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 treatywas 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.

THER

CHAPTER XIX.

NEW YORK.-ADMINISTRATION OF STUYVESANT.

HE 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 lest 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

the commerce of New Netherland. In the first year of the new administration this monopoly was abolished, and regular export duties were substituted. The benefit of the change was at once apparent in the improvement of the Dutch province. In one of the letters written to Stuyvesant by the secretary of the company, the remarkable prediction is made that the commerce of New Amsterdam should cover every ocean and the ships of all nations crowd into her harbor. But for many years the growth of the city was slow. As late as the middle of the century, the better parts of Manhattan Island were still divided among the farmers. Central Park was a forest of oaks and chestnuts.

In 1650, a boundary-line was fixed between New England and New Netherland. The Dutch were fearful lest the English should reach the Hudson and cut off the fur-trade between Fort Orange and New Amsterdam. Governor Stuyvesant met the ambassadors of the Eastern colonies at Hartford, and after much discussion an eastern limit was set to the Dutch possessions. The line there established extended across Long Island north and south, passing through Oyster Bay, and thence to Greenwich, on the other side of the sound. From this point northward the dividing-line was nearly identical with the present boundary of Connecticut on the west. This treaty was ratified by the colonies, by the West India Company and by the states-general of Holland; but the English government treated the matter with indifference and contempt.

Stuyvesant had less to fear from the colony of New Sweden. The people of New Netherland outnumbered the Swedes as ten to one, and the Dutch claim to the country of the Delaware had never been renounced. In 1651, an armament left New Amsterdam, entered the bay and came to anchor at a point on the western shore five miles below the mouth of the Brandywine. On the present site of New Castle, Fort Casimir was built and garrisoned with Dutch soldiers. This act was equivalent to a declaration of war. The Swedish settlement of Christiana was almost in sight of the hostile fortress, and a conflict could hardly be avoided. Rising, the governor of the Swedes, looked on quietly until Fort Casimir was completed, then captured the place by stratagem, overpowered the garrison and hoisted the flag of Sweden.

It was a short-lived triumph. The West India Company were secretly pleased that the Swedes had committed an act of open violence. Orders were at once issued to Stuyvesant to visit the Swedish colonists with vengeance, and to compel their submission or drive them from the Delaware. In September of 1655 the orders of the company were carried out to the letter. The old governor put himself at the head of more than six hundred troops-a number almost equal to the entire population