When the Raritan Indians, living near New Amsterdam, refused to pay the protection money in 1641 and attacked an outlying Dutch colony, Kieft declared brutal war on them. Two years later, he put the squeeze on the Wappinger Indians, who lived along the Hudson River above Manhattan. To convince them of the wisdom of paying tribute, he unleashed the Mohawks on them. The Wappingers fled down to Pavonia (present-day Jersey City, New Jersey), just across the Hudson from Manhattan. Failing to understand the situation, they appealed to Kieft for aid. In response, he dispatched the Mohawks to Pavonia, then sent Dutch troops in to finish off the refugees. During the night of February 25-26, 1643, Dutch soldiers killed men, women, and children in what was later called the “Slaughter of the Innocents.” The heads of 80 Indians were brought back to New Amsterdam, where soldiers and citizens used them as footballs. Thirty prisoners were publicly tortured to death.
Following the atrocity, 11 local tribes united in waging war against the settlers of New Netherland. Kieft frantically parleyed with the Indians, fruitlessly seeking peace. His own colony, panic-stricken, threatened rebellion. At last, in 1645, the Dutch West India Company recalled Kieft to Holland and replaced him with a crotchety one-legged son of a Calvinist minister, Peter Stuyvesant.
The autocratic Stuyvesant immediately set about whipping the colony into shape, restricting the sale of alcohol and persecuting Quakers and Lutherans, whom he feared would lead the impending revolt. On the positive side, he tried earnestly to provide an honest and efficient administration, including a limited public works campaign of improving roads, repairing fences, constructing a wharf on the East River, and building a defensive wall on the northern edge of New Amsterdam along a “crosstown” pathway that would be named for it: Wall Street.
As to the Indians, Stuyvesant strove to reestablish trading relationships, but he continued Kieft’s policy of ruthlessness, especially against the Esopus, whose children he took and held as hostages in 1.659 to insure the tribe’s “good behavior.” And when the Esopus refused to yield all of their children as directed, Stuyvesant sold those he held into the West Indian slave trade. Their parents never saw them again.
It was, however, Stuyvesant’s despotism in governing the colony itself that led to the decay of his power, as the burghers of New Amsterdam clamored for increased self-government, which the West India Company finally granted them. Beyond the confines of New Netherland, Stuyvesant had mixed success in dealing with the colonies of other European powers, beginning with New Sweden.
Sweden In the Delaware Valley
In 1655, Stuyvesant expanded his colony into the Delaware Valley. The fact that the region was already held by Sweden did not deter him. He simply invaded, and New Sweden just as simply yielded. The colony had been founded by Manhattan’s own Peter Minuit, who, having been recalled from New Netherland to Holland in 1631, subsequently entered into the service of Sweden (Minuit was neither Dutch nor Swedish by nationality, but had been born in the Duchy of Cleves, a Germanic state). In any case, the New Sweden Company, formed in 1633, was a joint Swedish and Dutch enterprise. Minuit led the company’s first expedition in 1.638 and established a settlement on the site of present-day Wilmington, Delaware, which he named Fort Christina in honor of the Swedish queen. Within a short time, the Dutch dropped out of the colony, and New Sweden, lying along Delaware River in what is now Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, became exclusively Swedish. Under the administration of governors Johan Bjornsson Printz (1, 643-53) and Johan Claesson Rising (1654-55), friction developed with New Netherland, and Stuyvesant invaded, annexing the territory. Thus concluded the cameo appearance of Sweden as an actor on the New World stage.
New Netherland Becomes New York
But for Stuyvesant, it was win a little, lose a little—and then lose it all. Relations between New Netherland and New England became increasingly strained as the colonies competed for Indian loyalty and trade. The Dutch were at a disadvantage not just militarily, but also as victims of the settlement scheme established by the Dutch West India Company. Whereas the English settled New England, Virginia, and the other southern colonies with relative speed, putting in place a combination of wealthy planters and yeoman farmers, Dutch settlement was hampered by the patroon system, a process whereby land grants of approximately 16 miles along one side of the Hudson (and other navigable rivers) or about 8 miles on both banks (and extending for unspecified distances away from the river) were made to absentee landlords who installed tenant farmers. Thus New Netherland was largely a colony of tenants rather than property holders, and this state of affairs retarded settlement and made patriotism among the New Netherlanders pretty much a lost cause. Even in the 17th century, tenancy, as opposed to ownership, went counter to the American Dream.
By the 1660s, New Netherland was weak and torn by dissension. Peter Stuyvesant stumped about on his peg leg and rattled his saber, but he could not rally his countrymen. On September 8, 1664, a fleet of British warships sailed up the Hudson. The Dutch colonists simply declined to offer resistance, leaving a supremely frustrated Stuyvesant no choice but to surrender, albeit on the important condition that the West India Company continue to enjoy substantial trading rights. The British promptly renamed both the colony and its chief town after the Duke of York (the future King James II), and Stuyvesant retired peacefully to his farm, which he called the Bouwerie. Through the years, the tranquil country path passing through his farm was transformed. In the 19th century, it became a racy street of inexpensive theaters, and, by the early 20th, a gray and dilapidated avenue of cheap bars known as the Bowery and symbolic of other American dreams that somehow went awry.
The Least You Need to Know
The French claimed vast tracts of land, but failed to adequately colonize them.
Although they set up a lively trade with the Indians, the Dutch likewise failed to create an enduring colony.
Word for the Day
Canada and the northeastern United States are filled with Frenchified Indian place names. Quebec is how an Algonquian Indian word meaning “abrupt narrowing of the river” sounded to Champlain’s French ears. Quebec City is located at the narrow head of the St. Lawrence River estuary.
Word for the Day
The terms Algonquin,Algonquian cause confusion. “Algonquin” describes any of various Native American peoples who live or lived in the Ottawa River valley of Quebec and Ontario. “Algonquian” is a family of Indian languages. Tribes linguistically related through dialects of this language are collectively referred to as Algonquian—not Algonquin. The other major Indian linguistic family in eastern North America is the Iroquoian.