This certainly ensures for the tales the firm belief of all mankind. When an imaginative Hibernian or a lively, light-hearted Gaul announces a vision, it must be taken with some little allowance for flights of fancy, etc., etc.; but when a phlegmatic, cool-headed Hollander declares he has seen a spook, you may believe as if it was your own eyes.
For the precise period most prolific in signs, sights, and dreams, we must go back to the early days of our state, yet not to the first settlers. Their troubles, so numerous that it is scarcely possible to number them, had their origin in things tangible; and so closely did these troubles press daily on all sides, that the thoughts of the first colonists were entirely engrossed by the things of earth. To such a point did this downward tendency reach, that they seemed at times in danger of relapsing into heathendom, as may be seen from the reports sent back to Amsterdam, and yet extant among colonial papers, that they possessed neither school-houses nor churches. They did possess, however, three unfailing sources of annoyances and danger—an Indian warfare, neighbors on their eastern boundary of unparalleled audacity, and domestic bickerings in the perpetual strife kept up between Manhattan and Rensselaerwyck.
What might have happened if the Indians had been treated with common justice and honesty can be now only conjecture; but their wrongs began at the beginning. It is a dark
spot on the glories of the adventurous little yacht Half-Moon that her very first track through the waters of the magnificent Cahohatéa (now the Hudson) was marked with their blood, causelessly and wantonly shed.
Hendrik Hudson and his crew landed, we are told, on the western bank of the great bay, which was lined with “men, women, and children, by whom they were kindly received, and presented with tobacco and dried currants.”[68] A little further on were “very loving people and very old men, by whom the Europeans were well used.” They brought in their canoes to the voyagers all sorts of fruit and game, and on one occasion of a visit made by white men to the shore they broke their arrows and threw them in the fire to express their pacific intentions. Yet despite all this, when the vessel had advanced only a few miles, one of her crew fired and killed an Indian, without the least warning, for attempting to steal a pillow and some old garments.[69] No satisfaction was offered to the terrified savages, and they pushed off for the shore in their canoes, but they vowed a vengeance, and they kept the vow; so that, when some few years later one ship after another brought the enterprising individuals who first unpacked their household utensils and farm tools in the New World, they entered upon a stormy existence already prepared for them. It was not a glimpse of wraith or goblin that people feared to encounter in the lonely by-path, but the stealthy tread and dark visage of some lurking savage, ever watchful and merciless, ever close at hand when least expected. How often in the silent night, in how many little hamlets, in how many solitary huts, women and children
listened in speechless terror to the war-whoop, that fearful yell, and were made to feel Indian retaliation for the evil doings of fathers and husbands! Small time had they for ghostly fears. When the savages fled before European firearms, it was only to return. More than two thousand of them appeared in their canoes at one time before the little block-house at Manhattan, because Hendrik von Dyke, with an imprudence and wickedness perfectly disgraceful in a mynheer, had killed a squaw for stealing apples in his orchard. His orchard was on the present site of Rector Street.
But, though the Dutch colonists were generally at fault in provoking contention, they were also valiant, after some preparation, to meet it. When Claes Smit was ruthlessly murdered by the natives, some time about 1642, and they refused either to give up or punish his murderer because he had fled and could not be found, the colonists consented to march to battle,
“provided the director himself (Von Kieft) accompanied them to prevent disorder, also that he furnish, in addition to powder and ball, provision necessary for the expedition, such as bread and butter, and appoint a steward to take charge of the same, so that all waste be prevented.
“If any person require anything more than this bread and butter, he to provide himself therewith.”[70]
Finally, however, gunpowder prevailed; and the aborigines retreated to forests beyond the reach of the pale-faces; schoolmasters and ministers had been sent over from Holland, and the inhabitants of Manhattan Island, as well as the other little settlements up the river, began to live a