New demands

The patroon difficulties had been partly settled—or at least so the directors hoped by the Company's buying back Pavoniapower from and Swaanendael, thus opening new fields for their trade. the patroons. But though the Company was rid of a few competitors by this means, Van Rensselaer and his fellows, among whom were some new proprietors, had been growing stronger and more prosperous while the affairs of the corporation were mismanaged. Taking advantage of their own strength and the Company's weakness, they proposed a remedy of their own for the troubles and abuses which the directors were striving to cure. This was that their already enormous privileges should be largely increased, and their irresponsible jurisdiction be still more extended.

Action of the
West India
Company.

This extraordinary request was promptly refused; but it was evident that something must be done, if the Company would save itself from the horns of a very awkward dilemma. It had not power enough to assume a high tone with the patroons unless the States aided it; and they on the other hand would not aid it unless it showed itself, capable of the better government of its colony. In this crisis the chamber at Amsterdam, with the assent of the Council of Nineteen, adopted a measure which in some degree redeemed its former folly, and solved the question, so far as could be done by half measures. It resolved to do what should have been done long before, and in a proclamation, in the fall of 1638, it opened the New Netherland trade to virtually free competition. People of the United Provinces, and their "allies and friends" of whatever nation, might convey any cattle, merchandise, or goods to New Netherland in the Company's ships, and receive "whatever returns they or their agents might be able to obtain in those quarters therefor," subject to a duty of ten per cent. on imports and fifteen per cent. on exports. "And whereas," said the proclamation further, "it is the intention of the Company to people the lands there more and more, and to bring them into a proper state of cultivation, the director and council there shall be instructed to accommodate every one, according to his condition and means, with as much land as he, by him and his family, can properly cultivate;" such lands to become the absolute property of the possessor, on payment of a quitrent of one tenth of the produce to the Company. Any colonist taking advantage of this provision had only to promise to submit to the laws in force in New Netherland; and even further privileges, such as free passages, and aid in bringing over stock for their prospective farms, were granted by the Amsterdam directors to desirable emigrants.

This wise and timely act placed New Netherland where it had never been before — on an equality, so far, with the English colonies

1640.]

BETTER TIMES IN NEW NETHERLAND.

447

Hol

about it. The change the measure wrought in its condition was great and immediate. Emigration from Holland began in the very Increased autumn after the issue of the proclamation, De Vries, who emigration had bought land on Staten Island, being one of the first land. to carry out colonists to the plantation. During the next summer ship after ship brought emigrants, people of all conditions, from substantial burghers to the laborers whom they had employed at home. From an unprofitable trading-post New Netherland suddenly became, in the eyes of Hollanders, a very land of promise. Those who emigrated to it wrote to their friends at home of the prosperity which

began to spring up about them; rich men, like Melyn of Antwerp, who came "to see the country," sent back for their families and servants to join them. Nor was the immigration from the Netherlands only; men who had long been restless under the severity of Puritan rule began to seek new homes among the tolerant Dutch; "whole settlements," says the record, removed to Dutch territory to avail themselves of the new freedom offered there, and "to escape from the insupportable government of New England." Many came from Virginia also, who had been bound to masters there, and had served out their time.

1 The phrase of the Journael Van Nieuw Nederlant, 1647. See, also, O'Callaghan, vol. i., p. 208.

The town of New Amsterdam.

The main current of this sudden immigration set toward Manhattan Island and the region about it, though the colonies farther up the river and on Staten Island also benefited by it. On Manhattan itself, where the "town of New Amsterdam" was now first becoming worthy of such a name, thirty wellstocked bouweries [farms] had taken the place, in the summer of 1639, of the few neglected ones noticed in Kieft's first report, and there were applications for grants of land for a hundred more. Kieft had bought from the Indians, in view of the growing demand, nearly all the land that now forms Queen's County, and part of that in southern Westchester, and this began to be peopled. A part of the shore of the bay, north of the entrance to the Kill van Kull, was also purchased, besides private tracts in different places. Prosperity seemed to follow every enterprise of the new comers, and many of the old abuses vanished with the coming of a better class of people. The Virginians brought cherry and peach trees, which were soon abundant in the island bouweries; and they introduced from the south their better method of tobacco-culture. Far up the river, close by Fort Orange, the little village of Beverswyck, which had grown up on the lands of Van Rensselaer and was the central point of his manor, shared in the new immigration. The only one of the original patroonships that had succeeded, its prosperity well maintained under the capable Van Curler, attracted many, and the persistent efforts of its owner sent still more. Its fertile farms and excellent houses gave the appearance of more rapid growth than was visible at Manhattan, but its feudal restrictions nevertheless were a serious drawback to its progress, which was less real than that at the river's mouth. In

Journey of

1640 the restless De Vries made a voyage up the Hudson, De Vries up of which he gives an elaborate account in his journal; and though he appreciated all the material prosperity of Rensselaerswyck, his quick eye did not fail to note that the patroons had

the Hudson.

very much embellished" their property, at the cost of the Company, "and that they had well known how to turn things to their own advantage." Their policy, like the earlier policy of the Company itself, was too selfish for the permanent success of their colonies in any large and popular sense.

In this same year, 1640, the College of Nineteen passed an ordinance materially changing the charter of Privileges and Exemptions, and limiting the lands of future patroons to a water front of one mile, and a depth of two miles; it left them their feudal privileges, but put disputes between them under the jurisdiction of the governor of Manhattan. Furthermore, it recognized any one, who should take five settlers to the colony, as a "master," entitled to two hundred acres of

1640.]

NEW DIFFICULTIES AND DANGERS.

449

land, and such "masters or colonists" might form themselves into towns or villages with municipal privileges; it established a second class of patroons, restricting them to one mile of water-front, and whoever chose might trade at New Netherland in the Company's ships, by the payment of certain imposts. It was a great improvement upon the old charter, curtailed the powers of the old patroons and extended their privileges to the people at large.

This removal of the restrictions upon free emigration, upon the possession of land, and upon the freedom of trade, increased Progress of at once and largely the prosperity of the colony. The emi- the colony. grant naturally preferred to hold his lands directly from the Company, rather than from a manorial proprietor and master, and the possibility of doing so was an inducement to remove to a new country. He was a free man, not a serf. This fundamental change in the colonial policy made all the difference between a community possessing the elements of success, and one so bound and crippled by its laws, that to escape from, not to seek it, was an instinctive impulse.

New difficul

A healthy and rapid progress might now be looked for, but there. were dangers and difficulties to be encountered from without. On the one hand were the encroachments of the Eng- ties and lish upon territory claimed by the Dutch which had to be met; on the other the more serious and more alarming peril of Indian hostilities.

dangers.

CHANGE OF POLICY TOWARD THE INDIANS.KIEFT'S CRUEL AND STUPID OBSTINACY.- - MASSACRE OF INDIANS BY THE DUTCH AT PAVONIA. - RETALIATIONS BY THE NATIVES.- MURDER OF THE HUTCHINSON FAMILY AT ANNIE'S HOECK. - DISASTROUS CONDITION OF THE COLONY. APPEAL OF THE PEOPLE OF NEW AMSTERDAM TO THE STATES GENERAL.-END OF THE WAR.- KIEFT REMOVED FROM OFFICE. - TERRITORIAL ENCROACHMENTS OF RIVAL COLONIES. THE ENGLISH AT THE EAST. A SWEDISH SETTLEMENT ON THE DELAWARE. - FORT CHRISTINA. - THE SWEDISH GOVERNOR, JOHN PRINTZ.

THE wisdom and justice which the Dutch had hitherto shown in their treatment of the savages gradually disappeared under Kieft's administration. The agents of the Company, in their intercourse with the Indians, had been governed by a uniform practice; but when

trade was made free and competition grew with its increase, fraud and oppression followed among Indian traders, who had little regard — then as now for any rules but the rules of addition and multiplication. This reckless love of gain sowed the seeds of future trouble in