Historians have hitherto failed to give due weight to the attempt of Sweden to establish this American colony, and to the effect it had upon the fortunes of the West India Company. The expedition of 1655, although politically successful, not only exhausted the ready means of the New Netherland Government, but also plunged it and the Company into debts which never ceased to hamper its movement, and which afterward rendered it impossible to furnish the province a sufficient military protection.
But no less a share in the final result of 1664 is due to the second invasion of the Dutch territory, made about the time when the Swedes first appeared on the Delaware, by Englishmen crossing over from Connecticut to the east end of Long Island. The whole island had been granted by the Plymouth Company to the Earl of Stirling in 1635; and basing their claims on patents issued by Forrest, the Earl’s agent in America, the invaders quickly settled in the present County of Suffolk (1640), and resisted all efforts of the Dutch to drive them off. Prejudicial to the Company’s interests as these encroachments upon their territory were, they were calculated to call forth all the administrative and diplomatic talents of which Kieft was supposed to be possessed; but unfortunately by his lack of these qualities he contrived to lay the colony open to a danger which almost destroyed it. The trade with the interior had led to an intimacy between the Indians and the Dutch which gave the natives many chances to acquaint themselves thoroughly with the habits, strength, and usages of the settlers; while the increased demand for peltries required that the Indians should be supplied with better means to meet that demand. They were consequently given firearms; and when thus put on the same footing with the white inhabitants, Kieft committed the folly of exacting from them a tribute as a return for aiding them in their defence against their enemies by the building of forts and by the maintenance of a military establishment. He even threatened to use forcible measures in cases of non-compliance. The war resulting from this policy lasted until 1645, and seriously impaired the finances of the Company and the development of the colony. Equally arbitrary and devoid of common-sense was Kieft’s administration of internal affairs. Before the beginning of the Indian war, upon which he was intent, circumstances compelled him to make a concession to popular rights, which he might use as a cloak to protect himself against censure. He directed that the community at large should elect twelve delegates to consult with the Director and Council on the expediency of going to war, and when fairly launched into the conflict he quickly abolished this advisory board,—the first representative body of New York,—but only to ask for an expression of the public opinion by another board a few months later in 1643. This, at last disgusted with Kieft’s tyranny and folly, set to work to have him removed in 1647. The people had not forgotten that in the Netherlands they had been self-governing, and had enjoyed the rights of free municipalities. Although all the minor towns had acquired the same privileges almost at the beginning of their existence, New Amsterdam, the principal place of the colony, was still ruled by the Company through the Director and Council. The opposition which he met from the burghers of this place was the principal cause of his recall.
The relations of New Netherland with its English neighbors during Kieft’s administration were in the main the same as under his predecessors. He continued to complain of the grievous wrongs and injuries inflicted upon his people by New Haven, but had no means to do more than complain. The stronger English colonies kept their settlement on the Connecticut, and established another within the territory claimed by the Dutch at Agawam, now Springfield, Mass.
The arrival of the new director-general was celebrated by the inhabitants of New Amsterdam with all the solemnity which circumstances afforded; and they were pleased to hear him announce that he “should be in his government as a father to his children for the advantage of the Company, the country, and the burghers.” They had good reasons to be hopeful. Petrus Stuyvesant, the new director, had gathered administrative experience as governor of the Company’s Island of Curaçao, and while in Holland on sick leave, in 1645, he had proved his knowledge of New Netherland affairs by offering acceptable suggestions for the better management of this and the other transatlantic territories of the Company. His views, together with instructions drawn up by the Assembly of the Nineteen for the guidance of the director, were embodied in resolutions and orders for the future government of New Netherland, which revolutionized and liberalized the condition of the colony. It was henceforth to be governed by the Director-General and a Council composed of the vice-director and the fiscal. The right of the people to be heard by the provincial government on the state and condition of the country, through delegates from the various settlements, was confirmed; and the carrying trade between the colony and other countries, which the reform of 1639 had still left in the hands of the Company and of a few privileged persons, was now opened to all, although under certain rather onerous restrictions.
The first few months of the new administration fully justified the hope with which Stuyvesant’s arrival had been accompanied. The state in which Kieft had left the public morals compelled Stuyvesant to issue and enforce such orders, that within two months of his assuming the new duties the director of the Patroons’ Colony at Albany wrote home: “Mynheer Stuyvesant introduces here a thorough reform.” What the state of things must have been may be inferred from Stuyvesant’s declaration that “the people are without discipline, and approaching the savage state,” while “a fourth part of the city of New Amsterdam consists of rumshops and houses where nothing can be had but beer and tobacco.”
Unfortunately for his own reputation and for the good of the colony, he used his energies not solely to make provisions for future good government, but he allowed his feudal notions to embroil him in the quarrels of the late administration, by espousing the cause of Kieft, who had been accused by representatives of the commonalty of malfeasance in office. This grave error induced the home authorities to consider Stuyvesant’s recall; but he was finally allowed to remain, and in the end proved the most satisfactory administrator of the province sent out by the Company. It was his and the Company’s misfortune that he was appointed when the resources of the Company were gradually diminishing in consequence of the peace with Spain. He was thus constantly hampered by a lack of means; and when the end came, he had only from one hundred and fifty to two hundred soldiers, scattered in four garrisons from the Delaware forts to Fort Orange, to defend the colony against an overwhelming English force.
During the seventeen years of his administration Stuyvesant endeavored to cultivate the friendship of the Indians; and in this he was in the main successful, save that the tribes of the Mohegan nation along the Hudson refused to become as firm friends of the Dutch as their suzerain lords, the Mohawks, were. While Stuyvesant was absent on the South River, in 1655, to subdue, in obedience to orders from home, the Swedish settlements there, New Amsterdam was invaded by the River Indians and almost destroyed. The Colony and the Company had not yet recovered from the losses sustained by this invasion, nor from the draft made upon their financial resources by the successful expedition against the Swedes, when a few tribes of the same River Indians reopened the war against the Dutch. They first murdered some individuals of the settlement on the Esopus (now Kingston, Ulster County), and later destroyed it almost completely. With an expense at the time altogether out of proportion to the means of the Government, Stuyvesant succeeded in 1663 in ending this war by destroying the Esopus tribe of Indians.
The negotiations with the New England colonies for a settlement of the boundary and other open questions fall into the earlier part of Stuyvesant’s administration. Although he could flatter himself that he had obtained in the treaty of Hartford, 1650, as good terms as he might expect from a power vastly superior to his own, his course only tended to separate the two factions of New Netherland still farther. His espousal of Kieft’s cause had, as we have seen, alienated him from the mass of his countrymen, whose anger was now still more aroused when he selected as advisers at Hartford an Englishman resident at New Amsterdam and a Frenchman. He was accused of having betrayed his trust because he had been obliged to surrender the jurisdiction of the Company over the Connecticut territory and the east end of Long Island. Listening to these accusations, coming together as they did with the Kieft affair, the Company increased the difficulties surrounding their director by an order to make Dutch nationality one of the tests of fitness for public employment.
The people had already in Kieft’s time loudly called for more liberty,—a desire which Stuyvesant in the strong conservatism of his character was by no means willing to listen to. As, however, liberal principles gained more and more ground among the population, he at last gave his consent to the convocation of a general assembly from the several towns, which was to consider the state of the province. It was too late. The power of the Dutch in New Netherland was waning; Connecticut had been lost in 1650; Westchester at the very door of the Manhattans, and the principal towns of western Long Island were in the hands of the English; and a few months after the first meeting of the delegates the English flag floated over the fort, which had until then been called New Amsterdam.