Peter Minuit
A Dutch West India Company was organized on the same plan as the rich and powerful Dutch East IndiaCompany. The western company was to trade on the coast of Africa and of America from Newfoundland to Magellan. For convenience in this trade, forts and posts were established where agents were stationed to carry on trade and collect furs. A fort and trading-post was established on Manhattan Island. There was gradually built up a village; this became a town and finally grew to be a city. At first it was called New Amsterdam; now it is the wealthy and populous city of New York.
The first directors who were sent to New Amsterdam by the Dutch Company lacked either ability or character to govern the settlement well. At last, however, the Company found the right man for the place. This was Peter Minuit. He was not a Dutchman. He was French by descent and German by birth; his early manhood had been spent in Germany.
He was appointed director of the council of New Amsterdam and came to Manhattan in May, 1626. His ship brought seeds, plants, and tools, for he realized that on agriculture as well as on commerce depended the success of the colony. He wished to establish it on a foundation of justice. His first act was to summon the Indian chiefs of the neighborhood and to buy from them the island of Manhattan. Gay-colored cloth, beads, knives, and hatchets were displayed, and for goods to the value of twenty-four dollars the Dutch bought the island of Manhattan and bought also thegood will of the Iroquois. Thus the settlement was spared, for the most part, the horrors of Indian warfare which wasted most of the other colonies. Before Penn came to America, the Dutch leader, Minuit, treated the Indians in fair and humane fashion. We are not to think that the Indians were defrauded by the small sum paid for Manhattan. To them it was a mere hands-breadth of their vast possessions, a place to hunt deer and turkey and build wigwams and till cornfields.
Minuit tried to establish friendly relations with the English colonies north of him and sent courteous letters and presents of sugar and Dutch cheese to Governor Bradford of Plymouth.
Minuit looked after the welfare of the colony and also after the interests of the Company. A flourishing fur trade was carried on with the Indians; a large vessel was built and sent to Holland loaded with furs—beaver, otter, mink, and bear—and with oak and hickory timber. Furs were the money of this settlement, as tobacco was of Virginia, and they were used in the payment of salaries and debts. The Indian money, wampum, was also used in the commerce of the colonies, six pieces of wampum being equal to one stiver, a small Dutch coin worth about two cents. Bouweries, or farms, occupied the meadows along East River; grain was grown, and sheep, cattle, and hogs were raised. The thrifty Dutch people lived in comfort and plenty.
The colony prospered under Minuit’s management, but his rule came to an end on account of trouble with the “patroons.” These patroons were large land-owners along the Hudson. In order to get the colony settled, the Dutch Company granted land fronting sixteen miles on the river and extending back to the Atlantic or to the Pacific to persons who would establish settlements of at least fifty persons within four years. These patroons had almost absolute power over the settlers on their land; the only restrictions on their privileges and trade were that they were forbidden to make cloth, in order to protect Dutch manufacturers, or to trade in furs, which was the especial privilege of the Company.
The patroons, however, encroached on the Company’s fur trade, and Peter Minuit excited their enmity by endeavoring to protect the rights of the Company which he represented. On the other hand, the Company thought that he did not check and control the patroons as he should. Between the two he was recalled. He returned to Holland in the spring of 1632, having really established the colony of New Amsterdam which he governed for six years.
Failing to get his wrongs redressed by the Dutch West India Company, Minuit offered his services to Sweden to establish a colony in the New World. This plan had already been suggested by William Usselinx, a Dutch merchant who had projected the Dutch WestIndia Company in 1621. Minuit carried out the plan. He and his friends in Holland bore half the expense of fitting out an expedition to found a Swedish-Dutch Company.
Owing to Minuit’s illness, the vessels did not sail till late in 1637. They reached the shores of the Delaware in March, 1638, and took possession of the west bank of the river. Minuit had little regard for the claims of territory made by nations whose wandering ships had touched the coast and sailed away again. In his opinion the land belonged to those who purchased it from the Indian inhabitants and settled there and cultivated the soil. As at Manhattan, he met the Indian chiefs and formed a treaty never broken by either party. The Indians of Delaware, like those farther north, belonged to the great Iroquois Confederacy or Five Nations.
Minuit took possession of the country in the name of the young queen of Sweden and built a fort called Christina in her honor. He cultivated friendly relations with the English at Jamestown and with the Dutch trading-posts on the east bank of the Delaware. A thriving fur trade was established with the friendly Indians and soon the Dutch West India Company complained that their trade was greatly injured by Minuit’s colony. The governor of New Netherlands wrote a letter of protest against the Swedes occupying this land,but during the three years that Minuit remained in charge the Dutch confined their protests to words.
After doing his utmost to establish the colony in peace, strength, and safety, Minuit left it on a trading expedition. He sailed to the West Indies to barter for tobacco to carry back to Old Sweden. While he was guest on a Dutch vessel in the harbor a violent hurricane came up, the ship was driven to sea and was never heard of more. Thus perished the first governor of New Sweden, the real founder of New Amsterdam.