and of great profit to the proprietors. If the houses were rude and thatched with straw, there were energy and thrift within. If only wooden chimneys carried up the smoke, the fires of the hearthstones were kindled with laughter and song. If creaking windmills flung abroad their ungainly arms in the winds of Long Island Sound, it was proof that the people had families to feed and meant to feed them.

The West India Company now came forward with a new and peculiar scheme of colonization. In 1629, the corporation created a CHARTER OF PRIVILEGES, under which a class of proprietors called patroons were authorized to possess and colonize the country. Each patroon might select anywhere in New Netherland a tract of land not more than sixteen miles in length, and of a breadth to be determined by the location. On the banks of a navigable river not more than eight miles might be appropriated by one proprietor. Each district was to be held in fee simple by the patroon, who was empowered to exercise over his estate and its inhabitants the same authority as did the hereditary lords of Europe. The conditions were that the estates should be held as dependencies of Holland; that each patroon should purchase his domain of the Indians; and that he should, within four years from the date of his title, establish on his manor a colony of not less than fifty persons. Education and religion were commended in the charter, but no provision was made for the support of either.

Under the provisions of this instrument five estates were immediately established. Three of them, lying contiguous, embraced a district of twenty-four miles in the valley of the Hudson above and below Fort Orange. The fourth manor was laid out by Michael Pauw on Staten Island; and the fifth, and most important, included the southern half of the present State of Delaware. To this estate a colony was sent out from Holland in the spring of 1631. Samuel Godyn was patroon of the domain, but the immediate management was entrusted to David Peterson de Vries. With a company of thirty immigrants, he reached the entrance to Delaware Bay, and anchored within Cape Henlopen. Landing five miles up the bay, at the mouth of Lewis Creek, the colony selected a site and laid the foundations of Lewistown, the oldest settlement in Delaware.

After a year of successful management, De Vries returned to Holland, leaving the settlement in charge of Gillis Hosset. The latter, a man of no sagacity, soon brought the colony to ruin. An Indian chief who offended him was seized and put to death. The natives, who thus far had treated the strangers with deference and good faith, were aroused to vengeance. Rising suddenly out of an ambuscade upon the terrified colonists, they left not a man alive. The houses and palisades were

burned to the ground; nothing but bones and ashes remained to testify of savage passion. When De Vries returned, in December of 1632, he found only the blackened ruins of his flourishing hamlet. He sailed first to Virginia for a cargo of supplies, and thence to New Amsterdam; but before the colony could be re-established, Lord Baltimore had received from the English government a patent which embraced the whole of Delaware; the weaker, though older, claim of the Dutch patroon gave way before the charter of his more powerful rival.

In April of 1633, Minuit was superseded in the government of New Netherland by Wouter van Twiller. Three months previously the Dutch had purchased of the natives the soil around Hartford, and had erected a block-house within the present limits of the city. This was the first fortress built on the Connecticut River; but the Puritans, though professing friendship, were not going to give up the valley without a struggle. In October of the same year an armed vessel, sent out from Plymouth, sailed up the river and openly defied the Dutch commander at Hartford. Passing the fortress, the English proceeded up stream to the mouth of the river Farmington, where they landed and built Fort Windsor. Two years later, by the building of Saybrook, at the mouth of the Connecticut, the English obtained command of the river both above and below the Dutch fort. The block-house at Hartford, being thus cut off, was comparatively useless to the authorities of New Netherland; English towns multiplied in the neighborhood; and the Dutch finally surrendered their eastern outpost to their more powerful rivals.

Four of the leading European nations had now established permanent colonies in America. The fifth to plant an American State was Sweden. As early as 1626, Gustavus Adolphus, the Protestant king of that country and the hero of his age, had formed the design of establishing settlements in the West. For this purpose a company of merchants had been organized, to whose capital the king himself contributed four hundred thousand dollars. The objects had in view were to form a refuge for persecuted Protestants and to extend Swedish commerce. But before his plans of colonization could be carried into effect, Gustavus became involved in the Thirty Years' War, then raging in Germany. The company was disorganized, and the capital wasted in the purchase of military stores. In November of 1632 the Swedish king was killed at the battle of Lützen. For a while it seemed that the plan of colonizing America had ended in failure, but Oxenstiern, the great Swedish minister, took up the work which his master had left unfinished. The charter of the company was renewed, and after four years of preparation the enterprise was brought to a successful issue.

In the mean time, Peter Minuit, the recent governor of New Netherland, had left the service of Holland and entered that of Sweden. To him was entrusted the management of the first Swedish colony which was sent to America. Late in the year 1637, a company of Swedes and Finns left the harbor of Stockholm, and in the following February arrived in Delaware Bay. Never before had the Northerners beheld so beautiful a land. They called Cape Henlopen the Point of Paradise. The whole country, sweeping around the west side of the bay and up the river to the falls at Trenton, was honorably purchased of the Indians. In memory of native land, the name of NEW SWEDEN was given to this fine territory. The colony landed just below the mouth of the Brandywine, in the northern part of the present State of Delaware. On the left bank of a small tributary, at a point about six miles from the bay, a spot was chosen for the settlement. Here the foundations of a fort were laid, and the immigrants soon provided themselves with houses. The creek and the fort were both named in honor of Christiana, the maiden queen of Sweden.

The colony prospered greatly. By each returning ship letters were borne to Stockholm, describing the loveliness of the country. Immigration became rapid and constant. At one time, in 1640, more than a hundred families, unable to find room on the crowded vessels which were leaving the Swedish capital, were turned back to their homes. The banks of Delaware Bay and River were dotted with pleasant hamlets. On every hand appeared the proofs of well-directed industry. Of all the early settlers in America, none were more cheerful, intelligent and virtuous than the Swedes.

From the first, the authorities of New Amsterdam were jealous of the colony on the Delaware. Sir William Kieft, who had succeeded the incompetent Van Twiller in the governorship, sent an earnest remonstrance to Christiana, warning the settlers of their intrusion on Dutch territory. But the Swedes, giving little heed to the complaints of their neighbors, went on enlarging their borders and strengthening their outposts. Governor Kieft was alarmed and indignant at these aggressions, and as a precautionary measure sent a party to rebuild Fort Nassau, on the old site below Camden. The Swedes, regarding this fortress as a menace to their colony, adopted active measures of defence. Ascending the river to within six miles of the mouth of the Schuylkill, they landed on the island of Tinicum, and built an impregnable fort of hemlock logs. Here, in 1643, Governor Printz established his residence. To Pennsylvania, as well as to Delaware, Sweden contributed the earliest colony.

In 1640, New Netherland became involved in a war with the Indians of Long Island and New Jersey. The natives of the lower Hudson were a weak and unwarlike people; under just treatment they would have faithfully kept the peace. But dishonest traders had maddened them with rum and then defrauded and abused them. Burning with resentment and hate, the savages of the Jersey shore crossed over to Staten Island, laid waste the farms and butchered the inhabitants. New Amsterdam was for a while endangered, but was soon put in a state of defence. A company of militia was organized and sent against the Delawares of New Jersey, but nothing resulted from the expedition. A large bounty was offered for every member of the tribe of the Raritans, and many were hunted to death. On both sides the war degenerated into treachery and murder. Through the mediation of Roger Williams, the great peacemaker of Rhode Island, a truce was obtained, and immediately broken. A chieftain's son, who had been made drunk and robbed, went to the nearest settlement and killed the first Hollander whom he met. Governor Kieft demanded the criminal, but the sachems refused to give him up. They offered to pay a heavy fine for the wrong done, but Kieft would accept nothing less than the life of the murderer.

While the dispute was still unsettled, a party of the terrible Mohawks came down the river to claim and enforce their supremacy over the natives of the coast. The timid Algonquins in the neighborhood of New Amsterdam cowered before the mighty warriors of the North, huddled together on the bank of the Hudson, and begged assistance of the Dutch. Here the vindictive Kieft saw an opportunity of wholesale destruction. A company of soldiers set out secretly from Manhattan, crossed the river and discovered the lair of the Indians. The place was surrounded by night, and the first notice of danger given to the savages was the roar of muskets. Nearly a hundred of the poor wretches were killed before daydawn. Women who shrieked for pity were mangled to death, and children were thrown into the river.

When it was known among the tribes that the Dutch, and not the Mohawks, were the authors of this outrage, the war was renewed with fury. The Indians were in a frenzy. Dividing into small war-parties, they concealed themselves in the woods and swamps; then rose, without a moment's warning, upon defenceless farmhouses, burning and butchering without mercy. At this time that noted woman Mrs. Anne Hutchinson was living with her son-in-law in the valley of the Housatonic. Her house was surrounded and set on fire by the savages; every member of the family except one child was cruelly murdered. Mrs. Hutchinson herself was burned alive.

In 1643, Captain John Underhill, a fugitive from Massachusetts, was appointed to the command of the Dutch forces. At the head of a regiment raised by Governor Kieft he invaded New Jersey, and brought the Delawares into subjection. A decisive battle was fought on Long Island; and at Greenwich, in Western Connecticut, the power of the Indians was finally broken. Again the ambassadors of the Iroquois came forward with proposals for peace. Both parties were anxious to rest from the ruin and devastation of war. On the 30th of August, 1645, a treaty was concluded at Fort Amsterdam.

Nearly all of the bloodshed and sorrow of these five years of war may be charged to Governor Kieft. He was a revengeful and cruel man, whose idea of government was to destroy whatever opposed him. The people had many times desired to make peace with the Indians, but the project had always been defeated by the headstrong passions of the governor. A popular party, headed by the able De Vries, at last grew powerful enough to defy his authority. As soon as the war was ended, petitions for his removal were circulated and signed by the people. Two years after the treaty, the Dutch West India Company revoked his commission and appointed Peter Stuyvesant to succeed him. In 1647, Kieft embarked for Europe; but the heavy-laden merchantman in which he sailed was dashed to pieces by a storm on the coast of Wales, and the guilty governor of New Netherland found a grave in the sea.

CHAPTER XIX.

NEW YORK.-ADMINISTRATION OF STUYVESANT.

THE honest and soldierly PETER STUYVESANT was the last and greatest of the governors of New Netherland. He entered upon his duties on the 11th of May, 1647, and continued in office for more than seventeen years. His first care was to conciliate the Indians. By the wisdom and liberality of his government the wayward red men were reclaimed from hostility and hatred. So intimate and cordial became the relations between the natives and the Dutch that they were suspected of making common cause against the English; even Massachusetts was alarmed lést such an alliance should be formed. But the policy of Governor Stuyvesant was based on nobler principles.

Until now the West India Company had had exclusive control of