft had been forced by popular opinion to call a council of twelve deputies from the several settlements to advise him in regard to treatment of the Indians, and again in 1644 to consult as to taxes; but he rode rough-shod over the deputies. The public outcry over this arbitrary conduct led to his recall and the institution of some minor reforms. Under Stuyvesant there was formed a council of nine, the members being selected by him from a list of popular nominations. The board was so arranged as to be self-perpetuating, and the people, after the original election, ceased to have any hand in its makeup. In an important struggle between Stuyvesant and the residents of New Amsterdam (1651) relative to an excise tax, the director general was obliged to yield.
A heterogeneous population.
A source of anxiety to the rulers of New Netherland was the heterogeneous character of the population. The first permanent settlers had been the Walloons. The Dutch themselves soon followed. Besides these were several bands of Protestant reformers who had fled from persecution in Europe, and numerous sectaries from New England who had found life intolerable there. There were so many French-speaking people in the district that public documents were often printed both in French and Dutch. In 1643 it was reported that eighteen languages were spoken in New Amsterdam.
Encroachments by the Swedes.
The South Company of Sweden sent out a colony in 1638 under charge of Minuit, formerly employed by the Dutch West India Company. He built Fort Christina, on the future site of Wilmington, Del., and called the country New Sweden. The Dutch governor at New Amsterdam vainly protested against this occupation of territory claimed by his employers. Two years later (1641) a party of Englishmen from New Haven built trading-houses on the Schuylkill, and at Salem, N. J., near Fort Nassau, but were soon compelled to leave. The Swedish enterprise went unchecked until Stuyvesant's rule, when a fort was built (1651) on the site of Newcastle, Del., below the Swedish fort; and four years after this (1655) the South Company was obliged, upon display of force, to abandon its enterprise.
85. Conquest of New Netherland (1664).