Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 258 pages of information about Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam.

Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 258 pages of information about Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam.

The Esopus Indians were now left in a very deplorable condition.  Their brethren, on the upper Hudson, had refused to co-operate with them.  Their routed bands were being driven across the mountains and many of their warriors were captives.  To use the contemptuous language of the times, “they did nothing now but bawl for peace, peace.”

There had never been a more favorable opportunity to secure a lasting peace, and to win back the affections of the Indians.  By universal admission the colonists were outrageously in the wrong in provoking the conflict.  They had given the Indians brandy until they had become intoxicated.  And then half a dozen drunken soldiers had discharged a volley of bullets upon them as they were revelling in noisy but harmless orgies.

Had the governor frankly acknowledged that the colonists were in the wrong; had he made full amends, according to the Indian custom, for the great injury inflicted upon them, they would have been more than satisfied.  Even more friendly relations than had ever before existed might have been established.

But instead of this the governor assumed that the Indians were entirely in the wrong; that they had wantonly commenced a series of murders and burnings without any provocation.  The Esopus chiefs were afraid to meet the angry governor with proposals for peace.  They therefore employed three Mohegan chiefs as their mediators.  They offered to cease all hostilities, to abandon the Esopus country entirely, and surrender it to the Dutch if the Indian captives, whom the Dutch held, might be restored to them.  These very honorable proposals were rejected.  The Mohegan chiefs were told that the governor could not enter into any treaty of peace with the Esopus Indians unless their own chiefs came to fort Amsterdam to hold a council.  And immediately the Indian captives received the awful doom of consignment to life-long slavery with the negroes, upon a tropical island, which was but a glowing sandbank in the Caribbean sea.

“On the next day,” writes Mr. O’Callaghan,

“an order was issued, banishing the Esopus savages, some fifteen or twenty, to the insalubrious climate of Curacoa, to be employed there or at Buenaire with the negroes in the Company’s service.  Two or three others were retained at fort Amsterdam to be punished as it should be thought proper.  By this harsh policy Stuyvesant laid the foundations of another Esopus war, for the Indians never forgot their banished brethren.”

It was ascertained that several miles up the Esopus creek the Indians were planting corn.  It was the 20th of May, 1660.  Ensign Smith took a party of seventy-five men and advanced upon them.  The barking of dogs announced his approach just as his band arrived within sight of the wigwams.  They all made good their retreat with the exception of one, the oldest and best of their chiefs.  His name was Preumaker.  We know not whether pride of character or infirmity prevented his escape.  It is said, however, that he received the soldiers very haughtily, aiming his gun at them and saying, “What are you doing here, you dogs?”

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Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.