him that he returned to the Connecticut valley only to die, (1747.) His place was taken in Pennsylvania by Moravian missionaries, (1748,) whose labors, protracted to a much later period, came to such sad results as have just been described. The missionary would convert the Indians; the colonist would hunt them to death. Alas, that so little was wrought by the friend and the teacher, in comparison with the vast achievements of the foe and the destroyer!

Wars

CHAPTER IV.

DUTCH WARS.

RETURNING to trace the fortunes of the Dutch

with In- settlement of New Netherland, we immediately dians. find it, like its English neighbors, at war with the Indians, whom we may call Manhattans of the Algonquin race. Vexed by the traders, oppressed by the officials of the colony, the Manhattans had provocation enough to take up arms at an early period. But the vicinity of their dreaded foes, the Mohawks of the Five Nations, who were disposed to be friends with the Dutch, kept them at peace until peace was impossible. The incursions of the Indians into the Dutch settlements, and the horrid massacres inflicted by the Dutch in return, were of the same nature as the hostilities already described, (1640–43.) A temporary truce was instantly broken by a general war, spreading from the main land to the islands, and devastating almost the whole of the colony. But for a company of English settlers, just fresh from encounters with the Indians, it would have gone hard with New Netherland. As it was, the exhaustion of the colony was as great as that of its foes, when a treaty terminated the war, (1643–45.) Thrice, however, within the next twenty years, the Indians rose against the still oppressive Dutchmen, (1655, 1658, 1663.)

The increase of New Netherland was arrrested by

Effect

upon New

Netherland..

these repeated wars. A contemporary document* (1644) dwells upon the favorable prospects of the colony after the fur trade was thrown open, (1638,) as previously mentioned. "At which time," we are told, “the inhabitants there resident not only spread themselves far and wide, but new colonists came thither from fatherland, and the neighboring English, as well from Virginia as from New England, removed under us.” The hopes thus inspired are expressly stated to have been blasted by the Indian wars.

Internal restric

Had the wars never occurred, the colony would have had no rapid progress. In itself it was divided tions. by what may be called castes. The patroons, for instance, were an order by themselves, not necessarily hostile to the authorities or unfriendly to the colonists, yet often proving to be one or both. Then the colony lay at the mercy of the company and its director, whose supremacy was shared by none but a few officials and councillors. The attempts at representation on the part of the more substantial colonists, were of no avail. Boards of twelve, eight, and nine men were successively established, with the director's consent, but without any power to restrain him or to elevate themselves. It was at length resolved by the nine men to draw up a statement of their grievances to be laid before the government of the mother country. But the member charged with preparing the document, Adrian Van der Donck, was robbed of his papers, thrown into prison, and expelled from the board of the nine men as well as from the director's council, in which he had a seat, (1649.) Liberated from his imprisonment, Van der Donck set sail for Holland, with other representatives of the cause for which he had suffered. His exertions there brought about

* In O'Callaghan's History of New Netherland, Appendix E.

a provincial order from the States General, by which the West India Company was directed to make some concessions to the colony, (1650.) Two years elapse, and we find Van der Donck still appealing to the States General for justice, (1652.) The most that he procured was a municipal government for the city (as it was styled) of New Amsterdam, the first city of the United States. It was organized in the following year, (1653,) with sheriff, burgomasters, and judges, but all appointed by the director, Peter Stuyvesant, who had carried on for several years a downright war in defence of his prerogatives. In resentment against him personally much of the vigor belonging to the liberal party had been expended. He carried the day, it must be confessed, notwithstanding the city charter, notwithstanding also the remonstrances of a convention of eight towns held the same year.

Religious

The measure of arbitrary government was not persecu- yet full. At the instance of two clergymen of the tion. Dutch church, a proclamation from the director appeared, threatening fines upon all preachers and hearers of unlicensed congregations, (1656.) The first to suffer were Lutherans, who were not merely fined, but imprisoned; then some Baptists, who were not merely fined, but banished. Soon after, a few Quakers fell into the hands of the persecutors, one of them being subjected to tortures as horrid as any inflicted in the English colonies, (1657.) A few years afterwards, the remonstrance of a Quaker, John Bowne, who had been transported to Holland as a criminal, brought upon Director Stuyvesant the censure of the company for his oppression, (1662-63.)

Subjection of

New Sweden.

Despite all these drawbacks upon its strength, New Netherland was strong enough, with help from the company, to subdue its neighbor of New Sweden. That colony, though reënforced at times, con

Partly in op

tinued in a precarious state, with few settlers and uncertain resources. Protested against by the Dutch as interloping within their territory, it had nevertheless invited Dutch emigrants amongst its own settlers, (1640.) But the New Netherland authorities were on the alert. position to a Connecticut settlement attempted on the Delaware, but chiefly in resistance to the advances of the Swedes, Stuyvesant built his Fort Casimir at the present Newcastle, (1651.) A new governor, Rysingh, coming to the Swedish colony, got possession of the fort without difficulty, (1654.) It cost him dear; for Stuyvesant, with a force of several hundred, principally sent from Holland for the purpose, not only recovered Fort Casimir, but conquered Fort Christina and the whole of New Sweden, (1655.) A few Swedes swore allegiance to the Dutch; the rest went home or emigrated to the English colonies. The Swedish government protested against the conquest of its colony; but it had too much upon its hands in Europe to recover its possessions in America. So New Sweden came to an end; and the dream of the generous Gustavus Adolphus that he was to found a place of refuge from persecution and from corruption vanished forever.

New Am

The victorious West India Company hardly knew stel. what to do with its conquest. It found a purchaser, however, in the city of Amsterdam, which became the mistress of what had been New Sweden, - portions of our Delaware and Pennsylvania, under the name of New Amstel, (1656.) This was enlarged by a subsequent purchase so as to embrace the Dutch possessions on both banks of the Delaware; in other words, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, (1663.)

But the dominions of the Dutch, whether West English aggres- India Company or Amsterdam city, were passing into other hands. The claims of England to the

sions.