The Epic of New York City (11 page)

That night Hodgson was thrown back into his filthy dungeon. The second day he was flogged—and the third day. At last he was brought again before Stuyvesant, who commanded him to work or be lashed every day until he did. Boldly looking at his tormentor, Hodgson asked what law he had broken. The governor didn't bother to answer. The Quaker cried that he never would submit to Stuyvesant's will, so back to the dungeon he went, and for the next two or three days he was kept there without even bread or water. Still he refused to give in.

Now began new torture. Hodgson was dragged to a room, where his mutilated skin was bared once again. He was suspended from the ceiling by his wrists, with a heavy log tied to his feet. In this taut position he was lashed again and again and again. Two days later the torture was repeated. Sobbing, Hodgson begged to see a fellow Englishman, and at last a poor Englishwoman was allowed to visit him. She bathed his wounds and wept in pity. Later she told her husband that she didn't think the wretched fellow could live until morning. The husband went to the sheriff to offer him a fat ox to allow the prisoner to be removed to his own house until he recovered. This couldn't be done, the sheriff said.

By now, this torture having become common knowledge, people began muttering about their governor. Hodgson wasn't the only Quaker persecuted in the colony just then, although he suffered the most. Dutch ministers, unlike most burghers, sided with Stuyvesant and wrote the Dutch West India Company of their alarm at the spread of sectarianism in New Netherland.

Meanwhile, the governor's sister, Mrs. Verlett, caught the note of public discontent, and her gentle soul winced at what he had done. She marched into Peter's presence, tongue-lashed him for his cruelty, and denounced and upbraided him until at last Stuyvesant agreed to let the man go. Hodgson was freed, but he was banished from the colony.

Other Quakers met secretly at Flushing, Long Island, in the homes of Henry Townsend and John Bowne. Both men were arrested. Stuyvesant's action infuriated and saddened all the people of Flushing and nearby towns. After all, Flushing's charter of 1645 declared the settlers were “to have and enjoy liberty of conscience, according to the custom and manner of Holland, without molestation or disturbance.” Obviously, the governor himself was the lawbreaker. On December 27, 1657, thirty-one Dutchmen and Englishmen drew up a protest addressed to Stuyvesant. Six of the thirty-one, being illiterate, merely made their mark on the document; they were courageous men, willing to face the fiery governor along with the others.

This Flushing Remonstrance has been called the first American Declaration of Independence. Among other things, it said:

The Flushing sheriff traveled to New Amsterdam and handed the protest to Stuyvesant, who angrily banged his wooden leg and ordered the sheriff arrested. Then the governor cracked down on other Flushing officials. The town clerk was jailed for three weeks. Two justices of the peace were suspended from office. For a long time afterward no Long Island resident dared to shelter Quakers openly, but the sectarians continued to hold secret meetings in the Flushing woods. They managed to get news of their persecution to the Dutch West India Company in Holland, whose directors then ordered Stuyvesant to keep hands off the Quakers.

As we have seen, the Treaty of Hartford took away from Stuyvesant much of Connecticut, which he originally claimed for the company. Now, except for New Amsterdam, only the part of the Atlantic coastline between the Delaware and Hudson rivers came under his rule. Because the Delaware River emptied into the Atlantic to the south of the Hudson, the Dutch called the Delaware the South River and spoke of the Hudson as the North River. Even today the first leg of the Hudson just north of the Battery is sometimes called the North River.

Stuyvesant was irked by the existence, proximity, and rivalry of New Sweden. This colony on the Delaware River included parts of the present states of Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. About half the colonists were Finns, since Finland was then part of Sweden. The population of New Sweden never rose to much more than about 300 inhabitants, but Stuyvesant would not leave them alone.

In 1651 he built Fort Casimir on the site of New Castle, Delaware. Three years later the Swedes captured it, thus gaining control of the entire Delaware Valley. In 1655 Stuyvesant led an expedition of hundreds of soldiers, on seven men-of-war, back to the Delaware River and recaptured Fort Casimir. He and his men also took Fort Christina, about thirty-five miles below the present site of Philadelphia. Then New Sweden disappeared from the map.

For ten years—from 1645 to 1655—the Dutch in and around Manhattan had not been troubled by Indians. Of course, a few minor incidents did occur, and the Dutch discriminated against the Indians by charging them double fare for the East River ferry ride, but
nothing serious happened. Then, while Stuyvesant and most of the town's able-bodied men were subduing the Swedes on the Delaware River, open conflict broke out here.

A former sheriff, named Hendrick Van Dyck, had a farm on Broadway just south of the present Exchange Alley, or perhaps a block and a half below the site of Trinity Church. As twilight thickened one September day in 1655, he saw somebody moving stealthily among his heavy-laden peach trees. Tiptoeing closer, Van Dyck realized that an Indian woman was stealing his fruit. He pulled out a pistol and fired. The woman gently slumped to earth, and in that tragic moment Van Dyck triggered the historic Peach War.

When news of the murder reached the dead woman's relatives and friends and spread to neighboring tribes, the Indians suffered shock. Then they exploded with the cry “Death to the woman killer!” They were well aware that Stuyvesant had left the town almost defenseless by sailing away with most of his soldiers.

At daybreak on September 15 the prows of 64 canoes sliced through the morning mist along the high banks of the Hudson. A little below the stockade at Wall Street the craft glided to the shore. About 500 braves, armed with bows, arrows, and tomahawks and daubed with war paint, leaped out, made fast their canoes, and then raced into the city. Soon they were joined by others until 2,000 marauders fanned through the streets.

The Indians didn't instantly massacre the inhabitants. They began with psychological warfare by breaking into houses under the pretext that they were searching for their ancient enemies, the Iroquois. This transparent deceit heightened the menace. Alarmed Dutchmen struggled into pantaloons as their wives stared, wide-eyed with terror. Children screamed at the sight of dusky strangers in the kitchens. Council members assembled quickly and held a hurried conference. Realizing that the townspeople were outnumbered, these officials decided to put up a brave front. They strolled out into the open to the midst of the sullen intruders and asked to see their chiefs.

When the sachems advanced and identified themselves, the Dutch invited them to a parley inside the fort. There the white men tried to pacify the red men. At last the chiefs agreed to withdraw their warriors to Governors Island, but after filing out of the fort, the Indians did not leave as promised. Instead, all the rest of the day they loitered about the southern end of Manhattan, muttering menacingly.

At dusk they gathered and broke toward Broadway, screaming
and surging directly toward Van Dyck's home. He stood uncertainly at his garden gate. An arrow flashed through the evening sky and gashed into his side, wounding him gravely, but not mortally. A neighbor who tried to help had his scalp sliced with a war hatchet.

Frantically, the town elders tried once again to locate the chiefs to avert more bloodshed. Then the Indians slew a Dutchman. Now the colonists opened fire on the invaders, driving them back to the shore, back into their canoes. Even as they paddled out into the Hudson, the Indians twanged a volley of arrows into the counterattacking Dutchmen, killing one and wounding several others. Swift-stroking across the river, the Indians landed at Hoboken, set fire to every dwelling there, turned to Jersey City to reduce it to ashes, and then proceeded to Staten Island, where they wreaked havoc.

The Peach War lasted only three days, three terrifying days, but by the time it ended, the entire countryside had been put to the torch. About 100 white persons were killed, about 150 others were dragged into captivity, and 7 men and 1 woman were tortured to death. In addition, 28 plantations were destroyed, 500 head of cattle were slain or driven away, and huge quantities of grain were burned. All for a few peaches!

During the brief outbreak Mrs. Stuyvesant, her sons, and the rest of the family were guarded at the Stuyvesant farm by ten French mercenaries hired for the emergency. News of the attack was sped to the governor in Delaware, but he was unable to return until October 12.

Panic still prevailed when he arrived. Stuyvesant, who had always adopted a reasonable Indian policy, was careful to give the natives no cause to maraud again. His sturdy leadership, zeal, resourcefulness, and military know-how finally gave the people a sense of security. Soldiers were posted at outlying farms. Ship passengers ready to flee the colony were ordered ashore to join the troops “until it should please God to change the aspect of affairs.” Funds were raised to strengthen the vulnerable city wall.

But now the Indians were ready to negotiate. Their fury was spent. They grumbled about the portions of food consumed by their prisoners. One Dutchman wanted to continue the war to get revenge, but the governor flatly disagreed. “The recent war,” he rasped, “is to be attributed to the rashness of a few hotheaded individuals. It becomes us to reform ourselves, to abstain from all wrong, and to guard against a recurrence of the late unhappy affair by building
blockhouses wherever they are needed, and not permitting any armed Indians to come into our settlements.”

Stuyvesant's cool judgment prevailed. Still, he was able to negotiate the release of only forty-two white persons. Twenty-eight of them were ransomed by paying the Indians seventy-eight pounds of gunpowder and forty bars of lead. At last peace was concluded with the red men—or at least some of them. White prisoners held at Esopus were not released. This community, now known as Kingston, New York, perched on the west bank of the Hudson River eighty-seven miles north of New Amsterdam.

The Dutch West India Company suffered so many reverses in various parts of the world that it wound up a commercial failure. By 1661 New Amsterdam was bankrupt. That year, in a frantic effort to protect its investment, the company tried to lure discontented Englishmen to New Netherland from their native country. The Dutch government helped by seeding Great Britain with glowing descriptions of the Dutch colony “only six weeks' sail from Holland . . . land fertile . . . climate the best in the world.”

This practice irritated English authorities. As we have seen, they objected to the very existence of New Netherland. It blocked their westward expansion, denied them the continuous belt of English colonies along the coast necessary for protection from the French, and interfered with enforcement of the Navigation Acts.

Because of bitter rivalry with Holland for control of the seas and business profits, the English Parliament, as has been noted, passed several acts of trade and navigation. But Dutch smugglers in the New World loosened England's grip on trading among the English colonies. Although the Treaty of Hartford had reduced the Dutch holdings, the British weren't satisfied. They encouraged the rebellion of restless English towns on Long Island. Peter Stuyvesant thrice convened delegates from towns adjacent to New Amsterdam but never could satisfy all their demands.

Charles II became the king of England for the second time in 1660. Two years later he granted a charter to the English colonists of Connecticut. Because this area included settlements which the Treaty of Hartford said belonged to New Netherland, tension mounted between Dutch and English colonists.

On March 22, 1664, Charles gave a present to his brother, James Stuart, the Duke of York, later to become King James II. Upon the
duke Charles conferred all Long Island, its neighboring islands, and all the territory lying between the west side of the Connecticut River and the east side of Delaware Bay. This, of course, embraced the Dutch colony of New Netherland. By now the English had launched an undeclared war on the Hollanders, the Second Anglo-Dutch War.

Even British historians admit that the English acted like pirates. The king and duke knew that the war would be popular with the trading classes at home, for they intended to break Dutch control of slave-trading ports on the African coast and to seize land in the New World. The duke ordered Colonel Richard Nicolls to lead an expedition against the Dutch in America. This was kept a secret lest the Dutch government dispatch a fleet to protect Dutch interests. The English didn't issue a formal declaration of war until 1665. Meanwhile, the king lent his brother 4 men-of-war and 450 soldiers.

News of this small armada was brought to Peter Stuyvesant by an Englishman in New Netherland. He, in turn, had heard about it from a British merchant whose ships sailed from England to this city. Stuyvesant reacted quickly. He confined to port some Dutch ships ready to sail to Curaçao, sent agents to New Haven to buy provisions, stationed lookouts along the coast to watch for the British fleet, borrowed money, and ordered gunpowder rushed from Delaware to New Amsterdam.