unfriendly tribe.  One Indian, with his squaw, made his way to the fort.  He was met at the gate by De Vries.  “Save us,” he cried, “the Mohawks have fallen upon us, and have killed all our people.”  But De Vries answered, sadly, “No Indian has done this.  It is the Dutch who have killed your people.”  And he pointed toward the deep woods close by.  “Go there for safety, but do not come here.”

This was not war.  It was murder.  A cruel, treacherous act, which the greater number of colonists condemned and the record of which is a dark stain on the memory of William Kieft.

After this, all the Indians within the border of New Netherland combined.  Colonists were shot as they worked in the fields.  Cattle were driven away.  Houses were robbed and burned.  Women and children were dragged into captivity.  The war raged fiercely for three years.  By this time Indians and colonists were worn out.  Then the war ended.  But scarcely a hundred men were left on the Island of Manhattan.  The country was a waste.

A strong fence had been built across the island, to keep what cattle remained within bounds.  This fence marked the extreme limit of the settlement of New Amsterdam.  The fence in time gave place to a wall, and when in still later years the wall was demolished and a street laid out where it had been, the thoroughfare was called Wall Street, and remains so to this day.

While the entire province was in a very bad way, and the people suffering on every side, Governor Kieft sent to the West India Company in Holland his version of the war.  He showed himself to be all in the right, and proved, to his own satisfaction, that the province was in a fairly good condition; though during all the years he had been Governor he had not once left the settlement on the Island of Manhattan to look after other parts.

Certain of the colonists also sent a report to Holland.  Theirs being much nearer the truth, carried such weight with it, that the West India Company decided on the immediate recall of Governor Kieft, who had done so much injury to the colony, and had shown himself to be utterly incapable of governing.

Kieft returned to Holland in a ship that was packed from stem to stern with the finest of furs.  The ship was wrecked at sea.  Kieft was drowned, and the furs were lost.

In the same ship was Everardus Bogardus (the minister who had married Annetje Jans), who was on his way to Holland on a mission relating to his church.  The people of New Amsterdam mourned for their minister, but there was little sorrow felt for the Governor who had plunged the colony in war by his obstinate and cruel temper.

[Illustration:  Smoking the Pipe of Peace.]

CHAPTER VI

Peter Stuyvesant, the last of the Dutch governors