1645.] END OF THE INDIAN WAR. 463 pose of the Eight Men was gained: Kieft's recall was determined upon, and decreed on the tenth of December. A provisional appointment of Van Dincklage, the former sheriff, as his successor, was revoked in May, in favor of Peter Stuyvesant, the commander at Curaçoa, who had come home for surgical treatment, having lost a leg in an attack on the Portuguese at their Island of St. Martin. The Chamber of Accounts, to whom the matter was referred, reported in favor of the political changes recommended by the Eight Men, and against Kieft's conduct of the Indian war, and his earlier advice that the savages be exterminated. They suggested a great number of advantageous changes in the administration of New Netherland, and for the first time, taught by hard experience, admitted that a colony could not be made successful if managed solely for the immediate and selfish ends which had hitherto been sought by the Company in America, without regard to permanence or to the popular good. Hall of the States General. There was a delay, nevertheless, of a year between determination and execution; but in the mean time the assurance of what was intended was enough greatly to encourage the anxious colonists at Manhattan. Kieft had a hard life now that it was known how soon he would be powerless to trouble them; and he only aroused more bitter opposition by attempting to repress by summary trials the boldness of those who now denounced him openly. A happier event, however, than even the recall of the hated director, soon rejoiced the colony, and gave promise of the better days that were believed to be in store. With the spring of 1645, the Indians themselves began to show a wish for peace, and as early as April the colonists were glad Treaties with to conclude a treaty with some of the tribes about them, the Indians. Kieft willingly consenting, in the hope, perhaps, of still retrieving his } reputation with the Amsterdam directors. One treaty followed another. In May the mediation of an Indian ally secured a lasting peace with the tribes along Long Island Sound; and in July, Kieft, aided by the patroon's men at Fort Orange and Rensselaers wyck, brought about a similar agreement with the Mohawks and their neighbors on the upper river. Only the tribes immediately about Manhattan remained, and with these, who also wanted quiet that they might go back to planting and trading, and escape the vengeance which Underhill's victory showed was in store for them sooner or later, negotiations were equally successful. On the 30th of August, 1645, the citizens of New Amsterdam assembled at the end of the island, on the ground. still known as the Battery, and Smoking the Pipe of Peace. witnessed the smoking of the pipe of peace, and the conclusion of a general treaty with all the hostile tribes. On the 6th of September New Netherland held a day of thanksgiving for the ending of the long and terrible Indian war. Throughout the desolated colonies about Manhattan, proprietors and laborers began to rebuild and to cultivate again with renewed courage; but the country had received a check from which it revived but slowly. Sixteen hundred of the savages, indeed, had been killed; but there was not a single Dutch settlement, except that at Rensselaerswyck and the military post on South River, that had not been attacked and generally destroyed. Besides a few traders there were left upon Manhattan Island scarcely a hundred people, and throughout the whole province not more than three hundred men capable of bearing arms could have been mustered. 1637.] AFFAIRS ON THE FRONTIERS. 465 The year and more which yet remained of Kieft's administration, was a time of petty quarrels between him and his officers and the popular representatives. The Domine Bogardus denounced the governor from the pulpit, as he had done his predecessor, as a vessel of wrath and a fountain of woe and trouble. Kieft retorted by having cannon fired, drums beaten, and all kinds of noisy games carried on about the church on Sunday. His officers and soldiers were by no means reluctant to give implicit obedience in a warfare of this sort, and for a time the town was kept, between the domine and the governor, in a state of unusual liveliness. Military disaster and civil misrule had brought affairs to such a pass that in the order of nature a change must come, either of reconstruction or absolute dissolution. The "beloved peace" which the new governor was to bring must have wings broad enough to stretch over army, state, and church. Meanwhile affairs on the frontiers of New Netherland were in nearly, if not quite, as bad a state as on the island of Manhattan The steady aggression of the New Englanders had left the Dutch but the merest nominal foothold in Connecticut and eastern Long Island; and the serious attempt that had been made in 1641-1642, to settle the question of rights and boundaries, had resulted only in the usual empty talk about an arbitration which never came. The Dutch settlement at little Fort Good Hope was more a source of amusement than apprehension to the authorities of the thriving town of Hartford, the Dutchmen listening sometimes to remonstrances and reproaches, and sometimes submitting to outrages they could not resist. Dutch control in the Connecticut Valley was gone. On the southern borders of their possessions, however, events of a more positive character had occupied the years of Kieft's unhappy rule. Fort Nassau, reoccupied a few years before, held undisputed control of the beautiful region of the South River; the old importance of the district as an Indian tradingground had been reëstablished, and the English had ceased to molest the Dutch in this part of their territory, when about the time of Kieft's arrival at Manhattan a new nation appeared on that river. These colonies were to have a brief life, but to leave a lasting impress upon the region where they were established. William Usselinex, of Antwerp, who had first proposed and had succeeded in establishing the Dutch West India Company, visited Sweden, in 1624, and urged upon the king the great value which the founding of colonies in America, and the trade that would spring from them, must certainly be to his kingdom and people. The wise and liberal Gustavus Adolphus was fully capable of comprehending the broad views of the Holland merchant, and entertained them warmly. Usselincx set forth the advantages of his plan in a religious, political, and A Swedish commercial aspect. He showed that the establishment of a Swedish West India Company would benefit the state, in the spread of the Christian religion; in adding to the power and splenformed. dor of the sovereign; and in the decrease of taxes, while it augmented the general commercial prosperity of the people. Reward would surely come to a state aiding the cause of Christ; the state itself would have "another eye;" by reason of the increased revenue "every industrious man would thrive ;" and it would greatly tend, said Usselinex, in conclusion, "to the honor of God, to man's eternal welfare, to his majesty's service, and to the good of the kingdom." The project was accepted by the king and the Diet, and accompanied with the most favorable conditions for Usselincx himself, who was to share largely in the profits. Gustavus Adolphus fell at Lützen, in 1632, before the absorbing importance of his great campaigns had permitted him to take any practical steps toward the carrying out of the plan; but he had it constantly at heart, and just before his death had drawn up a proclamation in which he called the project "the jewel of his kingdom.” Fortunately, it was left in worthy hands. The chancellor Oxenstiern, who appreciated its importance as fully as the king, published the proclamation, urged on the undertaking with energy and wisdom, and in December, 1634, secured the passage of a full and definite charter for the Swedish West India Company. But, as in the case of the similar Company in the Netherlands, it was several years before the corporation was ready to act. Swedish colony under Peter Min uit. 1637. The hope of profitable employment from this Company led to Sweden the discharged director of the New Netherland colony, Peter Minuit. He pointed out to Oxenstiern how useful his experience might be to the Swedes. When the Company was fully organized he was put in command of its first expedition. In the autumn of 1637, Minuit set sail from Gottenburg in the Key of Calmar, accompanied by a tender called the Griffin, with about fifty emigrants. The neighborhood of the South River was the region upon which he had fixed for his settlement. The two vessels entered Delaware Bay in April, 1638, and sailed up the river as far as the "Minqua's Kill," as it was then called by the Dutch. To this stream the Swedes gave the name of their queen, Christina, since corrupted into Christiana, and here Minuit made a treaty with the Indian sachem of the region, buying, for a kettle and some trifling wares, all the land on the west side of the South River, from Cape Henlopen to the falls near Santickan (now Trenton), and "as much inwards from it in breadth as they might want."1 The spot they chose for their 1 Acrelius' Hist. of New Sweden, translated in N. Y. Hist. Soc. Coll., New Series, vol. i., p. 409; Hudde's Report on the Swedish Colony, ib., 439. |