| New Netherland series | |
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| The Patroon System |
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| Directors of New Netherland: Cornelius Jacobsen Mey (1620-25) |
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| People of New Netherland New Netherlander |
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| Flushing Remonstrance |
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Kieft's War, also known as the Wappinger War, was a conflict between Dutch settlers and Indians in the colony of New Netherland from 1643 to 1645. The war is named for Willem Kieft, who was the Director-General of New Netherland at the time.[1]
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Background
Appointed director general by the Dutch West India Company, Willem Kieft arrived in New Netherland in April 1638. Kieft was without obvious experience or qualifications for the job and likely got it through family connections.[2] The year before, the English colonies Massachusetts Bay, Providence Plantation, and Hartford along with the Mohegan and Narragansett nations had annihilated the Dutch allied Pequot Nation (see: Pequot War, Mystic Massacre), [3] paving the way for an English takeover of the northern reaches of New Netherlands along what is now called the Connecticut River. Two weeks before Kieft's landing Peter Minuit, himself a former director-general of New Netherlands established a rogue Swedish settlement New Sweden in the poorly developed southern reaches of the colony along what is now called the Delaware River. Along the Hudson, the colony had taken root despite years of being hamstrung by the West India Company's monopoly and mismanagement. However, the company continued to run the settlement as trading post, the director-general exercising unchecked corporate fiat, backed by soldiers even though New Amsterdam and the other settlements of the Hudson Valley had clearly transitioned from company town to working colony. In 1640, the company finally surrendered it's trade monopoly on the colony, declaring New Netherlands a free-trade zone and Kieft found himself governor of a full-fledged economic boomtown.
The directors of the Dutch West India Company, however, were unhappy. Largely due to its own mismanagement and neglect, the New Netherlands project had never been profitable (although the company's endeavors elsewhere had paid handsome returns) and directors, having surrendered the income of their monopoly were anxious to reduce their administrative costs. Chief among these costs was the provision for the defense of the colonies including, through the land "purchase" agreements (really more like modern co-op purchases in which common rights to exploitation of land are recognized in return for friendly relations and mutual defense) the Native American nations which shared the lands. Kieft's first solution to defray costs was an attempt to levy taxes on the tribes living in the region (pursued despite the warnings of long-time colonists), but his proposals were summarily rejected - sometimes humiliatingly - by the local chiefs. Determined to force more deference from the tribes, Kieft seized on the pretext of pigs stolen from the farm of David de Vries to send soldiers (over de Vries's objection) to raid a Raritan village, killing several indians. When the Raritan responded by burning down de Vries' farmhouse and killing four of his employees, Klieft (literally) put a price on their heads, offering to pay Native Americans from rival tribes for the severed heads of Raritan. (It was later determined that the pigs had been stolen by other Dutch colonists.) [4]
Shortly thereafter, in August of 1841, Claes Swits, an elderly immigrant from Switzerland who had been long in the colony was killed by a Weckquaesgeek of his long acquaintance.[5] Swits ran a popular public house, frequented by Europeans and Native Americans, along the Weckquaesgeek Trail at what is today the Turtle Bay neighborhood of Manhattan. The murder was apparently not personal, but a matter of paying a "blood debt" for the perpetrator (his name is lost to history) had been the sole survivor of an ambush of Weckquaesgeek traders by European's in the colony's earliest days 15 years before. Kieft was determined to use the event as a pretext for a war of extermination.[6]
War
Frustrated with the public resistance to his Indian initiatives, Kieft moved to use the Swits incident to build popular support for war. He created the Council of Twelve Men, the first popularly elected body in the New Netherlands colony to advise him on retribution. However, the council balked at Kieft's proposal to massacre the entire Wickquasgeck village if they refused to produce the murderer. The colonists had lived in peace with the Native Americans for nearly two decades, becoming friends, business partners, employees, employers, drinking buddies, and bed partners. Quite aside from the cultural gulf between the colonists and their appointed overseer, the Council was alarmed at the predictable consequences of Kieft's proposed crusade. The Native Americans were far more numerous and reprisals against European life and property easily achieved. Perhaps as importantly, the Native Americans were the suppliers of the furs and pelts that were the economic lifeblood and the raison d'etre, of the colony. With David de Vries as its President, the council aggressively sought to stall, delay and cajole Kieft away from war. They also began to advise on other matters, using the new Council as a means to press colonist interests with their imperious and blundering corporate rulers, and calling for the establishment of a permanent representative body to manage local affairs (as was traditional by then in the Netherlands). Kieft responded by dissolving the council and issuing a decree forbidding them to meet or assemble. [7]
A punitive expedition aimed at the village of the fugitive descended into farce when the soldiers got lost on the way, and Weckquaesgeek elders made peace offerings which Kieft accepted.[8] Then on February 23, 1643, two weeks after dismissing the Council, Kieft launched a sneak attack on two camps of refugee Weckquaesgeek and Tappan.[9] Expansionist Mahicans and Mohawks in the North (now armed with guns traded by the French and English)[10] had driven them south the year before seeking protection from the Dutch. Kieft had refused aid despite the previous guarantees made the tribes and they had taken up residence at Pavonia (in today's Jersey City) and Corlaers Hook. The initial strike is known as the Pavonia Massacre: 129 Dutch soldiers descended on the sleeping village and killed 120 Native Americans, including women and children. As de Vries, who had made a last minute attempt to dissuade Kieft, would describe in his journal:
"Infants were torn form their mother's breasts, and hacked to pieces in the presence of their parents, and pieces thrown into the fire adn in the water, and other sucklings, being bound to small boards, were cut, stuck, and pierced, and miserably massacred in a manner to move a heart of stone. Some were thrown into the river, and when the fathers and mothers endeavored to save them, the soldiers would not let them come on land but made both parents and children drown..."[11]
Historians differ on whether or not the massacre was Kieft's idea[12][13], but all sources agree that he thanked and rewarded the soldiers for their deeds. The attacks united the Algonquian peoples in the surrounding areas, including Lenape and Wappinger, to an extent not seen before. In autumn of 1643, a force of 1,500 natives invaded New Netherland, famously killing dissident preacher Anne Hutchinson. Entire villages and plantations were laid waste. The patient work of two decades of building was undone in months. In retaliation that winter, 500 Weckquaesgeeks were killed by Dutch forces. As the New Amsterdam crowded with destitute refugees, the colony moved to open revolt. New taxes ordered by Kieft to pay for the war were flouted, the colony began to lose population as people took ship. Private letters of appeal to the directors of the Dutch West India Company and the Republic to intervene being of no avail, the colonist eventually banded together to formally petition for the removal Kieft.
We sit here among thousands of wild and barbarian people, in whom neither consolation nor mercy can be found; we left our dear fatherland, and if God the Lord were not our comfort we would perish in our misery.[14]
– Excerpt from the petition of the Dutch settlers
For the next two years the united tribes harassed settlers all across New Netherland, killing sporadically and suddenly. The sparse forces were helpless to stop the attacks, but the natives were kept too spread out to mount more effective strikes. A truce was finally agreed to by the last of the eleven united tribes in August of 1645.
Outcome
The resulting attacks by the natives caused many Dutch settlers to return to Europe, shaking confidence in the Dutch West India Company's ability to control their territory in the New World. Kieft was recalled to the Netherlands to answer for his conduct in 1647, but he died in a shipwreck near Swansea before his version of events could be told. His successor was Peter Stuyvesant, who ran New Netherland until it was ceded to the British.
The war was extremely bloody in proportion to the population at the time: more than 1,600 natives were killed in Kieft's War at a time when the European population of New Amsterdam was only 250.[13] A relative peace lasted until the early hostilities of the Esopus Wars began in the 1650s.
See also
References
- ^ Governor Kieft's Personal War (by Walter Giersbach. published online: 08/26/2006) http://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/indianwars/articles/kieftswar.aspx
- ^ Shorto, Russell, The Island at the Center of the World, Vintage Books (Random House) 2004, p. 113
- ^ Vowell, Sarah, The Wordy Shipmates, Riverhead books (Penquin) 2008, pp. 166-196
- ^ Shorto, p.118-120.
- ^ Sultzman, Lee (1997). "Wappinger History". http://www.dickshovel.com/wap.html. Retrieved July 5, 2006.
- ^ Shorto, pp. 110-112, 121
- ^ Shorto, p. 121-120 for Council, passsim for civil society relations with the Native Americans
- ^ Sultzman, Lee (1997). "Wappinger History". http://www.dickshovel.com/wap.html. Retrieved November 23, 2009.
- ^ Shorto, p. 123
- ^ Sultzman, Lee (1997). "Wappinger History". http://www.dickshovel.com/wap.html. Retrieved November 23, 2009.
- ^ Henry Cruise Murhy (Translator) Vertoogh van Nieu Nederland, 149, cited in Shorto p. 124
- ^ Winkler, David F. (1998). Revisiting the Attack on Pavonia. New Jersey Historical Society.
- ^ a b Beck, Sanderson (2006). "New Netherland and Stuyvesant 1642-64". http://www.san.beck.org/11-5-Colonies1643-64.html#4.
- ^ Dutch Culture in a European Perspective; page 56
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