Lenape Country: Delaware Valley Society Before William Penn 9780812290196

Table of contents :
Contents
Note on the Text
Introduction
Chapter 1. A Free People, Subject to No One
Chapter 2. Controlling the Land through Massacre and War, 1626–38
Chapter 3. Managing a Tenuous Peace, 1638–54
Chapter 4. Allies against the Dutch, 1654–64
Chapter 5. Allies against the English, 1664–73
Chapter 6. Protecting Sovereignty amid Wars, 1673–80
Chapter 7. Negotiating Penn’s Colony, 1681–1715
Chapter 8. Strategies of Survival and Revenge
Conclusion
Note on Methodology
Notes
Index
Acknowledgments

Citation preview

Lenape Country

EARLY AMERICAN STUDIES Series editors: Daniel K. Richter, Kathleen M. Brown, Max Cavitch, and David Waldstreicher Exploring neglected aspects of our colonial, revolutionary, and early national history and culture, Early American Studies reinterprets familiar themes and events in fresh ways. Interdisciplinary in character, and with a special emphasis on the period from about 1600 to 1850, the series is published in partnership with the McNeil Center for Early American Studies. A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher.

LENAPE COUNTRY Delaware Valley Society Before William Penn

JEAN R. SODERLUND

universit y of pennsylvania press phil adelphia

Copyright 䉷 2015 University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112 www.upenn.edu/pennpress Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Soderlund, Jean R., 1947– Lenape country : Delaware Valley society before William Penn / Jean R. Soderlund.—1st ed. p. cm.— (Early American studies) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8122-4647-6 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Delaware River Valley (N.Y.-Del. and N.J.)—History—17th century. 2. Delaware Indians—Delaware River Valley (N.Y.-Del. and N.J.)—History—17th century. 3. Delaware River Valley (N.Y.-Del. and N.J.)—Ethnic relations—History—17th century. 4. Delaware Indians—Delaware River Valley (N.Y.-Del. and N.J.)— Government relations—History—17th century. 5. Delaware River Valley (N.Y.-Del. and N.J.)—Social conditions—17th century. 6. Indians of North America—History— Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775. I. Title. II. Series: Early American studies. F157.D4S68 2015 974.9—dc23 2014007128

For Rudy

contents

Note on the Text

ix

Introduction

1

Chapter 1. A Free People, Subject to No One

12

Chapter 2. Controlling the Land through Massacre and War, 1626–38

35

Chapter 3. Managing a Tenuous Peace, 1638–54

55

Chapter 4. Allies against the Dutch, 1654–64

86

Chapter 5. Allies against the English, 1664–73

112

Chapter 6. Protecting Sovereignty amid Wars, 1673–80

132

Chapter 7. Negotiating Penn’s Colony, 1681–1715

149

Chapter 8. Strategies of Survival and Revenge

177

Conclusion

196

Note on Methodology

205

Notes

207

Index

243

Acknowledgments

251

note on the text

The English and Swedes continued to use the Julian calendar in the seventeenth century, while the Dutch had adopted the newer Gregorian calendar. The calendars were different by ten days, and the Julian New Year began in March, so that, for example, an English document dated January 3, 1667, would be January 13, 1668, under the Gregorian calendar. While accounting for these differences in analyzing evidence, I have kept the original dates when citing documents. When I quote from English-language sources that were written prior to the nineteenth century, for better understanding I have modernized spelling and capitalization (but without altering the names of people and places); changed use of the thorn (for example, ‘‘ye’’) to the intended word ‘‘the’’; lowered superscript letters to the line; expanded abbreviations; and changed punctuation only when necessary for clarity. When I quote from translations of Dutch and Swedish documents, I have not altered the text.

Introduction

In May 1672, while traveling north through the English colonies in eastern North America, the founder of Quakerism George Fox and fellow missionaries arrived in New Castle, the small capital of the Delaware colony inhabited mostly by Dutch and English colonists. The town stood on the west bank of the river that the Lenapes, the Native Americans who dominated the region, called the Lenapewihittuck (now Delaware River). Fox and his companions quickly crossed the river, hiring Lenape guides who led them through the fertile lands of what is now southwestern New Jersey and the Pine Barrens farther east. Fox wrote to Friends in England that as they ‘‘passed through the woods, sometimes we lay in the woods by a fire and sometimes in the Indian cabins, through the bogs, rivers, and creeks and wild woods we passed. . . . I came at last and lay at one Indian king’s house and he and his queen received me lovingly and his attendants also and laid me a mat to lie upon, a very pretty man and then we came to another Indian town where the king came to me and he could speak some English and he received me very lovingly and I spake to him much and his people and they were loving.’’1 Fox and his associates called the Lenapes’ territory the ‘‘Indian Country,’’ recognizing the Natives’ sovereignty over the land. They described to colleagues in England a land still dominated by Lenapes despite the settlements of Swedes and Finns along the river, the Dutch/English town of New Castle, and Quaker villages of Middletown and Shrewsbury near the Atlantic shore. The hospitality of Lenapes saved Fox and his companions from sleeping under the open sky in terrain they considered a ‘‘wilderness.’’ The Quaker leader distinguished between the settlements of Lenapes who treated him ‘‘lovingly’’ and the ‘‘wild woods’’ full of bogs and rivers to cross, recognizing the Lenapes’ authority while appreciating their kindness. He spoke several times to the Natives about religion but reported no success in convincing them to Quakerism. They rejected his spiritual authority as he depended on them for food, direction, and shelter.

2

Introduction

The Quaker missionaries proceeded to visit Friends in New England, returning to Lenape country in September 1672, when they again traveled safely through the region by respecting the Lenapes’ power and following their rules. This time, with Lenape guides, they took the more usual route across New Jersey from Manhattan to Matinicum (now Burlington) Island, moving steadily from point to point ‘‘through many Indian towns, and rivers, and bogs.’’ They traveled through territory the Lenapes protected carefully against European settlement or passage without guides. Indeed, one night the party ‘‘found an old house, which the Indians had forced the people to desert.’’ The Quakers learned later of several Lenape murders of Europeans in the area the previous year. The travelers safely crossed the Lenapewihittuck once again with the help of hired Lenapes and their canoes, then rode thirty miles south ‘‘and came at night to a Swede’s house, and got a little straw and lay there all night.’’ With another guide they proceeded to New Castle, where government officials offered lodging and space so that the missionaries could hold a Quaker meeting before departing for Maryland.2 The Lenapes’ firm grip on south and central New Jersey is clear in a map from 1670 created by a merchant named Augustine Herrman, who had settled in New Amsterdam in 1644 and then established his plantation, Bohemia Manor, on the Maryland eastern shore in 1661. Herrman labeled the country from the Lenapewihittuck to the Atlantic Ocean as ‘‘at present inhabited only or most by Indians,’’ and he drew Lenape towns adjacent to many rivers and streams emptying into the Lenapewihittuck and the sea. Various Lenape people populated the territory as illustrated in the map (see Figure 1), including the Cohanseys, Mantes, and Armewamese, who had sold some of their lands to Europeans but retained much of New Jersey as their own. It was through this territory that, with the Natives’ guidance and permission, Fox’s party had crossed.3 Notwithstanding its acknowledgment of the Natives’ continued presence and power in the region, Fox’s report to English Friends about his journey through Lenape country helped to establish the mythology that the early Delaware Valley was a wilderness inhabited by generally friendly Indians and some scattered colonists. From his few weeks in the region, Fox described a segmented society, with Lenape towns entirely separate from Swedish, Dutch, and English villages. In this short time he learned little about the society the Lenapes, Swedes, Finns, and other Europeans had built together since European arrival, and he thus gave the impression to

Figure 1. Augustine Herrman, Virginia and Maryland as it is planted and inhabited this present year 1670, W. Faithorne, sculpt. (London, 1673). Library of Congress.

4

Introduction

William Penn and other Friends in England that the Lenapes’ domain was ripe for Quaker colonization. Fox’s narrative has given impetus to the legend that the Delaware Valley was a blank slate on which Penn and the Quakers first brought peace and justice to the Lenapes. For the Quaker founders of Pennsylvania, their descendants of the mid-eighteenth century, and historians in subsequent centuries, Delaware Valley history began in 1681 when Penn received his charter from Charles II. In creating and perpetuating this founding myth, colonists and scholars have credited Penn with efforts to form an open, tolerant society that dealt honestly and amicably with the Lenapes and other Natives. He pledged to pay a fair price for their land and to avoid the bloodshed that destroyed Native and European settlements elsewhere in eastern North America.4 Like other founding myths that ignored the history of Native Americans prior to European colonization, the Pennsylvania legend wiped away the Lenapes’ own history prior to contact with Europeans as well as the sixtyfive years of exchange, conflict, accommodation, and alliance between the Natives and the Dutch, Swedes, Finns, and English. Native Americans kept alive evidence of past events through spoken narratives rather than written documents, and most European settlers had little interest in recording the oral history of the original inhabitants. The colonists who described the Lenapes and their culture were more interested in their current practices and condition than the ways in which their society had evolved over the past fifty to one hundred years. Similarly, the Quakers consulted Swedish and Dutch records primarily to demonstrate early European settlement in what is now Delaware to combat Lord Baltimore’s claim to the region based on his 1632 charter. The Swanendael (Valley of the Swans) whaling station and plantation, founded by the Dutch in 1631 but quickly destroyed by the Lenapes, provided key evidence to support Penn’s case for ownership of the Lower Counties. Beyond the needs of the boundary dispute, however, Penn’s colonists had little curiosity about the society the Natives and earlier European settlers had built. Like English colonists in Jamestown, Plymouth, and Massachusetts Bay, the Friends wove a creation myth of exceptionalism, claiming for themselves a special relationship with the Lenapes based on Quaker principles of justice, peace, religious freedom, and respect for people of different backgrounds.5 Because of this mythology, the Lenapes are often portrayed as a weak people lacking the numbers and fortitude to defend their homeland. The prevailing narrative ignores the period from 1615 to 1681 when the Lenapes

Introduction

5

dominated trade and determined if, when, and where Europeans could travel and take up land. Besides the Swanendael incident, no major conflict between Natives and Europeans occurred in Lenape country to rival those in other regions, such as the Anglo-Powhatan wars and Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia, the Pequot and King Philip’s wars in New England, and the Kieft’s and Esopus wars in New Netherland. With the massacre at Swanendael, the Lenapes established their primacy and never lost it until after Penn received his colony in 1681. This portrayal of the Lenapes as a powerless people gained momentum soon after the fraudulent Walking Purchase of 1737, when William Penn’s sons Thomas and John Penn, with James Logan, convinced the Iroquois to undercut the Lenapes’ protests of land theft by asserting they were under Iroquois control. In 1742, building on earlier similar allegations that the Lenapes denied, the Onondaga sachem Canasatego called the Lenapes ‘‘women’’ who refused to fight but rather depended on the Iroquois for protection. Mythology created in the mideighteenth century to subjugate the Lenapes and divest them of their remaining territory in eastern Pennsylvania reinforced the earlier legend of the benevolent William Penn to suggest that Lenapes had never controlled their country economically or politically or had any substantial impact on the evolution of Delaware Valley society.6 Most recently, the historian Bernard Bailyn has suggested that, before 1681, Lenapes lived in ‘‘bands of less than 50 related individuals, little more than extended families,’’ much smaller than adjacent Native communities that ranged from as high as 2,000 among some Iroquois to two or three hundred among other Algonquians. Bailyn’s use of the word ‘‘bands’’ rather than ‘‘towns’’ or ‘‘nations’’ underscores his claim that the Lenapes lacked any coherent government. In fact, the sizes of Lenape towns and their political organizations were consistent with those of many other Native societies of eastern North America. Bailyn further argues that the Lenapes were ‘‘hunters and gatherers,’’ despite ample evidence that they grew corn and other crops. Painting with a broad brush, Bailyn characterizes the Finns, who formed a large percentage of the region’s European population, as ‘‘barbarous, uncivilized frontier peoples’’ who participated in Sweden’s expansion ‘‘overseas, to the land of equally barbarous peoples, the Lenapes, on the shores of the Delaware River.’’ Sampling anecdotes about the early settlers and Lenapes, Bailyn misses entirely how the Native and European inhabitants collaborated politically, socially, and economically to create Delaware Valley society.7

6

Introduction

Bailyn’s presentation of the seventeenth-century mid-Atlantic offers a step backward as scholars, excavating evidence from seventeenth-century records of the pre-1681 Delaware Valley, have begun to uncover aspects of this past. In recent decades, historians have used the journals, reports, and correspondence of Dutch and New Sweden officials to provide European perspectives on Lenape culture and intercultural exchanges between the Lenapes and colonists. Others have examined New Sweden within the larger framework of mid-seventeenth-century eastern North American trade and diplomacy, and they have carefully delineated relations among the Lenapes, Susquehannocks, Swedes, English, and Dutch.8 Still, no sustained historical study exists for both sides of the river from Dutch arrival in the Lenapewihittuck region to the eighteenth century. Most scholars of the early Delaware Valley begin the history of relations between the Lenapes and European colonists only in 1681 with William Penn’s commitment to a ‘‘holy experiment’’ in which the Quakers practiced their principles of nonviolence and established a society quite different from other American colonies. While some versions of this narrative acknowledge that even William Penn strayed a bit from his ideal of harmonious and just dealings with the Lenapes, all emphasize his role in setting a benchmark of amicable coexistence that subsequent provincial leaders, including Logan and Penn’s sons Thomas and John, chose to disregard. The history of the Delaware Valley has also suffered from scholars’ tendency to focus their work by colonial boundary rather than provide a more integrated study of the region that became New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. A number of scholars have illuminated the Lenapes’ society, culture, politics, and postcontact relations with Europeans in these provinces as part of projects focusing on a state’s ancient and more recent pasts. These studies are rich and insightful yet miss the ways in which Lenapes managed land and resources throughout Lenape country and responded across colonial boundaries to European settlement.9 The Lenapes are an Algonquian people who at first contact with Europeans and through most of the seventeenth century controlled the country stretching from what is now central and southern New Jersey through eastern Pennsylvania to Cape Henlopen in Delaware. They spoke the Unami (or Lenape) language, which was closely related to but distinct from other Algonquian dialects. Lenape in Unami means an ‘‘ordinary, real, original’’ person, and it was the word by which Lenapes referred to themselves. They

Introduction

7

affiliated closely with the Munsees, whose homeland extended from current central and northern New Jersey through southern New York. The names ‘‘Unami’’ and ‘‘Munsee’’ were the words each group used to designate the other; the word ‘‘Unami,’’ for example, means in Munsee ‘‘person from down river.’’ By the mid-eighteenth century, European colonists referred to both the Lenapes and Munsees as Delawares, a name many of the Natives adopted as well. Most Lenapes lived along tributaries of the Lenapewihittuck, which the Dutch and Swedes called South River, and the English named the Delaware (see Map 1). The Lenapes built unpalisaded towns that reflected their good relations with one another and propensity to avoid war with other nations. The Lenapes held land cooperatively, by the community as a whole, not by individual members or families claiming ownership rights. Their sociopolitical structure was egalitarian and democratic: sachems, operating with the guidance of a council of elders and other leaders, held considerable authority as long as they followed the collective will of their people.10 For about fifteen years after the first Dutch ships entered the Lenapewihittuck, Dutch-Lenape relations focused on trade. Then in 1631, Dutch investors sent men to Cape Henlopen in Delaware to build a plantation colony they called Swanendael on land purchased from the Sickoneysincks, the southernmost community of Lenapes. Believing that they had sold a site that was to be a trading fort rather than an agricultural plantation, the Sickoneysincks killed all the residents and destroyed the settlement. Thus they prevented the Dutch from establishing an agricultural economy on Lenapewihittuck, demanding instead that the Dutch obtain goods only through trade. After 1631, under Lenape supervision, the Dutch reverted to their practice of conducting the fur trade from a small fort and ships. The Lenapes imposed strict limits on European settlement even as leaders of New Sweden (1638–55), the Dutch South River colonies (1655–64, 1673– 74), and the Duke of York’s Delaware colony (1664–73, 1674–81) claimed they had established primacy on the river. Unlike Native Americans in southern New England and the tidewater Chesapeake area, the Lenapes retained control of their country until the 1680s. During the seventeenth century, prior to William Penn’s arrival, the Lenapes and early European colonists created a society in Lenape country that preferred peaceful resolution of conflict, religious freedom, collaborative use of the land and other natural resources, respect for people of diverse backgrounds, and local governmental authority, all facilitating the business relationship the residents sought for profitable trade. Though

8

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theirs was a polyglot, negotiated society, it was one in which the Lenapes held the upper hand and remained flexible to win allies and accommodate trade. The process by which the Lenapes and their European counterparts created this society was difficult, uneven, and tenuous. Though David de Vries, a Dutch adventurer, had found the destroyed Swanendael in 1632 and claimed he made ‘‘a firm peace, which they call rancontyn marenit,’’ with the Sickoneysincks, the Natives and Dutch had in fact negotiated a

Introduction

9

tentative pact that would be renegotiated throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by different groups of Europeans and Lenapes. After the massacre at Swanendael, the Dutch dropped their plans to establish plantation colonies in the region they called South River, limiting their footprint to forts protecting their commerce with the Lenapes and Susquehannocks. When Peter Minuit sought permission to establish New Sweden in 1638, Lenapes granted a small parcel of land for a trading post and enough acreage to sustain the colony. As conflict arose between the colonists and Natives in the spring of 1644, Lenapes murdered five Europeans, the Lenape equivalent of limited war. Despite Kieft’s War in New Netherland and the Anglo-Powhatan War in Virginia during the 1640s, however, the Lenapes refrained from destroying the Dutch and Swedish outposts along the Lenapewihittuck primarily because they wanted the trade but also because they were developing personal relationships with colonists. With the change of leadership in New Sweden and among the Lenapes by 1654 and the Dutch conquest of New Sweden in 1655, the Natives, Swedes, and Finns formed a more stable alliance against both the Dutch and, after 1664, the English Duke of York’s governments. Through their partnership the Lenapes, Swedes, and Finns avoided involvement in Peter Stuyvesant’s war against the Esopus Indians; while the Lenapes sheltered Esopus refugees, the Swedes and Finns refused to serve with New Netherland troops to expropriate Esopus land. In the late 1660s and early 1670s, when the Lenapes resisted English encroachment on unsold lands by killing more than ten English colonists and their allies, the Swedes and Finns would not participate in Governor Francis Lovelace’s intended military offensive against the Lenapes, thus quashing Lovelace’s plans. After Edmund Andros became governor in 1674, Lenape country once again stayed out of war despite the danger of wholesale destruction of English colonies along the Atlantic coast from the spread of King Philip’s War in New England and Bacon’s Rebellion in the Chesapeake. Though Lenapes threatened to attack their English neighbors, the mutual accord of the Natives with the Swedes and Finns prevented a racial conflict such as in New England and Virginia. Thus, even before William Penn landed in 1682, Lenapes and their European neighbors had established a relatively fair and equitable relationship. The Lenapes had welcomed trade with the Dutch, who sailed into the Lenapewihittuck by about 1615. When the Dutch started to build the plantation colony at Swanendael, however, the Lenapes moved quickly to snuff it out. They quickly made peace on the condition that European activity

10

Introduction

in the region should focus on trade, not large-scale agriculture. The sachems enforced these ground rules with the Swedes, Finns, Dutch, and English who vied for but failed to dominate the region through most of the seventeenth century. The Lenapes controlled where the Europeans could settle; required actual occupation to confirm rights to land; demanded periodic gifts; and kept all dealings on a pragmatic, nonideological basis. Despite diminishing populations from epidemic disease and war, before 1681 the Lenapes continued to outnumber Europeans in the region. The Natives monitored the movement of colonists, preventing them from venturing north of the Falls (the site of present-day Trenton, New Jersey) and providing Native guides to accompany messengers to Maryland and New York.11 The memory of Swanendael remained alive in Lenape country for decades. The society that the Lenapes and Europeans created on Lenapewihittuck was different from those described by historians for other regions, though certainly more similar to the middle ground of cross-cultural accommodation in the Great Lakes region than to contemporaneous conflicts in the colonial Chesapeake, New Netherland, and southern New England.12 The Lenapes traded and negotiated with Europeans, but they also retained their sovereignty through much of the seventeenth century, despite their declining numbers, by using both diplomacy and strategic small-scale violence and by forging alliances with the Susquehannocks as well as the Swedes and Finns. In negotiations for land, the Natives and Europeans quickly learned each other’s goals—and the Swedes, Dutch, and English learned the Lenapes’ expectations—so they had clear knowledge of each other’s perspectives. While identifying as separate communities, the Lenapes and Swedes associated in ways that changed each group, as they assimilated technology, language, and respect for the other’s religion and culture. They understood the differing preferences for politics and diplomacy, with the Europeans adapting to the Natives’ norms. Some intermarried, integrating familial customs into both groups. As decades passed, the Natives and Europeans established a framework for interaction based on mutual values of selfdetermination, shared use of the land, and an inclusive definition of freedom, all facilitated by mutual commitment to economic gain.13 The Quakers are credited with creating a peaceful, tolerant, multiethnic polity in West New Jersey and Pennsylvania, of governing with a light hand. The historian David Hackett Fischer, in his influential Albion’s Seed, distinguished Delaware Valley ‘‘freedom ways’’ from those of the Puritans and

Introduction

11

Virginia cavaliers. The Friends, he argued, created a culture of ‘‘reciprocal liberty’’ in the region, a culture based on the belief that ‘‘God had given [liberty] not merely to a chosen few, but to all his children, so that they might be safe in the sanctity of their families and secure in the possession of their property.’’14 In fact the Friends who settled in West Jersey and Pennsylvania perpetuated the model of decentralized authority, preference for peace, and openness toward other cultures and religions that the Lenapes, Swedes, and Finns had already established. The Lenapes and colonists remained separate, with different legal frameworks and governance, yet interaction was a normal part of their daily lives. To the Lenapes, the Swedes and Finns became another community in their country, people with whom they intermarried, exchanged goods, and defended against common enemies. The English Quakers offered a greater challenge to the Natives because of their substantial numbers, but they were also peaceful, refrained from any significant effort to convert Natives to Christianity, and initially accepted joint use of unimproved territory. The Lenapes, Swedes, and Finns had worked out a policy that allowed travel across lands whether or not they had been sold. The New Jersey Friends and William Penn’s colonists accepted this policy when they arrived. Mid-Atlantic society changed after 1700 with more general shifts in the Atlantic world. Demand for grain and meat products in the West Indies and Europe bolstered the economy and offered opportunity to new immigrants from England, Ireland, and Germany, putting increasing pressure on Lenape lands. The colonies became enmeshed in imperial conflict between Great Britain and France. While some Lenapes migrated west to the Susquehanna and Ohio valleys, others stayed in small New Jersey towns, pursuing their traditional agricultural economy and reaping the resources of the Pine Barrens and Atlantic shore. They remained a localized, egalitarian people through the eighteenth century, and today they still identify with numerous groups rather than as one unified organization representing the Lenapes of New Jersey and Pennsylvania.15 Most Jersey Lenapes rejected an invitation from western Delawares in 1771 to join them in the Ohio Valley, and in fact most stayed in New Jersey when the Brotherton Indians moved to New York in 1802. They had assimilated European ways to some extent, but mid-Atlantic society had assimilated Native ways as well. Delaware Valley society began with the Lenapes and they were part of it. Despite increasing regulation, racism, war, and loss of land, the Delaware Valley offered resources and family ties that made it home.

chapter one

A Free People, Subject to No One

In 1643, the New Sweden governor Johan Printz believed that it would be extremely difficult to convert the Lenapes to Christianity: ‘‘when we speak to them about God they pay no attention, but they will let it be understood that they are a free people, subject to no one.’’ He made an accurate assessment, for the Native people of Lenape country resisted Christianization through the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Their insistence on autonomy extended to areas beyond religion as well—to government, ownership of land, and individual rights. Though population decline resulted in some merging of communities, the Lenapes avoided forming an overarching government, instead keeping their decentralized organization of affiliated towns. And despite the claims of the Iroquois and some historians, the Five Nations (after 1722, the Six Nations) held no suzerainty over the Lenapes until the 1730s, and even then the Iroquois controlled only the minority who had moved to their territory. Similarly, some historians, using scanty evidence, have argued that the Susquehannocks dominated the Lenapes during the seventeenth century, while in fact their war of the late 1620s and early 1630s ended with confirmation of Lenape sovereignty over their land and a close alliance between the two peoples. The Lenapes also remained committed to personal freedom—for individuals within their communities, for other Natives, and for the newcomers who arrived from Europe. While defending their territory, the Lenapes welcomed trade with the Dutch, Swedes, and English, granting them enough real estate to conduct business. Unlike Natives such as the Chickasaws and Creeks in the American Southeast and the Iroquois, the Lenapes did not fight wars to enslave people or forcibly adopt strangers into their families.1

A Free People

13

The Lenapes built their towns along streams in the coastal plain, stretching from what is now central and southern New Jersey through eastern Pennsylvania to northern and eastern Delaware (see Map 2). The soils on both sides of the Lenapewihittuck were good to excellent for agriculture, while tidal marshes and sandy beaches characterized the banks of Delaware Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. The New Jersey Pine Barrens of pines, cedar, oaks, and sandy soil comprised a large area adjacent to the bay and sea.2 The Lenapes cultivated corn (maize) and other crops in arable fields near their towns; hunted for deer, bear, beaver, and other animals in the larger region; gathered wood and berries in the Pine Barrens; and caught fish in creeks and rivers, and shellfish at the shore. They produced pottery, clothing, stone weapons and tools, and they practiced basket making and other crafts. Though the Lenapes engaged in long-distance trade with other peoples of eastern North America, they remained outside the mound-building, hierarchical civilizations that flourished prior to European contact in the Ohio and Mississippi valleys.3 The Lenapes’ sociopolitical structure was democratic and egalitarian, as the sachems held authority only by consulting with a council of elders and following the expectations of their people. Each town claimed ownership to specific territory, which the town as a whole, represented by the sachem, could sell (or refuse to sell) without obtaining approval from other Lenape communities, the Susquehannocks, or Iroquois. Our knowledge of Lenape country in the early seventeenth century is based largely on the reports of Dutch explorers and traders who entered the Lenapewihittuck (which the Dutch called South River) in about 1615. The Dutch explorer Cornelis Hendricksen in 1616 published the first extant European map of the region, indicating two Lenape groups on the river: the ‘‘Stankekans’’ (Sanhickans) and ‘‘Sauwanews.’’ He situated the Sanhickans on both sides of the Lenapewihittuck and the Sauwanews on the east bank. On later maps the Sanhickans are shown in various parts of central New Jersey, from present-day Trenton toward Manhattan, and the Sauwanews appear on the west bank near the Schuylkill River. In the 1630s, European maps and documents show Lenape towns on major streams feeding into the Lenapewihittuck, identifying the Sickoneysincks, Kechemeches, Cohanseys, Sewapois, Asomocches, Narraticons, Mantes, Armewamese, Rancocas, Atsayans, Sanhickans, and others.4 Because the Susquehannocks burned Lenape towns and drove the inhabitants to the east bank of the Lenapewihittuck in the late 1620s and early 1630s, some of the first evidence

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from Europeans depicts the Lenape population in flight. Even after the Susquehannocks and Lenapes declared peace by 1638—and Lenapes built new towns along the west bank—epidemics of European diseases created further dislocation as former neighboring communities merged.5 The early information is approximate because European mapmakers often either based their drawings on sketchy narratives or simply copied out-of-date evidence from previous maps. Intermittent contact between Europeans and the Lenapes, their seasonal movement, and war with the Susquehannocks in the 1620s and 1630s account for these variations among early European maps. Even so, the combination of archaeological remains, maps, and records suggests that a substantial Lenape population living in autonomous towns throughout the region survived the Susquehannock war and Dutch contact. By the mid-seventeenth century, some Lenape communities, such as the Sickoneysincks at Cape Henlopen, continued to live in approximately the same locations, while others had relocated from New Jersey to the west bank. A Swedish engineer, Peter Lindestro¨m, surveyed and mapped the river in 1654, providing brief descriptions of Native towns and assessing the land for economic development. He started at Cape Henlopen, where he noted that the Sickoneysincks were ‘‘a powerful nation and rich in maize plantations.’’ He then traveled along the east bank, mentioning ways in which the Lenapes used the land and various plants, but he did not report any towns until his vessel reached the Falls near Assunpinck Creek, where ‘‘there is along the river a beautiful and good land, suitable for black and blue maize, Swedish barley and other such like. [It] is a level and good land for pasture, where the savages have lived for a long time, and are still dwelling.’’ Lindestro¨m wrote that the Mantes people now lived at the Falls and northward on the river where only canoes could travel. The Mantes, he explained, ‘‘which nation is the rightful owner of the east side of the river’’ that was ‘‘formerly mostly occupied’’ by them, ‘‘yet this nation is now much died off and diminished through war and also through diseases.’’ Lindestro¨m also noted that the region was ‘‘very rich in all kinds of wild animals and birds, and in the river as well as in the kills and streams emptying into it, there is an abundance of fish of various kinds.’’ When the Mantes people ran short of grain, they moved to the west bank where they hunted and fished, selling their surplus to the Swedes and other Natives.6 Lindestro¨m considered Chiepissing, which he located on the west bank, south of the Falls, particularly good land for pastures and for growing corn, and ‘‘for many years has been occupied and cultivated.’’ At midcentury,

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the majority of Lenapes on the west bank lived near the Schuylkill, which Lindestro¨m praised for its beauty, freshwater springs, many fruit trees, and ‘‘abundance of various kinds of rare, wild animals, which, however, now begin to become somewhat diminished’’ from the Lenapes’ hunting. Lindestro¨m esteemed the region highly, identifying six Lenape towns from Wicaco to the falls of the Schuylkill at Nittabakonck. ‘‘This is occupied in greatest force by the most intelligent’’ of several Lenape groups ‘‘who own this River and dwell here. There they have their dwellings side by side one another’’ and have ‘‘cleared and cultivated [their land] with great power.’’ Six sachems led these Lenape settlements, there ‘‘being several hundred men strong, under each chief, counting women and children, some being stronger, some weaker.’’ Lindestro¨m wrote that four communities— Poaetquessingh, Pemickpacka, Wickquaquenscke, and Wickquakonick— were located along the Lenapewihittuck, while Passyunk and Nittabakonck lay by the Schuylkill. This district, he noted, ‘‘they rightfully own.’’ These were Armewamese and other Lenape people led by Mattahorn, Ackehorn, Sinquees, and other sachems, who built towns in this region to take advantage of the fur trade with the Susquehannocks, Dutch, and Swedes, for which the Schuylkill River was a terminus. As Lindestro¨m noted, they also grew corn on a large scale, selling it as a cash crop to the Swedes who frequently fell short of food.7 The remainder of Lindestro¨m’s tour passed the Swedish, Finnish, and Dutch settlements south from the Schuylkill River. He noted it was ‘‘a level, very splendid and fertile land, good and suitable for whatever we may desire to plant, as everything grows there abundantly.’’ He marveled, ‘‘Yes [it is] such a fertile country that the pen is too weak to describe, praise and extol it [sufficiently]; yes indeed, on account of its fertility it may well be called a land flowing with milk and honey.’’ The region farther south toward Cape Henlopen was fertile but uninhabited by colonists or Natives.8 These remained, for the most part, Lenape hunting lands. Lindestro¨m provided no report on the Lenape communities that were situated on the east bank along Rancocas, Timber, Raccoon, and Cohansey creeks; Maurice River; or near the Atlantic shore at Barnegat, Little Egg Harbor, and Great Egg Harbor. New Netherland Secretary Cornelis van Tienhoven wrote in 1650 that ‘‘large numbers of all sorts of tribes’’ passed through central New Jersey ‘‘on their way north or east.’’ Augustine Herrman, who purchased land on the Raritan River and knew the region well, indicated Lenape towns in southern and central New Jersey on his 1670

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map. He labeled the area between Sandy Hook and the Lenapewihittuck as ‘‘at present inhabited only or most by Indians.’’ Lenapes had kinship ties and frequent contact with Munsees close to Manhattan—particularly the Raritans, who lived on Staten Island and the adjacent region north of the Raritan River, and the Navesinks, who controlled the region from the Raritan River south and east to Barnegat Bay.9 Calculations of the Lenape population range widely for the early seventeenth century, with variations resulting from the impact of disease and war and from the lack of documentation such as censuses of Native Americans. Most scholars provide early figures of 8,000 to 12,000 for the Munsees and Lenapes combined; these numbers, as the scholar Herbert Kraft has noted, likely undercount the precontact population because Natives succumbed to diseases brought by sailors and fishermen even before the Dutch arrived. For the Lenapes alone in 1600, Ives Goddard estimated 6,500, which is probably low. An Englishman, Robert Evelyn, who traveled in 1634 to the Lenapewihittuck with his uncle, Captain Thomas Yong, provided data on the size of eight Lenape groups on the east bank from Cape May to the Falls. He counted 940 men available to defend the Kechemeches, Mantes, Asomocches, Armewamese, Rancocas, Atsayans, Calcefar, and Mosilian communities. If one assumes an average family size of four to five people, the population of all these groups was 3,700 to 4,700.10 In his account, Evelyn omitted the Sickoneysincks at Cape Henlopen; the Cohanseys, Narraticons, and Sanhickans in New Jersey; and the Lenapes on the west bank in what is now Pennsylvania and northern Delaware, of whom some relocated to New Jersey because of the Susquehannock war. Evelyn thus included about one-half of the Lenapes in his report, bringing their number in 1634 to about 7,500 to 9,000. Although they apparently did not suffer as severely as some other groups, the Lenape people decreased in population between the 1630s and 1650s, with epidemics of smallpox and other diseases brought by the Swedes and other Europeans. Throughout North America, French, Dutch, Swedish, and English settlers carried the deadly microbes of smallpox, influenza, measles, and other viruses for which Native Americans lacked immunity. Susquehannocks, on their regular visits to the Lenapewihittuck, carried contagion from their trading partners, the Hurons, who had endured waves of epidemics in the 1630s. As early as 1633, smallpox struck the Mohawks, who traded with the Dutch; the Senecas and other Iroquois endured epidemics by 1641. Disease destroyed at least one-half of the

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Huron and Iroquois populations by the 1640s, with continued plagues in following years decreasing their numbers before European contact by 90 to 95 percent. Cornelis van Tienhoven believed in 1650 that Native populations had declined significantly on Long Island, as ‘‘[t]here were formerly in and about this bay, great numbers of Indian Plantations, which now lie waste and vacant.’’ Six years later Adriaen van der Donck, a New Netherland resident, wrote that Hudson Valley Natives reported ‘‘that before the arrival of the Christians, and before the small pox broke out amongst them, they were ten times as numerous as they now are.’’11 Lindestro¨m’s note in 1654 that several hundred men served under each chief sachem of the six towns near the Schuylkill is ambiguous because he could have meant that a total of 1,200 men lived in that area of the west bank, for a total population of perhaps 5,000 people, or that the total population, including women and children, was about 1,200. Whichever number is correct, with the addition of the Sickoneysincks at Cape Henlopen and other communities located in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, the Lenape population totaled at least 4,000 at midcentury. Forty years later the Swedish ministers Andreas Rudman and Ericus Bjo¨rk reported that the numbers of Lenapes living on the Schuylkill had dropped significantly since 1650. Peter Kalm, writing in the mid-eighteenth century, also learned that the Lenapes ‘‘previously lived quite densely, where Philadelphia now stands, and moreover lived everywhere in the country; but they became extinct through the measles, which they got from the Europeans, when many 100s died.’’12 In 1650, despite the population decrease and trade with Europeans, the Lenapes held control of the region, retaining their autonomy and traditional ways of life while selectively adopting new technology from the Dutch and Swedes. Though women and men incorporated European goods into their daily lives, appreciating the convenience of woolen cloth, firearms, and metal tools, they adhered to their customary economic cycle of hunting, agriculture, fishing, and gathering. In late autumn, men organized the hunt, burning off undergrowth and creating fire-surrounds to trap deer and other game such as bears, wolves, and raccoons. Hunting parties could number more than one hundred people. In the winter, families lived in dispersed villages; with the arrival of spring, women planted corn, tobacco, beans, squash, and gourds. In summer and early autumn, Lenapes hunted; fished; tended and harvested the crops; gathered shellfish, berries, and wood; and dried fish and preserved corn for the winter. They commemorated the harvest with

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the green corn ceremony, their principal religious celebration, by dancing, singing, and feasting on corn and venison.13 Like other Natives of eastern North America, the Lenapes divided work on the basis of gender. Women raised the crops, gathered nuts and fruit, built houses, made clothing and furniture, took care of the children, and prepared meals. Men cleared land, hunted, fished, and protected the town from enemies. Europeans often criticized this division of labor because it differed from agricultural societies in which men took primary responsibility for planting and harvesting crops. Van der Donck wrote, for example, that the ‘‘men are generally lazy, and do nothing until they become old and unesteemed, when they make spoons, wooden bowls, bags, nets and other similar articles; beyond this the men do nothing except fish, hunt and go to war. The women are compelled to do the rest of the work, such as planting corn, cutting and drawing fire-wood, cooking, taking care of the children and whatever else there is to be done.’’ David de Vries agreed that ‘‘the women are compelled to work like asses, and when they travel, to carry the baggage on their backs, together with their infants, if they have any, bound to a board.’’ The Dutch scholar Nicolaes van Wassenaer, a compiler of newsworthy information from New Netherland in his Historisch Verhael, noted more favorably that North American women took responsibility for planting and gathering food. They prepared meals, including corn, which ‘‘is pounded . . . , made into meal, and baked into cakes in the ashes, after the olden fashion, and used for food.’’ Van Wassenaer observed that Native women followed the moon in making preparations for planting and harvest: they ‘‘are the most skilful star-gazers [who] . . . can name all the stars; their rising, setting.’’14 Dutch and Swedish writers who commented on the Natives’ politics and society found the liberty and equality of Lenape society most perplexing. As elites in stratified social systems, the Europeans described—and often condemned—the Natives’ egalitarian government, religion, and gender codes, including their freedom from taxes and flexibility in childrearing. We can only guess the response to the Lenapes’ society of more ordinary Swedes, Finns, and Dutch who left no accounts of their experiences. At least some aspects of the Lenapes’ open society must have been welcome to Europeans at lower rungs of the social ladder. Most of the European observers harshly denounced what they considered the Natives’ sexual freedom, believing that the Lenapes had few restrictions on marriage and divorce except for rigid prohibitions against incest.

Figure 2. Native American women grinding corn. From Franc¸ois Du Creux, Historiae Canadensis, sue Novae-Franciae libri decem, ad annum usque (Paris, 1664). Special Collections, Lehigh University Libraries.

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Van der Donck thought that ‘‘[t]races of the institution of marriage can just be perceived among them, and nothing more.’’ These traces consisted of the groom giving the bride some wampum or cloth, which she would return if they separated after only a short time. Isaack de Rasie`re, the secretary of New Netherland, noted specific rituals for divorce, which he thought common because men and women were ‘‘very unfaithful to each other; whence it results that they breed but few children, so that it is a wonder when a woman has three or four children, particularly by any one man whose name can be certainly known.’’ He noted their rule against incest, which the Natives ‘‘considered an abominable thing.’’ The adventurer de Vries also thought the Natives sexually liberated but was less censorious, writing that the ‘‘men are not jealous, and even lend their wives to a friend.’’15 The Europeans, of course, were speaking from the viewpoint of their own male-dominated Christian culture in which marriages were difficult to dissolve officially, and thus they viewed the Lenapes’ sexual norms as permissive, and they exaggerated the frequency of divorce. Unlike their European counterparts, Native women held an equivalent status with men in their families and society, a fact that certainly accounted for the male Europeans’ censure. Several colonists complained as well that Native parents treated their children too leniently. Reverend Jonas Michae¨lius, who served the Dutch Reformed church in Manhattan for several years, wanted to separate young Native children from their parents in order to instruct them in the Dutch language and Christianity and to give them ‘‘good examples of virtuous living.’’ ‘‘But,’’ he reported, ‘‘this separation is hard to effect. For the parents have a strong affection for their children, and are very loath to part with them; and when they are separated from them, as we have already had proof, the parents are never contented, but take them away stealthily, or induce them to run away.’’ Peter Lindestro¨m observed that Lenape parents ‘‘show themselves very tender towards their children’’ and that the children in turn rarely cried or whined ‘‘like the Christian children.’’16 In religion, the Lenapes, like other people of eastern North America, believed that the earth and sky formed a spiritual realm of which they were a part, not the masters. Spirits inhabited the natural world and could be found in plants, animals, rocks, or clouds. Each spirit, or manitou, could become the guardian of a young Indian man (less often a young woman), who, in search of a manitou, went into the woods alone, without eating or sleeping perhaps for days. If the spirit made itself known, it would provide

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help and counsel to the individual for the rest of his or her life. Lenapes also believed in a Master Spirit or Creator, who was all-powerful and allknowing but whose presence was rarely felt. The religious leaders, or shamans, who were usually men but sometimes women, performed rituals to influence weather conditions or ward off danger. Native Americans believed that shamans could cure illness, interpret dreams, bring good weather, and predict the future.17 Reverend Michae¨lius considered ‘‘the natives of the country . . . entirely savage and wild, strangers to all decency, yea uncivil and stupid as garden poles . . . who serve nobody but the Devil, that is, the spirit which in their language they call Menetto.’’ Michae¨lius was pessimistic about the possibility of converting the Natives to Christianity. To try to convey the nature of God, he explained, he could not in loyalty to his own religion use ‘‘the name of Menetto, whom they know and serve—for that would be blasphemy,’’ so instead he attempted to use the concept ‘‘of one great, yea, most high, Sachiema, by which name they—living without a king—call him who has command over several hundred of them.’’ But to his chagrin, as the Natives listened, ‘‘some will begin to mutter and shake their heads as if it were a silly fable; and others in order to express regard and friendship for such a proposition, will say Orith (That is good).’’ The minister believed the main problem was language. He complained that the Natives revealed only enough of their words to trade, which would not do ‘‘in religious matters.’’ ‘‘Many of our common people,’’ he wrote, ‘‘call it an easy language, which is soon learned, but I am of a contrary opinion. . . . It also seems to us that they rather design to conceal their language from us than to properly communicate it, except in things which happen in daily trade; saying that it is sufficient for us to understand them in that.’’18 Michae¨lius was certainly correct that he lacked a clear understanding of the Natives’ spirituality. Europeans commonly referred to manitous as devils, ignoring the concept of the manitou as a guardian spirit, and failed to appreciate the Natives’ belief in an all-powerful Creator. Governor Johan Printz in 1643 agreed with the Dutch cleric’s assessment of the Natives’ religion, reporting to the Swedish chancellor Axel Oxenstierna the challenge of converting the Lenapes to Christianity. Printz wrote that they ‘‘know nothing of God, but serve Satan with their Kintika [religious dances], and sacrifice to him that he may give them success in their hunts and that he may do them no harm. And when we speak to them about God they pay no attention, but they will let it be understood that they are a free people,

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subject to no one, but do what they please. I presume it would be possible to convert them; but only with great labor.’’19 The Swedish government nevertheless retained the Lenapes’ conversion as one of its goals in establishing New Sweden. The Swedish Lutheran minister Reorus Torkillus arrived in 1640 and served until he died in 1643, when the clerics Johan Campanius and Israel Holg Fluviander took over his work. More than other Swedish Lutheran priests, Campanius seriously pursued his mandate to convert the Lenapes and understood, like Michae¨lius, the importance of language. Campanius explained that the Lenapes were at first suspicious of Lutheran worship in which the minister ‘‘stood alone, and talked so long, while all the rest were listening in silence.’’ Once they heard the purpose of the Lutheran services, however, a number of Lenapes returned frequently, asking the priests questions. Soon Campanius believed that they understood, and some perhaps even accepted, Christian doctrines of the creation, Adam’s fall, and salvation through Jesus Christ. In collaboration with Native and European interpreters, Campanius translated Luther’s catechism into the Unami trade jargon and provided vocabulary lists of Lenape and Susquehannock terms. Significantly, Campanius used the word ‘‘Manetto’’ for God, angel, and spirit, rejecting Michae¨lius’s concern about blasphemy. The Swedish pastor explained the trinity with specific terms: ‘‘Manetto Nwk, God the Father. Manetto Nissianus, God the Son. Chintika Manetto, God the Holy Ghost.’’ He also suggested that Lenapes distinguished between a good angel (Hwritt Manetto) and bad angel (Manunckus Manetto).20 Despite the Lutheran preacher’s good relationship with some Lenapes and their efforts to bridge the linguistic gap, Campanius, like Michae¨lius, failed to convert any Natives to Christianity. In 1647 Campanius requested from the archbishop an appointment in Sweden, arguing that he had been ‘‘in this country nearly five years, in danger for my life day and night in a heathen country among these cruel heathen, who have threatened to kill us Swedes and exterminate us.’’21 Campanius exaggerated the situation in New Sweden in order to obtain a position at home and to help explain why he could report no conversions of Natives. After a sincere effort, Campanius gave up trying to change the Lenapes’ worldview and returned home. Lenapes also retained their political system comprised of affiliated autonomous towns, which Europeans correctly considered more consensual than their own hierarchical governments. The kinship group, or extended family, as among other Native Americans, formed the basis of

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Lenape society; their system was matrilineal, with descent through the mother’s line. The heads of kinship groups chose the group’s sachem, who with advice assigned fields for planting, decided where and when to hunt, managed trade and diplomatic relations with other Natives and Europeans, and judged whether or not to go to war. On questions of war, peace, and diplomacy, the sachems of different Lenape towns collaborated and often consulted neighboring Munsee groups as well. Some useful evidence about Lenape politics can be gleaned from early Dutch and Swedish writers, though their observations—as always—must be treated with care. Johan de Laet, a Dutch West India Company director who never actually visited North America but reported information he received from adventurers, declared that they ‘‘have no form of political government, except that they have their chiefs, whom they call sackmos and sagamos, who are not much more than heads of families, for they rarely exceed the limits of one family connexion.’’ De Rasie`re thought their politics ‘‘democratic,’’ asserting that ‘‘[t]hese tribes of savages all have a government,’’ but the men are ‘‘so inclined to freedom that they cannot by any means be brought to work.’’ When a stranger with a request visited the town, de Rasie`re continued, he would appear before the sachem and anyone else who chose to be present. ‘‘That being done, the Sackima announces his opinion to the people, and if they agree thereto, they give all together a sigh—‘He!’—and if they do not approve, they keep silence, and all come close to the Sackima, and each sets forth his opinion till they agree; that being done, they come all together again to the stranger, to whom the Sackima then announces what they have determined, with the reasons moving them thereto.’’ Van der Donck maintained that the Lenapes ‘‘are divided into different tribes and languages, each tribe living generally by itself and having one of its number as a chief, though he has not much power or distinction except in their dances or in time of war. . . . There is hardly any law or justice among them, except sometimes in war matters, and then very little. The nearest of blood is the avenger. The youngest are the most courageous, and do for the most part what they please.’’ Lindestro¨m agreed that the Lenapes showed ‘‘no reverence or honor to their ruler, which their sachem does not require of them’’ and added that they ‘‘know nothing of taxation.’’ He believed, however, that the sachem could hold his people ‘‘to strict justice that he without pardon, when [someone is] caught in the act, consigns the same to death.’’22

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The Lenapes adhered to their traditional religion, egalitarian politics and society, and ways of life, though integrating some new technology, cloth, and metal goods from the colonists. Adriaen van der Donck, in his 1650 description of Munsees near New Netherland, wrote that their ‘‘weapons formerly were the bow and arrow, which they employ with wonderful skill, and the cudgel, but they now, that is, those who live near the Christians or have many dealings with them, generally use firelocks and hatchets, which they obtain in trade. They are exceedingly fond of guns, sparing no expense for them; and are so skilful in the use of them that they surpass many Christians.’’ The Lenapes incorporated European goods to supplement their traditional attire. According to Lindestro¨m in 1654, Lenape men plucked the hair from their faces so ‘‘they look smooth on the chin as the women,’’ painted their faces with many colors, decorated their heads with ‘‘large painted bird feathers,’’ and strung chains of wampum and their ‘‘Pa˚a˚hra or idol,’’ an image of a manitou, around their necks. They wore ‘‘laced shoes of deer skin, bordered and decorated with their money [wampum],’’ much like the Lapps and Finns of northern Scandinavia did. Lindestro¨m also observed the Lenapes wearing brass and tin earrings and European cloth: sachems had ‘‘begun to buy shirts from the Christians, reaching to the knees.’’ He believed that they now wore clothing even in warm temperatures to conform to European practice. While previously the Lenapes were content to go quite naked, they ‘‘are hence compelled, if they wish to have dealings with the Christians, to cover themselves with something.’’ Van der Donck noted that the Natives wore a combination of hides and European cloth. Both women and men wore ‘‘a piece of duffels or leather in front, with a deer skin or elk’s hide over the body.’’ Some had doublets and coats made from the hides of bears, raccoons, wolves, beavers, and other animals. ‘‘At present,’’ Van der Donck wrote, ‘‘they use for the most part duffels cloth, which they obtain in barter from the Christians. They make their stockings and shoes of deer skins or elk’s hide, and some have shoes made of corn-husks, of which they also make sacks.’’23 While the Lenapes introduced some European technology and customs into their daily lives, they refused to adopt Christianity, retaining their religion and worldview. They adhered to their egalitarian norms and preferred peace over war with other nations. Still, the Lenapes asserted their dominance within the Lenapewihittuck area, determining where Europeans could settle and establish forts. From 1609 to 1630, the Lenapes welcomed

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the Dutch explorers and the promise of European commerce but, at the same time, had to fight against the Susquehannocks, who from about 1626 to 1636 tried to take over Lenape country and the Dutch trade. From the start, European-Native relations vacillated between friendly and hostile in the region from what is now New York to Delaware. In early September 1609, the Lenapes and Munsees had already heard of European traders and had probably seen their ships off the coast when the English explorer Henry Hudson’s de Halve Maen (Half Moon) rounded the tip of Sandy Hook, the northernmost spit of beach on the New Jersey coast. Hudson and his crew of about eighteen English and Dutch seamen sailed in the employ of the Dutch United East India Company in search of a northwest passage through North America to reach Asian markets. The ship moved tentatively into Sandy Hook Bay, checking depth and fishing for salmon and mullet. When the anchor pulled loose in a hard wind and the ship went aground, members of the Navesink group of Munsees, who had close connections with the Lenapes, visited the Europeans, ready to trade. Robert Juet, one of the Half Moon’s officers and an Englishman, described their approach on September 4: ‘‘This day the people of the country came aboard of us, seeming very glad of our coming, and brought green tobacco, and gave us of it for knives and beads. They go in deerskins loose, well dressed. They have yellow copper. They desire clothes, and are very civil. They have great store of maize, or Indian wheat, whereof they make good bread.’’24 Though we lack a similar firsthand description of this contact from the Navesinks, Adriaen van der Donck noted forty years later that ‘‘those natives of the country who are so old as to recollect when the Dutch ships first came here’’ remembered that ‘‘they did not know what to make of them, and could not comprehend whether they came down from Heaven, or were of the Devil.’’ Some imagined the Half Moon ‘‘to be a fish, or some monster of the sea, and accordingly a strange report of it spread over the whole land.’’ This later reminiscence must be interpreted with care, not only because a European reported it but because subsequent conflict between the Munsees and Dutch likely embittered the Natives’ memories. Even so, Van der Donck reported, significantly, that only some of the Navesinks were perplexed when sighting the ship. Others, in Juet’s narrative, identified the visitors as traders and approached the ship with tobacco and Indian corn, prepared to exchange goods. With high tide the next day, the Half Moon heaved loose without damage from the ‘‘soft sand and ooze.’’

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Figure 3. Interview of Hendrick Hudson with the Indians by Seth Eastman. From Henry R. Schoolcraft, Information Respecting the History, Condition and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States, Part 2 (Philadelphia, 1854). Special Collections, Lehigh University Libraries.

When crew members went ashore, the Navesinks gave them tobacco and currents, which Juet found ‘‘sweet and good.’’ Many of the Munsees, ‘‘some in mantles of feathers, and some in skins of divers sorts of good furs,’’ boarded the ship, including women who gave the sailors hemp. ‘‘They had red copper tobacco pipes,’’ Juet added, ‘‘and other things of copper they did wear about their necks. At night they went on land again, so we rode very quiet, but durst not trust them.’’25 The last phrase presaged relations between the Munsees and Hudson’s crew as the Half Moon explored the complexity of New York Bay. On September 6, 1609, when Hudson sent five men in a boat to sound the water near Manhattan, twenty-six Canarsees in two canoes attacked them, killing one of the crew ‘‘with an arrow shot into his throat.’’ Juet failed to mention whether the sailors did anything beyond trespassing in territorial waters to provoke the Natives. Then on September 8, Juet reported that Navesinks once again ‘‘came aboard, . . . and brought tobacco and Indian wheat

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[corn], to exchange for knives and beads, and offered us no violence.’’ But the next day, he recorded that from the Manhattan area ‘‘two great canoes came aboard full of men; the one with their bows and arrows, and the other in show of buying of knives to betray us, but we perceived their intent.’’ Hudson’s crew captured four of the men but then allowed one to leave; another escaped by jumping overboard, and later the other two captives ‘‘got out of a port and swam away. After we were under sail, they called to us in scorn.’’26 The alternating friendly and antagonistic encounters of Henry Hudson and company with the Native people of eastern New Jersey and Manhattan foretold New Netherland’s bumpy relations with its neighbors. Despite the Europeans’ misbehavior in kidnapping people and untold other ways, the Munsees of eastern New Jersey—like their Lenape neighbors to the west and south—were eager to trade their corn and tobacco for knives, beads, and cloth. The explorers took note of the Natives’ furs, reporting back to their Dutch sponsors the prospects for a lucrative trade.27 Dutch mariners first entered the Lenapewihittuck region in about 1615 and exchanged goods on a sporadic basis with both the Susquehannocks and Lenapes. The first ships came under auspices of the New Netherland Company, which held the Dutch monopoly for North American trade from 1614 to 1618. Cornelis Hendricksen reported in 1616 that his expedition ‘‘traded with the inhabitants of Minquaus28 and ransomed from them three persons belonging to the people of this Company,’’ including a trader called Kleynties and two companions. They had been stationed at the company trading post on the North (Hudson) River and taken prisoner in fighting between the Susquehannocks and Mohawks.29 Dutch skippers such as Cornelis May continued to explore and conduct business in Lenape country between 1615 and 1624, when the Dutch West India Company (WIC) initiated settlement in New Netherland under May’s leadership. The first colonists were thirty Walloon families, who were Protestant French-speaking exiles from the southern Netherlands (now Belgium), which remained under Catholic Spanish control after the northern provinces achieved independence. The WIC created three trading outposts: one on Matinicum (now Burlington) Island in the Lenapewihittuck; another that became Fort Orange (where Albany now stands), on the North River; and a third on the Fresh (now Connecticut) River. The Walloons divided among the three colonies, with two families and eight men assigned to Matinicum Island. Their function was to provide auxiliary support,

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Figure 4. Ceramic pipe fragment from Dutch trading settlement on Burlington Island, 1630–35. Courtesy of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University [52–46–10/34025.1].

including farming, for the company’s fur trade. The WIC prohibited the Walloons from trading in pelts for their own profit—a rule they and subsequent settlers often ignored. Although the documentary record is unclear, Cornelis May likely purchased Matinicum Island from the Lenapes. Based on earlier reports, the WIC directors in their instructions to May described the island as ‘‘situated about 25 miles up the South River, below the first falls. . . . [T]he said island is in itself a level field with a fertile soil and on both sides has much suitable arable and pasture land as well as all kinds of timber. . . . For this purpose, at the most suitable place at the lower end of the said island, such a provisional fortification is to be built as will best protect the people and the cattle.’’30 The Matinicum settlers and Lenapes developed a trade jargon that became standard trade language for New Netherland and, later, the colonies of New Sweden, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. The language was a much simplified version of Unami, lacking plural endings and correct grammar.

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When the settlers from Matinicum Island moved to Manhattan in 1626, they took the trade jargon with them. Johan de Laet, one of the WIC directors, published a short list of Lenape words, which he attributed to the Sanhickans at the Falls. He included terms for the human body, for elements such as fire and rain, and for numbers, animals, birds, and fish. Most of the words were either Unami or jargon based on Unami, such as ‘‘ouret’’ for ‘‘good,’’ ‘‘synquoy mackyrggh’’ for ‘‘[mountain] lion,’’ and ‘‘renoes’’ for ‘‘male.’’31 In 1626, the Dutch established another outpost, Fort Nassau, on the east bank of the Lenapewihittuck, across from the site of present-day Philadelphia. In the same year, Director Peter Minuit of New Netherland consolidated the settlers on Manhattan Island because of an incident at Fort Orange in which Dutch troops, against WIC policy, fought as allies of the Mahicans against the Mohawks, resulting in the deaths of four Dutch soldiers. The incident underscored both the WIC’s lack of control over farflung settlements and the vulnerability of the tiny colonies. Fort Nassau remained standing but was not occupied continuously. According to Van Wassenaer, ‘‘The fort at the South River is already vacated [in 1626], in order to strengthen the colony. Trading there is carried on only in yachts, in order to avoid expense.’’32 The short-lived colony at Matinicum Island and continued appearance of Dutch ships precipitated war along the Lenapewihittuck between the Lenapes and Susquehannocks from about 1626 to 1636. The Lenapes were eager to trade for European cloth, guns, and metal goods, so they stepped up their hunting for beaver, otter, and other skins. While these local pelts were thinner than those from Canada because of milder mid-Atlantic winters, the Lenapes successfully marketed them to the Dutch and forcefully contested control of the Lenapewihittuck with the Susquehannocks, who tapped into the continental fur trade that reached back into central Canada, with its ample supply of the thickest and most valuable beaver pelts. The war between the Lenapes and Susquehannocks was part of a larger struggle in North America for control of the Atlantic fur trade. An Iroquoian people numbering about 8,000, the Susquehannocks were allies of the Hurons, another Iroquoian group, who resided northwest of Lake Ontario and traded primarily with New France. The Susquehannocks needed an outlet to take advantage of their alliance with the Hurons and participate in the continental trade. The Susquehannocks and Hurons allied together for control of the Canadian fur trade against the Five Nations of

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Iroquois—the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas— who lived in what is now central New York. The Mohawks served as primary merchants for the Iroquois with New Netherland on the North River, exchanging Canadian furs for guns, cloth, and particularly wampum (also called sewant), the purple and white beads that Natives crafted from shells found along the Long Island Sound. The Iroquois and other inland Natives valued wampum for jewelry, gifts, and ceremonial uses in religious rituals, diplomacy, and treaties of peace. Manufacturing the wampum beads was painstaking work, which greatly enhanced its worth among Natives, who would accept only the wampum produced by expert Native craftspeople. According to Peter Lindestro¨m, when the Dutch attempted to manufacture wampum in the Netherlands and transport it for trade in North America, the Natives quickly rejected it as counterfeit. English, Swedish, and Dutch colonists also used wampum as money in their cash-starved economies during the seventeenth century.33 The Susquehannocks, from their palisaded capital thirty-five miles north of the mouth of the Susquehanna River, tried for decades to establish commercial relationships with European colonies. In 1608 the Susquehannocks learned from the Tockwoghs of northern Chesapeake Bay that Captain John Smith, Jamestown’s leader, wished to meet with them. According to Smith, the Tockwoghs owned ‘‘[m]any hatchets, knives, and pieces [guns] of iron, and brass,’’ which the Englishman considered clear evidence that they were engaged in continental trade. The Susquehannocks sent sixty men to meet with Smith’s party on the lower Susquehanna River, where large rocks prevented the English boat from traveling upstream. With exaggeration, Smith described the Susquehannocks in his Generall Historie of Virginia published in 1624: ‘‘Such great and well proportioned men are seldom seen, for they seemed like giants to the English, yea and to the neighbors, yet seemed of an honest and simple disposition. . . . Those are the strangest people of all those countries, both in language and attire; for their language it may well beseem their proportions, sounding from them, as a voice in a vault.’’ Five Susquehannock sachems boarded Smith’s boat, offering ‘‘skins, bows, arrows, targets [shields], beads, swords, and tobacco pipes for presents.’’ The Susquehannocks were eager to trade and viewed the English as potential allies against the Iroquois. Through interpreters, they presented Smith ‘‘with a great painted bear’s skin . . . [and] a great chain of white beads, weighing at least six or seven pound.’’ They described the Iroquois ‘‘and other people, signifying they inhabit upon a great water

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beyond the mountains, which we understood to be some great lake, or the river of Canada: and from the French to have their hatchets and commodities by trade.’’ The Susquehannocks also mentioned the Lenapes, whom they called ‘‘Atquanachuks.’’ Though the Englishmen promised to return the next year, they lacked the resources to establish a regular exchange. Smith and the Virginia governors who succeeded him were fully occupied with the fledgling colony’s survival and battles with the Powhatans closer to home.34 Dutch settlement along the Lenapewihittuck in the mid-1620s attracted the Susquehannocks’ attention as they sought additional sources of wampum and European arms, cloth, and metal goods to develop their status as middlemen in the continental trade. Because the supply of Canadian furs outstripped available trade goods in both New France and the North River, and the Susquehannocks’ efforts to establish commerce with Virginia were less successful than they hoped, they sent a delegation to Manhattan in 1626, undaunted by the fact that the Dutch dealt with their Iroquois enemies at Fort Orange. The delegation met with de Rasie`re, the secretary of New Netherland, who reported to the WIC directors that ‘‘the Minquaes have been here from the south, some thirty or forty strong, and have sought our friendship.’’ De Rasie`re understood that they wanted an ongoing trade alliance: ‘‘[T]hey begged me that when the season [for trading furs] approached I would send them a sloop or a small ship, until whose arrival they would keep the peltries, which I promised to do.’’ The Susquehannocks sealed the agreement with ten beaver pelts; de Rasie`re responded with cloth, beads, and two hatchets.35 Apparently the Susquehannocks hoped at first to reduce conflict with the Lenapes by trading with the Dutch at the mouth of the Susquehanna rather than on the Lenapewihittuck, for de Rasie`re promised the Susquehannock emissaries to send a vessel to the head of Chesapeake Bay. He wrote to the Amsterdam directors asking for permission ‘‘to send any sloops where none have been before.’’ If the Dutch were able to open a post on the Chesapeake, the Susquehannocks would not need to encroach on Lenape territory. In 1626, however, the Dutch had no hope of sustaining trade on the Susquehanna, as English Virginia had become more stable and English traders were investigating commerce on the northern bay. De Rasie`re probably recognized the impossibility of the enterprise even as he promised the Susquehannocks to send a ship. In the same letter to the WIC in which he requested permission to send sloops to a new location, he

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recommended building the fort on South River to exclude other Europeans and to help protect the Lenapes who ‘‘say that they are afraid to hunt in winter, being constantly harassed by war with the Minquaes, whereas, if a fort were there, an effort could be made to reconcile them. Of this there is now greater hope than ever before, as heretofore we could never get in touch with the Minquaes, while now they have come to us of their own accord, so that I do not doubt but we shall gain their trade.’’ De Rasie`re wanted to trade with both the Lenapes and Susquehannocks on the Lenapewihittuck, just as the Dutch traded with the Mahicans and Mohawks at Fort Orange. He noted the importance of neutrality when dealing with competing groups: ‘‘I find it important that the natives are well treated, each according to his station and disposition, and that when [representatives of] two different nations are present one chief is not shown more favor than the other, of which they are very jealous.’’36 Secretary de Rasie`re thus hoped to regularize trade with the Susquehannocks while continuing to purchase furs from the Lenapes. The Dutch inability to send ships to the northern Chesapeake, however, resulted in a decade of war between the Susquehannocks and Lenapes. The shortage of Dutch trade goods exacerbated the situation, as the Natives competed for inadequate supplies, particularly duffels. In 1626, de Rasie`re pleaded to the WIC for black, blue, and gray woolens, which he said the Natives preferred. They would not accept red or green cloth because ‘‘it hinders them in hunting, being visible too far off.’’ He noted that independent traders on the Lenapewihittuck prior to 1624 had obtained 2,000 to 2,500 skins each year, ‘‘whereas now but 1100 or 1200 have come from there, and this because the sloops were so late in coming up the river and when there had in particular no duffels to offer, so that the Indians were obliged to go to the English, who furnish them with plenty of cloth.’’ Lenape country, de Rasie`re believed, could potentially provide a substantial portion of the beaver trade, which was the chief business of the WIC in New Netherland. In 1626, the peltries exported by WIC from all parts of New Netherland totaled 7,258 beavers and 857 other furs. In 1627, the number was similar, with 7,520 beavers and 370 other skins.37 For their part, the Lenapes embraced the opportunity to purchase Dutch goods for furs and corn, integrating some European technology into their culture while protecting their independence, personal liberty, and land. They had no intention of adopting Christianity or European political culture. The Lenapes avoided conflict with other nations by treating them

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with respect; they established alliances rather than enslave or forcibly adopt other people. They lived in autonomous towns without palisades and aligned, when necessary, with other Lenape and Munsee villages to defend against attack. The Lenapes thus gained a reputation among Native Americans and Europeans as a peaceful nation, but they were neither fainthearted nor weak. When the Dutch trade inspired the Susquehannocks’ invasion in 1626, the Lenapes who lived in what is now Pennsylvania first retreated to the east bank, then by 1638 they had reestablished control of the region. Similarly, they destroyed the colony at Swanendael when the Dutch diverted their efforts from exchange to plantation agriculture. The Lenapes took action to protect their sovereignty and freedom while at the same time emphasizing their priority of trade.

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Controlling the Land through Massacre and War, 1626–38

The Lenapes struggled to keep control of the land surrounding the Lenapewihittuck after 1626, as the Dutch expanded their vision of settlement and the Susquehannocks aimed to create a trading hub. The Lenapes had to defend their command of a country full of agricultural and commercial promise, as rich as (or richer) in potential as Chesapeake Bay, where English colonists expropriated the land of the Powhatans, or New England, where settlers similarly threatened Native territories. The Lenapes eagerly traded with Dutch mariners who traveled on their river; when the Susquehannocks attacked, the upriver Lenapes—Armewamese, Mantes, and others—carried out a ten-year war to restore their sovereignty and trade. During the same period, in 1631, the Sickoneysincks near Cape Henlopen wiped out the Dutch plantation of Swanendael when it became clear that the colonists intended large-scale agriculture on both sides of South Bay. While Lenapes preferred peace, they took necessary steps, including massacre and war, to protect their rights. In 1629, though the primary goal of the Dutch West India Company (WIC) in New Netherland remained taking profits from the fur trade, the WIC directors made a decision, after much controversy, to allow private investors to buy plantation colonies. The company faced competition from England and France for the region along the Atlantic coast and believed that permanent settlement would be the best long-term strategy to retain its territory. Wealthy merchants received permission to purchase land directly from the Natives to set up patroonships, or private colonies.

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Among the investors who responded to the WIC’s offer were Samuel Godijn, Kiliaen van Rensselaer, Samuel Blommaert, and Albert Burgh, who created a partnership to found colonies on the South, North, and Fresh rivers. Each of the patroons took leadership in establishing one colony.1 Samuel Godijn, a merchant and WIC director, organized the venture to install a colony called Swanendael near Cape Henlopen, sending a mariner named Gillis Hossitt to purchase land. Hossitt met with the Sickoneysincks on June 1, 1629, obtaining a deed from the leaders ‘‘in a full council gathered together,’’ including Aixtamin, Oschoesien, Choqweke, Menatoch, Awijkapoon, Mehatehan, Nehatehan, Atowesen, Ackseso, Maekemen, Queskakons, and Eesanques as well as ‘‘all the generation both young and old inhabitants, out of their villages’’ within the south corner of the bay. According to the Dutch deed, the sachems transferred possession of a twomile-wide stretch of land from Cape Henlopen to the ‘‘first narrow’’ of the river, a distance along the bay of about thirty-five miles, and received payment in cloth, axes, and tools. The next year, on July 11, 1630, Queskakons, Eesanques, and other ‘‘inhabitants of their village’’ appeared before Director Peter Minuit and his council in Manhattan to confirm the Sickoneysincks’ satisfaction with the sale. Minuit then issued a patent to Godijn, indicating that the Sickoneysincks acknowledged receipt of the goods, were fully satisfied, and thus transferred possession of the land.2 The Dutch patroons hoped to receive a handsome return on their investment from tobacco and grain, as well as oil harvested from the whales that frequented the ocean near South Bay. The ship Walvis (Whale) arrived on the Lenapewihittuck in the spring of 1631 carrying twentyeight men, cattle, horses, lime, bricks, supplies, and trade goods. The Sickoneysincks observed the colonists plant corn and tobacco, and build a large yellow brick house and shed for boiling whale fat within a palisade (see Figure 5). Several additional colonists joined the plantation, probably from the North River. The Sickoneysincks expected the Dutch to establish a regular trade and thus planned hunting expeditions to provide furs, but they soon learned that much of the Dutch merchandise was destined for a land deal across the bay. On May 5, 1631, Peter Heyes, captain of the Walvis, and Gillis Hossitt, the colony’s agent (commis), obtained a deed from Lenape sachems on the northeastern bank of South Bay for a large tract at Cape May, a second patroonship intended to strengthen Dutch control in the region. The principal patroon of the Cape May settlement

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Figure 5. Map of South Bay, including Swanendael. De Zuid Baai in Nieuw-Nederland, 1630s. Nationaal Archief, the Netherlands.

was Albert Burgh, with Godijn, Blommaert, and van Rensselaer as partners. The Lenape sachems who confirmed the transfer before Director Minuit and his council in Manhattan included Sawowouwe, Wyoyt, Pemhake, Mekowetick, Techepewoya, Mathamek, Sacook, Anehoopen, Janqueno, and Pokahake.3

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After the Cape May purchase and the Walvis’s departure, relations soured between the Sickoneysincks and Dutch at Swanendael because the colonists had limited goods for gifts and exchange. The Dutch may not have known that the Sickoneysincks expected annual gifts for continued permission to settle, planning instead to use their few remaining commodities to buy furs and food. To signify ownership of the region, Gillis Hossitt posted on the shore, at a distance from the palisade, a tin standard of the United Provinces—the coat of arms with the image of a lion holding a sword in one paw and seven arrows in the other—to warn off other European adventurers. According to a Native informant who later described the events to David de Vries, a Sickoneysinck sachem removed the sign because he wanted to use the tin to make tobacco pipes. Friends of the sachem explained to the angry Dutch that he did not understand what the sign meant. One suspects, however, that he knew only too well that the Dutch were claiming much more land than the Sickoneysincks had intended to sell. Unable to read the Dutch deed they had signed in 1629, the Sickoneysincks understood from their oral agreement that they transferred only enough land for a trading fort, not the two-mile-wide territory described on the deed. The Sickoneysinck sachem gave little credence to the Dutch marker, cutting it up to make pipes.4 Hossitt threatened the Natives, insisting that they bring in the guilty party for punishment. A group of Sickoneysincks then killed the sachem, taking ‘‘a token of the dead’’—most likely his head—to the Dutch, who acted surprised and said that they had simply ‘‘wished to have forbidden him to do the like again.’’ It is unknown whether members of the sachem’s family initially agreed to his death in order to preserve trade relations with the Dutch or if other Sickoneysincks proceeded without consulting them. In any case, the sachem’s relatives became enraged and swore vengeance against the colonists. The sachem’s family acted on his killing as if the Dutch had murdered him, for they believed Hossitt caused the death through his treacherous behavior. The rules of Lenape justice held that family members of a murder victim either could accept compensation in wampum and other goods to ‘‘cover’’ the death or could kill the perpetrator. The attack on Swanendael went beyond the norm in taking retribution for the sachem’s death, however, as Sickoneysincks executed many more than one man. Though de Vries, and perhaps the Sickoneysinck informant, omitted mention of spiritual concerns it is also possible that the sachem’s family saw his death as God’s punishment for welcoming the Dutch. Later

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in the century, Europeans recorded the Lenapes’ conviction that an evil manitou or spirit inflicted their community with epidemic disease because they had admitted the colonists to their shores. In these cases, as with Swanendael, a faction threatened or carried out mourning war—but only in 1631 did they destroy the whole settlement.5 The Sickoneysincks planned the assault on Swanendael with care, approaching the palisade when most of the colonists were tending their crops and the large guard dog was chained. Hossitt stood near the house and a sick man lay inside. As the informant told de Vries, ‘‘three of the bravest Indians who were to do the deed, bringing a lot of beaver-skins with them to exchange, asked to enter the house. The man in charge [Hossitt] went in with them to make the barter; which being done, he went down from the loft where the stores lay, and in descending the stairs, one of the Indians seized an axe, and cleft the head of [the] agent who was in charge so that he fell down dead.’’ The Sickoneysinck used a Dutch axe to kill Hossitt after transacting business with him in the loft and then dispatched the sick man as well. The assailants shot the guard dog with twentyfive arrows before he died, then ‘‘proceeded towards the rest of the men, who were at their work, and going among them with pretensions of friendship, struck them down.’’ The precise date of the slaughter is unknown though it must have occurred in the summer of 1631 when the crop was high enough to allow the Sickoneysincks to approach each man individually rather than stage a group attack. The Natives then killed the livestock, leaving only their heads, and destroyed the buildings and palisade. They left unburied the men’s bodies and the heads of the cattle and horses as an unequivocal warning to the Dutch and any other Europeans who planned a similar settlement. In effect, the Sickoneysincks replaced the symbol of the Dutch coat of arms with these ghastly remains.6 In early 1632, de Vries, who had signed on as a partner with Godijn, prepared to captain the second expedition to Swanendael to provision the colony and supply a ship and yacht for the whale fishery. Before the expedition departed the Netherlands, however, news arrived that Swanendael had been destroyed and thirty-two men killed. De Vries and his crew proceeded nevertheless and reached Cape Henlopen by early December 1632. Even before sighting land, they knew that Natives were nearby because they could smell ‘‘the land, which gave a sweet perfume. . . . This comes from the Indians setting fire, at this time of year, to the woods and thickets, in order to hunt; and the land is full of sweet-smelling herbs, as sassafras, which has

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a sweet smell. When the wind blows out of the northwest, and the smoke is driven to sea, it happens that the land is smelt before it is seen.’’ De Vries commented further on the landscape of sand dunes and hills that rose up ‘‘full of pine-trees, which would serve as masts for ships.’’7 As they moved close to Swanendael, de Vries and his men viewed the human remains, the horse and cattle heads, and demolished house. They learned about the massacre from the Sickoneysinck informant who came aboard their ship, then met successfully with the sachems presenting bullets, hatchets, cloth, and trinkets as gifts. The Sickoneysincks promised a gift in return, ‘‘as they had been out a-hunting.’’ De Vries reported that they met to ‘‘make a firm peace, which they call rancontyn marenit.’’ The Sickoneysincks ‘‘then departed again with great joy of us, that we had not remembered what they had done to us, which we suffered to pass, because we saw no chance of revenging it, as they dwelt in no fixed place.’’ De Vries’s small crew had no hope for reprisal, which the company had already dismissed by not sending an adequate force. When the WIC learned of the Swanendael massacre before de Vries left Europe, the directors made a conscious decision to instruct him to end rather than perpetuate hostilities. The Dutch captain later wrote in his journal that after news of the Swanendael attack reached the Netherlands, ‘‘it was then proposed to the Company to make war upon the savages, but the Company would not permit it, and replied that we must keep at peace with the savages.’’8 In early January 1633, having reached an accord with the Sickoneysincks, de Vries and his six-man crew sailed the yacht Squirrel upriver from the whaling station to purchase food, but they found the Lenapes and Susquehannocks at war. Despite the turmoil, the Lenapes were ready to make peace and trade furs with the Dutch, approaching the vessel as it reached Fort Nassau on the eastern bank. De Vries needed corn rather than pelts, however, and had few goods left after the peace treaty at Swanendael. A Sanhickan woman warned the Dutch against going too far into Timmer Kill as she understood some of the Natives were ready to attack. Offered some cloth, she told the sailors that Lenapes had recently ‘‘seized a shallop with Englishmen and killed the Englishmen.’’ On the next day, January 6, the Dutch initially felt threatened by a group of about forty-five Mantes people, who boarded the yacht with beaver skins to trade. Several were wearing English jackets, which gave de Vries ‘‘more cause of suspicion, as those were not clothing for them, or trading goods.’’9

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De Vries repeated his request for food and learned over the next several days that Lenape women controlled food supplies and held authority among their people. He also witnessed cooperation among Lenape sachems from different villages in negotiating with visiting traders. For three days, de Vries tried to purchase corn from Mantes and Armewamese sachems, who preferred to sell beaver pelts. Lacking enough trade goods to purchase both furs and food, de Vries convinced an Armewamese leader to meet him at Fort Nassau the next day. De Vries found the fort ‘‘full of Indians, and more and more constantly coming.’’ Nine sachems from ‘‘nine different places’’—as a coalition of Armewamese and Mantes leaders, and perhaps representatives from other Lenape groups as well—then paddled a canoe to the yacht. On the yacht, ‘‘[t]he nine seated themselves in a circle and called us to them, saying they saw that we were afraid of them, but that they came to make a lasting peace with us, whereupon they made us a present of ten beaver-skins, which one of them gave us, with a ceremony with each skin, saying in whose name he presented it; that it was for a perpetual peace with us, and that we must banish all evil thoughts from us, for they had now thrown away all evil.’’ The Native men declined gifts that de Vries offered, ‘‘declaring that they had not made us presents in order to receive others in return, but for the purpose of a firm peace, which we took for truth.’’10 When de Vries offered ‘‘to give them something for their wives,’’ the stores of corn finally opened. The sachems promised to return the next day, when fifty Natives boarded the yacht with ‘‘Indian corn of different colors, for which we exchanged duffels, kettles, and axes. We also obtained some beaver-skins, all in good feeling.’’11 The Lenape exchange with de Vries demonstrated the collaboration of sachems from various towns to negotiate peace. The Lenape leaders took the initiative by boarding the vessel, then brought their wives and other family members to finalize the sale of corn. De Vries and his men returned to Swanendael to restock the yacht for another provisioning voyage up the river. They left the whaling station in midwinter, on January 18, 1633, and soon encountered hazardous ice and witnessed the fires of war. For two weeks, the Dutch took refuge in Wyngaert’s Kill (probably Chester Creek) on the west bank. They shot turkeys for food but saw no Lenapes: ‘‘we saw here and there, at times, great fires on the land, but we saw neither men nor canoes, because the river was closed by the ice.’’ On February 3, during a brief thaw, they sailed across the river to the creek near Fort Nassau, where they met an elderly Lenape

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couple, who sold them some corn and beans. According to de Vries, ‘‘We could not understand from the Indian how it was that we saw no Indians. It seemed as if he were unwilling to tell us; he always looked frightened as if he were fleeing, ran frequently ashore, looked to and fro, so that we could perceive there must be something. They hauled the next day out of the kill, and passed between the cakes of ice and the shore, which we could not do with our yacht.’’12 A week later, when a group of fifty Susquehannocks approached the yacht, de Vries learned why the Lenapes had been alarmed. The Susquehannocks appeared friendly to the Dutch but ‘‘came on a warlike expedition, and six hundred more were to come.’’ De Vries decided not to trust them, moving the vessel upriver through the treacherous ice. The Dutch met three Armewamese who said ‘‘they were fugitives—that the Minquas had killed some of their people, and they had escaped. They had been plundered of all their corn, their houses had been burnt . . . the main body of their people lying about five or six hours’ journey distant, with their wives and children.’’ The Susquehannocks had killed about ninety Sanhickan men and the Lenapes more generally ‘‘were suffering great hunger.’’ The Armewamese reported that at this time, however, ‘‘the Minquas had all left and gone from us, back to their country.’’13 The yacht returned to Swanendael without further incident. In March, de Vries decided to solicit corn from the Virginia colony: ‘‘as I had escaped the danger in the South River,’’ he wrote, ‘‘I would be the first one of our nation to venture to the English in Virginia.’’ He believed that the Dutch colony on Manhattan would have little food to spare and perhaps he wanted to avoid turning over to the WIC the pelts he had received as gifts and purchased from the Lenapes. De Vries and his men had failed to obtain enough food along the Lenapewihittuck for their return voyage to the Netherlands ‘‘in consequence of the war among the Indians, as before related, by which we were placed in such danger, and the grain of the Indians was destroyed.’’14 A year later, in the summer of 1634, the conflict still raged as both the Lenapes and Susquehannocks observed the ship of Captain Thomas Yong, who had received a commission from King Charles I to establish English ownership of the river, which the English called Delaware, and find a northwest passage to Asia. A Lenape explained to Yong that they ‘‘were at war with a certain nation called the Minquas, who had killed many of them, destroyed their corn, and burned their houses.’’ They were forced from

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their homes on the west bank of the river to move to ‘‘the other side far up into the woods, the better to secure themselves from their enemies.’’ He also informed Yong that a Dutch ship had recently visited to buy furs. The Lenape left Yong’s ship and the next day Susquehannocks came on board. While one of Yong’s crew was able to interpret the Lenape’s dialect, he understood very little of the Susquehannocks’ language so they mostly used signs. The Susquehannocks told the same story as the Lenape: ‘‘they were lately come from war with the other Indians, whom they had overcome, and slain some of them, and cut down their corn.’’ The Susquehannocks had ‘‘a good quantity’’ of green corn that they had taken in plunder. They gave some ears to Yong and roasted others for their own meal. Yong presented each of them with a hatchet, pipe, knife, and scissors; they asked to see his ‘‘truck,’’ particularly cloth and other goods. The Susquehannocks wanted to trade and indicated they would return in ten weeks ‘‘and bring with them [a] great store of truck of beavers and otters.’’ Yong misunderstood the Susquehannocks to mean they should meet in ten days, so the deal foundered. He departed the river without taking control of it for the English (or finding a northwest passage through North America).15 De Vries’s and Yong’s descriptions of the destroyed Swanendael and war between the Lenapes and Susquehannocks portrayed the early midAtlantic region as more violent than we generally conceive. Historians of colonial New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware often omit Swanendael entirely or dismiss the slaughter as outside the normally amicable relations between Native groups and the Dutch, Swedes, Finns, and English settlers. In fact, the episode was consistent with patterns of violence in eastern North America, such as instances that occurred in Virginia, New England, and New Netherland where Europeans moved on to Native lands. In particular, Swanendael suggests that the Sickoneysincks brought lessons already learned by Natives in the Chesapeake to their specific encounter with the Dutch. Unlike combatants elsewhere, however, the Lenapes and Dutch stopped the cycle of violence before it spiraled out of control, both sides making political decisions against war so that they could pursue mutual goals of trade. The Lenapes eagerly exchanged furs for cloth and metal goods and tolerated small European settlements that had a primary commercial focus, while the Susquehannocks fought the Lenapes for an outlet on the Lenapewihittuck for the continental trade. After a decade of conflict between about 1626 and 1636, the Susquehannocks won the right to do business in Lenape country but did not conquer the Lenapes or their land.

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The Lenapes and Susquehannocks agreed to share the European trade and formed an alliance that served both groups as they resisted aggression from the Iroquois and English in subsequent decades. As for the Dutch and other colonists in the region, Swanendael presented a firm reminder to respect the Lenapes’ power and to concentrate on trade. While a few chroniclers and historians have attempted to explain the destruction of Swanendael, their accounts generally examine specific actions of its settlers without considering the larger context of colonization and war in eastern North America. De Vries offered the first explanation, quoting the Sickoneysinck who came aboard ship. Indeed the Sickoneysincks may have annihilated Swanendael for reasons the Native informant gave, because the confusion leading to the sachem’s death was serious, yet killing thirty-two men—the entire settlement—surpassed the Natives’ usual pattern of retribution or mourning war. Normally, the family or friends of a murdered Lenape sought revenge by killing the murderer, unless the offender’s relatives or the sachem negotiated an agreement by compensating the grieving family with wampum and other valuable goods. The Sickoneysinck informant made no mention of an effort at Swanendael to negotiate a settlement.16 Jasper Danckaerts, a Dutch Labadist who traveled with Peter Sluyter in the region in 1679, provided an alternative explanation, nearly fifty years after the event, to suggest cultural misunderstandings resulted in the Sickoneysincks’ decision to wipe out the colony. Danckaerts linked destruction of Swanendael to the Dutch name given to the adjacent creek, Hoerekil (in English, either Harlot’s Creek or Whorekill). Danckaerts reported that residents told him that the Swanendael men had mistreated Sickoneysinck women. In retaliation, the ‘‘Indians killed many of [the settlers] because they did not live well with them, especially with their women, from which circumstance this kill [the Whorekill] derives its name.’’ The settlers of the all-male outpost may have sought relationships with neighboring women. Dutch traders and Manhattan residents believed that promiscuity was common among Lenape men and women and that Native women would willingly have sexual intercourse with European men. Disrespectful behavior or rape by one or more of the Swanendael residents may have contributed to the massacre. Whether or not Dutch men sexually abused or raped Native women, however, elder Sickoneysinck women, as leaders in their community, likely played an important role in planning and executing the attack.17

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Misunderstanding leading to a sachem’s murder and the possibility of rape could account for violence, but complete destruction of a settlement? The Dutch were hardly strangers to the Sickoneysincks, as representatives of the Dutch patroons had negotiated the land sale in 1629 and Sickoneysincks had visited Manhattan in 1630 to confirm the agreement. For over a decade (since about 1615), Lenapes had sold furs to Dutch traders on ships and at Fort Nassau. Dutch contacts had been intermittent and—as far as we know—friendly. Both sides benefited from trade. Swanendael thus seems an anomaly in Dutch-Native relations in the Lenapewihittuck region and therefore must be considered within the larger context of the eastern seaboard of North America, where there appeared more and more European colonies, which in 1631 posed a severe threat to Native communities. The English had arrived in Plymouth in 1620, for example, sustaining a small colony until ten years later when the much larger migration of Puritans to Massachusetts Bay changed the balance between Native and European populations in New England. Of more immediate importance to the Sickoneysincks, however, were developments in the Chesapeake: the growth of English Virginia beyond its initial settlement at Jamestown and the movement of Susquehannocks into northern Chesapeake Bay, just sixty miles west of Cape Henlopen. While the Sickoneysincks were Lenape people, they were also neighbors and had close connections with the Nanticokes, Choptanks, and Wicomisses of Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Commercial links existed across the peninsula through the early and mid-seventeenth century, as the Nanticokes traded with Europeans in the Chesapeake Bay and Lenapewihittuck areas. The important Wicomiss or Whorekill trading path crossed from the Nanticokes’ region on the upper Choptank River to Sickoneysinck territory at Cape Henlopen.18 Sickoneysincks knew that the Susquehannocks, just as they were attempting to control Lenape country, were also moving south to trade with the English Virginians, pushing Eastern Shore Natives away from the head of Chesapeake Bay. The Sickoneysincks correctly assumed that the Dutch patroons planned large plantation settlements at Swanendael and Cape May that would result in European violence, slavery, and expropriation of their lands similar to what had occurred on Chesapeake Bay. While trade brought the Dutch and Lenapes together, European expansion forced them apart. The WIC encouraged immigration in order to compete successfully against England and France for territory in North America; the Lenapes viewed Swanendael

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as an invasion of their lands. From Natives in the Chesapeake, the Sickoneysincks learned about the antagonistic and murderous behavior of the English who had established the Jamestown colony in 1607. The Lenapes’ networks extended throughout the Eastern Shore, including Natives who felt the ravages of English settlement. During the early years, despite faltering population growth among the colonists, Virginians harassed the neighboring Powhatans, killing Natives and alternately destroying and stealing their corn. In August 1610, for example, the governor sent his associate George Percy ‘‘to take revenge’’ on several groups for protecting settlers who had run away from harsh conditions at Jamestown. Percy’s soldiers burned houses, ‘‘cut down their corn growing about the town,’’ slaughtered fifteen or sixteen people, and took the queen and her children captive. Percy then threw the children into the James River, ‘‘shooting out their brains in the water.’’ When the troops returned to Jamestown, the governor ordered the queen’s death. More frequently the Virginians stole corn rather than destroyed it. Refusing to plant sufficient food for themselves, they depended on the Powhatans from the first years of settlement.19 The First Anglo-Powhatan War, from 1609 to 1614, resulted when Wahunsonacock (Powhatan) became convinced that the English ‘‘coming hither is not for trade, but to invade my people, and possess my country.’’ The colony won the war, developed tobacco as a viable crop, and the settlement grew. The Powhatans feigned subservience, luring the colonists to a false sense of security, then attacked in 1622, leaving one-quarter (347) of the colonists dead. According to the historian Edmund S. Morgan, the Powhatan leader Opechancanough, ‘‘spurred not only by the arrogance of the English but by their alarming growth in numbers, apparently decided on a concerted effort to wipe them out in a surprise attack.’’ The colonists killed many times that number of Natives within the next two to three years and the Second Anglo-Powhatan War continued for a decade, until 1632. Virginia was well entrenched and expanding steadily by 1631; annual arrivals of immigrants increased the population, despite continuing high mortality. The colonists focused overwhelmingly on tobacco rather than on raising their own food. At harvest time, they raided corn from neighboring Powhatan towns and other Natives as far north as the Potomac River.20 The experience of Chesapeake Natives with the Virginians’ livestock must have intensified the Sickoneysincks’ foreboding as they watched the Swanendael colonists tend their cattle and horses as well as crops. The historian Michael Dean Mackintosh has argued that the Sickoneysincks cut

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down the Dutch plantation at Swanendael out of dread of the livestock, maintaining, ‘‘[t]o the Indians, the animals that the Europeans brought with them, and that were vital to the success of their colonies, were a crucial marker of difference between Native and newcomer.’’ The Sickoneysincks had not yet dealt with European animals directly but likely knew about the impact of domestic livestock on the Chesapeake. As the historian Virginia DeJohn Anderson has described, the Virginians allowed cattle and pigs to run free and destroy unfenced Powhatan crops. Angry Natives retaliated by killing the animals; in other cases, they shot the livestock for food, just as they would hunt deer roaming in the woods. The Powhatans destroyed many livestock as part of the First and Second Anglo-Powhatan wars. During the 1622 assault, according to an eyewitness, the Natives ‘‘fell upon the poultry, hogs, cows, goats and horses whereof they killed great numbers.’’ Virginians believed that conquest of the Powhatans was necessary both for their own security and for preserving their animals.21 A specific incident occurred on Virginia’s Eastern Shore in October 1626 that exacerbated the Chesapeake Natives’ antipathy toward European livestock. Several Accomacs killed some hogs belonging to Eastern Shore colonists, perhaps for food or because the animals had trampled their corn. During the 1620s, the Accomacs traded and had generally good relations with the Virginia colony, despite its ongoing war with the Powhatans. Thus they were surprised by the excessive reaction of the colonists who demanded restitution in corn and warned that another occurrence would ‘‘be an occasion of the breach of the peace between us.’’ As Anderson suggests, incidents such as this added to the mutual feelings of distrust between Natives and English. ‘‘Disputes over livestock,’’ she contends, ‘‘like exchanges related to other issues, cannot be separated from the main story of colonization. Both Indians and colonists associated livestock with Englishness, leading them to invest quarrels over animals with greater meaning than the actual events might seem to warrant.’’ Despite Virginia’s severe losses in 1622 and continued war, the supply of domestic animals in the colony grew by the early 1630s and planters exported livestock to other colonies.22 Thus Natives of the Chesapeake region, and arguably their Sickoneysinck neighbors, well understood the impact of European livestock spreading out across the land. Domestic animals, of course, were only part of the European system of agriculture that Native Americans learned to fear, as differences in Native and European concepts of landownership created serious conflicts. The

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livestock were significant to that system because they roamed widely and thus inhibited coexistence by colonists and Natives within a territory. In Anderson’s words, ‘‘As agents of empire, livestock occupied land in advance of English settlers, forcing native peoples who stood in their way either to fend the animals off as best they could or else to move on.’’23 Sickoneysincks took lessons learned by Chesapeake Natives who had permitted the English beachhead at Jamestown that resulted in sprawling settlement, invasion by livestock, and war. While according to Dutch records the Sickoneysinck sachems in 1629 sold to Samuel Godijn and his partners a broad swath of territory along the southwestern shore of South Bay, the Lenapes expected the Dutch to build a trading station, not an agricultural plantation similar to those in English Virginia. The Sickoneysincks, who did not read Dutch, hardly planned to sign over their homeland. They believed they were granting the right to erect a trading post in exchange for gifts and saw the Dutch settlement at Swanendael as a grave threat.24 The men landed with bricks, cattle, and horses but had few trade goods. With an all-male workforce that challenged Lenape gender roles and perhaps worried the Natives that the colonists would try to force Lenape men into regimented agricultural bound labor, the Dutch proceeded to plant tobacco (like the Virginians) and corn. The ship captain and commis crossed South Bay, taking most of their commodities to buy land for another settlement from Lenape sachems at Cape May. Bad behavior toward Sickoneysinck women by some of the Dutch colonists may have sealed Swanendael’s fate. Viewed within the context of European colonization by 1631, the Sickoneysincks’ destruction of Swanendael was a rational act in a violent world. The Virginia model demonstrated that European plantations resulted in expropriation of land, large-scale theft of corn, destruction of property by roving livestock, and death. Relations between the English Virginians and Powhatans rested primarily on force. Alternatively, until 1631, Dutch relations with Lenapes and other Native groups had rested primarily on trade. The WIC only reluctantly endorsed patroonships in order to sustain its geographic claims to the region in face of English challenges.25 Lenapes were dominant on South Bay, so they eradicated the fledgling Dutch colony before it could spread. While the slayings at Swanendael seem out of character for the Lenapes—despite the menace of another Jamestown on the Lenapewihittuck—

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perhaps the greater anomaly in seventeenth-century North America was the decision by both the Sickoneysincks and Dutch to avoid the cycle of violence that destroyed Native American societies and killed thousands of colonists in New England, New Netherland, and the Chesapeake. The Lenapes proved eager to reestablish trade; the WIC and de Vries averted ongoing war through negotiations, choosing not to rebuild Swanendael and canceling settlement plans at Cape May. Commerce serves as the obvious answer to why both sides chose peace, but a more complete explanation requires exploring relationships among the Susquehannocks, English, Lenapes, and Dutch in the continental trade. Lenape country held great potential as an entrepoˆt for Canadian furs, and while the Sickoneysincks’ destruction of Swanendael clearly represented their desire to restore territorial integrity, the Susquehannocks likely saw it differently, as an incident capable of disrupting their plans to create a commercial nexus with the Dutch. Upriver Lenapes at war with the Susquehannocks likely viewed the Swanendael massacre more ambiguously—as a possible interference to trade but at the same time a useful benchmark for relations with the Dutch. At about the same time as the Swanendael massacre, the Susquehannocks temporarily found an outlet for their furs on Chesapeake Bay, where William Claiborne, a Virginia official and major tobacco planter, founded a trading colony on Kent Island. He had traveled throughout the region, learning Native languages and initiating contacts with the Susquehannocks, and by early 1631 he obtained backing from English merchants to stock the ship Africa with trade goods and purchase the time of twenty indentured servants. Claiborne’s English business partners grasped the economic significance of the northern fur trade. They wanted to compete with the French and Dutch to reap profits in furs, especially the thick beaver pelts used to make felt hats, for which European consumer demand was strong.26 As in the Lenapewihittuck region, the Susquehannocks battled Native inhabitants in the northern Chesapeake in order to command the European trade. The Susquehannocks claimed control of Kent Island, about seven miles east of present-day Annapolis, and Palmer’s Island at the mouth of the Susquehanna River; they welcomed Claiborne to both islands to facilitate the trade. Claiborne established his colony on Kent Island, which by October 1631 ‘‘consisted of one large timber-framed house and several thatch-roofed huts set on crotches and raftered with a covering of brush.

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Figure 6. Susquehannock hair combs. Courtesy State Museum of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.

The whole was surrounded by palisades and four guns were strategically mounted.’’ Kent Island was similar to other settlements at the time, including Swanendael, but focused primarily on sustaining the northern fur trade. The island’s population included fur traders, carpenters, smiths, agricultural laborers, hog tenders, and female cooks and domestic servants. In addition to trading in beaver pelts, they produced corn, salt, lumber, and tobacco for export.27 Because the Kent Islanders faced periodic attacks from their neighbors, who were allies of the Sickoneysincks, Claiborne took the Swanendael massacre seriously. He later testified that the island’s defenses were insufficient ‘‘against the Indians who were very treacherous there and had lately cut off a plantation and slain 30 or 40 Dutchmen which lived not far from thence.’’

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Figure 7. Typical trade goods from a Susquehannock site. Courtesy State Museum of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.

He believed local Natives, not his business partners the Susquehannocks, ‘‘sought and attempted to do the like’’ to his colony. Like the Lenapes, the northern Chesapeake inhabitants viewed the Susquehannocks as interlopers and thus fought back against both the Susquehannocks and their commercial allies on Kent Island. Claiborne reported in 1634 that they ‘‘were much hindered and molested by the Indians falling out with us and killing our men’’; thus the English put maximum effort into strengthening their fort.28 Each spring Claiborne sent traders in small boats to purchase beaver pelts from the Susquehannocks during a trading season that lasted from March to June for the pelts collected in Canada the previous winter. He described the trade as a risky, imprecise business in which the Natives held the upper hand: [O]ur trade with the Indians is always with danger of our lives; and that we usually trade in a shallop or small pinnace, being 6 or 7 English men encompassed with two or 300 Indians. And that it is as much as we can do to defend ourselves by standing on our guard

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with our arms ready and our guns presented in our hands. Two or 3 of the men must look to the truck that the Indians do not steal it, and a great deal of the truck is often stole by the Indians though we look never so well to it; also a great part of the truck is given away to the kings and great men for presents; and commonly one third part of the same is spent for victuals, and upon other occasions. And that the usual manner of that trade is to show our truck, which the Indians will be very long and tedious in viewing, and do tumble it and toss it and mingle it a hundred times over so that it is impossible to keep the several parcels asunder. And if any traders will not suffer the Indians so to do they will be distasted with the said traders and fall out with them and refuse to have any trade. And that therefore it is not convenient or possible to keep an account in that trade for every axe knife or string of beads or for every yard of cloth, especially because the Indians trade not by any certain measure or by our English weights and measures. And therefore every particular cannot be written down by itself distinctly. Wherefore all traders find it that it is impossible to keep any other perfect account than at the end of the voyage to see what is sold and what is gained and what is left.29 Claiborne’s enterprise was quite successful, grossing during a six-year period more than £4,000 sterling on 7,500 pounds of beaver pelts, but the Virginian had trouble supplying European goods to the Susquehannocks. As a result, the Natives could sell Claiborne only one-half of their available pelts. The alliance between Claiborne and the Susquehannocks, which showed great promise, quickly succumbed to intercolonial rivalries when Charles I in 1632 granted Maryland to Sir George Calvert, Lord Baltimore. Claiborne’s success in part encouraged Lord Baltimore to request the charter for Maryland, as he expected profits from the northern fur trade to pay for the costs of settlement.30 Because Kent Island fell within Maryland’s geographic boundaries, the proprietor demanded Claiborne’s removal from the island and northern Chesapeake trade. Despite important connections in England and the Susquehannocks’ loyalty, in 1638 Claiborne lost Kent Island and its property, estimated at £10,000 sterling, to Maryland soldiers. Expecting this action, the Susquehannocks had given Claiborne, the previous year, Palmer’s Island at the head of Chesapeake Bay. When Maryland troops destroyed

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this site as well, the Susquehannocks expressed outrage at aggression ‘‘so near [their] home’’ and vowed not to trade with the Marylanders because they ‘‘would sooner trade with Claiborne than with any other.’’ The Susquehannocks turned aside Maryland’s overtures and diverted their Chesapeake business to the Lenapewihittuck, where in 1638 Peter Minuit established New Sweden and the Dutch continued to trade.31 The pact ending the Susquehannocks’ war with the Lenapes recognized the commercial rights of both groups in the region but preserved the Lenapes’ sovereignty over the land. The Sickoneysincks’ massacre of thirty-two Dutchmen at Swanendael in 1631, though uncharacteristic of what we know about Lenape rules of justice, was sadly consistent with events in eastern North America. The Dutch plan for agricultural colonies at both capes of South Bay countered the Natives’ desire to focus on trade. The Sickoneysincks’ neighbors on Chesapeake Bay had already suffered the impact of English livestock and tobacco culture, with constant wars, seizure of corn, and expropriation of land. The invasion by the Susquehannocks to compete with local inhabitants for European trade disrupted both the Lenapewihittuck and northern Chesapeake areas. The thirty-two deaths at Swanendael paled in comparison to the more than one hundred Lenapes killed by the Susquehannocks in the early 1630s and thousands of Powhatans and English Virginians dead in two long wars. With the destruction of Swanendael, Lenapes set rules of engagement with Europeans on their river and, having made their point, quickly sought peace and trade. The Dutch assented, both from weakness and the WIC’s overarching goal to pursue profits from furs. Both sides made a political decision to prevent violence from impeding common economic goals. Dutch traders purchased furs from the Susquehannocks and Lenapes, but they lacked sufficient trade goods to satisfy the Susquehannocks, who thus also dealt with Claiborne until he lost Kent and Palmer’s islands to the Maryland government. The business of the Lenapewihittuck region in the 1620s and 1630s was trade. When the Dutch ventured into agriculture at Swanendael, the Sickoneysincks cut them off. In the years that followed, New Sweden survived because its tiny population focused on commerce, while the Dutch built only small forts for the same purpose. Dutch policy in the river diverged sharply from Manhattan after 1638, as Director Willem Kieft supervised New Netherland’s transition to a mixed commercial/agricultural

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economy, with resulting decades of war against the Munsees and neighboring Algonquians. In the late 1630s and 1640s, Lenape country remained relatively quiet as European populations in New Netherland, New England, and the Chesapeake grew, violently expropriating Native lands. While relations between New Sweden and the Lenapes could be rocky, society on the Lenapewihittuck—framed by both Native Americans and Europeans— evolved with shared goals, with incentives to move beyond brutal episodes and to return to trade.

chapter three

Managing a Tenuous Peace, 1638–54

The Lenapes and Susquehannocks had reached a peace settlement by the spring of 1638, when the Swedish ships Kalmar Nyckel (Key of Calmar) and Fa˚gel Grip (Griffen) sailed up the Lenapewihittuck and entered Minquas Kill (now Christina River), where the New Sweden governor Peter Minuit, who earlier served as director of New Netherland, met with Lenape and Susquehannock sachems to obtain land and establish trade. He chose the site at the eastern terminus of the Minquas Path, on the river’s west bank, to intercept some of the Susquehannock trade from reaching the Dutch Fort Nassau on the eastern side. Minuit and his squadron fired cannon, waited six and one-half weeks for a response, and traveled several miles into the country to identify any sign of ‘‘Christian people.’’ They found none. According to an affidavit that four Kalmar Nyckel men affirmed in Amsterdam later that year, Minuit then ‘‘requested and caused the nations or people to whom the land really belonged to come before him, whom he then asked, if they wished to sell the river, with all the land lying about there, as many days’ journeys as he would request.’’ According to the witnesses, in the Kalmar Nyckel’s cabin, the Lenape and Susquehannock sachems Mattahorn, Mitatsimint, Elupackan, Mahamen, and Chiton ‘‘ceded, transported, and transferred all the land, as many days’ journeys on all places and parts of the river . . . upwards and on both sides.’’1 The four Europeans testified that the Natives did not know their language, so Andries Lucasson, who had lived in the region previously, served as translator. The Lenapes and Susquehannocks stated that they ‘‘were paid and fully compensated for [the land] by good and proper merchandise.’’ The Europeans then posted the Swedish Queen Christina’s coat of arms, fired cannon, and built Fort Christina, naming it for the queen. Another deposition,

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taken much later in June 1684 from three ‘‘Ancient Swedes,’’ Peter Cock, Peter Rambo, and Hans Ma˚nsson, who were by then in their seventies, certified that Minuit purchased ‘‘as much of the adjacent lands as they could shoot over with a cannon bullet from Cristina.’’ The men also recollected that Governor Peter Holla¨nder Ridder, soon after he arrived in April 1640, purchased land on the western shore from Bombay Hook north to the Falls from several Lenape sachems.2 The Lenapes later disagreed emphatically that in 1638 they had sold a broad expanse of their country to Minuit. According to the Dutch report of a 1651 meeting at Fort Nassau with New Netherland Director Peter Stuyvesant, the sachem Mattahorn claimed that he and the other leaders simply permitted the Swedes to erect Fort Christina as a trading center and tiny agricultural settlement. Minuit ‘‘gave him a kettle and other trifles, requesting of him as much land as [Minuit] could set a house on, and a plantation included between 6 trees, which he, the Sachem, sold him.’’ Minuit promised him, but never paid, one-half of the tobacco that the colonists would grow. Mattahorn ‘‘declared further, that neither the Swedes nor any other nation had bought lands of them as right owners, except the patch on which Fort Christina stood.’’3 In this 1651 statement Mattahorn also implicitly denied that the Susquehannocks had any right to deed territory on the Lenapewihittuck. The references to Susquehannocks in both the 1638 affidavit and 1684 deposition are misleading about their role in the 1638 deal with Minuit. The ‘‘Ancient Swedes’’ were incorrect in recalling that the Susquehannocks had sold the land; the Swedes’ further discussion of Ridder’s specific purchases from Lenape sachems and subsequent treaties demonstrates that the Lenapes held sovereignty. The Susquehannocks, in their 1626–36 war with the Lenapes, had won the right to trade on the river, which was probably their chief goal, but they did not take possession of Lenape land. Thus at most the Susquehannocks served as witnesses, or interested parties because of the fur trade, to Minuit’s purchase on Minquas Kill.4 The Lenapes at Minquas Kill apparently had no problem with Peter Minuit’s posting of Queen Christina’s coat of arms as did the Sickoneysincks about the Dutch arms at Swanendael seven years earlier. Minuit must have posted the sign within the agreed bounds or quickly moved it if the sachems complained. As a participant in Dutch colonization, the governor was well aware of the Swanendael disaster and would have avoided making the same mistake. Perhaps, too, through communication with the Sickoneysincks, the

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sachems better understood the symbol’s meaning and discussed any problems with Minuit rather than remove it unilaterally. Like the colonists, the Lenapes wanted to make the new trade relationship work so in these early years they negotiated rather than use violence to resolve conflicts. For the Lenapes, the Lenapewihittuck was Main Street, their country’s main artery. They lived on smaller streams that fed into the river, using canoes as their chief means to travel and transport goods. The Lenapewihittuck pulled together their territory rather than dividing it. Often, Lenape communities possessed land on both banks, as shown in the European deeds. Each community, led by a sachem who represented the group in negotiations about land and trading privileges, held specific territory that included its agricultural town and nearby woods and fields where people could gather, hunt, and fish. When the Lenapes made agreements with the Europeans during the seventeenth century, they had no intention of transferring all rights to the area in question. They aimed to stay in their villages and retain free access for farming, hunting, fishing, and gathering. With an agreement, in return for annual gifts, they allowed the Europeans to establish a fort and small settlement to support trade. In essence, the Lenapes permitted the Europeans to set up shops and houses on Main Street. The Natives saw no problem with making room for retailers from several European countries, particularly because each group often lacked enough appropriate goods to sell. Peter Minuit, as the former New Netherland director, knew that the Dutch had earlier agreements with the Lenapes, including permission to settle Matinicum Island in 1624 and the deeds for Swanendael (1629) and Cape May (1631). He was also well aware that Dutch traders visited the river, using Fort Nassau as a base. Thus Minuit and his successor, Peter Holla¨nder Ridder, focused on the west bank north of Bombay Hook, making no effort to dislodge the Dutch from Fort Nassau, a move the Lenapes would have prevented. The Lenapes granted use rights to the Swedes, Dutch, and English for prized locations to build trading posts and forts. Each European group wanted a site near the Minquas Path in order to tap into the continental fur trade with the Susquehannocks. For the Swedes and English, this circumvented the Dutch monopoly on the North River with the Mohawks; for the Dutch, the Susquehannocks provided a second important source of furs. Minuit took an ideal location at Minquas Kill, but lands to the south at Tamecongh (now New Castle, Delaware) and to the north at Wicaco, on the Schuylkill River (now Philadelphia), also accessed the Susquehannocks’

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country. The Lenapes readily granted permission to set up forts in return for gifts and promises to trade. While the Susquehannocks engaged in longdistance commerce, the Lenapes hunted more locally—on the western shore of the Lenapewihittuck, in the Pine Barrens, and north of the Falls— and also sold corn and other provisions. During the 1640s and early 1650s, within the context of Lenape sovereignty, the Swedes, Dutch, and English jockeyed to take control of the fur trade and exclude other Europeans from accessing the river. It is sometimes difficult to remember that the inhabitants of New Sweden, New Netherland, and neighboring English colonies knew that the Lenapes dominated the region because European officials, in their deeds, reports, maps, correspondence, and diaries, focused on discord with other Europeans and claimed mastery of the territory, when in fact the Natives ruled. The officials made these claims from the perspective of European nation-building and the patriarchal social hierarchy of their native land. Governors Johan Printz and Johan Risingh, who successively managed New Sweden from 1643 to 1655, understood their mission as securing the South River for Sweden. Their reports portrayed conflict with the Dutch and English as the central struggle in the region, and they assured their superiors that they remained faithful to the goal of enhancing the wealth and prestige of the Crown and the Swedish nation. Colonization, for the governors, their patrons, and Queen Christina, involved mercantilist motives to benefit the nation-state in competition with other colonizing powers (see Figure 8). In Lenape country, however, the Natives determined the limits of colonization, rejecting notions of European power. Despite epidemics brought by the colonists, the Lenapes remained strong, certainly more powerful than the faltering colony of New Sweden and trading posts of the Dutch. Even in the 1640s and 1650s the Lenapes, Swedes, and Finns created alliances based on intermarriage and similarities in culture and goals that became more resilient in ensuing years. Data for New Sweden reveal a population, like most colonies in seventeenth-century North America, heavily skewed to men. Indeed, the twenty-four men who came to Minquas Kill with Peter Minuit in 1638 were unaccompanied by women and children and thus had strong incentives to interact with neighboring Lenape women (see Table 1). The names and fate of eight men are unknown: they may have died or deserted the colony. The sixteen identified in the records were the fort’s commander Ma˚ns Nilsson Kling; the commissary Hendrick Huygen and his fourteen-year-old assistant, Gotfried Harmer; the sloop

Figure 8. Portrait of Queen Christina, by Se´bastien Bourdon, c. 1653. Photo 䉷 Nationalmuseum, Stockholm.

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Table 1. Immigrants to New Sweden, 1638–48 Date of Arrival

1638–39

1640–42

1643–48

Total

25

77

63

165 (79%)

Females, fourteen years Ⳮ

0

13

5

18 (9%)

Boys

0

9

2

11 (5%)

Girls

0

6

4

10 (5%)

Children (sex unknown)

0

2

2

4 (2%)

25

107

76

208 (100%)

Males, fourteen years Ⳮ

Total

Sources: Peter Stebbins Craig, ‘‘New Sweden Settlers, 1638–1664 Part 1 (1638–1640),’’ Swedish American Genealogist (hereafter SAG), 16 (March 1996): 63–86; Craig, ‘‘New Sweden Settlers, 1638–1664 Part 2 (1641),’’ SAG 16 (September 1996): 219–48; Craig, ‘‘New Sweden Settlers, 1638–1664 Part 3 (1643),’’ SAG 17 (March 1997): 1–22; Craig, ‘‘New Sweden Settlers, 1638– 1664 Part 4 (1644–1653),’’ SAG, 17 (September 1997): 113–32; Peter Stebbins Craig, 1671 Census of the Delaware (Philadelphia: Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania, 1999); Peter Stebbins Craig, The 1693 Census of the Swedes on the Delaware (Winter Park, Fla.: SAG, 1993).

captain and interpreter Andries Lucasson; and three carpenters, the barbersurgeon, a laborer, and seven soldiers.5 Of significance as well from this first settlement at Fort Christina was the mix of colonists from a range of European countries. Unlike Virginia, Maryland, and New England, where settlers were overwhelmingly English, New Sweden from the start and throughout its history drew people of diverse nationalities, forming a society in which individuals regularly negotiated different European languages and cultures, just as they learned those of Lenapes and Susquehannocks. Dutch collaboration in New Sweden’s founding, most notably Minuit’s leadership, was manifest in the ethnicity of the fledgling colony’s first settlers: six Dutchmen, four Swedes, one German, one Finn, and the others unknown. Another early settler was the enslaved man Anthony, who appeared in various New Sweden records as Antoni Swart, Antoni Niger, and Anthony Swartz (‘‘svart’’ is the Swedish word for ‘‘black’’) and was described as a ‘‘Morian or Angoler.’’ On Governor Johan Printz’s 1644 roll of male inhabitants, Anthony was one of four laborers at Tinicum who cut hay for the cattle and manned the governor’s sloop. He remained in bondage until at least 1648 but was probably a freeman by 1654 when he disappeared from the colony records. No evidence

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exists about whether he had a family. Apparently he was the only enslaved person in New Sweden during its existence.6 Though in 1640 a few European men began arriving in Lenape country with their wives and children, unaccompanied men continued to dominate among the immigrants. The families who came with Governor Ridder included Hans Rosbrack, his wife, and two children; Sven Gunnarsson, his wife, two sons, and a daughter; and Lars Svensson (called Lasse the Finn) and his wife, Karin.7 Thus, New Sweden in these early years resembled Swanendael and the initial settlement at Jamestown where all the settlers were male. The Lenapes perhaps found the similarity with Swanendael unremarkable as Dutch activity on the Lenapewihittuck—with the exception of the short-lived settlement on Matinicum Island—had involved no women and children. Under the leadership of governors Minuit and Ridder, the New Sweden inhabitants avoided the fate of the Dutch plantation at Cape Henlopen by presenting gifts and conducting trade. In the spring of 1641, when English merchants from New Haven sought to establish a colony on the Lenapewihittuck—challenging their own King Charles I as well as the Dutch traders and small Swedish colony—the Lenapes greeted them as providing another opportunity to trade. Leading residents of the strict Puritan colony, founded in 1638 on Long Island Sound in what is now Connecticut, started the Delaware Company so they could trade for furs on the Lenapewihittuck. They adopted the English name for the river while disregarding the king’s prior grant of the region to Sir Edmund Plowden for a colony called New Albion, which Plowden tried to establish without success. Like the Dutch and Swedes, the New Haven men ignored the English Crown’s assertion of sovereignty based on first discovery. New Haven traders George Lamberton and Nathaniel Turner arrived in Lenape country with European goods and wampum, to which they had ready supply because Long Island Sound was the principal region where Natives manufactured the valuable shell beads. Lamberton and Turner explored the river and purchased furs, offering better prices than the Swedes and Dutch, a tactic that the Swedes also used against the Dutch. The Lenapes and Susquehannocks benefited from the competition.8 The Lenapes welcomed the New Haven traders, approving three sites for English outposts. In the spring of 1641 Usquata, sachem of Narraticon, and Wichusy, sachem of Watcessit, with other unnamed Lenapes granted rights to Lamberton and Turner for a settlement on the east bank at Varkens

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Kill (now Salem Creek). The Swedes contested the treaty, asserting that Wichusy had three days earlier sold Governor Ridder the same land from Cape May north to Raccoon Creek. Ridder obtained a statement from Wichusy that another Lenape had pretended to be his deputy in the English transfer. The next year, Mattahorn and other sachems granted land at Wicaco to the English, directly across the river from Fort Nassau, and Wichusy sold them territory at Tamecongh, on the west bank opposite Varkens Kill. The Swedes protested these transactions as well, claiming the sites by earlier purchase. The agreements for Varkens Kill and Tamecongh provide evidence that Lenape communities, in this case the Watcessit group headed by Wichusy, possessed lands on both sides of the Lenapewihittuck. By the summer of 1642, despite the conflict over rights, New Haven sent twenty families to Varkens Kill and Wicaco but held off settling at Tamecongh.9 The Dutch and Swedes reacted vigorously; both governors viewed the English settlements as a threat. They considered the New Haven people a vanguard of New Englanders who would engulf their colonies. The Dutch acted first to destroy the English garrison at Wicaco, which intercepted their trade with the Susquehannocks. The New Netherland council in Manhattan agreed in May 1642 that because ‘‘some Englishmen have presumed to come into our Southriver, obliquely opposite our fort Nassauw, where they settled down in the Schuylkil without commission from any potentate, which is a matter of evil consequence, . . . seriously injuring the West-India Company, as their trade, which they carry on in the Southriver, is thereby made unprofitable, Therefore we have resolved . . . to expel the aforesaid English . . . in the quietest manner possible.’’ Governor Willem Kieft sent two sloops with soldiers to serve under Jan Jansen, the commissary at Fort Nassau. Following Kieft’s orders to ‘‘lay waste that place’’ without shedding blood, the Dutch squadron burned the trading station and imprisoned the English, taking them to Manhattan. The prisoners were later released in New Haven.10 While the Swedes took no role in the military operation, the Dutch kept Ridder informed about their actions. Neither the Dutch nor Swedes assaulted the English colony at Varkens Kill, which lacked direct access to the Susquehannock trade and instead grew tobacco. Queen Christina’s instruction to the new Swedish Governor Johan Printz, dated August 15, 1642, prior to his departure from Sweden, noted that ‘‘several English families, altogether perhaps about sixty persons strong, have settled and begun to build and cultivate the land’’ at Varkens Kill. The instruction gave Printz

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Figure 9. Portrait of Johan Printz. Stauffer Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

discretion on whether to evict them peaceably or permit them to stay under Swedish jurisdiction, which ‘‘it is rumored that they, as a free people, would submit themselves to that government, which can maintain and protect them, believing that they might shortly increase to some hundred strong.’’11 Upon arrival in the Lenapewihittuck region in February 1643, Printz gave high priority to New Sweden’s claims to the east bank (see Figure 9). He ordered construction of Fort Elfsborg at Varkens Kill, which simultaneously brought the English colony under supervision and allowed the Swedes

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to challenge large vessels entering the river. In his 1644 report to his superiors in Sweden, the governor noted that the cargo of the ship carrying his report included tobacco grown by Swedish freemen, ‘‘our English’’ in Varkens Kill, and Virginia planters. He explained that he paid more for the tobacco grown locally than in the Chesapeake because he wanted to make ‘‘our own . . . more industrious’’ and to encourage immigration by ‘‘people, both of our own nation and strangers.’’ Printz forwarded a list of seven male planters who lived at Varkens Kill in 1644 ‘‘under Swedish Jurisdiction.’’ This list, which omitted the names of women and children within households, represented a decline from the sixty persons reported in Printz’s instruction and the twenty families noted by Governor John Winthrop of Massachusetts in 1642. Some of the Varkens Kill settlers probably returned to New Haven after the Dutch attack on the Schuylkill and, in addition, Winthrop recorded in his diary that he heard in the summer of 1642 ‘‘there fell such sickness and mortality among them as dissolved the plantation.’’ He noted that the disease also assailed the Swedes. Though Winthrop was incorrect in attributing the end of the English colony on the Lenapewihittuck to sickness rather than to the Dutch military action and Swedish construction of Fort Elfsborg, he shed additional light on the Varkens Kill colony’s fate.12 Johan Printz came to Lenape country after a varied military career during the Thirty Years’ War in central Europe and Denmark. In the Swedish army, he rose quickly through the ranks to lieutenant colonel but was imprisoned after he surrendered the city of Chemnitz, Germany, which he was defending with a small troop, and returned to Stockholm without permission. At his trial, Printz was found not guilty of cowardice, but he was removed from service. Soon after, the government asked him to recruit settlers for New Sweden and appointed him governor. In the same year, 1642, he received knighthood. Printz was fifty years old when he sailed on the Fama that autumn with his second wife, Maria von Linnestau, and five children. Printz was a large man, six feet tall and more than four hundred pounds. The Lenapes referred to him as Meschatz, or ‘‘big belly.’’13 While Printz worked hard to make New Sweden a success, Swedish officials’ failure to send cargoes, troop reinforcements, and colonists weakened his efforts to maintain authority among his settlers and respect from neighboring Lenapes. From the time he arrived in February 1643 until his departure a decade later on a Dutch ship from Manhattan, only three Swedish expeditions reached the colony: Fama and Kalmar Nyckel in 1644; Gyllene

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Hajen (The Golden Shark) in 1646; and Swanen (The Swan) in 1648. The settlers survived by purchasing corn from the Lenapes when their own crops were insufficient and by obtaining cattle, oxen, wampum, tobacco, and other trade goods from merchants of New England, New Netherland, and Virginia.14 Still, colonists deserted the river, and Susquehannocks and Lenapes wondered when the Swedes would fulfill their promise of an active trade. From 1638 to 1654, the New Sweden colony evolved from an outpost of male traders and soldiers to a community of single men and families increasingly connected to neighboring Lenapes. European records provide better evidence about the colonists than we have for the Natives, but still our knowledge of New Sweden’s population is incomplete. Throughout the period, male soldiers and laborers who immigrated without spouses predominated: some died in the colony and many returned to Europe a few years after their arrival, but others stayed a decade or more, in some cases marrying the daughters or widows of fellow colonists. Some men remained on what they called South River for decades, establishing relationships with women, including Lenapes, who remained nameless in the surviving records. Intermarriage between the New Sweden and Lenape communities helped to create bonds that prompted Swedish Reverend Ericus Bjo¨rk to write in 1697 that the Natives and ‘‘ours are as one people, much friendlier than with the English, as they also in their language call these Swedes their own people.’’15 During the decade after 1638, of the 208 people known to have settled in New Sweden, most originated from Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands, and Germany, while a few came from Norway or England and its colonies (see Table 1).16 The population was ethnically diverse but heavily dominated by adult men. Almost 80 percent were males aged fourteen years or older, 9 percent were women, and 12 percent were children quite evenly split between girls and boys. Nearly all came between 1638 and 1644, as no colonists arrived by ship during the years 1645 to 1647. Three-fifths of the immigrants still lived in the colony in 1648, while 15 percent had died there, 12 percent departed voluntarily, 3 percent were banished in 1642 for misbehavior, and the fate of 8 percent is unknown. By 1648, the number of children in the community grew to 18 percent but the percentage of European women remained unchanged, resulting in a highly skewed sex ratio among the adult settler population (Table 2).17 Men who immigrated with their wives were more likely to survive and stay in New Sweden than men who were single or had left their spouses in

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Table 2. Inhabitants of New Sweden in 1648 Date of Arrival

1638–39

1640–42

1643–48

Total

Males, fourteen years Ⳮ

6

48

40

94 (73%)

Females, fourteen years Ⳮ

0

7

4

11 (9%)

Boys

0

9

2

11 (9%)

Girls

0

6

3

9 (7%)

Children (sex unknown)

0

1

2

3 (2%)

Total

6

71

51

128 (100%)

Sources: Peter Stebbins Craig, ‘‘New Sweden Settlers, 1638–1664 Part 1 (1638–1640),’’ Swedish American Genealogist (hereafter SAG), 16 (March 1996): 63–86; Craig, ‘‘New Sweden Settlers, 1638–1664 Part 2 (1641),’’ SAG 16 (September 1996): 219–48; Craig, ‘‘New Sweden Settlers, 1638–1664 Part 3 (1643),’’ SAG 17 (March 1997): 1–22; Craig, ‘‘New Sweden Settlers, 1638– 1664 Part 4 (1644–1653),’’ SAG 17 (September 1997): 113–32; Peter Stebbins Craig, 1671 Census of the Delaware (Philadelphia: Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania, 1999); Peter Stebbins Craig, The 1693 Census of the Swedes on the Delaware (Winter Park, Fla.: SAG, 1993).

Europe. In 1648, all thirteen men who had traveled with their families from Europe, but only 53 percent of men who came without wives, were still in the colony. Four of the married men departed for home with their families in 1648, including Ma˚ns Kling, the minister Johan Campanius (whose replacement, Lars Lock, arrived on Swanen), a man whose wife had died, and another whose wife had probably died in New Sweden. The remaining nine families stayed, helping to create the core European population in Lenape country. Mortality was high in New Sweden before 1645 primarily from disease and, during a brief period in the spring of 1644, the killings of five colonists by Lenapes. Poor records for most of the 1640s probably resulted in an undercount of deaths. Though Massachusetts Governor Winthrop reported that during the summer of 1642 ‘‘sickness and mortality’’ befell both the Swedes and the colony of English at Varkens Kill, New Sweden’s records for that year noted the death of only one man.18 Reported deaths increased to at least thirty in 1643 and 1644 after new settlers arrived with Governor Printz. Although Printz blamed food shortages for the deaths in 1643, infection was also a likely cause, consistent with the ordeal of seasoning that European settlers experienced in other parts of seventeenth-century North America. In 1644, three men died from unspecified causes, one drowned,

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and the Lenapes killed five people in March because of the lack of European trade goods and the spread of epidemic disease.19 While mortality in New Sweden apparently declined during the late 1640s and early 1650s, the European population failed to grow as only an estimated 128 lived there in 1648, and 130 inhabited the colony immediately prior to Governor Johan Risingh’s arrival in 1654. These numbers mask important change in the structure of the society, however, as many single men left and were not replaced, while at the same time families increased in number and size. By 1654, children in twenty-one households comprised one-half of the population.20 Immigration to New Sweden had decreased to a trickle after 1643 as a result of infrequent ship arrivals, lack of effort in Sweden and Finland to recruit colonists, and Printz’s difficulties in keeping the settlement supplied. Fourteen colonists arrived in 1644 and then none until 1648. The ship Gyllene Hajen arrived in the fall of 1646 after, according to Printz, ‘‘four months on the way, losing her sails, topmasts, and other implements, and fared very badly. The master of the ship, the mate and all the people, except one man, [were] sick.’’ Gyllene Hajen carried no colonists, returning to Sweden in the spring of 1647 with a cargo of tobacco. Printz pleaded for more settlers, noting in particular the need for women to marry freemen who were taking up farms. In his 1647 report, the governor noted that the people were healthy and only two men and two small children had lost their lives since his last account. Nevertheless, all of the soldiers and company servants expressed discontent, desiring to leave the colony.21 Johan Papegoja, who became Printz’s lieutenant and later served as interim governor, described the challenges of an unmarried man in the colony. Seeking the Swedish official Per Brahe’s support to obtain Printz’s permission to marry Printz’s daughter, Armegard, Papegoja wrote in 1644, ‘‘the one who wishes to remain here he cannot be without a wife. If one were in Sweden, there would be no want; but here one must himself cook and bake and himself do all the things that women do, which I am not accustomed to, and it is difficult for me.’’ Apparently the governor, Armegard, or both did not consent to the match immediately, for Papegoja complained to Brahe that he had talked with the governor ‘‘several times through the pastor and also visited him with my writings several times, but I can get no answer from him according to which I can act.’’ Papegoja was impatient to marry Armegard and otherwise had no interest in staying in America. They married in 1645, when Armegard was about twenty and

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Papegoja was thirty-five. Their first son, Jo¨ran, was born in 1647; a son, Bernt, in 1649; and two other sons, Gustaf and Johan, in the following years, probably by 1655.22 Papegoja was one of just eight (out of a total of sixty-two) adult men who came to New Sweden without a spouse and wed identified New Sweden women before 1655. Of the eight, most wed the daughters of other colonists, while Anders Dalbo and Hans Ma˚nsson married recent widows. With many competitors, bachelors quickly pursued available women as they came of age or lost a husband. Men who were unsuccessful in wooing a Swedish or Finnish bride had several choices: return to Europe, migrate to another colony or Native community, continue to live in New Sweden without a spouse, or establish a relationship with a Lenape woman. Of sixty-two adult men in the colony in 1648 who had immigrated without a wife, five died before 1655 and four had left behind wives in Sweden or the Netherlands. Seventeen returned to Europe or went elsewhere in North America; nine disappeared from the New Sweden records and perhaps also migrated to Maryland, New Netherland, or a Native community (or they may have died). Thirteen of the men (21 percent) remained in the colony as late as 1654, apparently without wives or children. They had lived near the Lenapewihittuck for ten to fifteen years. It seems possible, even probable, that they established short-term or long-term relationships with Lenape women in nearby towns. In addition, six men who arrived without spouses became the fathers of children in the colony; the origins of their wives are unknown. Some of these women, too, could have been Lenapes. The extent to which conjugal relationships existed between Lenapes and colonists must be estimated because the Swedish governor and church failed to recognize these unions and we lack Native records from the seventeenth century. Evidence exists, however, that the communities exchanged more than corn, furs, woolens, and tools and that common perspectives and goals evolved from family ties. Dutch and Swedish commentators noted the Natives’ flexibility on matrimony and divorce. Lenape women had significant freedom in choosing mates and they could end relationships at will. European clerics considered these heathen practices, as they thought Christianity involved monogamy and patriarchy as well as religious belief. While the New Sweden church controlled its records, omitting references to Lenape-European relationships, the ministers had little power over the colonists’ actions. As elsewhere in North America, Lenape communities could welcome European men, integrating them as part of the declining

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Native populations.23 Unmarried Swedes and Finns could benefit from the Lenapes’ flexibility to establish brief or longer-term liaisons without concern for European matrimonial law. The silence of Swedish church records on marriages between Lenapes and colonists underscores the distance between official views of the ‘‘heathens’’ and close relations between Natives and ordinary settlers. Indeed the Lenapes, Swedes, and Finns developed comradeship based on common culture as well as interpersonal relations. The cultural similarities among them and their willingness to adopt new technologies promoted interaction among the Natives and the rank-and-file colonists. Over time, Natives adopted some of the Europeans’ crops and livestock, while the Swedes and Finns learned to grow tobacco and Indian corn. They had similar cultures. The Finns in particular, like the Lenapes, practiced slash-andburn agriculture and took steam baths in specially built huts (saunas). Many of the Swedes and Finns came from a wooded environment in which they supported themselves economically by hunting, fishing, and agriculture. They used nets and spears in fishing, as well as crossbows and spears in the chase.24 In June 1644, wars in New Netherland, Virginia, and Maryland surrounded the communities on the Lenapewihittuck, as Printz reported that the Natives in North America ‘‘set themselves up against the Christians in one place after another.’’ Kieft’s War was ongoing around Manhattan and ‘‘the Hollanders have lost more than a thousand [sic] men at it and the company has received so great a damage from it that (as they themselves admit) it cannot be repaired with some barrels of gold.’’25 The war resulted from the expansion of English colonists along the Long Island Sound and of Dutch farmers in the region surrounding Manhattan. Following the Pequot War of 1637, English settlers moved into Connecticut, challenging Dutch claims and threatening the Narragansetts, of whom Miantonomo and his followers attempted to expel the Dutch and English by forging a pan-Indian alliance with the Munsees. Director Willem Kieft instigated hostilities in 1639 by attempting to require the Munsees to pay tribute in corn or wampum to New Netherland. The ensuing series of murders, attacks, and massacres destroyed the colony and left more than one thousand Natives and scores of colonists dead.26 Printz also noted in his 1644 report that several thousand Natives had attacked Virginia settlements about six weeks earlier ‘‘and fearfully murdered over 600 Christians.’’ Maryland ‘‘also suffered great damage from the Minquas and have lost two

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cannon and some people.’’ The Powhatans’ war against Virginia in April 1644 started with a broad attack on the rapidly growing English settlements, lasting until 1646 when the settlers killed the Powhatan leader Opechancanough. As a result of the Powhatans’ defeat, they became subjects of the English and lost much of their land. Maryland was less successful in the winter of 1643–44, when the colonial government sent troops against the Susquehannocks, who prevailed, taking fifteen prisoners and two pieces of artillery. The defeat and reports of the Natives’ grisly torture of the prisoners discouraged the Marylanders from further attacks.27 A military man, Printz requested regular cargoes and additional troops from Sweden, concerned that the Lenapes have ‘‘also become very proud here in the river.’’ Since March 1644 Lenapes had killed five colonists: a husband and wife in their bed, two soldiers, and a workman. Soon after the killings, sachems met with the governor, explaining ‘‘that this had happened without their knowledge and asked for peace.’’ While Printz did not report more details, the perpetrators were possibly practicing mourning war to atone for the deaths of family members from European diseases. The five deaths in a short time span represented for the Lenapes a serious challenge to the Swedes, tantamount to war. The murders warned the colonists that they would survive in the region only by the Lenapes’ consent. Nevertheless, the governor bluffed his way through the meeting, stating that he would accept peace as long as they refrained from violence. ‘‘[I]n case they hereafter practiced the smallest hostilities against our people,’’ he blustered, ‘‘then we would not let a soul of them live.’’ The sachems signed a pledge of friendship ‘‘and (according to their custom) gave us twenty beavers and some sewant [wampum] and we presented them with a piece of cloth in return. But yet they do not trust us and we trust them still less.’’ Despite their dominant numbers, the Lenapes chose peaceful coexistence with the Swedes. According to his own admission, the governor had ‘‘hardly 30 men’’ he could call upon for defense. Perhaps the bloodshed surrounding them near Manhattan and in the Chesapeake, and Printz’s pragmatic willingness to accept their offer to cover the colonists’ deaths with gifts, convinced the sachems that amicable relations, with the promise of continued trade, was the best route. It is also likely that the Lenapes and colonists were already creating close relationships that helped prevent a bloodbath in New Sweden. Indeed, the five deaths of settlers reported by Printz represented the majority of slayings from 1638 to 1655. Evidence exists of eight murders by Lenapes but no killings perpetrated by colonists against the

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Natives.28 Some additional murders by either side are probably undocumented. Nevertheless, compared with costly wars and massacres during approximately the same period in southern New England, New Netherland, and the Chesapeake, this record suggests an active effort by both groups to create common ground. Memories of Swanendael and the Lenapes’ dominance helped to keep the colonists in line, while desire for trade and amity influenced the Natives. If settlers and Lenapes already recognized the advantage of peace, Governor Printz reflected, in this 1644 report amid wars in nearby colonies, his martial mentality. In a famous quote, he urgently asked for more troops: Nothing would be better than to send over here a couple of hundred soldiers, and [keep here] until we broke the necks of all of them in this River, especially since we have no beaver trade whatsoever with them but only the maize trade. They are a lot of poor rogues. Then each one could be secure here at his work, and feed and nourish himself unmolested without their maize, and also we could take possession of the places (which are the most fruitful) that the savages now possess; and when we have thus not only bought this river, but also won it with the sword, then no one, whether he be Hollander or Englishman, could pretend in any manner to this place either now or in coming times, but we should then have the beaver trade with the Black and White Minquas alone.29 Printz never received the several hundred soldiers, and the supply ships did not arrive more frequently. Sweden’s war with Denmark prevented regular shipments. In his February 1647 report Printz noted a lapse of almost two and one-half years between the Fama’s departure and the arrival of Gyllene Hajen in October 1646. During that time he had few goods to trade with the Susquehannocks, so ‘‘the Hollanders have drawn the principal traders (who are the White and Black Minquas) from us, that we shall be able only with great difficulty to regain them.’’ The Swedes had lost 8,000 to 9,000 beavers to the Dutch because of lack of goods. At Gyllene Hajen’s arrival, Printz sent traders with eight soldiers to let the Susquehannocks know. This was prior to hunting season, however, so the Natives could only promise to conduct business beginning the next April and continuing until fall. His negotiators ‘‘were assured by them that they would trade with us

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hereafter as before,’’ especially because the Swedes promised better prices than the Dutch were offering.30 Printz’s greatest problems after 1645 were a lack of trade goods and greater pressure from the Dutch, who had ended Kieft’s War and in 1647 received a new director-general, Peter Stuyvesant. The Swedish governor reported to his superiors in 1647 that the Lenapes ‘‘have been quiet,’’ particularly since Native Americans made peace in New England, New Netherland, and the Chesapeake, and thus he dropped his request for troops. Printz complained, however, that the Dutch supplied firearms and powder to the Lenapes, urged them to attack the Swedes, and bought land ‘‘within our boundaries, which we had purchased already eight years ago.’’ Printz appeared more worried about the loss of land and power to the Dutch than any military threat from neighboring Lenapes. At a large meeting of Lenape men and women in 1645, Mattahorn and his son Ackehorn had suggested it was perhaps time to force the Swedes to leave because of their inability to trade. The Lenape council concluded that the ‘‘Swedes are good enough,’’ better than the Dutch and English whose populations expanded and created wars. When Printz heard of the meeting, he promised that a ship would soon arrive and reiterated to his superiors at home about the need for manufactures to retain the Natives’ trust and friendship. One more ship arrived in 1648, but then nothing else before he left the colony in 1653.31 The temporary halt of hostilities between the Dutch and Munsees in 1645 allowed the Dutch to focus on the Lenapewihittuck area, in particular to eject the Swedes and corner the Susquehannock trade. Kieft’s War had consumed New Netherland’s military resources and deterred the Lenapes from trading with the colony because they had close relations with the Raritans and Navesinks, who resisted Kieft’s aggression. Peter Stuyvesant’s arrival in Manhattan in May 1647 reinforced the Dutch decision to increase their power in South River (see Figure 10). The new director-general was in his mid-thirties, a military man who had lost a leg on the West Indies island of Saint Martin commanding an attack against the Spanish. He was bold, quick-tempered, and patriotic—an imposing competitor for Johan Printz.32 Despite their mutual antipathy, however, both governors came to recognize that the Natives, not they, controlled events in Lenape country. The sachem Mattahorn, who had initially sold Minuit the ‘‘patch’’ of ground at Minquas Kill and who, with his son, convened the Lenape council in 1645 to expel the Swedes, served as the primary mover in the Lenapes’ shift toward the Dutch during the remainder of Printz’s term as governor.

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Figure 10. Portrait of Peter Stuyvesant. Acc 噛1909.2, Collection of the New-York Historical Society.

Starting in 1646, the Lenapes welcomed inquiries from Andries Hudde, the new commissary at Fort Nassau, for rights to build a trading fort at the Schuylkill on the west bank of the Lenapewihittuck. The sachems were angry that the Swedes presumed to dominate the river yet often lacked goods to exchange. The Swedes’ Fort Elfsborg interfered with passage upstream by Dutch and English ships, and Fort Christina commanded the

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Minquas Kill, one of the best sites for the Susquehannock trade. Another Swedish blockhouse, located on the Schuylkill, according to Hudde, ‘‘monopolized the trade with the River Indians because most of them go hunting that way and cannot easily come through without passing his [Printz’s] place.’’33 In September 1646, Ackehorn, Megkirehondom, and Renowewan signed a deed transferring land at Wicaco, on the Schuylkill, to the Dutch. Printz quickly protested that Lenapes had earlier conveyed this land to his colony. The Natives encouraged Hudde to challenge the Swedes, but for two years the Dutch dealt with the Natives from ships rather than constructing a fort. In 1648, when the Swedes prepared to ‘‘erect some buildings at the place where the [Dutch] vessels presently anchor and trade,’’ and thus disrupt an important outlet for exchange, several Lenapes approached Hudde to build on the land they had provided in 1646. When he agreed, the Natives ‘‘summoned the Swedes, who were already living there, and ordered them to depart.’’ The sachems Mattahorn and Wissemenetto then planted the Dutch flag and ‘‘ordered [Hudde] to fire three shots as a sign of possession.’’ The Dutch started to build. When the Swedes’ commissary, Hendrick Huygen, challenged Hudde, the sachems clearly explained their position, adding a lesson in recent history. They observed ‘‘that they had sold [the Dutch] the land, and that [they] should live there.’’ Mattahorn and Wissemenetto continued by asking by what authority they (the Swedes) had built there on the land; whether it was not enough that they occupied Moetinnekonck [Tinicum], the Schuylkill, Kinsessingh, Kakarikonck, Upland, and other places settled by the Swedes, all of which they had stolen from their people; that Minwit, now about eleven years ago, had purchased no more than a small piece of land at Paghahackingh [Minquas Kill] in order to plant some tobacco, of which they the natives, were to have half in acknowledgement; whether they (pointing to the Swedes), by coming to them and buying one piece of land, should be able to take further all that adjoins it, as they (the Swedes) had done here in the river and still were doing; that it amazed them that they (the Swedes) wanted to prescribe the law to them, the native owners, so that they would not be able to do with their own possessions whatever they wanted; that they (the Swedes) had only recently come into the river and had already seized and occupied so much of their

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land, and that we (meaning us [the Dutch]) had never taken away any land from them although we have been frequenting here for over 30 years.34 The Dutch pressed on with constructing Fort Beversreede, building a palisade to protect the house. A Swedish troop of twenty-five armed men arrived, threatened the Dutch, and cut down fruit trees. To eliminate Printz’s claim that the Swedes were first purchasers of the Schuylkill, in June 1648 Mattahorn, Sinquees, and other sachems confirmed an earlier deed of 1633 to the Dutch trader Arent Corsz of ‘‘the district of country called Armenveruis [Armewamese], situate around and on the Schuylkill.’’ Yet the Swedes continued to harass the Dutch and in September 1648 built another blockhouse immediately in front of Fort Beversreede. Alexander (Sander) Boyer, the Dutch quartermaster and interpreter on the Schuylkill, wrote to Director Stuyvesant that ‘‘it deprives us of the freedom of the stream, so that when our vessels come to anchor there under the protection of the fort, our fort can scarcely be seen. My lord, I firmly believe that [Printz] has had it built there more to mock our lords than to expect that it could realize any profit.’’ Shortly after, the Swedes ‘‘violently and forcibly’’ prevented Simon Root, an English trader who worked for the Dutch, from erecting a house.35 Despite the presence of both Swedish and Dutch traders, the Lenapes and Susquehannocks remained unsatisfied with the supply of goods. They protected the Swedes and Dutch from each other because the competition among Europeans allowed the Natives to set prices and define the terms of trade, including their demand for firearms. The Swedes faced the greatest challenge, as Swanen, which arrived in January 1648, brought the last Swedish cargo until the spring of 1654, when the next governor, Johan Risingh, landed along the Lenapewihittuck. Printz tried to compensate by purchasing manufactures from merchants in surrounding colonies, but he complained that they charged two to three times the normal price. He emphasized his difficulties in letters written from 1650 to 1653 to Chancellor Axel Oxenstierna and Per Brahe, a member of the Swedish Council of State. Each year the governor complained about the lack of cargoes and correspondence from home, stating in 1652 that the Natives, English, and Dutch ‘‘tell us at present to our face, that we do not belong to any government.’’ He warned that the Lenapes and Susquehannocks had become less friendly because of the Swedes’ failure to provide trade goods; the Swedish colonists themselves also doubted the arrival of vessels, so ‘‘that part of

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them have already run away and the rest are daily on the point of leaving.’’ Printz protested that their meager supplies had allowed the Dutch to ‘‘intrude upon us on all sides; they have here so completely spoiled the fur trade [with low prices of manufactures and wampum] that neither they themselves nor we can trade any longer . . . with any profit.’’36 The Dutch, too, heard from the Susquehannocks about the inadequate stock of European goods and wampum. Sander Boyer reported to Stuyvesant in September 1648 that a sachem arrived at Fort Nassau with thirty to forty beavers to find out if a vessel had arrived from Manhattan. The Susquehannocks said that because ‘‘they presently have an abundance of skins in their country it makes them all the more anxious to trade.’’ Boyer observed, ‘‘They are also very unhappy that this river is not continually stocked with our goods. The Swede presently has little merchandise left; consequently, if we had any here, there would be without a doubt a favorable trade with the Minquas.’’ Another Dutch trader, Adriaen van Tienhoven, warned in November 1648 that both the Lenapes and Susquehannocks were demanding ‘‘a constant supply of goods at our place. . . . They also ask for guns, powder and lead.’’ He added that the trade was ‘‘badly spoiled’’ because the Natives were able to set high prices for beavers in both wampum and cloth, so ‘‘the exchange is somewhat too expensive.’’37 Stuyvesant decided in 1651 to strengthen the Dutch position along the Lenapewihittuck by erecting a more strategic fort. He had planned to visit the region promptly after his appointment to solidify Dutch claims but was delayed. As early as December 1648 he heard complaints from residents of New Netherland about the Swedish colony. They remonstrated in a pamphlet published in the Netherlands in 1650 that Governor Printz had built Fort Elfsborg ‘‘and manifests there great boldness towards every one, even as respects the Company’s boats or all which go up the South River. They must strike the flag before this fort, none excepted; and two men are sent on board to ascertain from whence the yachts or ships come. It is not much better than exercising the right of search.’’ By June 1651 Stuyvesant had heard enough, marching overland with 120 soldiers from Manhattan to Fort Nassau, where they joined eleven vessels with additional men. Printz reported that the Dutch governor ‘‘threw 200 soldiers on H[er] R[oyal] Maj[esty’s] land between the two forts, Christina and Elfsborg, at a place called Sandhauk [Sandhook, or Tamecongh], and placed there a fort, stationed there people and cannon, besides also leaving there two men-ofwar.’’ The Dutch dismantled Fort Nassau, transferring its ordnance to the

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new blockhouse, Fort Casimir, which would intercept ships sailing to Fort Christina and provide excellent access to the Minquas Path. Thus, the Dutch moved their principal trade center from the Schuylkill to Tamecongh, forcing the Swedes into an inferior position.38 Before Fort Casimir was built, however, Stuyvesant met with Lenapes to obtain rights to the territory, thus fulfilling the requirement of the Dutch West India Company (WIC) to purchase land from the Native owners. The subsequent struggle over Tamecongh demonstrates the range of goals and strategies the Lenapes and Europeans brought to treaty conferences, as well as the ways in which their thinking had evolved over the past twenty years. The Dutch governor invited the sachems Mattahorn and Sinquees, who in 1648 had signed the confirmation of Arent Corsz’s purchase at the Schuylkill, to a conference at Fort Nassau on July 9, 1651. The Lenape sachem Peminacka, who claimed Tamecongh, also attended the meeting. The sachems were ready to help the Dutch establish a more secure and strategically located trading fort to replace forts Beversreede and Nassau, and they expected to receive the gifts that accompanied treaty conferences. Stuyvesant’s impressive assembly of troops and vessels must have inspired the Lenapes to think the Dutch were serious about regularizing trade. Stuyvesant first inquired whether they possessed the west bank. Mattahorn said yes, except for the small plot of ground at Minquas Kill he had sold to Peter Minuit. Mattahorn added that the Mantes sachems Siscohaka and Mechekyralames, who were not the true owners, had three or four years earlier made an agreement with Governor Printz for land from Wicaco to the Falls. Mattahorn indicated that the Swedish claims to the entire river, going back to Minuit’s and Ridder’s purchases in 1638–42, were invalid. The Swedes had not shared the tobacco crop at Fort Christina as promised and they had expanded their settlements without permission.39 Stuyvesant wanted to know exactly which land the sachems had sold to the Swedes. Mattahorn only reluctantly declared specific boundaries, arguing ‘‘that all Nations coming to the river were welcome to them, and that they sold their land indiscriminately to the first who asked it.’’ He acknowledged that the Dutch had been the first European nation to arrive, referring to ‘‘one Cornelis with one eye, or a film on his eye.’’ Mattahorn ‘‘declared further, that neither the Swedes nor any other nation had bought lands of them as right owners, except the patch on which Fort Christina stood, and that all the other houses of the Swedes’’ built at Tinicum, on the Schuylkill, and elsewhere ‘‘were set up there against the will and consent of

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the Indians, and that neither they, nor any other natives had received anything therefor.’’ The sachems then agreed to convey the lands Stuyvesant requested on the west shore of the Lenapewihittuck from Minquas Kill (at Fort Christina) south to Bombay Hook.40 In fact, the identity of the ‘‘rightful owners’’ of Tamecongh was in dispute. The Dutch thought incorrectly that they could obtain territory south of Minquas Kill from the same sachems they had dealt with on the Schuylkill. Ownership of lands along the Lenapewihittuck was local as well as temporal. Lenapes made land deals for specific purposes, times, and places. Mattahorn and Sinquees were pleased to receive gifts for a deed, but they had no jurisdiction over Tamecongh. And while Peminacka claimed he was ‘‘the present and ceding proprietor,’’ another Lenape group claimed possession. Johan Printz obtained a deposition from Notike, the widow of Mitatsimint, and his son Kiapes and two other children. They claimed ownership of Tamecongh, stating that Mitatsimint had granted Peminacka only the right to hunt there. They further noted that ‘‘the late Sachem Mitatsimint bargained about the said land with the Swedes,’’ thus they now confirmed ‘‘that no one else, be [it] what nation it may, has a right or pretention to dwell upon the aforesaid lands.’’ They referred to Peter Minuit’s initial conference in 1638 with Mattahorn, Mitatsimint, and other sachems.41 When Stuyvesant and the Lenape sachems gathered once more on July 19, 1651, this time at Tamecongh, they formalized the transfer in writing. Stuyvesant knew that the rights to the land were disputed, but he proceeded anyway to obtain a written deed he could send home to the WIC directors. The names of Mattahorn and his son Ackehorn, Sinquees, and Peminacka appeared in the deed, transferring ‘‘all actual and real possession, property, right and jurisdiction, not only for ourselves, but also for all our heirs and co-heirs . . . without we, the granters, reserving any part, right or jurisdiction in the aforesaid lands, streams, kills and superficies thereof, the hunting and fishing excepted.’’ In return, they received duffels, kettles, axes, tools, twelve bars of lead, four guns, and powder. Peminacka was named in the deed but did not sign.42 Perhaps he took seriously the challenge of Mitatsimint’s heirs. The phrase ‘‘hunting and fishing excepted,’’ which was not included in earlier deeds for land in Lenape country, marked some movement by the Dutch to conform more carefully to the Lenapes’ intention. Perhaps, in this case, it reflected Peminacka’s effort to retain the actual rights he held at Tamecongh. According to Notike, he was entitled to hunt there—a privilege

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he did not yield to Stuyvesant. The region from Minquas Kill to the Whorekill was primarily a hunting area for the Lenapes. ‘‘Tamecongh’’ was the European rendering of the Lenape word for ‘‘place of the beaver’’; however, because of overhunting, probably few beavers survived there by this time. Nevertheless, in the July 19, 1651, deed, the Lenape community retained the rights for which they employed the land, while permitting the Dutch to erect a fort. Four Susquehannock sachems attended as witnesses to the treaty, indicating their interest in better access to Dutch trade.43 This was not the last time that the Lenapes met with colonists about Tamecongh. In 1654, when the new Swedish governor, Johan Risingh, captured Fort Casimir from the Dutch and renamed it Fort Trinity, he then met with neighboring Lenape sachems to confirm ownership to the land. In July 1654, Peminacka and Ahopameck, apparently Mattahorn’s successor, acknowledged that Mitatsiment’s 1638 sale of Tamecongh to the Swedes ‘‘was firm and legal, so that no one else hereafter could rightfully pretend to it.’’ Peminacka and Ahopameck said that Peminacka had not sold the land to Stuyvesant and that while he ‘‘had received some presents from him, for which he promised him [permission] to place a house there, no deeds concerning it [had] been made or given.’’ Peminacka could make this argument, apparently, because he had not signed the 1651 Dutch deed. At the meeting with Risingh in 1654, Peminacka now wished to confirm the Swedes’ first purchase because he ‘‘was the rightful owner of the said land, which Mitatsiment had presented to him before the purchase and before his death, so that none hereafter may find cause to object.’’ The series of documents in 1651 and 1654 regarding Tamecongh make little sense for someone attempting to trace title through European law. Since 1638, the Swedes contended that Mitatsiment had deeded the region to them, but now they recorded Peminacka as rightful owner. No record exists of why Mitatsiment’s heirs dropped out of the discussions. For government officials in Sweden, Risingh needed to verify ownership of the region surrounding Fort Trinity—particularly in the face of protests from Stuyvesant—and was happy to obtain a signed statement from Peminacka ¨ rnen (see Figure 11). The governor promptly ‘‘sent it home by the ship’’ O 44 (The Eagle), which was preparing to sail. Even as Risingh gained more knowledge about the Lenapes’ interpretation of treaty conferences and deeds, still he created the written documents his patrons required. Very quickly he understood that the deeds Europeans received from the Lenapes remained valid only if reconfirmed with gifts

Figure 11. Native deed to Tamecongh (or Sandhook), July 1654, signed by Peminacka and Ahopameck. Handel och Sjo¨fart, vol. 194A, Riksarkivet, Stockholm.

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and actual use of the land. On June 16, 1654, Risingh had sent a vessel to the Whorekill, near Cape Henlopen, ‘‘with a cargo to trade and also to present gifts, thereby confirming the purchase of land and taking possession of it anew, as it had previously been purchased by our people.’’ The yacht returned on June 29 with a message of gratitude from the sachem Hvivan: ‘‘He promised to make the land available to us and requested that we come there to live.’’ The emissaries had responded that Swedes ‘‘would go there as soon as we received some ships and people.’’45 Risingh conferred directly, on June 17, with ten sachems, including Peminacka and Ahopameck, who controlled the Lenapewihittuck region from Tamecongh to the Falls. He introduced himself as the new representative of Queen Christina and thanked them for their friendship. He sought confirmation of earlier land purchases, showing them some of the deeds. The Swedes distributed gifts to the ten sachems and the sixteen to twenty Lenape witnesses at the meeting. When Risingh asked the sachems to validate the earlier deeds, they ‘‘all with a common sound replied, ‘Yes.’ ’’ Then the Swedes picked up some of the previous deeds of purchase, reading the names of the Lenape sachems who had signed: ‘‘when [the sachems] heard their names they thought much of it, but when some one was mentioned, who was dead, they hung their heads down. With this we stopped.’’46 The treaty conference at Tinicum in June 1654 between Governor Risingh and ten Lenape sachems marked a shift in the ways the Swedish and Lenape communities dealt with one another. The transition in the New Sweden governorship from the soldier Johan Printz to the scholargovernment official Risingh helped to change relations between the two groups.47 New leadership among the Lenapes did the same, as neither Mattahorn nor Ackehorn attended the Tinicum meeting. Mattahorn had participated in treaties with the Dutch and Swedes as early as 1624, when the Lenapes permitted the Dutch under Cornelis May to settle at Matinicum Island. Mattahorn’s last documented meeting with the Europeans occurred at Tamecongh in 1651. He was a tough match for Printz and Stuyvesant: the Lenape sachem’s speeches, as reported by the Dutch and Swedes, were stern reminders that the Native people owned Lenape country, that Europeans lived and traded there only with the Natives’ permission, and they should fulfill their promises to provide trade goods and generous gifts. Mattahorn, supported by his son Ackehorn, was the strict landlord who talked business, playing one European tenant/business partner off the other. At the June 1654 treaty, Peter Lindestro¨m recorded that Ahopameck and his

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brother Quirocus, Peminacka, Speck, Weymotto, and Juncker represented Passyunk; Mattawirarcka and Skalitzi appeared for Nittabakonck; and Winangene and Naaman attended for Chiepissing.48 Risingh invited them to Tinicum both to confirm the earlier deeds to land on the west bank of the river and to agree on ways to address problems moving forward. Ris¨ rnen had added several hundred colonists to the small number ingh’s ship O remaining after Printz’s departure, combining to form a population of about 370, the largest number of Swedes and Finns in the colony since its founding. At the same time, the Lenape population was declining, the result of waves of epidemics since the Dutch and Swedes had arrived. Naaman, whom Risingh indicated was their ‘‘war chief,’’ perhaps recognized his people’s weakened position or was mollified by the replenishment of Swedish cargoes. In any case, both sides addressed issues that confronted their communities: mutual defense and friendship; roaming livestock; disease and mortality.49 Risingh assured the sachems at the Tinicum conference that the Swedes ‘‘wished to damage neither their people nor their plantations and possessions.’’ He proposed a mutual alliance in which each group would ignore rumors of ‘‘bad intentions’’ and warn the other of impending attack by an enemy nation. Naaman and a fellow sachem responded by inviting the colonists ‘‘to build a fort and houses at Passayunk (which is the major village where most of them live)’’ in order to alleviate the possibility of elevated violence when the Europeans’ livestock trampled the Natives’ fields or a young Lenape attacked a colonist. Naaman promised that the Swedes’ ‘‘enemies would be theirs, and if they heard or saw anything evil, they would call our attention to it and inform us, even in the middle of the night.’’50 Naaman’s oratory, with careful gestures and metaphors, impressed both Governor Risingh and the engineer Peter Lindestro¨m who, as new arrivals, had not witnessed the Lenape rituals of diplomacy before. Dutch and Swedish scribes had earlier failed to describe these rituals perhaps because Mattahorn eschewed ceremony or because the Europeans ignored rhetoric that seemed extraneous to their goal of obtaining written deeds. Risingh and Lindestro¨m, however, recorded Naaman’s 1654 lecture sufficiently to demonstrate similarity with Lenape treaty rituals documented later, in the eighteenth century. Perhaps, as war sachem, Naaman served as a diplomat to the Susquehannocks and Iroquois, where such oratory was expected. His use of diplomatic rites suggested that the Lenapes now considered the

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Swedes a community in Lenape country, not just (poor) traders on Main Street. The recent arrival of several hundred colonists, including additional Swedish and Finnish families, contributed to this change. Risingh and Lindestro¨m heard Naaman’s oratory somewhat differently. While Risingh provided less detail, his description suggested the power of Naaman’s speech. The governor observed, Naaman ‘‘promised that they all now hereafter would be our good friends and stroked himself several times beneath his arm as a sign of great friendship. They promised that they would hereafter maintain a firmer friendship than before, which he extolled with words, images, gestures and grand airs, so that we had to marvel at the Indians.’’ Lindestro¨m portrayed with more specifics Naaman’s proposal that as the Swedes and Lenapes had ‘‘been as one body and one heart’’ during Printz’s time, ‘‘therewith [he] struck himself on his breast, so should they hereafter be as one head with us, [and] at this [he] grasped about his head and twisted around with his hands, as though he wanted to tie a fast knot.’’ Naaman’s emphasis on the head, rather than the body or heart, heralded the Lenapes’ expectations to ally strategically with the Swedes against external enemies and to solve problems between their communities through mediation rather than violence. Lindestro¨m apparently found these metaphors, with corresponding hand gestures, convincing. Naaman’s ritual performance employed common understandings of the human body, thus enhancing the Swedish engineer’s comprehension of the speech.51 In contrast, Lindestro¨m called ‘‘ridiculous’’ Naaman’s depiction ‘‘that just as a calabash is a round growth, without a fissure or cut, so should we hereafter also be like one head without a fissure.’’ Naaman’s body metaphors held greater weight for the European than one equating the human head with a gourd.52 Of most concern to the Lenapes in June 1654 was the epidemic that swept through their community after Risingh’s ship arrived. A heated discussion almost fractured the treaty. The governor tried to explain that ¨ rnen had not ‘‘brought along any evil, which was to destroy them, which O they call Manitho, as many of [the colonists] were dying and the sickness had come among them. [We] told them that sickness had formerly often been among them, through which whole tribes had died out, when none of our ships had come here.’’ Risingh noted that the sachems ‘‘feared that all their people would perish.’’ He responded that they should turn to God, who had helped the Swedes and ‘‘could also help them to improve, if they had confidence in Him.’’53

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In Lindestro¨m’s narrative, the Lenapes expressed no interest in the Swedes’ God. One of the sachems sat on the table, requesting a boat to travel to Cape Henlopen to beg ‘‘Tentackan, a great Sachem . . . to take away again that bad Manitho, i.e., the evil one, whom he sent in our ship and all around the ship, otherwise both we and all would die.’’ When the Swedes asked what evil they had seen, the Lenapes said ‘‘[l]ike fire all around the ship.’’ The Swedes argued it was only saltwater, ‘‘which had sparkled thus during our whole voyage.’’ The sachem became furious and told the interpreter, Gregorius van Dijk, ‘‘Now, you are crazy, you old fool. Before you always used to say that I lied, but now you lie enough for anything. Have I and some [others] not seen that?’’ Van Dijk backed down, stating, ‘‘You may indeed be right, I did not believe you to be so intelligent, I am in this matter not so wise.’’ The discussion ended as the Swedes offered the Lenapes food and sack, a strong wine.54 Both groups understood that disease had come on the Swedish ship ¨ rnen, with about 100 deaths among the 350 settlers on board and addiO tional fatalities after arrival.55 While both looked to their deities to preserve their people, the discussion illustrated their very different religious views. The Lenapes’ reference to the Sickoneysinck sachem who had influence with the ‘‘bad Manitho’’ was both a warning that the Lenapes believed God was punishing them through smallpox and other diseases for accepting the Europeans to their land and a reminder of the massacre at Swanendael. The epidemic undoubtedly inclined family members of those who died to pursue mourning war against the Swedes and Finns to appease the manitou who inflicted the disease. The Tinicum treaty conference thus represented the success of Naaman and other sachems in convincing these families to choose peace and trade rather than revenge. As the historian Daniel Richter persuasively argues, gifts and trade provided a powerful spiritual as well as economic connection between peoples; in this case, reciprocity at least partially outweighed the negative effects of disease.56 The sachems were panicked, with good reason, by the epidemic assailing their people. While Risingh was correct that disease had swept the region earlier, he was wrong in attempting to deflect the blame from the Swedes and other Europeans who had transmitted contagious diseases since earliest contact. They carried smallpox, influenza, measles, and other viruses for which Native Americans lacked immunity. By 1620, many Natives of eastern New England had been annihilated by a plague before the English had landed to found Plymouth. Smallpox struck the Mohawks as early as 1633,

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and the Senecas and other Iroquois by 1641. Epidemics destroyed at least one-half of the Huron and Iroquois populations by the 1640s, with continued plagues in following years decreasing their precontact numbers by 90 to 95 percent. In addition to the Swedes, Finns, and Dutch who brought deadly microbes by ship, the Susquehannocks, in regular contact with their commercial partners the Hurons, brought contagion to the Lenapewihittuck region. The waves of disease destroying families and towns throughout America caused spiritual and social crises, conflict within societies, and a variety of responses to European settlement.57 Disease disrupted families and forced towns to merge, yet the Lenapes remained dominant along the Lenapewihittuck during most of the seventeenth century. By 1654, the Dutch, Swedes, and Lenapes all understood the complexity of landownership and coexistence in the region. The Dutch and Swedish governors continued to use written deeds as ‘‘proof’’ of ownership, even while they knew the documents carried little (or no) weight with local sachems. The governors sent the deeds home and reported on the conferences to satisfy their superiors, and they used the documents internally as the basis for grants to colonists—when they could keep control of the land. Even within their European legal framework, the deeds held little importance in the face of military power. The series of occupations of Tamecongh, first by the Dutch to build Fort Casimir, then by the Swedes in 1654, the Dutch again in 1655, and the English in 1664, demonstrated that written deeds were ineffectual even among Europeans. While the governors expected to gain absolute rights to territory, they soon learned that the Lenapes would remain sovereign, granting privileges only to trade, build forts and houses, and pursue limited agriculture. After Swanendael, the Dutch and Swedes knew that trying to establish plantation colonies would require overwhelming force against the Lenapes, a choice their home governments did not make.

chapter four

Allies against the Dutch, 1654–64

In 1654, at least 4,000 Lenapes and approximately 400 Swedes, Finns, and Dutch lived along the Lenapewihittuck. Members of both groups—Natives and colonists—resisted heavy-handed efforts to restrict their autonomy, as the Lenapes repelled efforts by European clergymen to convert them to Christianity and continued to control events in the region. Lacking significant police and military power, the Swedish governors could dominate neither their own settlers nor the Lenapes. The colonists sharply protested Johan Printz’s oppressive actions, and his successor, Johan Risingh, had difficulty in maintaining loyalty and preventing people from abandoning the colony. At midcentury, Lenapes and Swedes remained separate communities, divided by lingering suspicions yet tied by individual relationships, mutual commercial interest, and awareness of external threats. As events unfolded over the next half-century, both groups helped to create in Lenape country a society open to and integrating people from a broad range of backgrounds and beliefs, protective of individual liberty, and dedicated primarily and purposefully to trade. After arriving in New Sweden in May 1654, Governor Risingh faced challenges from settlers at the same time that he conducted delicate negotiations with the Lenapes. A group of twenty-four male inhabitants had precipitated Governor Printz’s departure in October 1653 with a petition charging him with misgovernment. Reinforcing their belief that he wielded unreasonable authority, Printz labeled their action a mutiny, though twenty-two of the protesters were independent farmers and craftsmen not subject to military discipline or dependent on a salary from the government or company. They included most of the freemen in the colony. Printz executed by firing squad a soldier, Anders Jo¨nsson, whom he considered one of the ringleaders, and he charged as instigators Reverend Lars Lock, who

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probably wrote the petition, and the freeman Olof Stille, holding them for trial.1 Reflecting on the lack of supply from Sweden for more than five years, the petitioners began with a general protest that the home government had abandoned them so ‘‘that at no time or hour are we secure in our life and welfare.’’ The rest of the document focused on complaints against Printz: he forbade them ‘‘under pain of fines and capital punishment’’ from trading with the Natives and other colonies, and he prevented access to agricultural lands, pastures, firewood, and fish. He refused use of the mill to grind flour, despite the colonists’ contribution to its construction, and mistreated several Finns and their children. The petitioners specifically argued that ‘‘Anders the Finn,’’ although indebted to the governor, should retain his woods so ‘‘that his wife and children [may] not starve to death.’’ The colonists intended to send two representatives to Queen Christina ‘‘to find out whether we are entirely disowned and [so] that we may know whether [missing text] we shall cultivate [our] soil any more or what we shall turn to, as we are not able to find our sustenance in any place here on land or water.’’2 As a result of the mutiny and Printz’s departure, a diminished popula¨ rnen survivors who arrived tion greeted Johan Risingh and the 250 feeble O in May 1654. Thirty inhabitants had departed from Manhattan in October 1653 with Governor Printz, including his wife and daughters (except Armegard, who remained in Lenape country for most of the time until 1676). Additional settlers looked for more promising futures elsewhere in North America. Risingh learned on his arrival that in the past year fifteen male colonists, some with families, had fled to Maryland, including six freemen who had signed the petition. Johan Papegoja, as deputy governor after Printz’s departure, enlisted several Natives to track them down. It is unknown whether they were Lenapes or Susquehannocks, the most likely groups to be recruited for the mission. When the Natives returned with the heads of two men who resisted capture, probably Matts Hansson and Hendrick Mattsson who had both lived in New Sweden since 1641, Risingh wrote that the grisly outcome provoked fear that the Natives ‘‘might in that way become accustomed to slaughtering our Christians, which the Indians are only too willing to do when they have the opportunity.’’3 Risingh had much work to do in order to stabilize the colony and establish his authority. With only 130 colonists welcoming 250 ailing immigrants, he needed the help of freemen who had signed the petition to

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provide food and shelter for the newcomers and orient them to the resources and potential dangers of the region. He also faced opposition from the Dutch soldiers and traders at Fort Casimir, which Risingh’s military forces captured and renamed Fort Trinity. Thus he relied on the ‘‘mutinous’’ Swedes and Finns for support. The company employees and ‘‘old’’ freemen, as Risingh called them, provided continuity in dealing with the Lenapes and Susquehannocks for land purchases and trade—most ¨ rnen to carry to Sweden.4 immediately to obtain a cargo for O The governor took a number of steps to satisfy his superiors in Sweden that he was bringing the mutineers to justice, while at the same time he listened carefully to the petitioners’ complaints. He sent two men with a Native guide to the Chesapeake to retrieve the escaped New Sweden colonists. When they located the fugitives, the Maryland provincial council called a hearing and determined they could not force the Swedes to return because ‘‘they were not bound by contract or otherwise to remain and serve the Swedish government.’’ Presumably the Maryland leaders would have honored Risingh’s request if the runaways had been indentured servants, as they would want to establish reciprocal arrangements for returning escaped servants and slaves. On June 9, 1654, Risingh called together all of the ‘‘old’’ and ‘‘new’’ freemen and widows to take a loyalty oath to the Queen, pledging to punish criminals, defend New Sweden against enemies, remain there unless given permission to depart, and conduct no trade competitive or detrimental to the Crown’s interests. In addition to twenty ‘‘old’’ freemen and the widow of Ma˚ns Lom, at least twenty-two ‘‘newly arrived’’ freemen, one unmarried woman, and seven widows signed the oath. Four of the new freemen were labeled ‘‘sick.’’5 Several weeks later, on June 26, Risingh called together a court at Tinicum to hear the mutiny case and other matters. Most of the freemen attended. Risingh released Reverend Lock from blame as a ringleader, and he accepted bail from Olof Stille for a future hearing, which apparently never occurred. When the freemen amplified their charges against Printz, Risingh asked to receive them in writing for transmittal to Sweden. At least eight, and perhaps more, who signed the 1653 petition put together a more detailed document, alleging charges of serious misconduct against Governor Printz. According to the freemen, he had forbidden them from selling food to the Dutch along the Lenapewihittuck when they ‘‘were in the greatest need,’’ yet when he departed ‘‘took away with him the best things in the country and sold a large part of it in Manhattan—wheat, rye, salt, and

Figure 12. Fort Trinity, formerly Fort Casimir. From Peter Lindestro¨m, Geographia Americae. Riksarkivet, Stockholm.

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other things—to the great detriment of the Country.’’ The freemen offered Printz’s treatment of Lars Svensson (‘‘Lasse the Finn’’) and his widow (‘‘Karin the Finn’’) as evidence that he ‘‘treat[ed] us so that our wives [missing text] [will] cry and that our heads will turn bald.’’ He drove Lars and Karin from their home ‘‘without law and judgment’’ and, after Lars’s death, beat Karin, imprisoning her at Fort Elfsborg with no means to sustain her children. When she pried herself loose from the chains to obtain food, Printz imprisoned her again for more than a year. ‘‘From that she lost her mind and could not remain among other people, but she stayed in the woods [missing text] and snow and other horrors, and she died from the world insane.’’ The freemen claimed Printz confiscated the Finns’ land for his own plantation, Printztorp. They added other specific accusations that he had seized their oxen and other property and had forced Anders the Finn into dire poverty.6 Before Swedish officials could respond to Risingh’s report and the freemen’s charges of Printz’s malfeasance, the Dutch took control of the colony, ending judicial proceedings against the ‘‘mutineer’’ Olof Stille but also preventing the freemen from obtaining justice against Johan Printz. Johan Risingh also faced a challenge from Printz’s daughter Armegard, who served as a central figure in the community after her father departed in 1653 and her husband, Johan Papegoja, left the next year. Armegard Printz was a force to be reckoned with, challenging Risingh’s authority in 1654 and later collaborating with other Swedes and Finns and the neighboring Lenapes to resist Dutch and English authority. She remained in the region with her four sons as manager of her father’s estates of Printzhof at Tinicum and Printztorp on Upland Creek.7 Soon after arriving, Risingh decided to relocate New Sweden’s administrative center from Tinicum to Fort Christina, which would give him room to build his own estate and was more centrally located after the conquest of Fort Trinity. Printz’s manor had served as the center of New Sweden’s government since 1643, and it was described by Peter Lindestro¨m as ‘‘very splendidly and well-built, with a pleasure garden, summer house and other such [things].’’ It also included the colony’s church. Risingh continued to use Printzhof as the center of government during the summer of 1654, as he met there with the freemen, held his conference with the Lenape sachems, and presided at court, but he then transferred the government to Fort Christina. To do that he needed to reduce Armegard Printz’s ability to challenge his authority by convincing her to move from the fort to Tinicum.8

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Though Risingh believed that he could diminish Armegard Printz’s influence by inducing her to leave Fort Christina, she complicated his plans by recruiting several important company officials to work for her in the fur trade and to supervise the Printz estate at Tinicum. Risingh reported that ‘‘one after another of the older employees began to request release from the service of the company: namely, Vice Factor Jakob Svensson [the brother of Captain Sven Svensson Skute], Constable Johan Sta˚lkofta, Corporal Anders Olofsson, Engineer Peter Lindestro¨m, and Sven, the drummer,’’ along with the skipper Abbe Larsson, who requested his pay and discharge. Risingh considered this a precarious situation for, if they had joined Printz, ‘‘the functions of the South Company there would have made little progress, as still others would also have requested discharges or without such would have run away.’’ This was a direct assault on Risingh’s authority. He spoke to each of the men, reminding them that they ‘‘would be held responsible to higher authorities for the ensuing damage.’’ Thus he foiled her plan, which he characterized as ‘‘a dangerous plot of an evil person.’’9 The twenty-nine-year-old Armegard Printz has been labeled ‘‘overbearing’’ and ‘‘self-willed’’10 likely because of this so-called plot. She clearly had a following in New Sweden with her ability to attract Svensson, Sta˚lkofta (or Stalcop), Lindestro¨m, and the others to her service. Her collaboration with Jacob Svensson is particularly interesting, as he was the chief trader and liaison with the Lenapes and Susquehannocks. That summer and fall he successfully obtained food from the Lenapes on the basis of his friendship and little more than promises of future payment, and he had just returned from a trip to the Susquehannocks, who pledged exchange of gifts, some land, ‘‘and to be reliable friends and protect [New Sweden] against attack by all the other Indians.’’ After the tug-of-war between Risingh and Armegard Printz, Svensson fell very ill, recuperating at her Tinicum manor. Though Risingh kept Svensson in the company’s service, he remained loyal to Armegard Printz.11 In addition to challenges from the settlers, Risingh had some trouble maintaining amity with the Lenapes, despite his generally successful conference in June 1654. A year later he reported to Sweden that ‘‘[o]ur neighbors the Renappi [Lenape] threaten not only to kill our people in the land and ruin them, before we can become stronger and prevent such things, but also to destroy even the trade’’ with the Susquehannocks and other Natives and colonies. He explained that the Swedes ‘‘must daily buy their friendship with presents’’ or they would become antagonistic and that the Lenapes

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had established a three-pronged trade profiting from access to the Swedes, Susquehannocks, and Dutch. The Lenapes first bought trade goods in New Sweden on half-credit and then went ‘‘to the Minques, and there they buy beavers and elkskins, etc., for our goods, and then they proceed before our eyes to [Manhattan], where the traders can pay more for them than we do, because more ships and more goods arrive there.’’12 While Risingh may have overstated the threat from the Lenapes in order to encourage the Swedish government to send cargo ships, he knew—like Printz before him—that the Natives remained amicable in large part from their own self-interest. Risingh continued in the next sentence: ‘‘Yet we associate with them to a certain extent, and they are fond of us, because we do not do them any harm or act hostile towards them. Otherwise, they would indeed ruin our cattle, yes probably the people on the land, as they vex them daily and take away whatever they can. Last winter one of them killed a woman not far from here and robbed what there was. Later indeed they promised that they would make amends for it, but have not as yet given more than ten fathoms of sevan.’’13 The Lenapes frequented the Swedish settlements, Risingh observed, apparently to a greater extent than occurred in Maryland. When a visitor from the neighboring colony ‘‘saw the Indians come and go so freely here, he said that we ought not to allow this, as they could be murderous when they had the opportunity.’’ Risingh replied that the colonists ‘‘would be on our guard,’’ but ‘‘[w]e now needed to look to the Indians for friendship and would have to do as the others had done’’ prior to his arrival. Frequent references in the records to individual Lenapes and Susquehannocks, including some who served as messengers and guides to other colonies, suggest that the Natives and New Sweden colonists intermingled without restraint. In particular, most of the freemen and their families lived in Kingsessing, adjacent to the Lenape communities at Passyunk.14 From 1654 to 1656, the Lenapes, Swedes, and Finns moved from their equivocal relationship based on trade, proximity, and personal relationships to a firmer friendship also based on mutual defense. As the Lenape population declined and new Finns and Swedes arrived, the Natives and colonists created closer alliances for mutual support, seeking common cause under the foreign regimes of New Netherland and, after 1664, England’s Duke of York. The Lenapes, Swedes, and Finns together developed a society and culture forged from the Natives’ identity as ‘‘a free people, subject to no one’’ and the Europeans’ ready opposition to heavy-handed authority. Their similar

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agricultural and forest origins, resistance to efforts to limit their freedom, and decades of shared territory encouraged the European colonists and Lenapes to create a society of free exchange that led the Swedish minister Ericus Bjo¨rk in 1697 to state that the Natives and Swedes ‘‘are as one people.’’15 The Dutch conquest of the New Sweden colony in 1655 revealed deepening collaboration between the Swedes and Lenapes, when the Natives, as they had promised at the 1654 Tinicum conference, warned the Swedes of the impending Dutch assault. A coalition of Munsees and some Susquehannocks then attacked Manhattan while Stuyvesant and most of New Netherland’s troops were in Lenape country. The Natives’ offensive against Manhattan did not prevent Stuyvesant’s defeat of New Sweden but forced him to withdraw quickly, leaving the Swedish and Finnish community intact. For the remainder of the decade until the English defeated the Dutch in 1664, the Lenapes, in alliance with the Raritans and Navesinks near Manhattan, remained alienated from Stuyvesant’s regime. The Munsees fought the Dutch during the Peach War, beginning with the attack in 1655, and remained hostile through 1664, supporting the Esopus Indians against New Netherland. The Lenapes remained at peace with the Dutch but aligned with the Raritans, Navesinks, and Esopus. They also aligned with the Swedes and Finns, who maintained their community separate from the Dutch. When the ship Mercurius arrived in 1656 with new Finnish and Swedish immigrants, the Lenapes helped them to disembark and become part of the society in the Lenapewihittuck region in defiance of Stuyvesant’s orders. The Swedes and Finns reciprocated by refusing to serve as soldiers against the Esopus. While both the Lenape and Nordic communities acted from self-interest as well as friendship, each collaborative effort strengthened bonds of common identity against the external Dutch authority. The Swedes and Finns maintained their ‘‘Swedish nation’’ adjacent to the Lenapes at Passyunk. After the English conquest of New Netherland in 1664, even as the political landscape changed significantly and the Lenapes found the English government more dangerous than the Dutch, the ties between the Swedish and Native communities held fast. The Dutch invasion of New Sweden in September 1655 confirmed the Lenape-Swedish alliance as the Natives warned of the assault, allowing the Swedes to reinforce Fort Trinity with troops and supplies. While Stuyvesant attacked, the New Netherland Council informed him by letter that more than nine hundred Indians from areas surrounding Manhattan struck the colony, breaking into houses and setting fires. The Natives burned Pavonia,

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Figure 13. New Amsterdam, 1656. Johannes Vingboons, Nieuw Amsterdam ofte nue Nieuw Iork oft Teylant Man. The City College of New York, CUNY.

on the west side of North River, killing all but one family. The council passed along information from a colonist ‘‘that the great chief of the Minquas has been here conferring on some matters with all the aforementioned Indians.’’ The colonist alleged that the Swedes had convinced the Natives to attack ‘‘and that it is through Swedish instigation that these troubles have befallen us in your absence.’’ The councilors urged the governor to return home to defend his colony where one hundred people had died within nine hours and most of the rural inhabitants were in flight.16 Stuyvesant remained in Lenape country until Risingh signed articles of capitulation, but with news of the attack on Manhattan, the Dutch director hastened negotiations by easing the terms of surrender. After taking possession of Fort Trinity (named Fort Casimir once more) and Fort Christina (now Fort Altena), Stuyvesant proposed that the Swedes and Dutch ‘‘form an offensive and defensive league with one another.’’ Risingh and the Swedish colonists denied that they had instigated the

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Natives’ assault on Manhattan and were stunned when the Dutch soldiers, under that misconception, went on a rampage. According to Risingh, they ‘‘ravaged us as if they were in the country of their archenemy, to which fact the plundering at Tennakong, Uplandt, Finlandt, Prinstorp and many other places bear a clear witness; not to mention what happened around Fort Christina: where the women were, sometimes with violence, torn from their houses; buildings dismantled and hauled away; oxen, cows, pigs and other animals slaughtered daily in large numbers; even the horses were not spared but wantonly shot, the plantations devastated and everything thereabouts so ill-treated that our provisions have consequently been mostly spoiled, taken away and otherwise consumed.’’17 Risingh and his advisors rejected the Dutch alliance, stating that they could enter ‘‘an offensive and defensive league’’ only with permission from the Swedish government. They thought it ‘‘dishonorable’’ to conclude a pact so quickly after enduring violence and plunder, and, most importantly, they understood that Stuyvesant wanted their help against the Natives. Risingh wrote that while ‘‘the Indians at Manhattan had attacked the Dutch there and defeated many families . . . the Indians were well disposed towards us.’’ The Swedes chose an alliance with the Lenapes, not with the Dutch. Risingh knew that the Swedish families who remained in the colony would need protection and food from the Lenapes, particularly after the Dutch pillaged farms and supplies.18 The Swedes and Finns believed that their neighbors, in league with the Munsees and Susquehannocks who attacked Manhattan, helped to defend their community. The Swedes and Finns sealed their alliance with the Lenapes by refusing the Dutch pact. Although Risingh, Lindestro¨m, and other Swedes soon departed for their homeland, the core New Sweden community remained. The articles of capitulation signed by Stuyvesant and Risingh permitted the defeated Swedes and Finns to choose whether to leave or stay. While some accompanied Risingh, and others migrated to Maryland (the destination of earlier Swedish ‘‘deserters’’), many continued on in the colony. Stuyvesant promised the Swedes and Finns freedom to make a living and to practice Lutheranism if they took an oath promising loyalty and obedience ‘‘to the honorable High and Mighty Lords, the States-General of the United Netherlands, together with the honorable lords, directors of the Chartered West India Company, and their director-general and councillors, already appointed or to be appointed hereafter; and remain without engaging or assisting in any act of hostility, sedition or conspiracy in word or deed

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against the same’’ for as long as they resided in the colony.19 Most Swedes and Finns maintained their settlements in the region north of Fort Christina, aligned more closely with the Lenape towns at Passyunk than with the Dutch. In December 1655, Vice-Director Jean Paul Jacquet and a small troop of soldiers established the new Dutch government at Fort Casimir (now New Castle, Delaware). With his council, Jacquet held both military and civil authority, with the power and responsibility to hear suits, maintain order and morality, and keep peace with the Native people. Jacquet’s instructions required him to publish New Netherland’s ordinances against theft from gardens or farms, selling brandy and other alcoholic beverages to the Lenapes, and ‘‘running about in the country, drinking on the Sabbath and profanation of the same.’’ Jacquet was expected not only to prevent ‘‘the free people, especially the Swedes,’’ and the Lenapes from visiting Fort Casimir too often or staying inside but also to ban trade at any place on the river except near the fort. As conflict continued between the Munsees and New Netherland, Stuyvesant remained suspicious of the Lenapes and their allies, the Swedes and Finns, instructing Jacquet to treat them with courtesy but circumspection. The Native attack on Manhattan was fresh in Dutch minds. Stuyvesant instructed Jacquet to ‘‘try to have intercourse with the savages in all politeness, but in the meantime be on his guard against them and other foreign nations and not suffer that they or others come into the Fort armed or in great numbers, by no means let them stay there over night, which the inhabitants also ought to take to heart.’’ Stuyvesant recognized, however, that the Susquehannocks and Lenapes would need shelter when trading and negotiating with the Dutch. He suggested, rather than let the Natives ‘‘remain under the blue sky,’’ that the company servants and freemen build ‘‘a house of bark outside of the Fort as lodgings for those Indians, who are not great Sachems.’’20 Within a month of assuming office, on December 28, 1655, Jacquet met at Fort Casimir with Lenape leaders to confirm their commercial treaty. When the sachems reminded him that they had worked out an agreement for higher prices prior to his arrival, Jacquet responded that his intention was ‘‘to live with them in friendship and fraternal love’’ and that it was not his responsibility to set the terms of trade. He noted ‘‘that they were left free to do as they pleased, and that they may go wherever their purse enabled them and where the goods were to their liking.’’ The Lenapes further informed the vice-director ‘‘that since it had been customary to present

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the chiefs with some gifts, it would be most appropriate now for the confirmation of this treaty.’’ Jacquet admitted a lack of goods and over the next few days raised funds from the Company treasury, his own pocket, and fourteen traders residing near Fort Casimir. The Lenapes thus continued their business partnership with the new Dutch government at the fort despite their close relationship with the Munsees at war with New Netherland. The Lenapes held the Dutch at arm’s length, however, interacting with them only for trade and formal negotiations. When the Dutch wanted to contact the sachems, they asked the Swedes to arrange the meetings.21 The arrival of the Swedish ship Mercurius in March 1656 offered the Lenapes, Swedes, and Finns another opportunity to show unity in the face of Dutch authority. A combination of financial motives and mutual alliance directed their actions. The ship carried 25 crew members and 105 passengers, mostly Finns who intended to settle in the country. They had left Go¨teborg in November 1655, before news of the Dutch conquest had arrived. The ship’s leaders included the commissary Hendrick Huygen, the Dutchman who earlier filled the same role in New Sweden, and Johan Papegoja, the husband of Armegard Printz. At Fort Casimir, upon learning about the Dutch conquest, Huygen spoke to Vice-Director Jacquet, who denied them permission to land their cargo and passengers, threatened to arrest Huygen ‘‘as a traitor and enemy of his State,’’ and sent a report to Peter Stuyvesant in New Amsterdam. The director-general and the council decided immediately to bar the Mercurius from landing goods or settlers, allowing them to obtain in Manhattan any provisions needed for the return voyage to Sweden. Despite Huygen’s pledge if permitted to stay in the colony ‘‘to keep all proper friendship and intercourse and to assist in preventing all disturbances either from Indians or from Christians for the security of the subjects of either side,’’ Stuyvesant did not want the Mercurius’s trade goods and passengers to augment the Lenape-Swedish coalition. At the same council meeting at which they banned the Swedish ship, Stuyvesant and his advisors reconsidered a March 17, 1656, message from Jacquet that a number of Swedes were proving ‘‘either troublesome or very dangerous,’’ most particularly Sven Svensson Skute and his brother Jacob Svensson, who ‘‘to the detriment of our state there he held secret intelligence with the savages.’’ Stuyvesant and the council instructed Jacquet to arrest these two men and send them to Manhattan and to require any Swedes and Finns who had not taken the oath of allegiance to comply or leave the river.22

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The Dutch fear that they lacked control was justified, for when the Mercurius prepared to depart from the Lenapewihittuck, a large group of Lenapes, Swedes, and Finns boarded the ship, forcing the skipper and crew to sail upriver. Papegoja wrote later that ‘‘we decided to set sail for Manhattan. But as soon as the savages or Indians observed this they collected speedily in great numbers, came down to us and reminded us of the former friendship and love, which they had for us Swedes, above all other nations, and said that they would destroy and exterminate both Swedes and Hollanders, unless we remained with them and traded as in the past.’’ They discharged the passengers and cargo at Tinicum, where Armegard Printz lived and managed her father’s manor, offering the Dutch little choice but to allow the new settlers to take the oath of allegiance and stay. Anders Bengtsson, a passenger, later wrote his perspective on the episode: ‘‘the Dutch forbade the ship to travel up the river, would have ignominiously sent it back, if the heathens (who loved the Swedes) had not gathered together, went on board, and defiantly brought it up past the fort.’’23 Stuyvesant and his council responded to reports on May 1, 1656, ‘‘regarding the state of affairs of the Southriver and the behavior of the Swedes and savages there’’ by sending a troop of about fifteen soldiers and the warship de Wægh. They were convinced ‘‘that some of the principal men of the Swedes were at the bottom of it’’ but recognized that the Dutch officials could do little against the united front of Lenapes, Swedes, and Finns. Councilors Nicasius de Sille and Cornelis van Tienhoven went to the Lenapewihittuck area to investigate the matter and ‘‘also the differences, jealousies and dissensions, created thereby, to quiet, settle and remove the same, whether they have arisen in the Dutch, Swedish or the Indian nation.’’ They apparently recommended the creation of a local government for the ‘‘Swedish nation.’’ No record exists that they tried to arrest and exile the ringleaders as Stuyvesant directed, for the Swedes who likely helped instigate the Mercurius landing were appointed local magistrates and military leaders over the next several years. The sheriff and magistrates took office on August 14, 1656. To the office of sheriff, Stuyvesant appointed Gregorius van Dijk, who had come to New Sweden in 1640 as Governor Ridder’s assistant. Though born in The Hague, Netherlands, he had emigrated from Go¨teborg, Sweden, and had a Swedish wife. He lived at Fort Christina and remained part of the Swedish community after the Dutch takeover. As magistrates of the Swedish court, Stuyvesant appointed Olof Stille, Mats Hansson, Peter Cock, and Peter Rambo, all long-term residents

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who had arrived in New Sweden in 1640 and 1641. Perhaps most revealing, in May 1658 the director-general appointed as ‘‘officers of the Swedish nation on the Southriver’’ Sven Skute as militia captain, Anders Dalbo as lieutenant, and Jacob Svensson as ensign. Dalbo had come to New Sweden as a convict in 1640, but he became a freeman and served with Skute at Fort Trinity during the 1655 Dutch attack. Skute and his brother Jacob had nearly been arrested and sent to Fort Amsterdam in chains during the Mercurius affair for unspecified crimes related to ‘‘secret intelligence with the savages.’’ Jacob Svensson in particular played a key role in sustaining the Swedes’ alliance with the Lenapes. He had been vice-commissary in New Sweden, purchasing corn and venison from the Lenapes and trading with the Susquehannocks. He knew both languages and frequently served as an intermediary between the Europeans and Natives.24 With their separate local government, the upriver Swedes and Finns had considerable autonomy in dealing with the Lenapes and Susquehannocks. On January 10, 1657, when Vice-Director Jacquet summoned the Fort Casimir community to set prices for the fur trade, he apparently hoped to rein in the Swedish nation’s independence but it is unclear how he hoped to enforce his decree. Jacquet charged that ‘‘some people do not hesitate to ruin the trade with the Indians by having already run up the price of deerskins by more than a third and it is apparent that they shall run higher yet to the great and excessive damage of the poor community here.’’ He was concerned that an even greater problem would arise ‘‘when the beaver trade open[ed] up in the spring.’’ The Fort Casimir residents agreed on set prices and approved Jacquet’s proclamation forbidding ‘‘each and every inhabitant residing on this South River, henceforth, whosoever it may be, to go among the Indians and natives of this country, wherever they might live, with any goods, or to travel by boat or on foot, be it upriver or down, or to go to the Minquas or elsewhere, wheresoever it might be, or to meet or seize or call in the Indians, coming by water or land here or elsewhere, at the homes of Christians.’’ Instead, the Europeans had ‘‘to allow [the Natives] free passage to go wherever they desire with their goods.’’ Though no upriver Swedes and Finns signed the proclamation, its language suggests that it was directed to them as well as to the folks living near Fort Casimir. The thirty-three signers of the price agreement included Dutch and English traders and household heads of Fort Casimir as well as seven or eight Swedes who lived in the Swanwyck district between Christina Kill and Fort Casimir.25 Swedes and Finns who lived farther north along the river did not

Figure 14. Map of New Netherland. From Adriaen van der Donck, Beschryvinge van Nieuw-Nederlant (1656). Special Collections, Lehigh University Libraries.

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participate. It seems unlikely that, as neighbors of the Lenapes, they would obey a ban on inviting them into their homes. Indeed the proclamation ignored in several respects the fact that the Lenapes lived in the region—both in addressing the edict to ‘‘each and every inhabitant’’ of the river while clearly excluding the Lenapes and in assuming that the Natives were entirely separate from the Europeans. Just as the Swedish nation and Lenapes considered themselves allies, the Dutch officials at Fort Casimir had difficulty comprehending this alliance while at the same time fearing its power. The European government in Lenape country changed yet again in the spring of 1657, when Jacob Alrichs took office at Fort Casimir for the City of Amsterdam, Netherlands, which called its colony New Amstel. The Dutch West India Company (WIC) had transferred to the City the land from Christina Kill south to Bombay Hook in payment of a debt for use of the City’s warship de Wægh. The WIC retained the European settlements north of Christina Kill, including Fort Altena and the Swedish and Finnish neighborhoods north to the Schuylkill. Willem Beeckman, a respected official of New Amsterdam whom Stuyvesant praised as ‘‘a person of peaceful character,’’ served as commissary and vice-director of the WIC lands along the Lenapewihittuck from 1659 to 1664, working as best he could with Alrichs and his haughty assistant and successor, Alexander d’Hinojossa.26 In accordance with the transfer agreement, Beeckman went with d’Hinojossa, the Dutch interpreter Sander Boyer, and five witnesses to arrange a treaty with the Lenape owners of land from Bombay Hook south to Cape Henlopen. With the resulting deed, dated June 7, 1659, the Dutch claimed the southwest bank of South Bay, extending inland ‘‘2 or 3 days walking up into the country or about thirty [Dutch] miles.’’ At the Whorekill, sixteen Lenape sachems inscribed the deed with their marks, including Neckosmus and his brothers Meoppitas and Meas, and Kocketoteka ‘‘of the Whorekill (called in the Indian lingo Siconece) & the land there about’’ and other sachems of territory north to Bombay Hook. The Dutch had ‘‘purchased’’ some of these lands thirty years earlier, in 1629, in preparation for the Swanendael colony. While the deed claimed that the sachems transferred in return for gifts ‘‘the said parcel of land free and without encumbrance and do desist hereby of our rights & properties forever,’’ it also acknowledged that the Lenapes would continue to reside there even after ‘‘these lands shall be possessed and cultivated’’ by the Dutch. The Lenapes pledged that they would ‘‘live in unity and peace’’ with the settlers and their livestock, and if any of their people might cause damages by accident the

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sachems ‘‘will take care that reparation shall be made.’’27 The Dutch and Lenapes thus continued treaty making so that the Dutch could satisfy their superiors in the Netherlands and counter English claims to the region, but all parties at Sickoneysinck recognized that the country remained primarily in Lenape hands. While the New Amstel colony established a small fort at the Whorekill, European settlement remained sparse. Willem Beeckman’s job as commissary and vice-director at Fort Altena was to protect the WIC’s interests, primarily for trade.28 The region’s commercial significance remained strong as exchange continued with both the Susquehannocks and Lenapes. At the same time, links between peoples along the Lenapewihittuck and their external allies threatened to draw the region into military struggles from New Netherland to Maryland. While Dutch directors in the Netherlands expected Stuyvesant and Beeckman to control the Swedes, Finns, and Lenapes, the mutual solidarity of these groups protected their autonomy. The WIC directors in Holland, with the Mercurius landing fresh in their minds, were angry that Stuyvesant appointed Swedes as officers of their militia, noting that the director-general himself had stressed their unreliability. The WIC directors wrote in February 1659 that it was ‘‘an unheard of and bold proposition by subjects bound to this State’’ to permit them neutrality if the Netherlands and Sweden went to war. They instructed Stuyvesant to appoint Dutch officers for the Swedes’ militia immediately and also to replace their sheriff at the end of his term, to reduce the threat of conspiracy. They ordered Stuyvesant ‘‘to separate [the Swedes] from each other and prevent their concentrated settlements, or rather to put them scattered among our people, where they will be less to fear.’’29 Stuyvesant was surely infuriated by the WIC directors’ lack of understanding of the multiple threats he faced throughout New Netherland. Nevertheless, the long duration and uncertainty of ocean voyages, which could delay messages for three to six months or longer, gave him considerable independence of action. Stuyvesant responded to the directors in July 1659 that he agreed ‘‘that neither the Swedes nor the English, who live under our jurisdiction or outside of it, have a great affection for this State,’’ but he observed that ‘‘the same might likewise be supposed and sustained from us, in case we should be conquered.’’ He had acted on his belief that ‘‘the most suitable would be a lenient method of governing them and proceeding with them, to win their hearts and divert their thoughts from a hard and tyrannical form of government’’ and thus ‘‘granted to the Swedish nation,

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at their request, some officers, that in time of necessity, against the savages and other enemies, in case of defense, they might keep order.’’ He closed by saying that if the directors did not agree, he would ‘‘correct and abolish it as far as possible agreeable to circumstances and occasion.’’30 What Stuyvesant failed to spell out in this short passage was that, with limited troops, continuing hostilities with the Esopus Indians north of Manhattan and the Raritans and Navesinks to the west and south, and the Lenapes’ support of the Swedes and Finns, his government had no option but to allow autonomy for the Swedish nation. A state of war had existed with the Esopus since the spring of 1658 as the Natives opposed deceptive trade policies involving alcohol and resisted the beginnings of Dutch settlement in the area of present-day Kingston, New York. In September 1659, after settlers attacked a small Esopus group, four to six hundred Natives surrounded the Dutch fort Wiltwijck, capturing thirteen men sent to obtain reinforcements from Manhattan. At the same time, fighting broke out east of Manhattan, sending settlers to Fort Amsterdam for cover. By October 10, Stuyvesant dispatched 150 troops to Wiltwijck, which the Esopus abandoned. When the director-general demanded that the Natives meet with him in November to cede their lands, they refused. During the winter Stuyvesant prepared for war and in the spring of 1660 Dutch troops attacked and destroyed Esopus settlements, slaying inhabitants and capturing key leaders. They reached a temporary peace on July 15, 1660, which lasted until June 1663, after settlers constructed Nieuwdorp (New Town) near Esopus Creek. The Esopus then destroyed both Wiltwijck and Nieuwdorp, killing or capturing at least sixty-five colonists.31 The war raised the potential for conflict in the Lenapewihittuck region as Lenapes and Susquehannocks reacted as allies of the Esopus, Raritans, and Navesinks, who all faced Dutch expropriation of their lands. At the same time, Stuyvesant called on the Swedes and Finns to serve as soldiers against the Esopus. Navesinks were linked to the killings of a Dutch trader near Esopus in 1658 and a settler near Manhattan in 1659. Stuyvesant reported to the WIC directors that ‘‘most of the perpetrators of all the single murders keep themselves’’ among the Navesinks and Raritans, but he was unable to deal with them because of the Esopus War. By September 1659 news of the unrest near Manhattan reached Willem Beeckman, who wrote to Stuyvesant that the Natives ‘‘had been spreading rumors 8 or 10 days ago that the Christians on Staten Island and at Gamoenepae were once again being ravaged by the Indians.’’ Several messengers trying to reach

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New Amsterdam overland turned back because of fighting; Lenapes near the Falls advised Sander Boyer and a companion to return to New Amstel ‘‘because the Raritans had fled for fear of those Indians from Manhattan.’’ On March 1, 1660, Stuyvesant sent Andries Laurens to Fort Altena ‘‘to enlist as many soldiers as possible among the Swedes and Fins,’’ offering ‘‘8, 10 or 12 guilders heavy money, according to their abilities.’’ Laurens’s instructions also empowered him to offer freemen and their families a pair of oxen to encourage them to relocate to the North River. Beeckman reported that while about 130 Swedish and Finnish men could bear arms, Laurens was unsuccessful in his mission, indicating that ‘‘they have no inclination whatsoever’’ to move to Esopus.32 Amid the troubles near Manhattan and Esopus, the Dutch settlements along the Lenapewihittuck suffered their own crisis in January 1660 near New Amstel when Natives discovered that two European servants had murdered two Lenapes and a Susquehannock. The colonists near New Amstel fled into the town for protection while Beeckman sought help from Sheriff Gregorius van Dijk and the Swedish nation magistrates. He requested them to participate in a meeting with the Natives gathered at New Amstel ‘‘to discuss the murder, since they were better acquainted with the nature and customs of the Indians than we newcomers.’’ Van Dijk and the Swedish officials at first refused to help, stating that the Lenapes upriver, their neighbors, ‘‘have told them that they should not concern themselves in this affair since the people of Sand Hoeck or New Amstel were not of their people.’’ Beeckman insisted, replying that they must attend because ‘‘it would be unjustifiable to refuse the urgent need and request for assistance in order to prevent bloodshed.’’ The outcome of the incident hardly satisfied the Natives, for while the Dutch tried the murderers, d’Hinojossa then released them. The Indians did not retaliate but carefully continued to distinguish between the Dutch (as unsatisfactory neighbors) and their allies from the Swedish nation.33 The Swedes and Finns prudently tended their partnership with the Lenapes and Susquehannocks. When Stuyvesant issued a proclamation in New Netherland directing settlers living separately on farms to consolidate in villages for better defense against the Natives, the Swedish nation refused. These folks who lived in scattered locations north of Fort Altena had little to fear from their Lenape neighbors and argued they would lose all of their crops and improvements if they had to leave their farms. Beeckman’s extended discussions with farmers at Kingsessing, Aronameck, and the river

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islands failed. ‘‘[N]o one wishes to move or come to an accommodation,’’ he informed Stuyvesant, ‘‘each one asserting the intention to keep his whole lot and cultivated land.’’ Armegard Printz stated that it made no sense for her to relocate because ‘‘of her large buildings, and because the church is located there,’’ and she welcomed others to live at Tinicum rent-free. The Swedish magistrates then proposed that they build a new village at Passyunk, ‘‘that they could acquire it from the Indians for a trifle.’’ After investigating this possibility for a month, however, the community representatives Peter Cock, Peter Andersson, and Hans Ma˚nsson reported to Beeckman in May 1660 that they wanted to stay on their current farms because they would not be able to purchase enough pasture land at Passyunk. They threatened ‘‘that if they were forced to move, they would go away to where they might remain settled in peace.’’ While Beeckman believed that the Swedes and Finns had used various tactics to evade the director-general’s proclamation, he lacked the resources to force them to move.34 The Swedish nation’s consideration of Passyunk for a consolidated village suggests that the Lenapes extended an invitation to live more closely together, yet the idea proved unworkable because of lack of space. The Swedes’ threat to ‘‘go away’’ is ambiguous; they could have referred to Maryland, where some Swedes and Finns had resettled since the 1640s, or to the east bank of the Lenapewihittuck where many Lenapes lived, or perhaps farther west toward Susquehannock territory. Beeckman received intelligence from various sources about the ongoing hostilities on the North River and the movements of the Esopus, Raritans, and Susquehannocks through Lenape country. In April 1660 Jacob Svensson informed him that ‘‘the Esopus Indians had sent presents and requested assistance; saying that they were 1800 strong and would march against [Peter Stuyvesant] if anything was done against them.’’ Later that month the vice-director heard that the Munsees ‘‘are behaving very strange and are all inclined to go against the Dutch’’ because eleven Munsees had died while fighting alongside the Esopus. Jacob Svensson appears to have operated, most likely with Lenape sachems, to obtain assistance from the Susquehannocks for the Esopus, Raritans, and Navesinks. Beeckman reported that the principal sachem of the Susquehannocks arrived at Fort Altena on May 23, 1660, upon the invitation of Svensson, who presented him with gifts of cloth, blankets, a firearm, and other goods. Although Beeckman was told the Swede offered the gifts ‘‘to promote trade,’’ Svensson was actually negotiating an alliance for the Esopus. In June, the vice-director met again

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with the Susquehannock sachem who warned him that if the Dutch failed to ‘‘come to an agreement with the Esopus Indians, then he would assist them.’’ A month later, the sachem reported that Stuyvesant had ‘‘concluded a firm peace with the Indians,’’ which was actually the temporary treaty of July 15, 1660. During the spring of 1660 negotiators also met with the Susquehannocks to obtain protection for Esopus and Munsee refugees. In early June 1660, one group of Native men, women, and children traveled in seven canoes from Minisink to the Susquehannock territory. The July 15 peace treaty halted—at least temporarily—the need for further migrations to the Susquehanna.35 The early 1660s were difficult for the Lenape community at Passyunk, with attacks by the western nations of the Iroquois, epidemics of smallpox, and disrupted trade. By 1664, the Armewamese population along the Schuylkill, which had numbered at least 1,200 people in 1654, was significantly reduced. By 1671, many had relocated to the east bank of the Lenapewihittuck, joining the Mantes and neighboring groups. The Lenapes remained much more numerous than the Europeans, however, and controlled Lenape country with this superior strength and their strategic alliances with the Swedish nation, Susquehannocks, and Munsees.36 The western nations of the Iroquois—the Senecas, Cayugas, Onondagas, and Oneidas—threatened these alliances because they sought to destroy the Susquehannocks’ control of the continental fur trade in Maryland and the Dutch colonies along the Lenapewihittuck. With the Dutch defeat of New Sweden in 1655, the Susquehannocks had made peace with the Mohawks, the easternmost nation of Iroquois; together they monopolized the trade of Canadian furs with New Netherland, including both the North and South rivers. The Dutch and English referred to all of the western Iroquois as Senecas, spelled in a variety of ways such as ‘‘Sinnecus,’’ ‘‘Sinnekens,’’ or ‘‘Cynegoes.’’ An early sign of trouble came in 1660, when Oneidas murdered five Maryland Indians—Piscatawas—for allying with the Susquehannocks and the Maryland government. The continental fur trade, however, was not the only reason for the Iroquois attacks. Like other Natives in eastern North America, the Iroquois suffered severe losses from smallpox epidemics. They conducted mourning wars in which female elders instructed warriors to raid other nations for captives, of whom some were tortured and killed in rituals to replenish the community’s spirit while others were adopted into families to replace deceased loved ones. The Susquehannocks, another Iroquoian group practicing mourning war, took captives

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from the enemy Iroquois. The smallpox epidemic of 1660–63 began in New Amsterdam during the winter of 1660–61, spreading quickly to nearby Native communities. Willem Beeckman reported ‘‘great mortality’’ among the Susquehannocks in October 1661, noting also that ‘‘they are hardpressed by the Sinnecus which results in a very bad trade.’’ By February 1663, smallpox had reached the Lenapewihittuck and in June many Lenapes were suffering from the mortal disease.37 While the Susquehannocks and western Iroquois had fought for more than a decade over control of the Canadian fur trade and for captives, the Lenapes had stayed out of the fray. Since 1636 they had remained at peace with the Susquehannocks and, by 1661, the two groups were closely allied. The Swedes and Finns, most notably the trader and interpreter Jacob Svensson, moved easily among both groups. As firm friends of the Susquehannocks, the Lenapes became targets of Iroquois aggression. In October 1661, the Swedes near Passyunk reported to Willem Beeckman ‘‘that the Sinnecus have killed 12 River Indians here on the river above the Swedish settlement.’’ The Swedes themselves were concerned that they would lose livestock to the Iroquois. During the winter of 1661–62, because of the Iroquois threat, the Lenapes avoided their usual hunt in the Lehigh and Susquehanna valleys, resulting in, according to Beeckman, ‘‘a poor trade.’’38 The ongoing Susquehannock-Iroquois war helped to fan hysteria in New Amstel in the late summer of 1662 when an elderly Dutchman, Joris Florissen, was shot and scalped. The inhabitants concluded ‘‘that it was the Sinnekens who must have done it because they hacked off one side of his head with the hair and everything else.’’ Then a river hut went up in flames after dark on September 7, 1662, sending the panicked residents of New Amstel into the fort. Two months later, when a servant was killed near Fort Altena, the Dutch blamed the Lenapes, who said either the Susquehannocks or Iroquois were responsible for the death. After Beeckman summoned the principal sachems at Passyunk for an explanation, five Susquehannock leaders arrived with their people. The vice-director called together Hendrick Huygen, Jacob Svensson, and Swedish magistrates to witness and interpret the proceedings. The Susquehannocks explained that a young Seneca captive who lived with them committed ‘‘the celebrated murder.’’ They expressed their regret and urged that the Dutch overlook this misdeed just as they had responded with moderation to a European murder of one of their people three years earlier, when d’Hinojossa released two servants who had killed a Susquehannock and several Lenapes. The Susquehannocks

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confirmed their ‘‘good alliance and friendship’’ with New Netherland, noting that they intended to attack the western Iroquois forts in the spring of 1663. They asked that the Dutch ‘‘not be negligent in furnishing them with materials of war, for which they would pay.’’ The conference ended when the Susquehannocks offered 110 pounds of elk hides and the Dutch reciprocated with a similar gift.39 Word arrived in May 1663 that, instead of a Susquehannock assault on Iroquois territory, eight hundred western Iroquois were marching against the Susquehannock fort, where one hundred Lenapes assisted seven hundred Susquehannock men to defend their town. Two narratives of the weeklong battle exist. According to the Iroquois version recorded by the French missionary Je´roˆme Lalement, the Senecas, Cayugas, Onondagas, and Oneidas quickly realized that they could not overcome the Susquehannocks’ fortifications, which included European artillery, and thus attempted to enter the palisade by pretending to seek peace. The Susquehannocks suspected the ruse, seizing the Iroquois messengers and ‘‘without further delay, made [them] to mount on scaffolds where, in sight of their own army, they were burned alive.’’ Despite their earlier conquests of the Hurons and other foes, the Iroquois were unable to defeat this coalition of Susquehannocks and Lenapes. The Susquehannock version, recorded by Willem Beeckman, omitted any reference to torture. The Susquehannocks reported that some of their returning hunters detected the Iroquois forces, who remained concealed while the mock peace party approached the town with presents. The Susquehannock hunters attacked the Iroquois while soldiers within the fort ‘‘sallied out and drove the Sinnecus away. They pursued them for two days, taking ten prisoners and killing a number of them.’’ The retreating Iroquois carried smallpox that had afflicted the Susquehannocks, causing another epidemic at home.40 War with the Iroquois and smallpox epidemics had devastating effects on the Lenapes. The Armewamese people at Passyunk reported to Secretary Andries Hudde in May 1663 ‘‘that half of them have already been killed by the Sinnekus.’’ Hudde doubted this claim: he told Peter Stuyvesant that he would leave the Armewamese ‘‘to attest to the truth of it.’’ While perhaps the Iroquois alone had not destroyed half the Armewamese, their numbers had decreased significantly since 1654 as a result of disease as well as Iroquois murders and kidnapping. The Lenapes had allied with the Susquehannocks in part because of their declining strength and, despite the victory in May 1663, paid a price as Iroquois raided the countryside for captives.

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Neither the Lenapes nor Susquehannocks provided military assistance to the Esopus when they assailed Nieuwdorp and Wiltwijck on June 7, 1663. Both groups were suffering from disease and had just fended off the western Iroquois. The Susquehannocks had helped to broker the temporary peace between the Dutch and the Esopus in 1660 and continued to honor their alliance with the Dutch. Stuyvesant persuaded Native groups in North River not to help the Esopus, and he sent troops to invade their territory, where they burned fields and destroyed their fort. During the summer, Beeckman learned that some Esopus had taken refuge among the Munsees at the head of the Lenapewihittuck and that two Esopus people stayed at the Swedish settlement in Kingsessing for ‘‘about one day. They complained that [Stuyvesant] had destroyed all their crops.’’ Beeckman sought information from the Swedes about colonists taken prisoner by the Esopus. While he learned nothing about the captives, the Swedish magistrates did tell him that the Lenape sachem Erwehongh received a request from the Munsees to help the Esopus. Peter Cock told Beeckman, however, ‘‘that the chief, Erwehongh, has specifically ordered him to tell me that they would undertake nothing against the Dutch, but would, on the contrary, try everything to arrange a peace.’’ The Esopus failed to obtain military reinforcements from the Munsees, Lenapes, and Susquehannocks in the fall of 1663, and they thus agreed to a truce facilitated by several Munsee sachems. The war finally ended on May 15, 1664, when the Esopus ceded the lands Stuyvesant demanded.41 In December 1663, news arrived that the WIC had transferred governance of its remaining territory along the Lenapewihittuck to the City of Amsterdam. Alexander d’Hinojossa, Beeckman’s sworn enemy, would now administer Fort Altena and the Swedish settlements upriver as well as New Amstel and the Whorekill. The City of Amsterdam had sent 150 settlers and had great plans for improving revenue from trade and agriculture. D’Hinojossa directed that the marshlands be drained and diked to expand cultivation, prohibited brewing and distilling of alcohol to increase grain exports, and allowed only representatives of the City to purchase tobacco from the English or furs from the Natives. Beeckman warned that d’Hinojossa’s plans for agricultural expansion and increased immigration would alienate the Lenapes. He wrote to Stuyvesant, ‘‘I foresee much opposition from the Indians when the lands here and there are claimed, especially, up here [north of Fort Altena] on the river.’’42 For the Dutch, Finns, and Swedes, the massacre at Swanendael was not a distant memory, as the

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Lenapes clarified on a continuing basis their opposition to large-scale agricultural development. In early January 1664, d’Hinojossa summoned the Swedes and Finns to meet with him to take an oath to the City of Amsterdam. They appeared first at Fort Altena, where Beeckman released them from their previous oath to the WIC, then proceeded to New Amstel. There the Swedes and Finns ‘‘were administered an oath by the director and council . . . which they unanimously refused to take until they had in writing those privileges of trade and other things which they had enjoyed under the Company’s administration; without this [they said] that they would be forced to leave.’’ Beeckman informed Stuyvesant that he had heard ‘‘that they would rather break up and come under your government at the Nevesins or thereabouts.’’ In choosing the Navesinks, the Swedes and Finns had certainly consulted with the Lenapes about where to move, for that region in what is now east-central New Jersey near Sandy Hook was strongly controlled by the Navesinks, with whom the Lenapes had intermarried and were closely allied. The region was analogous to their current location near Passyunk, particularly if the Armewamese community joined them in the move. Assuming that Stuyvesant extended the same rights they had held under the WIC, the Swedes and Finns could retain considerable autonomy in collaboration with the Lenapes and Munsees. It is doubtful, however, that the director-general would have willingly permitted the Swedes and Finns to bolster the Navesinks’ power in resisting Dutch expropriation of their lands.43 The European government in the Lenapewihittuck region soon changed again with the invasion of the Duke of York’s forces in the fall of 1664. The English offered new challenges to the Lenapes and Swedish nation, helping them to form even closer bonds between their communities. Since 1655, the Lenapes, Swedes, and Finns had together resisted submission to Dutch authority while also taking advantage of Dutch networks for trade. The disorganized Dutch government that was divided between the City of Amsterdam and the WIC, Dutch reliance on Lenapes for trade, the small European population, Willem Beeckman’s easy management style, external alliances with the Susquehannocks and Munsees, and their own mutual solidarity all contributed to the success of the Lenape-Swedish coalition. Despite smallpox and Iroquois attacks, their communities promised resistance to the English invasions that engulfed Lenape country over the next thirty-five years.

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This system of alliance by which the Lenapes remained mostly at peace during the years from 1654 to 1664 seems unique in eastern North America, though further research in other regions might uncover similar patterns as well. Despite Dutch pretensions, the Lenapes dominated their own country, interacting with the WIC and City of Amsterdam governments primarily to facilitate trade. As their numbers declined, the Armewamese and other Lenape groups welcomed close relationships with the Swedes and Finns while also nurturing alliances with the Susquehannocks and Munsees. The Lenapes welcomed Europeans like the Swedes and Finns, who built small unpalisaded villages like their own, and they tolerated Dutch-fortified settlements as long as the Dutch offered trade and refrained from expansive agriculture like that in New England and the Chesapeake.

chapter five

Allies against the English, 1664–73

In October 1664, Sir Robert Carr’s expedition took possession of Fort Altena, New Amstel, the Whorekill, and the City of Amsterdam’s property, including sixty or seventy enslaved Africans, a sawmill and brew house, livestock, harvested crops, and other goods worth more than £400 sterling. The English attackers had no casualties while the Dutch lost three killed and ten wounded. Carr confiscated the land of Dutch administrators, transferring the estates to his officers and keeping for himself Alexander d’Hinojossa’s plantation on Matinicum (now Burlington) Island. King Charles II had granted his brother James, Duke of York, the territory claimed by the Netherlands between Connecticut and the east bank of what the English called the Delaware River (after Sir Thomas West, Lord De la Warr), a name they had used since visiting the region decades earlier. James’s commissioners, including Carr, decided after taking New Netherland to go beyond these boundaries and conquer the New Amstel colony to eliminate the Dutch altogether from eastern North America. The move also interrupted lucrative smuggling between Lord Baltimore’s colony in Maryland and Dutch merchants. Though Carr confiscated the estates of Dutch officials, he offered reasonable terms to the ordinary Dutch, Swedes, and Finns, who could retain freedom of religion and their personal property, houses, and farms by taking an oath of allegiance to the English king. Their local magistrates continued in office under Sir Robert Carr until February 1665 when Captain John Carr succeeded him.1 Over the next several decades, the people in the Lenapewihittuck region faced a series of English invasions as new settlers came to the Duke of York’s Delaware colony from New York, Maryland, and elsewhere. Quakers established colonies at Salem and Burlington in West New Jersey, and thousands more immigrants arrived after 1681 when William Penn received his

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charter for Pennsylvania. The alliance among the Lenapes, Swedes, and Finns remained firm even as the Native population declined from disease and Iroquois attacks, and together they resisted the new English authority. The Armewamese left the Passyunk area in the late 1660s and were replaced by some English and Swedish settlers in that prime territory where Philadelphia now stands. Though it is unclear whether the Armewamese were forced out or chose voluntarily to join the Mantes and Cohansey communities on the eastern side of the river, their relocation moved the center of Lenape population and power to what became southern and central New Jersey, while the Sickoneysincks remained at the Whorekill. The Lenapes, familiar with the English record in the Chesapeake and New England, had serious concerns about their takeover, killing more than ten English and their allies between 1664 and 1674 and threatening broader attacks. The Lenapes sustained their partnership with the increasingly diverse community of Europeans comprised of Swedes, Finns, Dutch, Germans, a Scot, and some English often lumped together as ‘‘the Swedes,’’ ‘‘Swedish nation,’’ or ‘‘old settlers.’’ While Swedes and Finns predominated, other Europeans had migrated to New Sweden or married into the community. The Lenapes supported the 1669 Long Swede conspiracy discussed later in this chapter and, in 1671, the Swedish nation reciprocated by refusing to join the New York government’s preparations for war against the Natives. The alliance between the Lenapes and the Swedish nation strengthened particularly during the term of English Governor Francis Lovelace from 1668 to 1673, as his administration charged quitrents and expropriated common lands from the old settlers, and he ignored the Lenapes’ policies of renewing treaties and compensating for deaths. Throughout the Duke of York’s proprietorship, the Lenapes and Swedes reinforced their alliance and cross-ethnic understandings that served as a basis for Delaware Valley society after the founding of Quaker colonies in West New Jersey in the 1670s and Pennsylvania in 1681. The English entered a region in 1664 where the Lenapes still held sway, despite the recent onslaught of smallpox and attacks by western Iroquois. The Native population along the Lenapewihittuck from the Falls south to Cape Henlopen had declined since 1654, yet they still far outnumbered the Europeans, counting the Swedes and Finns who were more likely to side with the Lenapes than with the English. The decrease in the Lenape population was not as steep as among Natives in many parts of eastern North America where villages merged as numbers declined often by 90 percent or

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more over several decades. Sheriff William Tom and Peter Alrichs reported in 1671 ‘‘that we are in a sad condition is most certain being under the power of the heathen and no power to defend.’’ Though the Armewamese moved to the east bank, the Lenapes continued to own the territory on both sides of the river and commonly moved back and forth. The evolving fur trade had occasioned Lenape consolidation at Passyunk around 1650 in order to claim a central position in commerce with the Susquehannocks, Swedes, and Dutch. The decline of their trading partners, the Susquehannocks, who similarly endured smallpox epidemics and war, disrupted the trade and likely contributed to the Armewamese decision to relocate their towns to the east.2 Consolidating in southern and central New Jersey made sense as large expanses of the region remained Native territory. Some of the best evidence about Lenape towns during this period comes from Augustine Herrman’s map Virginia and Maryland as it is planted and inhabited this present year 1670 (London, 1673), which he produced for the Maryland government in return for land. Herrman had immigrated to New Netherland in 1644, served as an ambassador to Maryland, and received a plantation on the Eastern Shore that he named Bohemia Manor after his birthplace; he knew Lenape country well and obtained acreage there for his sons, Ephraim and Casparus. Herrman indicated on the map that much of the east bank south of the Falls was ‘‘at present inhabited only or most by Indians.’’ Herrman marked Lenape wigwams on various waterways, including the Maurice River and Rancocas, Pennsauken, and Narraticon creeks, and he specifically noted the Cohansey (Kahansick) Indians off South Bay. He also recorded wigwams near the Atlantic shore at Great Egg Harbor, Little Egg Harbor, and Barnegat. Southern New Jersey offered a wide range of resources, including arable land along the river and creeks; hunting, fishing, and gathering in the Pine Barrens; and fishing within the ocean and bay.3 Though the Swedish nation felt little immediate impact from the 1664 English conquest, by 1669 new immigrants and land policies threatened their autonomy and ways of life. The English government first assured the Swedes and Finns that they could keep their lands but then required surveys, warrants, and quitrents to retain those holdings. The Swedish nation and Lenapes lived in separate yet overlapping communities with a flexible system of land tenure that permitted neighbors and travelers to cross property lines. While families claimed homesteads on which they farmed and pursued crafts, they considered the surrounding meadows and forest to be

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commons available to both European and Native inhabitants. Neighbors had rights to pass across lands as long as they avoided damage to crops, livestock, or buildings. The mingling of Swedes, Finns, and Lenapes that surprised Governor Risingh’s Maryland visitor back in 1654 continued as did sharing of resources. Near New Castle (formerly New Amstel), for example, residents retained the right to cross a neighbor’s property to pasture their cattle and gather wood in the forest even after ownership of the property changed hands. In Upland, inhabitants grazed their cattle on marshes held in common along the river, for when Nils Larsson Fra¨nde in 1678 raised a fence that ‘‘stop[ped] up the old and usual way to the fly [marsh],’’ the Upland court ordered him to ‘‘take up the said fence and leave the way open as formerly.’’4 As their numbers expanded, members of the Swedish nation had continued to build dispersed farms in small neighborhoods, some adjacent to Lenape towns, with a single church at Tinicum miles from most of their homes. Censuses taken in 1671 by the English surveyor Walter Wharton and the Whorekill settler Helmanus Wiltbank provide a glimpse of the European population in Lenape country at this time. The censuses reveal continued separation between the Swedish nation who lived upriver and the governmental center at New Castle while also demonstrating the ethnic diversity among the group known as Swedes but comprised as well of Finns, Dutch, English, and Germans. Members of the Swedish nation had also married Lenape women, thus creating personal ties that strengthened the political alliance between the communities. The ethnic diversity within the Swedish nation and its social and economic partnership with the Lenapes supported the development of a culture of freedom and mutual respect among the old settlers and Natives. In 1671, an estimated 858 Europeans lived along the Lenapewihittuck, stretching from Matinicum Island near the Falls to Cape Henlopen (Table 3). Most of the colonists lived on the west bank. The population remained quite divided by ethnicity, as the Swedes and Finns were most numerous north of New Castle while Dutch and English settlers controlled the town of New Castle, a small New Jersey settlement opposite New Castle, and the Whorekill (see Table 4).5 As Dutch Governor Peter Stuyvesant had failed to remedy, the Swedes and Finns refused to form compact villages such as New Castle but rather lived on homesteads along streams in small neighborhoods or hamlets. The Swedish nation’s dispersed residence pattern reflected the Lenapes’ similar settlement and familiarity between the two

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Table 3. Estimated Population of European Communities in the Lenapewihittuck Region, 1671 Males, Sixteen Years Ⳮ

Females,* Sixteen YearsⳭ

Boys

Girls*

157

112

119

119

507 (59%)

Christina Creek to New Castle

69

45

42

42

198 (23%)

New Castle

39

23

17

17

96 (11%)

7

n.a.

n.a.

n.a.

7 (1%)

24

8

9

9

50 (6%)

296

188

187

187

Areas North to South North of Christina Creek

East Bank (N.J.) Whorekill Total

Total

858 (100%)

Source: Compiled and estimated from the censuses and biographical data in Peter Stebbins Craig, 1671 Census of the Delaware (Philadelphia: Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania, 1999). *Because daughters were underreported in the records, the number of daughters (above and under age sixteen) was increased to approximate the number of sons.

Table 4. Ethnicity of Household Heads in European Communities in the Lenapewihittuck Region, 1671 Areas North to South

Swedish Finnish Dutch* English† German Unknown Total

North of Christina Creek

42

21

4

9

5

5

86

Christina Creek to New Castle

15

13

13

3

2

2

48

New Castle

1

0

19

8

0

0

28

East Bank (N.J.)

0

0

5

0

0

0

5

Whorekill

0

0

9

6

0

1

16

58

34

50

26

7

8

183

Total

Source: Compiled and estimated from the censuses and biographical data in Peter Stebbins Craig, 1671 Census of the Delaware (Philadelphia: Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania, 1999). *Includes several Frenchmen who accompanied the Dutch settlement. †Includes one Scot who accompanied the English invasion in 1664.

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groups. On the west bank, Peter Cock’s son, Lars (Lasse) Cock, had the most northerly farmstead in 1671, living with his wife and two young children on six hundred acres at Shackamaxon. Swedes and Finns numbered three-quarters of household heads in the region from Shackamaxon south to Christina Creek. The exception was Passyunk, where a group of English led by Robert Ashman from Hempstead, Long Island, in 1668 received a grant of the land where the Armewamese had lived on the Schuylkill River.6 Swedes and Finns remained numerous (58 percent of household heads) in the area between Christina Creek and New Castle but were nearly absent in New Castle, the colony’s political and military center. The one Swedish head of household identified in the town was Anders Stille who had recently married the Dutch woman Annetje Pieters. As under the Dutch government, most Swedes and Finns remained separate from the colony’s English leadership, including the chief government official Captain John Carr, Sheriff William Tom, and Edmund Cantwell, who succeeded Tom as sheriff in 1672. Several French and Dutch settlers—Machiel La Croix, Isaac Tayne, and Foppe Jansen Outhout—in 1666–69 purchased land from the Lenapes across the river, in the area that later became Lower Penn’s Neck in Salem County, New Jersey. The Dutch still formed a majority of residents south of New Castle at the Whorekill, also known as Sickoneysincks, the land of the Lenapes who remained in the area. The Whorekill faced challenges and changes over the next several decades, enduring attacks by Maryland troops and in-migration by English settlers from Maryland and Virginia.7 Males dominated in number among Europeans along the Lenapewihittuck as in other seventeenth-century North American colonies; thus young women readily found husbands among new immigrants and older settlers. Men and women married across ethnic lines, breaking down ethnic distinctions and, in the particular case of Swedish and Finnish men and Lenape women, strengthening bonds between their communities. Even as intermarriage took place among Europeans and complicated relationships across groups, the Swedish nation maintained its autonomy from the English and its alliance with the Lenape people. Though some Swedish and Finnish families had immigrated in the 1640s and 1650s, many men arrived as bachelors and had uneven success in marrying and establishing households. By 1671, most of the Europeans, including the Swedes and Finns, had been in the country for less than two decades, and the sex ratio remained skewed among Europeans with about 1.6 adult men per adult woman (Table 3). The scarcity of women existed among all European

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Table 5. Marriage and Ethnicity of Europeans in the Lenapewihittuck Region, 1671 Swedish/ Finnish Dutch English German Unknown Men Men Men Men Ethnicity Swedish/Finnish women

Total

47

6

1

4

0

58

Dutch women

2

11

2

0

0

15

English women

2

0

9

0

0

11

German women

0

1

1

0

0

2

Unknown ethnicity

27

9

3

1

2

42

Total

78

27

16

5

2

128

Source: Compiled and estimated from the censuses and biographical data in Peter Stebbins Craig, 1671 Census of the Delaware (Philadelphia: Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania, 1999).

groups, so the daughters of Swedes and Finns, as they came of age, readily found marriage partners, most often among Swedes and Finns but also among the Dutch, Germans, and English (see Table 5). In this lively marriage market, Nordic daughters married early and could consider economic status as well as emotional ties. In 1665, for example, Captain John Carr married Petronella, the daughter of Swede Olof Thorsson, who lived just north of New Castle at Swanwyck. Petronella’s sister Mary married Hans Block, the Dutch gunner who held substantial lands near New Castle. James Sandelands, a Scottish soldier who came with the invading English forces, married Anna, the daughter of Ju¨rgen Keen, a German who served as a soldier in New Sweden after his arrival in 1643. Anna and James Sandelands lived in Upland, adjacent to her father and brothers, as part of the predominantly Nordic community.8 While most Swedish and Finnish men married Nordic women, the ethnicity of twenty-seven (35 percent) of their wives is unknown. Some of their wives were likely Native women though systematic records of their relationships are lacking. Jacob Svensson, for example, had spent two decades along the Lenapewihittuck before departing in 1663 to represent Armegard Printz in Amsterdam to obtain payment for the Printz manor at Tinicum. According to Swedish records, he had no wife or children. With close ties to both the Lenapes and Susquehannocks, it seems likely that he

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had one or perhaps several domestic relationships with Native women, who continued to live with their families. Israel Helm, who traded with the Natives and by 1677 obtained land from them in West Jersey, had children by a wife who was not identified.9 Lars Andersson Coleman purchased land from the Lenapes north of Raccoon Creek in West New Jersey; though a prosperous farmer, according to official records he died unmarried. His brother Hendrick Andersson Coleman, a chief confederate of the Long Swede, was fluent in Unami and moved to Raccoon Creek. Other Swedes and Finns who took up lands in New Jersey in areas the Natives controlled and whose wives are unidentified in the Swedish records include Pa˚l Larsson Corvhorn, Anthony Nilsson (alias Long), Eric Jo¨ransson, and Ma˚ns Jo¨nsson Halton. While cross-cultural relationships for these men cannot be proved, the migration of Swedes and Finns to the east bank of the Lenapewihittuck, under Lenape control, demonstrates affinities among many of the Swedes, Finns, and Natives. By 1693, one-third of the Delaware Valley’s Swedish Lutheran households lived in southern New Jersey. Because of close proximity between their farms and Lenape towns, the men could easily have remained part of the Swedish nation while their wives raised the children as part of their Lenape communities. As in other parts of North America, the matrilineal structure of Lenape families facilitated integration of the couples’ children within the Native kinship network. By the mideighteenth century, many New Jersey Lenapes had mixed ancestry, including the leaders who negotiated land deals with the colonial governments.10 In addition, a few Swedish men married English and Dutch women, creating alliances that served their careers well. Two men married the daughters of Robert and Catharine Ashman, an English couple from Long Island who settled at Passyunk with family and friends. Lasse Cock married Martha Ashman in 1669, which undoubtedly established connections and improved his English-language skills, such that he became an interpreter for William Penn and served in the English government as a justice of the peace, assemblyman, and provincial councilor. Olof Svensson, a Swede who had arrived as an infant in New Sweden in 1640, married Martha’s sister, Lydia Ashman, and lived adjacent to his father and brothers at Wicaco. In 1674, Olof Svensson became a justice of the Upland Court. Just as Robert and Catharine Ashman, with their daughters Martha and Lydia, deemed Lasse Cock and Olof Svensson promising marriage partners, the Swedes solidified their political and economic position through these arrangements.11

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The 1671 censuses were part of the English strategy to establish greater control over the colonists and collect quitrents to defray the cost of administering the colony and provide income to the proprietor, the Duke of York. At the conquest, Sir Robert Carr had promised the European inhabitants that they would retain their lands. Within a few years, however, it became clear that the English system of landownership was much more rigid than previously practiced by the Lenape, Swedish, and Dutch governments in the Lenapewihittuck region. In 1666, the New York government required all landholders to submit their old patents for renewal, and those who had none needed to obtain the documents. Governor Francis Lovelace repeated this order in 1669, specifically emphasizing ‘‘that the inhabitants in and about Delaware being under this government are likewise concerned as well as the rest.’’ With patents came quitrents, charged in bushels of wheat or other goods such as otter skins—taxes that many of the residents promptly ignored.12 The English land policies and taxes created a rift in the Swedish nation that exploded into the Long Swede rebellion and charges of treason. The English government had gained the allegiance of the Swedish justices Peter Cock and Peter Rambo, who had served under the Dutch, by reappointing and granting them substantial lands that opened up when the Armewamese left Passyunk. The magistrates’ language skills in Unami, Swedish, Finnish, Dutch, and English made them indispensable as intermediaries between the English governor and the old settlers and Lenapes.13 As the English granted formerly common lands and Lenape territory to new settlers and the magistrates, Cock and Rambo came under attack as English sympathizers. Their position remained ambiguous, however, as the English failed to control the river north of New Castle—in part because the justices played a double game. From 1668 to 1672, despite Governor Lovelace’s efforts to impose quitrents, quash the Long Swede rebellion, and attack the Lenapes, the Swedish nation—including the justices—kept their autonomy by leveraging their alliance with the Natives. Much about the Long Swede revolt—also known as the Long Finn rebellion—remains a mystery. As the historian Evan Haefeli noted in his detailed examination of the uprising, previous scholars generally interpreted it as a half-baked, doomed attempt by disreputable members of the Swedish nation (particularly Finns) to wrest control of the colony from the English. A recent immigrant who was known variously as the Long Swede, Long Finn, John Binckson, and Marcus Jacobsson, and who pretended to

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be the son of a famous Swedish general named Ko¨nigsmark, instigated the plot.14 Though scholars have correctly suggested the revolt was an effort to resist the English conquest by some Swedes and Finns, they have failed to see it within the context of the Lenape-Swedish alliance in opposition to central authority as with the Mercurius landing in 1656 or to recognize that English land policy was a chief motivating factor. The Lenapes aided the rebels in the Long Swede revolt, choosing the side of people who, like themselves, endured expropriation of land. Unlike the Mercurius affair when the Lenapes, Swedes, and Finns were united in welcoming the new settlers, the Long Swede rebellion divided the Swedish nation, as English land redistribution favored some Swedes and Finns while hurting others. Governor Lovelace, headquartered in New York, learned of the Long Swede revolt during the summer of 1669, when he sent an order to officials ‘‘at Delaware’’ to arrest the Long Swede and his chief confederate Hendrick Andersson Coleman, a Finn who lived at Carkoens Hook. The governor believed that the Long Swede, alias Ko¨nigsmark, intended to foment rebellion among the colonists to help return the colony to Sweden. Lovelace had received a report that the Long Swede ‘‘goes up & down from one place to another frequently raising speeches very seditious & false tending to the disturbance of his Majesty’s peace.’’ His accomplice Coleman was ‘‘well versed in the Indian language,’’ leaving ‘‘his habitation cattle & corn without any care taken for them’’ to seek refuge with Ko¨nigsmark among Native people, most likely Lenapes, a connection that elevated English fears.15 The Long Swede was arrested by September 14, 1669, after a dinner at which he encouraged the Swedes ‘‘to throw off the yoke, reminding them how they suffered from the English, and how they, partly by treachery, partly by force took from [the Swedes and Finns] one big piece of land after another.’’ When he asked them whom they supported, the King of Sweden or King of England, members of the group responded the King of Sweden. Justice Peter Cock disagreed and left the house, barring the door to prevent Ko¨nigsmark’s escape. Though Cock failed to hold him, English soldiers soon captured the Long Swede and placed him in jail. He stood trial in 1669, was found guilty, and was sentenced to be whipped publicly, branded on the face with the letter R, and transported to Barbados for sale as a servant.16 Governor Lovelace initially called for harsh punishment of the Long Swede’s confederates, including seizure of all of Hendrick Coleman’s estate if he failed to surrender within fifteen days, and imprisonment of Johan

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Andersson Stalcop of Christina, whom Lovelace ‘‘perceive[d] a chief fomenter as well as an actor in this by them intended tragedy.’’ Captain John Carr, the magistrates, and a petition from ‘‘divers of the inhabitants at Delaware’’ convinced the governor that imposition of fines varying by whether ‘‘they shall appear more or less guilty’’ was the better course than trial for treason. The five men most implicated in the plot were fined onehalf of their ‘‘goods & chattels’’: the Finn Hendrick Coleman and the Swedes Johan Stalcop, Jo¨ns Gustafsson of Marcus Kill, Reverend Lars Lock of Upland, and Olof Fransson of Carkoens Hook were each penalized 600 to 2,000 guilders. Each of the remaining thirty-seven rebels had to pay 300 guilders or less.17 Armegard Printz was left unpunished, though Lovelace believed she ‘‘intermeddled in so unworthy a design, for though what she hath committed was not of any dangerous consequence, yet it was a demonstration of their inclination & temper to advance a strange power & a manifestation of her high ingratitude for all those indulgences & favors she hath received from those in authority over her.’’ The records provide no greater detail about Printz’s involvement, so it is impossible to know what she had done to anger the governor. One of the Swedes implicated most deeply, Johan Stalcop, was an ally who had requested release from Governor Risingh back in 1654 to work for her. Another ringleader, the unpredictable minister Lars Lock who resisted authority under the Swedish, Dutch, and English regimes, had been her neighbor for many years.18 While most of the Long Swede’s confederates were Swedes and Finns, not all Nordic colonists joined the conspiracy. Overall, about one-third of household heads of the Swedish nation allied with Ko¨nigsmark. The distribution of rebels among the population argues that land disputes accounted for his success in attracting support and that the conspirators directed their animosity toward both the English conquerors and their Swedish collaborators, Cock and Rambo. None of the Long Swede’s confederates lived in Passyunk or Shackamaxon, where the English families from Long Island, Cock, and Rambo obtained patents in the 1660s for Lenape lands. One group of rebels lived just south of Passyunk in Carkoens Hook and Calcon Hook. They likely scorned the land grants at Passyunk, Shackamaxon, and farther north to the Falls, believing they had lost access to these lands ‘‘partly by treachery, partly by force.’’19 Native support of Coleman and Ko¨nigsmark suggests that the Lenapes held common cause with the rebels, for despite moving to the east, the Natives continued to claim lands from Passyunk north to the Falls.

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As during the Dutch regime, their alliance with the Swedish nation fanned the governor’s alarm about combined resistance and resulted in relatively mild punishments for most of those involved. Otherwise, it is difficult to understand Lovelace’s extreme initial reaction to the plot and his subsequent decision to resolve the matter with restraint. Long Swede rebels formed more than two-thirds of the Swedish nation in two sections of the colony: the area from Marcus Kill south to the Bochten (also called Verdrietige Hook); and Crane Hook. While most of Ko¨nigsmark’s confederates were Swedes or Finns, the Dutch Hans Hoffman and the Germans Hans Peterson and Marcus Laurens joined as well. Significantly, all three were married to Swedish women and lived among the Swedish nation. Women may have played a larger role in the conspiracy than the records reveal, as two of the three female household heads among the Swedes and Finns, Armegard Printz and Margaret, the widow of Pa˚l Jo¨nsson Mullica, were implicated in the plot. The third female Swedish household head on Wharton’s list, the widow Elisabeth Dalbo, was not a conspirator. She lived in Kingsessing, where the Long Swede failed to attract supporters.20 The concentration of rebels at Crane Hook was most remarkable, as ten of thirteen (77 percent) Nordic household heads and three additional nonhouseholders sided with Ko¨nigsmark. Settlement was dense in this region just to the north of New Castle. Recent grants to English soldiers and other English and Dutch settlers impinged on lands that the Swedes and Finns had held in common. At the same time the Delaware officials informed Governor Lovelace of the Long Swede uprising, William Tom recommended that ‘‘the Finns or others residing at or about Delaware may have an enlargement of their bounds for the which they desire to take up some lands at Apoquemini,’’ lying between New Castle and the Whorekill, at the time not settled by Europeans. Although the governor approved this proposal, the colonists decided not to move in that direction.21 Instead, over the next decade at least ten of the Long Swede conspirators moved their households to the east bank of the river, choosing to settle in territory still controlled by Lenapes rather than stay within the jurisdiction of Governor Lovelace and his government. In 1671, Matthias Nilsson of Bochten moved directly across the river to settle near the Cohanseys in an area whose name was later anglicized as Boughttown (a variant spelling of Bochten, meaning ‘‘the bend’’), where Matthias Matthiasson of Ammansland soon joined him. Matthias Ba¨rtilsson and Eric Jo¨ransson of Crane

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Hook relocated in the same year to Finn’s Point; Anders Andersson and Lars Cornelisson Vinam moved to adjacent Chestnut Neck in 1679. More than one-half of the Long Swede confederates from Marcus Kill and Marcus Hook—Ma˚ns Jo¨nsson Halton, Hans Hoffman, Jo¨ns Gustafsson, and Pa˚l Larsson Corvhorn—migrated east to Raccoon Creek in 1673–75. Despite— and because of—conflicting English claims for the territory and governance of West New Jersey, the Lenapes retained ownership of most lands and readily sold homesteads to the Europeans seeking acreage and escape from quitrents and rigid land titles. Depending on where they settled in southern New Jersey, members of the Swedish nation could extend their flexible land tenure adjacent to Lenape towns for many years.22 The old settlers remained wary of English rule, and the Swedes and Finns especially retained their reputation for rebellion for years to come. In June 1675, residents of Crane Hook, Christina, and other neighborhoods just north of New Castle protested the magistrates’ order to build a dike on Hans Block’s land, stating that they should not be forced to improve private property if they gained no rights to its use. Though two of the rebel leaders were the German Lutheran minister Jacobus Fabritius and John Ogle, an English soldier married to a Swede, William Tom primarily blamed the Swedes and Finns, harkening back to the Long Swede revolt. He complained to Governor Edmund Andros, who had taken office in 1674, that it was impossible for the magistrates to pursue the governor’s orders to build roads and make other improvements ‘‘when all our actions shall be disputed by a plebeian faction’’ who rebel ‘‘upon every occasion their frenzical brains please . . . the Swedes and Finns being such a sort of people that must be kept under, else they will rebel and of that nation these here are the worse sort as by instance the Long Finn.’’ As late as 1680, acrimony from the mutiny against building Block’s dike and the Long Swede revolt reared up once again when Catharina Johansdotter, the Swedish wife of Jacob van der Veer, and the Finn Evert Hendricksson Ek reported that the Delaware colony magistrate John Moll had declared in New York ‘‘that all the Swedes in the river were rebels etc. and that it was done as they supposed to make the Swedes odious in the Governor’s sight.’’ Whether or not the story was true, the rumor spread quickly throughout the colony. The Swedes and Finns had been called rebels before and readily believed the tale.23 The Long Swede conspiracy was particularly threatening to the government because it coincided with a series of murders by Lenapes of English

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people and their allies. Governor Lovelace became increasingly hostile as he received reports of the violence. He rejected the Lenape practice of covering the lost lives with gifts, which the Swedish and Dutch governments in the Lenapewihittuck region had accepted, and instead he insisted (unsuccessfully for the most part) that the perpetrators be delivered dead or alive. In June 1668, a year before the Long Swede rebellion, the New York government heard that the Mantes people had killed the servants of Sheriff William Tom and Justice Peter Alrichs. At the same time, Peter Rambo carried a message from the Lenapes requesting a ban on the sale of alcoholic beverages to their community. The governor instructed Captain John Carr and his assistants to discuss the situation with the Lenapes and report back to New York. The outcome of any discussions is unknown.24 By the late summer of 1670, relations between the Lenapes and the English government became grim, as Lenapes had murdered ten Europeans since 1664 and had recently plundered the property of Peter Jegoe and Peter Alrichs. Since the massacre at Swanendael in 1631, Lenape violence against Europeans along the Lenapewihittuck had been sporadic though clearly targeted against people considered outsiders or enemies. According to available records, the Lenapes murdered no Swedes or Finns after the early1650s. After 1664 the Lenapes killed English, their Dutch allies, and servants, focusing particularly on isolated individuals on Lenape lands, including the areas near the Falls and on the west bank south of New Castle. The killings were sporadic but not random, as the Lenapes sought to protect these uncolonized areas from English encroachment. Lovelace was correct to consider the series of deadly incidents as war, for through these murders the Lenapes tried to prevent further English expansion. At least some of the slayings reflected the Lenapes’ form of mourning war, as they killed but did not capture or ritually torture Europeans in reprisal for deaths of family members from diseases such as smallpox and murders by colonists. From 1664 to 1674, the Lenapes had multiple reasons for striking down colonists, including the deaths of family members, encroachment on their land, and the refusal of Lovelace to meet with them directly to renew treaties and make peace.25 Indeed, the governor expected Delaware colony officials to meet with the Lenapes about the killings rather than travel to the region himself. On September 23, 1670, the European negotiators Martin Roseman, Edmund Cantwell, Peter Cock, Peter Rambo, Israel Helm, and Matthias de Ring arrived at the Lenape town Annockeninck in West Jersey, where the Natives

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were celebrating the harvest festival with what the colonists called a cantico (from the Lenape word ‘‘gentgeen’’ or ‘‘gintkaan,’’ to dance).26 Eleven sachems attended the conference, including Mehocksett from Cohansey, and Renowewan, the brothers Ockanickon and Mamarakiekon, Nanacussy, and others of the region between Pennsauken Creek and the Falls. The sachems presented wampum and asked for time to find the troublemakers, who they claimed were from another Lenape group, not their own people. Several Susquehannocks warned the Lenapes that they should avoid war because of the changed situation in eastern North America with the decline of Native populations and the English conquest of New Netherland, which eliminated the Dutch as an alternative source of trade goods and arms. The Susquehannocks argued that the Lenapes now lived scattered among the Europeans, noting ‘‘Christians are living here and Christians are living there,’’ and they asked the Lenapes, if they went to war, ‘‘where would they get their gunpowder and lead?’’ The Lenape sachem asserted that ‘‘they did not seek war and that they desired to go out hunting and trade up and down among the Christians just as before.’’ The Europeans took the wampum, noting that they were accepting it not as ‘‘atonement for the murders’’ but as a pledge that the murderers would be delivered. ‘‘[O]ur great sachem,’’ the English warned, is ‘‘not satisfied with money but wants you to bring in the murderers.’’27 The position of the Lenapes remained unchanged after the conference, for in March 1671 William Tom and Peter Alrichs reported to Lovelace that relations with the Lenapes remained poor. Tom in particular felt handicapped because he had to depend on the old settlers for information, ‘‘for us few English none of us [is] able to speak to the Indians.’’ He believed that New Castle and scattered settlements were vulnerable to Native attack and urged Lovelace to come to the region to instill some respect in the sachems for the English government. Tom and Alrichs noted that the Lenape sachems explained that they threatened war because ‘‘where the English come they drive [the Natives] from their lands . . . for instance the North, Virginia, and Maryland and fear if not timely prevent[ed] shall do so here.’’28 The Sickoneysinks in 1631 had cut off the Dutch colony at Swanendael to forestall the spread of plantation agriculture similar to that of the Chesapeake. The sachems now considered that strategy once again, but the situation had changed during the past forty years, as the Susquehannocks reminded the Lenapes at the September 1670 conference. While Swanendael had been a small isolated Dutch plantation, the Delaware colony was

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one of a chain of English settlements stretching from New England to Carolina. Still, the Lenapes remained dominant in their country, in league with Swedes and Finns who also resisted Lovelace’s authority. Over the next year, both the English and Lenapes threatened and avoided full-scale war. The Swedes and Finns repudiated Lovelace’s call to arms against the Lenapes, who failed to turn over the accused murderers. The Natives used individual killings and plunder rather than broader attacks on the English. While the Lenapes could depend on the Swedish nation to deflect the governor’s call for military action, the diminished numbers of Native soldiers and divisions among the Swedes and Finns undercut any notion of large-scale assaults. Though the colonists refused to fight against the Lenapes and their allies, neither did they welcome an opportunity to march with them. In September 1671, tensions increased when the New York council received news that two Dutch servants of Peter Alrichs—Peter Weltscheerder and Christian Samuels—had been killed on Matinicum Island by the Lenapes who controlled that area of West Jersey. Alrichs reported to the council that Lenape sachems ‘‘promised their best assistance to bring in the murderers, or to procure them to be knocked in the head, if it might be allowed by the Governor.’’ The Lenapes told the magistrate that many Natives regretted the incident and would help, except that the two suspected of the crimes, Tashiowycan and Wywannattamo, had five kinsmen who would ‘‘seek to be revenged: so it was unsafe.’’ Tashiowycan had instigated the deed because his sister had died, and expressing ‘‘great grief for it, & said—The Manetto [manitou] hath killed my sister & I will go & kill the Christians.’’29 The full meaning of Tashiowycan’s statement is unclear, though his invocation of the manitou suggests that he believed that the spirit had killed his sister because the Lenapes had allowed the Dutch and English to settle on Lenape land. At the conference in 1654 with Governor Risingh, Naaman and other sachems had linked European diseases with a ‘‘bad Manitho, i.e., the evil one,’’ whom Tentackan, ‘‘a great Sachem’’ at the Whorekill, had sent against them. They requested a Swedish boat to sail to Cape Henlopen to ask for assistance to intercede with the manitou that was causing the disease. Similarly, later, in the mid-eighteenth century several Delaware prophets preached that God was punishing the Natives through disease, loss of land, and poor hunting because of their collusion with Europeans. In 1751, a few years prior to the Seven Years’ War, a Delaware woman

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whose name is unknown told the people of Wyoming, on the Susquehanna River, that ‘‘it was the mind of the Great Power that they should destroy the poison from among them.’’ The Delawares interpreted her message to mean that they should remain separate from the British, reject Christianity, and resist expropriation of their land. A decade later, the Delaware shaman Neolin helped create the pan-Indian movement leading to Pontiac’s War through his message, in part blaming Indians for their decline from disease and theft of land because they had tolerated settlement by Europeans and adopted their ways.30 This insight into Tashiowycan’s reasons for killing the servants Weltscheerder and Samuels suggests that he pursued mourning war to appease the manitou and thus end the epidemic and protect sovereignty of Lenape land. For Lenapes, no separation existed between spiritual and worldly matters. Little evidence survives from the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries of their religious expression, because either the Lenapes spoke rarely to Europeans about their beliefs or the settlers who engaged in such conversations either could not or had little interest in recording the Lenapes’ thoughts. Yet it is clear that the reforming nativist message of the eighteenth-century prophets developed from the Lenapes’ resistance through mourning war in the 1600s. In his September 1671 report to the New York council, Alrichs expressed little faith that the Lenapes would deliver the culprits and suggested that the English wait until late October when the Natives would leave their town to go hunting. They would then be separated into small groups, and the colonists would be better able to protect their crops and livestock in the event of war. In response to the account, Lovelace on September 26, 1671, instructed Tom ‘‘to bethink how a war may be prosecuted on those villains.’’ He blamed Tom and other Delaware colony officials for not taking forceful action earlier. He ordered farmers to harvest their corn and round up their livestock, and he forbade anyone from selling ammunition or alcohol to the Natives ‘‘on pain of death.’’ Tom should try to keep military preparations secret from the Lenapes, and he should let them know that conflict could be averted if they either delivered the murderers for prosecution or brought in the murderers’ heads.31 A month later, on October 25, 1671, Sheriff Tom reported on Peter Alrichs’ and his efforts to rally the Swedes and Finns for war against the Lenapes. He enclosed a document signed by Peter Rambo, Peter Cock, Hans Block, Hendrick Jansson, Edmund Cantwell, Martin Roseman, and

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himself explaining why, despite the fact the Lenapes had not yet surrendered the killers, military action was not an option. Though they had earlier recommended waiting until late October to march against the Natives, now they said it was too late. They still had not cut their hay or thrashed corn, which they would do over the winter, and in the spring they would pursue war if still necessary. The officials suggested that the governor send some troops, ammunition, and salt, advising ‘‘that if possible there be hired fifty or sixty North Indians who will do more than 200 men in such a war.’’ Tom explained further in his cover letter that the Swedes reacted to Lovelace’s call to arms with a ‘‘miserable moan for the loss of their beasts for want of hay’’ and, because of the oncoming winter, ice would prevent building fortifications at Matinicum Island. He attributed the need of the Native troops for ‘‘the broken lands and crewples [thickets] which are a shelter’’ to the Lenapes.32 While the New York council, including Lovelace, consented to the Delaware colony’s request for delay, the governor himself expressed great frustration to the commander, Captain John Carr, about the ‘‘backwardness of the inhabitants in Delaware’’ in comparison with ‘‘those in New Jersey, who were ready with a handsome party to have stepped in the work to bring the murderers to condign punishment.’’ He felt disgraced in seeing New Jersey Governor Philip Carteret’s ‘‘infant plantation to outstrip us’’ and warned Carr that he must ensure that the villains ‘‘be brought in dead or alive’’ by spring in order ‘‘to wipe off that stain of your remissness.’’ Carr responded with various excuses, including his own serious illness and lack of troops. Further, he noted, the New Jersey colony should have dealt with the murders because the perpetrators lived within its jurisdiction.33 The Lenape sachems met in December 1671 with colony officials at Peter Rambo’s place, promising to turn over the murderers or their bodies within six days. The Native leaders sent two men to Tashiowycan’s ‘‘wigwam in the night; one of them his particular friend; him he asked if he intended to kill him; he answered no, but the sachems have ordered you to die: [Tashiowycan] demanded what his brothers said; being told they also said he must die, he then holding his hands before his eyes, said kill me: Upon this the other Indian, not his intimate, shot him in the breast.’’ The accomplice Wywannattamo escaped into the woods. The affair ended with a meeting between the Lenapes and English, who hung Tashiowycan’s body in chains at New Castle and gave the sachems five match coats for bringing

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him in. The Lenape elders ‘‘summoned many of their young men, and before the English, told them, that now they saw a beginning of punishment, and all that did the like should be so served.’’34 The series of events reminds us of Swanendael, when a Sickoneysinck sachem destroyed the Dutch symbol of colonization, turning the tin sign into tobacco pipes. The Swanendael leaders reacted to this transgression with such horror that the Sickoneysincks thought it perhaps the equivalent in Dutch eyes to a murder and thus executed the sachem to expiate the crime. When the sachem’s family learned of the miscommunication, they retaliated by massacring the plantation’s residents. The Swanendael slaughter likely started as mourning war but for a variety of reasons, including the Dutch failure to exchange gifts and most importantly their intention to develop plantation colonies, the Sickoneysincks—or a number of their community—destroyed the entire settlement. They wiped out Swanendael to prevent spread of a plantation regime that swallowed up Native lands and threatened their freedom. The Sickoneysincks had acted from economic, political, and religious motives linked together in opposition to Dutch settlement. In 1671, as forty years earlier, many more factors were involved than removal of the Dutch sign or murders of two servants. Tashiowycan slew Weltscheerder and Samuels in retribution for his sister’s death, probably by a disease such as smallpox that the Europeans had brought. The servants lived on territory that the Lenapes still claimed; as in 1631, the Natives used violence to retain their autonomy and keep control of their land. When the English governor in 1671 demanded punishment of the wrongdoer, after much delay the sachems sent men to atone for the crimes by executing the offender, the normal step when murderers or their families could not cover a death with payment of wampum or other goods. Lovelace demanded the murderer’s life rather than compensation, thus forcing the Lenape sachems to turn in Tashiowycan’s corpse. The delay in complying with Lovelace’s demand suggests that the sachems only reluctantly, and with a great deal of trouble, convinced members of their community to resolve the matter rather than risk attack. Amid English colonies, as the Susquehannocks had warned, the Lenapes could no longer eradicate the Europeans in the Lenapewihittuck region as they had at Swanendael in 1631, but they conducted mourning war by killing one or two colonists at a time. The young Lenape men, whom their elders warned publicly (and probably disingenuously) at New Castle, did not change their

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behavior, as Lenapes continued over the next several years to resist the English threat of expropriation and slavery. They did not murder members of the Swedish nation, however, who remained allies throughout the conflict with Lovelace and, in 1675–76, as wars in New England and the Chesapeake threatened to engulf Lenape country as well.

chapter six

Protecting Sovereignty amid Wars, 1673–80

In the summer of 1673, the English lost New York and the Delaware colony to the Dutch commanders Cornelis Evertsen, Jr., and Jacob Binckes, who named Captain Anthony Colve as governor-general of the restored New Netherland. Colve appointed as commander of the colony along the Lenapewihittuck the Dutch magistrate Peter Alrichs, who had come to New Amstel in 1657. The Dutch government granted the European residents freedom of conscience, the right of free trade with other Europeans and Natives, and relief from quitrents on land and excise taxes on alcohol consumed in the colony. All colonists, including the English, would receive these privileges upon taking an oath of allegiance to the Netherlands.1 While the Dutch interlude of 1673–74 witnessed quiet among Europeans and Lenapes on the upper part of the river, the Whorekill sustained a brutal attack by Lord Baltimore’s troops. The site of the Swanendael massacre had been assaulted in 1672, and in 1673 it fell victim to yet another raid, as Calvert claimed the region on the basis of Maryland’s 1632 charter. In December 1673, Captain Thomas Howell led forty soldiers who disarmed the residents, seized their horses and food, and burned the town. Though Dr. John Roades, Sr., had obtained his land patent from Maryland, Howell’s troops torched his plantation, including a full tobacco barn near Rehoboth Bay, just as they destroyed the homes of his Dutch and English neighbors. According to witnesses, neighboring Sickoneysincks ‘‘wept when they saw the spoil that the inhabitants had suffered by their own native countrymen.’’ Roades and his neighbor Thomas Tilley traveled on foot to obtain help in New Castle, but they were killed at Murder Creek on South Bay by Natives who did not know them, probably Cohanseys who owned the area and hunted there. Other Whorekill residents found their way to

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Manhattan, where Colve provided assistance and ordered the colony along the Lenapewihittuck on military alert.2 In 1674, the Duke of York regained New York and the Delaware colony, appointing as governor Edmund Andros, who recommissioned all of the Delaware magistrates who had served under Lovelace except Peter Alrichs, ‘‘having proffered himself to the Dutch at their first coming, of his own motion.’’ Alrichs remained in the region as a major landowner, however, and was reinstated as a justice in 1677. Edmund Andros was a military officer who had remained loyal to Charles II and the Duke of York during the Commonwealth period (see Figure 15). He knew Dutch and French, and he had served the Crown in various assignments from suppressing a 1665 rebellion of republicans and Quakers on the Isle of Wight to making preparations against a possible Dutch invasion of England during the 1672–74 Anglo-Dutch War. Unlike the incompetent Francis Lovelace, whose governorship had been marked by turmoil in both New York and the Delaware, Andros was highly capable and could be expected to provide hardheaded leadership to the colony. He changed the tone of intergroup relations after Lovelace, acknowledging the Swedes’ autonomy and adopting Lenape policies in treaty-making and covering deaths with gifts.3 Andros’s priority in the Delaware colony was to create better relations between the English government and the Lenapes, Swedes, and Finns than had existed under Lovelace, aiming to create a well-governed colony that would provide income to the Duke of York. The governor strove to require Natives and colonists to conform with English law through stern governance and persuasion rather than violence and war. He wanted more land from the Lenapes for distribution to new immigrants and improved collection of quitrents from the settlers. Andros’s style might be considered the iron fist in a velvet glove, except that his limited military resources belie the metaphor of the iron fist. Rather, his success in bringing relative peace to the region and coaxing obedience from many old settlers to English land policy resulted from the force of his personality combined with his respect for the continuing power of the alliance among Lenapes, Susquehannocks, Swedes, and Finns. Though Andros and his assistants tried to enforce English land policy, they were only partially successful, as Lenapes challenged earlier deeds, old settlers resisted fencing of commons, and Swedes and Finns moved to join Lenapes in West Jersey, where the New York government had little control. Andros advised caution to Sheriff Edmund Cantwell, his commander in the Delaware colony, who in early 1674 held the colony on high alert. The

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Figure 15. Portrait of Edmund Andros, engraving prior to 1868. The Granger Collection, New York.

governor praised Cantwell for meeting with the Lenapes about the murders of Roades and Tilley but urged him to ‘‘prosecute in the best means you can, that it may be effected (if possible) without wars.’’ Linkages seemed likely in a series of deaths from 1673 to 1675 of Natives and colonists from the Whorekill to central New Jersey. Lenapes refused to give satisfaction for the murders of Roades and Tilley, pointing to the death at Achter Kol, near New York, of a Native man who had been drinking at a settler’s house.

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Andros interpreted this as ‘‘rather a pretence than a real cause of their keeping off,’’ because investigation showed that the Lenape at Achter Kol had been found in the woods after ‘‘drinking himself dead.’’ Andros thought instead that the death of a Lenape at James Sandelands’s house in Upland, which Cantwell had neglected to mention to the governor, was more likely ‘‘a great cause of their present actings’’ in the Lenapewihittuck region.4 Events in Lenape country during 1675 and 1676 must be considered within the context of hostilities developing between the Susquehannocks and the Chesapeake colonies in what is called Bacon’s Rebellion and between Natives and the New England colonies in King Philip’s (or Metacom’s) War. Had Native Americans in eastern North America joined together against the Europeans they might successfully have destroyed the English settlements by 1676. The murders of Europeans by Lenapes during this period reflected their solidarity with other Native groups against steady English encroachment; had Europeans along the Lenapewihittuck banded together, war might have occurred. The Swedish nation had no interest in defending the English colonists against the Lenapes, however, and the English had few soldiers in the region. Instead, the Lenape sachems, Governor Andros, and the Delaware magistrates negotiated a series of agreements to keep relative peace amid wars. In April 1675, with the murders of two Europeans at Millstone River in central New Jersey, perhaps by the brother of the Native who died at Achter Kol, Andros urged Cantwell and the Delaware magistrates to take care and ‘‘look to yourselves and give no just offense, or cause of suspicion to the Indians.’’ Andros suspected that Cantwell was fanning the flames while others informed the governor ‘‘that the Indians are quiet and busy on planting.’’ Cantwell should focus on taking Sandelands to trial in order to determine whether or not he was criminally responsible for the Lenape’s death at his house in Upland and to demonstrate to the Lenapes that the English court system would deal fairly with such incidents. The governor promised to visit the Lenapewihittuck area in May to meet with European and Lenape leaders.5 At a New York meeting on April 20, 1675, just prior to Andros’s planned conference with the Lenapes, a group of about thirty Navesinks presented three wampum belts to Andros, Philip Carteret, and the New York council. The Natives came to end the conflict engendered by the deaths at Achter Kol and the Millstone River, a goal Andros readily

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endorsed. One of the Navesink sachems was Metapis, the brother of the Lenape sachems Ockanickon of Crossweeksung and Mamarakiekon at the Millstone. As a result of intermarriage, family relationships tied Lenapes to the Navesinks and Raritans closer to New York, and as the Lenape and Munsee populations declined, their towns merged and relationships became ever stronger.6 Four Lenape sachems met on May 13, 1675, at New Castle with Governor Andros and the Delaware magistrates, with Samuel Edsall of East New Jersey and the Swedes Israel Helm and Lasse Cock serving as interpreters. The sachems included Renowewan of Pennsauken Creek, Nanacussy and Ockanickon of the Rancocas-Crossweeksung area, and Wassackarous, who had recently sold land at the Navesinks and moved to West Jersey. While Andros did well to attract these important leaders, two sachems did not attend—Mehocksett and his brother Petocoque of Cohansey—who subsequently sold lands on both sides of the river, to John Fenwick for his Salem colony and to settlers in what is now central Delaware. Mehocksett and possibly Petocoque had participated in the September 23, 1670, meeting that also included Edmund Cantwell, Israel Helm, Renowewan, Ockanickon, and Nanacussy, so their absence at the May 1675 conference in New Castle, close to their homes, begs explanation. Wassackarous perhaps negotiated for them to cover the deaths of John Roades and Thomas Tilley, as Cohanseys had likely killed the settlers. The spate of deeds signed by Mehocksett and Petocoque from 1676 to 1682 suggests that land cessions were part of the deal.7 While the May 13, 1675, meeting between Andros and the sachems was friendly, the governor got off to a bad start by attempting to establish a paternalistic relationship. Andros opened by stating ‘‘his desire to continue in friendship with them, and his readiness to protect them.’’ Renowewan and his colleagues responded pointedly by ‘‘express[ing] their readiness to continue in good friendship’’ and offered their assistance to the governor, who retorted that he did not need their help. If other Natives misbehaved or attacked, he would deal with them but would ‘‘be kind to those that will live quietly and well.’’ While Andros clarified that he wanted peace, he asserted a paternalistic hierarchy in their relations that the Lenapes had not previously accepted. Nor did they tolerate it now. They had dominated relations with the Swedes and Dutch, and they had removed themselves from daily interactions with English officials under Lovelace. Andros was extending the hand of friendship while initiating plans to buy up significant

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parts of their homelands to make way for new European settlers and increase profits for the Duke of York. Like previous European governors in the region, Andros expected to purchase territory in perpetuity and, like Printz, Risingh, and Stuyvesant, he quickly adapted to Native requirements for gift giving and shared use of the land. Andros also dropped Lovelace’s demand for English punishment for Lenapes who had murdered and instead accepted the Native practice of covering deaths through gifts. The Lenape sachems and English governor negotiated to reduce rather than escalate the cycle of violence. Many of the old settlers—Swedes, Finns, and Dutch—stood ready to continue the patterns of amicable relations that had existed for more than a generation. Following Andros’s speech on May 13, 1675, the sachems ignored his offer of protection while repeating their pledge of friendship. The first sachem—probably Renowewan—stood up, walked up and down, motioning to ‘‘his old acquaintance P [Peter] Rambo and Peter Cock, Lausa Cock with C[aptain] Cantwell then taking a band of sewan, he measured it from his neck to the length downward and . . . his heart should be so long and so good to the Governor and the Christians.’’ After he threw the belt at Andros’s feet, a second sachem rose, presenting another wampum belt with words of friendship. Andros said that he would keep the belts as tokens of peace and reciprocated with gifts of coats and lapcloths. The scribe recorded that the sachems then sang ‘‘Kenow, Kenow,’’ his rendering of their prayer to Getanittowit (or Kittanitowet), the Great Spirit.8 Andros presided the same day at the jury trial of James Sandelands, the Scot who came as a soldier with the English conquest, married Anna Keen, and lived among the Swedes and Finns at Upland. A farmer and trader, he was charged with manslaughter of a Lenape man, Peeques, whom in the fall of 1674 he had thrust out of his house. The man was ‘‘sorely bruised’’ and died within two months. Several Lenapes, who had come from Peter Rambo’s house that morning, testified to the court with Israel Helm as interpreter. The Natives disagreed on how long Peeques had lived after the fall: one said five days, another said six weeks, and yet another two months. The court explained the difference between ‘‘willful murder and accidental’’ death, and Sandelands had an opportunity to state his case to the Lenapes. The jury of European settlers then acquitted Sandelands and he was proclaimed clear of guilt the next day.9 At the same court session, related to the Sandelands case and death at Achter Kol, Andros imposed a ban on retail sales of alcohol to the Natives

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and promised to obtain Governor Carteret’s approval for a similar prohibition in New Jersey. The edict permitted merchants to sell rum and other liquor to the Lenapes in quantities of two gallons or more but prohibited settlers from offering smaller amounts. The governor also forbade the Delaware colonists from distilling alcohol from grain or corn. The Lenape sachems had periodically requested a ban to give them greater control over distribution of alcohol without stopping the exchange of large quantities that they received in trade and annual gifts. Despite Andros’s edict, however, though ordinary colonists could no longer legally earn some extra income and fraternize with neighboring Lenapes in tippling houses, the flow of liquor by small measure continued. Natives, Swedes, Finns, and Dutch had drunk together since contact, with resulting camaraderie and risk of bloodshed.10 While difficult to enforce, the ban likely caused further opposition to the English regime and convinced some Swedes and Finns to join the Lenapes in West Jersey to evade the restrictive English policies regarding alcohol and land. Because an Englishman recorded the 1675 court proceedings of Sandelands’s case, we cannot be sure what the Lenapes actually said or thought about the verdict. The case was part of the negotiations between Andros and the Lenape sachems, who may have accepted the combination of gifts, ban on sale of small quantities of liquor, and court ritual in the governor’s presence sufficient to cover Peeques’s death. Though Andros’s connection with King Charles II and the Duke of York may have given him prominence in the sachems’ eyes, the Lenapes gave no sign that they recognized English sovereignty, unlike the relationship that the historian Jenny Hale Pulsipher argues existed between New England Indians and the king. Whereas Narragansetts and others accepted a direct subject relationship with Charles I and II (but not with the Massachusetts Bay Colony), the Lenapes yielded sovereignty to no European power. Though the English had twice taken over New Netherland and the Dutch colony on Lenapewihittuck, they had not conquered Lenape country.11 Over the next several years, Lenape sachems uneasily kept their peace agreement with Governor Andros even as wars broke out in the Chesapeake and New England. In February 1675 the Susquehannocks, diminished in population and power, had obeyed the demand of the Maryland government to place themselves under its control. Assigned land on the Potomac River, in September 1675 they came under siege by Maryland and Virginia

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militia, who killed five sachems when they met to parley. The Susquehannocks withstood the siege for another six weeks, then escaped quietly in the night, killing ten sleeping militia. In vengeance the Susquehannocks attacked the Virginia backcountry, helping to unleash Bacon’s Rebellion, which resulted in the overthrow of Governor William Berkeley’s government, the death of many Natives and colonists, and dispersal of the Susquehannocks, some to the Lenapewihittuck area. Starting in the summer of 1675, King Philip’s War spread throughout New England, and thousands of Natives and colonists died. Andros moved swiftly to keep most Munsees out of the fray, and in 1676 he engaged the Mohawks to attack King Philip’s troops, thus assisting the eventual English victory.12 Because the Lenapes remained ambivalent in their relations with Andros and threatened to join a pan-Indian uprising, in September 1675 the governor followed up the May New Castle conference by traveling to the Falls to parley with Nanacussy and three sachems he had not previously met: Mamarakiekon (Ockanickon’s brother), Oreckton, and Sackoquewan. Mamarakiekon lived near the Millstone River where the settlers had been killed the previous spring, so his presence at this conference represented an effort to resolve those crimes. The governor and sachems initiated talks on September 22, 1675, to establish their goals for peace. Mamarakiekon affirmed his people’s intention to live quietly, while Andros stated his desire to keep the ‘‘wars to the eastward,’’ in New England, from spreading to the Delaware colony. He promised to punish wrongdoers among the colonists and ‘‘so must [the Lenapes] do with theirs & then the rest will be well.’’ Notably, Andros did not insist that the Millstone River murderers be turned over to the English officials. Instead, the next day, the sachems and governor sealed their promises with a deed of land from the Lenapes in exchange for a significant amount of trade goods from Andros. The exchange included the land on the west side of the Lenapewihittuck from a point eight or nine miles south of the Falls to a northerly point to be agreed upon at a later time. The amount of wampum, rum, mirrors, clothing, guns, ammunition, and many other goods that the Lenapes received suggests Andros sought a firm alliance in addition to cession of land.13 Though the English may have thought that the land sale was final, however, subsequent deeds demonstrate that the Lenapes expected periodic gifts for European use of the land. Over the next several months the governor continued to work to prevent the conflicts in the Chesapeake and New England from spreading to

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the Delaware colony. When he heard from Sheriff Cantwell in November 1675 that the Lenapes were ‘‘wavering’’ in their commitment to peace, Andros responded that he was confident ‘‘we need not fear them,’’ and he urged Cantwell to ‘‘be just to them on all occasions and kind to Renowickam [Renowewan] in particular manner, who shall not lose for his constancy.’’ Even so, when Andros informed the governor of Maryland in December about King Philip’s War, indicating that the Mohawks and other Iroquois continued to be firm allies of the English, he noted reports that the Munsees and Lenapes were ready to support King Philip, as ‘‘all our Indians as far as Delaware [are] thought only to wait opportunities.’’14 Why did the Munsees and Lenapes not join forces to destroy the English government in New York and New Castle, to push the Europeans out of their country as King Philip’s troops tried in New England? The historian Francis Jennings gave significant credit to Edmund Andros for meeting with various Munsee and Lenape groups—as he did in the Lenapewihittuck area in May and September 1675—to try to solidify their ties. Andros’s skill was palpable, yet the Lenapes remained wary and knew English colonization would bring ever more settlers to their land. Several reasons account for the Lenapes’ neutrality, which can be viewed as consistent with their relations with the Swedes, Finns, and Dutch over the previous forty years. To fight en masse against the Europeans living in their country would have meant killing and destroying the property of their allies, the Swedes and Finns, as well as the more recently settled English. In addition, the Lenapes’ numbers had declined and they no longer had the mighty Susquehannocks supporting them. Indeed, many Susquehannocks turned to the Lenapes for refuge. And Andros made it clear at the September conference that he had lots of goods for gift giving in exchange for use of the land and for trade in furs. The Lenapes hoped for a strong economic partnership, not just for land but also for commerce. Andros’s success came from his willingness, despite his language of paternalism, to adjust his goals to the Lenapes’ requirements. Much like the Swedish governor Johan Risingh and the Dutch director Peter Stuyvesant, Andros treated with the sachems as business partners, thereby gaining access to land, fostering trade, and keeping peace. In addition to maintaining peace, Andros wanted the Lenapes’ help in keeping the Maryland government out. The governor had reason to fear that Baltimore would use the pretext of following the Susquehannocks, who took refuge among the Lenapes, to invade and wrest control of the region.

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Baltimore’s raids on the Whorekill in 1672 and 1673 offered stern warning of this possibility. Despite Andros’s considerable efforts in 1676, the Susquehannocks preferred to live with the Lenapes, who gladly accepted them. Undeterred, Andros then obtained an invitation from the Iroquois asking the Susquehannocks to come live with them, yet some stayed along the Lenapewihittuck and others remained at their old fort on the Susquehanna River. At a conference in New York on June 2–3, 1676, two sachems, Canacheoweedo and Sneedo, told Andros that they had ‘‘no mind to go up to Albany but to return to the South River, to their folks.’’ In March 1677, the Lenapes, Iroquois, and Susquehannocks met at Shackamaxon to discuss where the Susquehannocks would live. The Iroquois, consistent with Andros’s intent, wanted them to bolster their communities in New York, while the Lenapes, contrary to the New York governor, urged them to remain in their country. Some of the Susquehannocks stayed with the Lenapes while others departed with the Iroquois, who then proceeded to the Susquehanna fort where they convinced thirty men—and presumably their families—to accompany them. The diminished Susquehannocks lacked the leadership and numbers needed to retain their unity.15 While 1676 marked a watershed for Indians in southern New England where English soldiers and their Native allies defeated the Wampanoags and other nations, and in the Chesapeake where Bacon’s Rebellion left the Susquehannocks in disarray, the Lenapes held on to sovereignty over much of their land and remained dominant in the region. In the mid-1670s, the eastern seaboard between New York and Maryland was still Lenape country, similar to places with relatively small European populations in northern New England, the Arkansas Valley, and the Great Lakes region.16 The ethnic diversity and alliance among the Swedish nation and Lenapes created a culture committed to personal freedom, religious liberty, shared use of resources, opposition to centralized authority, and focus on economic gain that remained distinctive of Delaware Valley society into the eighteenth century. A new invasion of English had begun in Lenape country, this time in West New Jersey, when John Fenwick arrived in 1675 with Quaker settlers to found Salem; in 1677 additional shiploads of Friends established Burlington. Though some Dutch, Swedes, and Finns had purchased land from the Lenapes and established homesteads on the east side of the Lenapewihittuck, official English colonization of the area had been delayed. In 1664 Sir

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John Berkeley had received half of the proprietorship of New Jersey from the Duke of York and in 1674 sold West New Jersey to Fenwick in trust for Edward Byllynge. Fenwick and Byllynge, both Quakers, then quarreled, and three Quaker trustees, including William Penn, mediated the dispute. Fenwick demanded one-tenth of the proprietorship, sold 148,000 acres to about 50 purchasers—mostly English Quakers—and set off on the ship Griffen with about 150 settlers arriving in Salem in November 1675. Because of his own financial difficulties and complicated legal actions, and despite obtaining deeds from the Cohansey sachems, Fenwick lacked English legal title, deeds, and the right to govern. As a result, the new colonists remained uncertain of their holdings; conflicts erupted with the Dutch, Swedes, and Finns already living in the area; and Fenwick was jailed in New York. The Duke of York refused to sign over the government to the West New Jersey proprietors until 1680, so Andros claimed authority over both banks of the river until that time.17 The Quaker trustees and Byllynge proceeded with plans to colonize his 90 percent share of West New Jersey. Byllynge himself probably drafted the innovative West New Jersey Concessions that described the process for distributing land, proposed a popularly elected assembly, and granted religious freedom and trial by jury. The Concessions set out a plan for mediation of disputes between Lenapes and Europeans including trial by a jury composed of six Natives and six colonists ‘‘when any of the Natives do any ways wrong or injure’’ a settler. While there is no evidence that these provisions for dealing with conflict between Europeans and Lenapes were implemented—the Concessions never became West Jersey law—the policy suggested the Quakers’ thoughtful planning for dealing with discord. Nevertheless, the sachems, if they were consulted, almost certainly would have rejected the proposal, as they would note inequality in the treatment of Natives and Europeans. While Lenape defendants would be subject to the mixed juries, English accused of crimes against Indians would be judged by their own countrymen alone.18 In 1676, the Quaker trustees and Byllynge initiated their own settlement in West Jersey, appointing commissioners to govern and sending the ship Kent with 230 Friends to build the Burlington colony near the Falls. William Penn and his colleagues wanted a site accessible to ships while still remaining relatively near Quakers at Shrewsbury and Middletown in East Jersey. The Kent stopped first at Sandy Hook to inform Andros of the plans before sailing to the Lenapewihittuck region in August 1677. Because the

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Duke of York had not transferred the right to govern along with the land, Andros denied liberty to the Quakers to establish their own government, but he agreed to appoint the trustees’ commissioners as magistrates to report to him. Andros charged the passengers duties on their cargo, creating considerable ill feeling toward the Duke of York. One new arrival, Thomas Hooten, wrote to his wife in England, ‘‘I know not how to write concerning thy coming or not coming hither; the place I like very well; but if it not be made free, I mean as to customs and government, then it will not be so well, and may hinder many that have desires to come.’’ A group complained to the trustees and Byllynge that Kent passengers transported themselves ‘‘and with them such household stuff and tools, as are requisite for planters to have’’ and upon arrival were ‘‘saluted with a demand of custom, of five percent, and that not as the goods may there be worth, but according to the invoice as they cost before shipped in England; nor did they take them as they came, but at pick and choose, with some severe language to boot.’’ Andros dropped the duties in 1680, the same year the Duke of York ceded the West New Jersey government to Byllynge. By 1682, an estimated 1,760 Quakers immigrated to West Jersey. After that date most Friends went to Penn’s colony on the west bank.19 While the Burlington Friends settled along the river without significant conflict, their presence caused anxiety among Lenapes and old settlers alike. The Kent passengers received crucial assistance from the Swedes and Finns at Raccoon Creek. They were too numerous to stay in the old settlers’ scattered houses, so ‘‘some were obliged to lay their beds and furniture in cow stalls, and apartments of that sort.’’ The West Jersey commissioners engaged Israel Helm, Peter Rambo, and Lasse Cock to serve as interpreters to purchase rights for two tracts along the river: from Oldman’s Creek to Timber Creek, and from Timber Creek to the Rancocas. Hendrick Jacobs Falkenburg, a Holsteiner married to a Finn and partner of Peter Jegoe at ‘‘Lazy Point’’ on Matinicum Island, helped the Quakers purchase land from the Rancocas to Assunpink Creek.20 The winter of 1677–78 arrived before the new settlers could begin constructing Burlington, so they built wigwams like the Lenapes had and depended on the Natives for corn, vegetables, venison, fish, and fowl. According to a colonist named Thomas Budd, the Lenapes were friendly and ‘‘very serviceable’’ but at a meeting the sachems warned that ‘‘they were advised to make war on us, and cut us off whilst we were but few, and said, they were told, that we sold them the smallpox, with the matchcoat

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they had bought of us.’’ Indeed an epidemic once again devastated the Natives following arrival of the Shield in 1678. One Quaker, Mahlon Stacy, wrote in 1680, ‘‘ ‘Tis hardly credible to believe, how the Indians are wasted in two years time; and especially the last summer,’’ while Mary Murfin Smith noted that the scourge was so great that the Lenapes ‘‘could not bury all the dead.’’ Despite the decimation and calls by their young men for war, the sachems assured the Burlington Quakers that they did not intend to attack, ‘‘for when we have war, we are only skin and bones; and meat that we eat doth not do us good, we always are in fear, we have not the benefit of the sun to shine on us, we hide us in holes and corners; we are minded to live at peace.’’ One sachem, with the others’ agreement, observed that the smallpox had come ‘‘once in my grandfather’s time, and it could not be the English that could send it to us then, there being no English in the country: And it was once in my father’s time, they could not send it us then neither; and now it is in my time, I do not believe that they have sent it us now: I do believe it is the man above that hath sent it us.’’ While the Lenapes resisted the will of their younger men to assault the Quakers for bringing smallpox, the sachems linked the epidemic to the disfavor of God—‘‘the man above.’’ Again the sachems were negotiating a difficult path between members of their community who wanted to conduct mourning war—and perhaps inflict an even more expanded massacre— against the new Quaker settlers because of the epidemic disease and loss of land. The war faction believed that God was punishing the Lenapes for accepting the immigrants’ gifts, and they became more belligerent when intoxicated. The sachems agreed with the war faction that ‘‘the man above’’ was angry but thought war would only cause more devastation and instead required the Friends to stop the trade in alcohol. According to Budd, the Natives blamed the old settlers for ignoring the ravages of strong liquors, which ‘‘when we drink it, it makes us mad; we do not know what we do, we then abuse one another; we throw each other into the fire, seven score of our people have been killed, by reason of the drinking of it, since the time it was first sold us.’’ As with Governor Andros, the sachems tried, though again unsuccessfully, to convince colonial leaders to stop the sale of alcohol by settlers. Because sachems continued to receive rum among trade goods exchanged at treaties, they apparently welcomed strong drink as long as they controlled its distribution.21 The Quakers’ landing and purchase of territory from the Lenapes in West Jersey in the late summer and early fall of 1677 created a flurry of

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activity among old settlers on the west bank. Twenty-four Swedish, Finnish, Dutch, and English residents, who described themselves as ‘‘for the most part born and brought up in this river and parts,’’ petitioned the Upland Court on November 13, 1677, for permission to establish a town ‘‘at the west side of this river just below the Falls.’’ The Lenapes had long protected this region, refusing to permit Europeans to travel above the Falls. The petitioners claimed that the settlement would strengthen the colony’s defenses and serve ‘‘the convenience of travelers.’’ They requested onehundred-acre lots, with rights to use marshland and appropriate ‘‘privileges and liberties for their encouragement as shall be thought fit.’’ Two of the six sitting justices, Israel Helm and Olle Svensson, signed the request as did the clerk of court Ephraim Herrman and the sons of the magistrates Peter Cock and Peter Rambo. Unsurprisingly the court promised to forward the petition to Governor Andros with its support. Though the governor had purchased land at the Falls from several Lenape sachems in September 1675 and asked the Upland Court in August 1677 to buy a tract just south of the 1675 purchase, he rejected this petition.22 As the old settlers along the Lenapewihittuck had feared, in the summer of 1679 Andros instead granted the land to a group of fifteen West New Jersey settlers, including Robert Hoskins, Robert Lucas, and other heads of household, who had petitioned the governor, stating, ‘‘We may have land in Jersie side but we are willing to become tenants to his highness the Duke of Yourk if your Honor please to give us the grant and to clear the Indians.’’ The men were looking for good farmland that would enable them to send for their families. Consistent with his goal to attract colonists who would pay quitrents to the Duke of York, Andros approved this request and instructed Philip Pocock to survey large tracts along the river.23 Pocock quickly learned that he would have to deal with two different groups of Lenapes whom he suspected of working covertly together and with the old settlers who had wanted the land. Ockanickon and his brother Metapis claimed the territory from the Falls to Oreckton’s Island, arguing that they were ‘‘the right owners, and never have had the value of a pipe. . . . Ockenickan saying that none will nor shall come upon the land without satisfaction.’’ Ockanickon and Metapis had not attended the September 1675 council at which Andros purchased the rights from Nanacussy, Oreckton, Sackoquewan, and Mamarakiekon (a brother of Ockanickon and Metapis). Ockanickon and Metapis now argued that the English also needed their permission to distribute the land. Further, the sachems claimed the

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area south of Oreckton’s Island and refused to deal with Edmund Cantwell, Peter Alrichs, and Israel Helm ‘‘about the land not yet purchased. They would give us no answer,’’ Cantwell wrote, ‘‘till they considered of it being a business of consequence, being here taken very ill.’’24 Cantwell’s interpreters, Israel Helm and Peter Alrichs—and perhaps Cantwell himself—likely colluded with Ockanickon and Metapis to limit the land surveyed for the West Jersey immigrants to whom Andros extended generous grants reaching a mile or more back from the river. In November 1679, four Delaware colony officials challenged these grants, requesting land in the same area promised to the prospective settlers from West Jersey. Helm claimed that he already had a grant of two hundred acres just south of Chiepiessing, ‘‘but it’s now laid out to some of the Quakers, by Mr. Pocock.’’ Ephraim Herrman wanted a plot of two or three hundred acres near the Falls; Olle Svensson, ‘‘being an old inhabitant, having divers children and but little land,’’ and Lasse Cock both desired two hundred acres. The provincial secretary Matthias Nicolls noted that Lasse Cock planned to visit New York ‘‘about Indians refusing to go off land purchased.’’25 Like the Lenapes and in cooperation with them, the leaders of the old settler community tried to keep the West Jersey colonists out—or at least limit the amount of land that Andros gave them. Helm, Herrman, Cock, and Svensson all sought to use their connections with the English government to obtain land for themselves. Thus the Swedish and Dutch officials collaborated with the Lenapes to obstruct Andros’s development of land near the Falls. According to Pocock in a letter to Andros in February 1680, the Lenapes at the Falls, led by Sackoquewan, contended that in September 1675 they had sold no more territory than from the Falls south to Oreckton’s Island. Meanwhile, Ockanickon, Nahoosey, and the Chiepiessing Natives ‘‘pretend[ed] a great antipathy to Seckaquewom and his company for selling their land without their knowledge and say that they received no part of the pay.’’ The surveyor believed that the Lenapes were simulating a feud, encouraged ‘‘by some of our own inhabitants’’ who he hoped would not prejudice the sachems against a settlement, which the Natives promised when their people all returned from hunting. Because Mamarakiekon, the brother of Ockanickon and Metapis, had participated in the September 1675 sale, Pocock had grounds for his suspicions.26 The Lenapes expected additional gifts because four years had elapsed since the 1675 meeting and the land was now under survey.

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The Lenape, Swedish, and Dutch leaders failed to prevent settlement of the West Jersey colonists near the Falls in a town they called Crewcorne. Nevertheless, the Natives made the lives of the new settlers miserable, while the Upland magistrates failed to help. In April 1680, Crewcorne inhabitants named William Biles, Richard Ridgeway, Robert Lucas, and seven others complained directly to Andros that they were ‘‘in great danger of our lives, of houses burning of our goods stealing and of our wives and children afrighting.’’ They blamed the English tavern keeper and ferryman Gilbert Wheeler for selling liquor to the Lenapes. The governor appointed Biles to head a new court at the Falls, sending a warrant for Wheeler and another man to appear in New York ‘‘for selling drinks to the Indians.’’27 Though Biles reported in May 1680 that ‘‘we hath been very quiet with the Indians,’’ by September the Crewcorne settlers protested to Andros once again that Wheeler sold alcohol to numerous Lenapes. As a result, they ‘‘fight together, and then they come furiously and break our fences and steal our corn, and break our windows and doors and carry away our goods, and worried 3 of our cattle in one day with their dogs, which oppression if it continue will force some of us from our plantations, we being very weak at the present for resistance and ignorant in their lingo whereby we cannot appease them when they are mad with drink.’’ Despite ongoing sale of liquor to the Lenapes, since the 1640s the Swedes and Finns had not faced such attacks by their neighbors. Ockanickon, Metapis, and their people resisted settlement on lands they had not sold. Apparently Biles abandoned the petitioners, for the Crewcorne settlers reported that he would do nothing for them and ‘‘by his words we perceive that he intends to sell rum himself.’’ Wheeler continued to purvey alcohol to the Lenapes in ensuing years, for the Upland Court fined him £4 and costs in June 1681, and the Burlington Court in 1682 fined him £5 for selling rum to the Lenapes in West Jersey. Apparently the profits from selling liquor outweighed the risk of occasional penalties.28 Whether the Lenapes continued their attacks on the property of Crewcorne residents is unclear, for the documentary record becomes scanty as the English government west of the Lenapewihittuck changed once again with Charles II’s March 1681 charter for Pennsylvania to the Quaker leader William Penn. Of concern to Acting Governor Anthony Brockholls of New York were arrears of quitrents that old settlers owed to the Duke of York. Though Brockholls requested Pennsylvania Deputy Governor William Markham’s assistance in collecting the back taxes, it is unlikely that the

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Swedes and Finns complied, given their earlier resistance to English land policies. Indeed Penn found it difficult to collect quitrents from Pennsylvania inhabitants in coming years.29 From 1674 to 1680, the Lenapes and Swedish nation maintained their close relationship while dealing with the English as outsiders. Edmund Andros had changed the nature of English dealings on the Lenapewihittuck, however, as he attempted to gain loyalty from the old settlers and bring an end to the Lenapes’ murders to protect their land. Unlike his predecessor, Governor Lovelace, Andros met with the sachems and colonists in person, accepted gifts from the Lenapes to cover European deaths, and pursued negotiations rather than war. In fact, he placed priority on keeping the Delaware colony and New Netherland out of what appeared to be a developing pan-Indian conflict as New England and the Chesapeake ignited in King Philip’s War and Bacon’s Rebellion. Once the threat passed, Andros’s chief goal was to expand settlement and revenues on the west bank of the Lenapewihittuck, lands that the Duke of York claimed. The Lenapes and Swedish nation combined to retard that expansion but through deception and threats rather than bloodshed. At the same time, sachems sold land to the Quaker colonists in West Jersey despite the alarm of a Lenape faction who interpreted smallpox epidemics as God’s punishment for admitting the immigrants. The assurances of the Salem and Burlington leaders that they came in peace and freedom apparently calmed the sachems’ fears despite the Quakers’ significant population. As of 1680, the Lenapes still outnumbered Europeans in the region and had successfully preserved their sovereignty. The population balance shifted in the next five years, however, as about 8,000 colonists arrived on the west bank of the Lenapewihittuck.30 While English Quakers predominated, Friends and people of other religions also came from Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Germany, and colonies such as New York, New Jersey, and the West Indies. Most were ordinary craftsmen, farmers, and their families; a small minority were wealthy merchants and planters who established large estates. Despite these overwhelming numbers, the Lenapes and old settlers continued to influence Delaware Valley society. While at first welcoming the Pennsylvania colonists, the Lenapes, Swedes, and Finns resisted changes in land policy and diplomacy, using their mutual alliance to leverage the strength of their small communities. They had stood up to Peter Stuyvesant, Francis Lovelace, and Edmund Andros, and they hoped to do the same with William Penn.

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Negotiating Penn’s Colony, 1681–1715

William Penn’s ‘‘holy experiment’’ did not develop from a blank slate. The new Quaker settlers obtained assistance, advice, and local perspectives from the Lenapes, Swedes, Finns, Dutch, and English who already lived along the Lenapewihittuck and had created an inclusive, tolerant, decentralized society based on economic goals. The Lenapes and old settlers had created a culture into which the Quaker colonists in West New Jersey and Pennsylvania easily moved.1 The Friends’ belief in religious liberty and commitment to friendly relations with Native Americans complemented cultural practices already in place. Nevertheless, significant changes occurred in the region as swelling numbers of Europeans soon pushed Lenapes and old settlers from prime lands along the river and their central position in the economy and society. In the region that became Pennsylvania, Lenapes withdrew to the west and north of Quaker settlement, while on the east bank they maintained substantial communities in West Jersey, where lessorganized European settlement left a great deal of land under Indian title. Because Lenapes on both sides of the Lenapewihittuck claimed territory throughout the region, they met periodically with William Penn and his lieutenants to confirm their friendship and cede land. They refused in particular to transfer the area from what is now central Bucks County north to the Pocono Mountains when Penn could not pay their asking price; they threatened violence to protect that last stronghold. Though diminished in population and lacking the predominance of power they had before 1681, the Lenapes skillfully managed their relationship with the nonviolent Quaker government in order to remain a sovereign people. Many of the old settlers were similarly pressured to sell their farms along the river and soon found themselves largely excluded from Penn’s government when

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First Purchasers and other wealthy Englishmen took control. Nevertheless, the old settlers coalesced as an ethnic interest group known as ‘‘the Swedes’’ centered on the Swedish Lutheran church, creating a new political identity through which they protected individual and group interests within factional Pennsylvania politics. Both the Lenapes and Swedes thus continued to shape Delaware Valley society and politics despite their new status as minority groups. In August 1681, Europeans on the west side of the Lenapewihittuck faced a new regime when, according to a London newspaper, they welcomed Deputy Governor William Markham with ‘‘a troop of horse and a company of foot, with drums beating and colors flying, having silk ensigns.’’ The report noted that the militia included ‘‘English, Dutch, and Swedes, born in the country and understanding the language and customs of the Indians,’’ which portended the new colony’s success. William Penn had appointed his cousin Markham soon after receiving the Pennsylvania charter on March 4, 1681. The deputy sailed promptly to New York, where he received Acting Governor Anthony Brockholls’s proclamation, which directed the inhabitants of the Delaware colony to pledge allegiance to the new proprietor. As yet, Pennsylvania’s southern boundary started at a point twelve miles north of New Castle. Penn only later received the deed for the Lower Counties (now the State of Delaware) from James, Duke of York, in August 1682, thus obtaining greater control over the river and uniting European residents along the western bank under his government.2 Deputy Governor Markham, following the terms of his commission, first chose a council of nine inhabitants, then with their assistance reconstituted and temporarily continued the authority of Upland Court; sounded the river and prepared to survey the land; informed the Lenapes of the new government; and contacted Charles Calvert, Lord Baltimore and the proprietor of Maryland, to determine the boundary dividing the two colonies. Markham appointed seven of his councilors as justices of Upland Court, which had a total of eleven members and remained the primary locus of government in Pennsylvania from the fall of 1681 to the fall of 1682, when Penn arrived and established his provincial assembly and county courts. The deputy governor named three longtime residents—Otto Ernest Cock, Lasse Cock, and James Sandelands—to both his council and the Upland bench, and he appointed to the court the Swedes Sven Svensson of Wicaco and Anders Bengtsson of Moyamensing, for a total of five old settlers: three Swedes (Bengtsson, Lasse Cock, and Svensson), a Holsteiner

Figure 16. Portrait of William Penn, by Francis Place. HSP Treasures Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

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(Otto Ernest Cock), and a Scot who had married into the Swedish nation (Sandelands). The six English members formed a slight majority of the Upland Court constituted in the fall of 1681. They included the Quakers William Biles, William Clayton, Thomas Fairman, Robert Lucas, and Robert Wade, and another Englishman, William Warner, whose religion is unknown; all had moved to the west bank during the late 1670s.3 Despite changed personnel and greater reliance on trial by jury, the Upland Court continued its preference for resolving differences and punishing crimes in ways that promoted social unity rather than division. Under the governments of New Netherland and the Duke of York, the old settlers had held significant autonomy. Their justices strove in most cases to govern with a light hand, minimizing the negative impact of their judgments on individuals and the community. As far as can be determined from brief court minutes at a distance in time of more than three centuries, their decisions appear to have been moderate and fair. Despite access to more onerous penalties under the Duke of York’s laws for such offenses as theft, robbery, and fornication, the magistrates used peace bonds and fines rather than corporal punishment to regulate behavior. While the Friends are generally credited for initiating the use of peace bonds in the Delaware Valley, the Quakers in fact continued the earlier practice of Upland Court.4 During the period between 1676 and 1681, for which Upland Court records exist prior to Markham’s arrival, the old settler justices did their best to resolve issues peacefully among the sometimes quarrelsome Delaware colonists. In September 1677, for example, Ma˚rten Ma˚rtensson, Jr., of Calcon Hook complained that his neighbor Ma˚ns Petersson Stake had chased his wife, Margaret, with an axe and then threatened both of them with a gun, yelling ‘‘get ye gone you rogue and whore or else I will shoot you.’’ Stake frequently got drunk and landed in court for misconduct. On this occasion, Ma˚rtensson asked the court to bind Stake to good behavior and to pay court costs. The justices found for the plaintiff, fined Stake fifty guilders, required that he post security for good behavior for one year, and pay the costs of the suit. When Stake soon violated his bond by punching Anders Bonde in the face in Lasse Coleman’s sauna and requested leniency of the court because he was drunk, the justices forgave ‘‘his breach of the behavior’’ and fined him one hundred guilders.5 In October 1680, Stake was in trouble again with another neighbor, Hans Geo¨rgen (Urian), with whom Stake exchanged several suits and countersuits for slander and assault. Receiving evidence from Ma˚rten

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Ma˚rtensson and William Orian of ‘‘great wrangling,’’ violence, and threats, the justices bound both Stake and Geo¨rgen ‘‘to their good behaviors, strictly to keep His Majesty’s peace to each other and all other His Majesty’s subjects for the space of one year and six weeks.’’ Stake was also fined two hundred guilders and the two men shared court costs for the assault case. In one of the slander suits, Geo¨rgen accused Stake of calling him a thief, which the defendant denied, saying ‘‘that he has only said that some plank which [Geo¨rgen] had were like his own.’’ The court found against Stake but simply required he apologize publicly for his rash words and pay the costs of the suit.6 Despite Stake’s misbehavior when drunk, the Upland Court—with support of the community—fined him for his crimes but resisted harsher punishment. Also at the October 1680 court, Justice Otto Ernest Cock complained that Stake ‘‘maliciously has defamed and most highly slandered him in his honor & reputation’’ by calling him a hog thief. The defendant responded that he had never heard that Cock had done such a thing and that if he said so, ‘‘it must have been in his drink, he humbly desires forgiveness, since he finds himself in a great fault.’’ The court again required Stake to apologize, to which he promptly complied, but this time the magistrates assessed a fine of 1,000 guilders, which would have ruined him. Stake asked that the fine be remitted and, with Cock’s intercession, the justices agreed. Remarkably, Stake later served on quite a few juries and was named an overseer for the highways in 1682.7 In various ways, prior to 1681 as well as during the transition period, the Upland Court worked to resolve differences peacefully between more recent English immigrants and the old settlers. In November 1677, Nils Larsson Fra¨nde complained that an English merchant named John Test ‘‘hath been troublesome to his son about a knife’’ and wanted to know why. After hearing both sides, the justices, ‘‘finding the business and difference of no value, did order the parties to be friends and forgive one the other.’’ The men agreed, Fra¨nde paying the court costs.8 In numerous other cases, the plaintiffs and defendants settled their differences prior to a court hearing. The Upland justices also dealt with several fornication and adultery cases, placing emphasis on requiring the defendants’ future good behavior rather than meting out harsh punishment. On March 13, 1677, Sheriff Edmund Cantwell charged Richard Duckett, a servant of Lasse Cock, and a mulatto woman, Swart (Black) Anna, with fornication. The court continued the case to June 1677, when Duckett confessed that he had made Anna

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pregnant, but he said he intended to marry her. Evidently required by the court, Duckett promised ‘‘for the future not to frequent the company of the said Anna, and engage[d] to the court to maintain the said child as soon he is free etc.’’ At his master Lasse Cock’s request, the justices remitted any further penalty ‘‘upon his humiliation.’’ No record indicates whether Anna was punished. Three months later Duckett petitioned for and received a grant of one hundred acres of land on the east side of the Schuylkill River.9 In June 1680, Constable Anders Homman informed the court that Claes Cram was living in adultery with Anna Larsdotter, the wife of Bengt Jo¨nsson Salung. The justices were indifferent to the case and told Homman to apprehend the lovers if they were seen together in the future. At the next court, in October 1680, the justices heard three cases related to Cram and the adultery charge. They first heard Cram’s defamation suit against Hans Petersson for calling him a thief. The court found Petersson guilty, ordering him to pay Cram twenty guilders for loss of his time. Next, Anders Jo¨nsson Ekoren complained that Constable Homman ‘‘hath pulled him by the beard & twisted his neck’’; Ekoren wanted an explanation and reparation. Homman replied that ‘‘hearing of a whore & a rogue which kept at [Ekoren’s] house, he was in pursuit of them & was obstructed & hindered of doing his office’’ by the plaintiff. The court ordered a nonsuit against Ekoren and ‘‘strictly forewarne[d] him of harboring the whore [Anna Larsdotter] & her associates for the future.’’ Later the same day, the justices took up Constable Homman’s accusation against Cram and Larsdotter, instructing them for the ‘‘future not to keep company together any more under what pretext soever upon pain of severe punishment.’’10 Under the Duke of York’s laws, the Upland Court could have used corporal punishment or fines to punish the couples for fornication and adultery, but instead the couples were warned not to keep company in the future.11 This may have been stringent punishment for Richard Duckett and Anna, who planned to marry, and perhaps for the accused adulterers Cram and Larsdotter as well. Still, the court showed little appetite for rooting out sexual misconduct and seemed to hope that Constable Homman would drop the case. In general, prior to the fall of 1681, the justices avoided corporal punishment and ruining offenders with heavy fines, and they accepted promises for future good behavior. The Upland Court continued without interruption after William Penn’s charter, convening in September 1681 as the June court had planned. The

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nine justices present included four old settlers and five Englishmen who had immigrated in recent years. John Test had been appointed sheriff and Thomas Revell, clerk of the Burlington Court, served in the same position at Upland. An important change in Upland Court’s procedures during the transition period from the fall of 1681 to the fall of 1682 was the frequent use of twelve-man juries, which generally each included two to four Swedes and Finns. More often than before 1681, plaintiffs and defendants reached agreement prior to the court hearing, perhaps because of the cost and increased uncertainty of a jury trial. Most of the cases that went to trial involved charges of assault and battery, trespass, and debt; each case brought damages (against the plaintiff or defendant, depending on the jury’s verdict) of six pence to £5, or requirement to pay the outstanding debt and cost of the suit.12 The new Upland Court, with its grand and petit juries, continued the relatively mild practices of its predecessor. For example, when Henry Reynolds had to account for ‘‘selling strong liquors by small measure in his house,’’ he admitted his guilt and was discharged without penalty. In a case of hog theft, Richard Noble, Peter Rambo, Jr., and Lasse Lawson testified in court that they had ‘‘found divers pieces of burnt pork or bacon’’ in John Andersson’s house and an outbuilding, ‘‘where (as an Indian had before then informed them) the said Anderson used to hide pork.’’ They added that Andersson threatened them during their search. Despite testimony from several others, the jury found the defendant not guilty, judging the evidence insufficient to prove guilt. In June 1682 Reynier Petersson, Anders Petersson, and Reynier’s wife, Annicka, accused Annicka’s brother Lasse Dalbo of some unlawful conduct for which the details are lacking. Dalbo, who also faced several suits for debt, had gone missing despite a warrant for his arrest. He appeared in September and was indicted by the grand jury. Dalbo pleaded not guilty, a judgment to which the petit jury and justices agreed after Reynier Petersson and Anders Petersson could ‘‘say nothing to the matter in the indictment.’’ While the court took considerable effort to bring Dalbo to justice, without sufficient evidence they proclaimed him innocent.13 In this transitional period, when both old settlers and more recent English immigrants served as Upland justices, Deputy Governor Markham and the court were successful in avoiding ethnic rivalries. In September 1681, at the first meeting of Upland Court under Penn’s government, Justice Lasse Cock faced charges from the Englishmen Daniel Brinson, Charles

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Brigham, and Walter Pumphrey, who claimed that ‘‘they heard certain Indians speak against him & Captain Edmond Cantwell.’’ When Cock denied the accusation, declaring ‘‘he had never spoken those words to the Indians, or any of that nature,’’ the court—besides himself comprised of three old settlers and five recent English immigrants—found him innocent. While the records fail to indicate the specific words that Cock allegedly said, the recent transfer of proprietorship suggests that he was accused of trying somehow to undermine the new government. Like other old settlers, as a trader and confidant of the Lenapes, Lasse Cock held both a powerful and vulnerable position. The new English immigrants needed help in establishing commerce and purchasing land, but they also envied the old settlers’ linguistic abilities and close relations with the Natives. When Lasse Cock suffered this attack from Brinson, Brigham, and Pumphrey, he represented other Swedes and Finns with similar ties to the Lenapes. The court’s finding of not guilty signaled to old settlers and recent immigrants alike that interethnic conflict would not be tolerated—at least until the Pennsylvania government gained from the expertise of such men as Cock.14 The John Andersson and Lasse Dalbo cases discussed earlier also provide examples of how the Upland Court sought to integrate the old and new settlers into one community. In the accusation of hog theft against Andersson, when the English Quaker Richard Noble and the Swedes Peter Rambo, Jr., and Lasse Lawson brought the charges to court, three old settlers served as Andersson’s sureties. The Upland justices who found him innocent in March 1682 consisted of Markham presiding, five old settlers, and four Englishmen. Andersson’s petit jury included six old settlers and six Englishmen. Markham had constituted the balanced court, which, along with Sheriff John Test, empaneled mixed juries. Both the old and more recent settlers participated in political leadership during 1681–82, continuing the earlier inclusive practices of the Upland Court. Lasse Dalbo’s case, tried in September 1682, further demonstrates this integrative approach. Markham again presided at court, with four old settler and three English justices. This time, however, with the growing population of Penn’s colonists, both juries were heavily skewed toward the recent immigrants, with only one old settler on the grand jury and two Swedes on the petit jury. Still, the mostly English petit jury cleared the Swede Dalbo.15 After the fall of 1682, with the arrival of Proprietor and Governor William Penn and thousands of new immigrating Friends, English Quaker domination of the Pennsylvania government accelerated and solidified.

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Penn created courts in Bucks, Philadelphia, and Chester counties to replace the single Upland Court. In Chester County he continued from the Upland Court two English Quakers (William Clayton and Robert Wade) and the Holsteiner Otto Ernest Cock, and he appointed four English Quaker First Purchasers (John Bezar, Thomas Brassey, John Simcock, and Ralph Withers) to fill out the bench. Most subsequent appointees to the Chester County Court over the next several years were also affluent English Quakers. Otto Ernest Cock served from June to October 1683, then dropped off the court. The prosperous merchant and plantation owner James Sandelands, a Scottish old settler, served in 1684–85 and from 1689 to his death in 1692. With overwhelming Quaker immigration to Pennsylvania, the old settlers lost political control, as power shifted to a more hierarchical Delaware Valley society. The well-to-do Quakers who invested in Pennsylvania expected to dominate. The new representative General Assembly replaced local leadership that had governed through Upland Court and had maintained the old settlers’ autonomy under the governments of New Netherland and the Duke of York. Very few of the old settlers served in the General Assembly as representatives of Bucks, Philadelphia, and Chester counties. From 1682 to 1691, Lasse Cock sat on the provincial council for one year and on the General Assembly for four, while Anders Bengtsson, Gunnar Rambo, James Sandelands, and Sven Svensson each served in the Assembly for one or two years. A few Dutch old settlers, such as Peter Alrichs and Casparus Herrman, represented New Castle County.16 Despite the loss of political leadership, many of the old settlers tried to maintain their homesteads and integrate with the new immigrants rather than move away. According to a Swedish minister, Andreas Rudman, who arrived in 1697, his parishioners told him that Deputy Governor Markham had invited them ‘‘to settle in one area and live according to their own laws, but the Swedes preferred to remain where they were, under the English, which they and their children later bitterly regretted.’’ While Markham could not have offered to let them live under Swedish law, he probably meant that they could keep their own court as formerly. Certainly it would have benefited Penn to remove all the Swedes from the prime land along the Delaware and its tributaries. The proprietor did allocate territory for them northwest of the city on the Schuylkill, where some later settled.17 In early 1684, cases of witchcraft against two women of the old settler community signaled danger, challenging the wisdom of trying to live among the English. The provincial council, with Penn presiding and Lasse

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Figure 17. The Landing of Penn at Dock Creek, Philadelphia. Courtesy State Museum of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.

Cock, William Clayton, John Simcock, and Thomas Holme as councilors, heard accusations against Margaret Matsson and Gertrude Hendricksson, with their husbands posting bond. Several weeks later the grand jury, of whom only one of twenty-one men was a Swede, found a true bill; the council then tried Matsson before a petit jury that included no Swedes. Matsson rejected the witnesses’ statements as hearsay, denying that she had bewitched cattle and the like. The jury found her ‘‘guilty of having the common fame of a witch’’ but not guilty of practicing witchcraft. The council then decided not to try Hendricksson, releasing both women on bond for good behavior. Matsson and her husband immediately sold their farm on Crum Creek and moved with their son and his family to West Jersey. Hendricksson and her husband also left the area, taking up land in New Castle County. Though one of the witnesses claimed he had heard Mattson was a witch twenty years previously, the Upland Court had not prosecuted her earlier.18 The Swedes continued to use the local courts to obtain redress for various offenses until the mid-1690s, when they believed the provincial court wrongly sentenced one of their community to death. In an analysis of the

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Chester County Court records, the historian William M. Offutt, Jr., found that the old settlers initially recognized the authority of the Quaker bench by taking each other to court but then stopped participating after the execution of a Bucks County Swede named Dirick Johnsson (also known as Derick Clawson). Between 1681 and 1695 forty-two Swedes sued other Swedes, while from 1696 to 1710, only one Swede sued another. Cases in which Swedes sued non-Swedes also declined significantly. Offutt suggests that ‘‘[i]n light of the evenhanded treatment of Swedes in civil cases, this legal peripheralization is surprising’’; he offers a convincing explanation that Johnsson’s 1693 conviction and execution on circumstantial evidence alienated the old settler community. Johnsson was arrested for murdering an unidentified person found at Neshaminy Creek and was held in prison from June to October 1692, when he obtained release on bail. The court deferred Johnsson’s trial until the next spring ‘‘to see if something further might not be discovered’’ beyond the substantial amount of blood found in his house. In April 1693, apparently without further evidence, the grand jury indicted him, his sister, and his wife, Brita. A jury of the provincial court of Oyer and Terminer found Johnsson guilty but released the women. He was one of only two persons executed in the Quaker colony prior to 1718.19 Johnsson’s execution and the Swedes’ withdrawal from the courts coincided with their concerted effort to obtain Lutheran ministers and religious books from Sweden. Johnsson and his family were members of the Swedish Lutheran congregation at Wicaco, so their plight was well known to the old settlers. Johnsson’s brother Claes and the prominent community leader Peter Rambo—probably the church warden rather than his eighty-oneyear-old father—each posted £50 bond for the defendant’s appearance at trial. Peter Gunnarsson Rambo and Peter Rambo, Jr., led the list of thirty signers who sought to renew their connection with the Swedish Crown and church. Five years earlier they had lost their Swedish minister, Lars Lock, who had officiated at the Crane Hook church where a Swedish layman named Carl Springer now read sermons and led the singing of hymns. At Wicaco, the Lutheran minister Jacob Fabritius had preached in Dutch for sixteen years. The Swedes and Finns had no complaint with Fabritius because they understood Dutch and praised him as ‘‘a good preacher’’ who has ‘‘done his office in all possible parts mighty well,’’ but he was advanced in years and blind. Thus the Swedes requested two learned Swedish ministers to help them maintain the Swedish language and religion, who could

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defend ‘‘us against all false opposers who can or may oppose any of us . . . that if tribulation should come amongst us, and we should suffer our faith, that we are ready to seal it with our blood.’’20 In their 1693 letter to Sweden, the old settlers expressed no specific complaints about their treatment by Penn’s government, stating that ‘‘[i]n general, we all confess and proclaim and in truth say that we have been exceedingly and mighty well treated, both in the Dutch government as well as in His Majesty the King of England’s time.’’ Yet by removing their intragroup quarrels from the Pennsylvania courts and strengthening their Swedish identity through the church, they adopted a new strategy of ethnic politics, abandoning hope for significant participation in provincial and local government. While the Swedes recognized their good fortune in living under a relatively benign regime, still they resented their loss of local power and self-determination. They questioned whether they could expect due process in the English courts and thus turned inward and toward Sweden to create a community for mutual support. Though not all old settlers affiliated, the Swedish Lutheran congregations extended from Christina and Wicaco to incorporate colonists in Upper Merion along the Schuylkill, Elk River in Maryland, and Raccoon, Penn’s Neck, and Egg Harbor in West Jersey. By requesting Swedish ministers, people of Swedish, Finnish, Dutch, German, and other backgrounds united together to create a community based on Swedish identity, known to themselves and others as ‘‘the Swedes.’’21 The Swedes claimed the rights they had retained under the Dutch and the Duke of York, using their churches as a political base. As before, their ministers provided leadership by writing letters and petitions and by cultivating alliances with other outsider groups. The Swedes played an important role in developing interest-group politics in early Pennsylvania, opposing the authority of Quakers within a government sufficiently open to permit free exchange. When James Logan, Penn’s secretary of the province, attempted repressive action against the Swedes in 1709, they used their ties to the Church of England and Lenapes to battle back, thus resorting to methods they had previously employed under New Netherland and the Duke of York. As an ethnic group willing to defend their group identity, needs, and positions against centralized authority, the Swedes influenced the development of interest politics in colonial Pennsylvania.22 While Penn had expected to preside over a harmonious community dominated by Quakers in which the colonists dutifully paid quitrents and

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approved his proposed laws in appreciation for beneficent government, from the beginning the proprietor faced opposition even from fellow Friends. Like the old settlers and Lenapes, many Quakers carefully guarded their autonomy and economic welfare, and they thus used every excuse to block Penn’s efforts to cover the heavy expenses of colonization and obtain the profits he anticipated from the Pennsylvania grant. The Keithian controversy of the early 1690s complicated politics among the colonial leadership as the Society of Friends split over the insistence of a Scottish Quaker, George Keith, that Friends should adopt a confession of faith and acknowledge Jesus Christ more centrally in their religion. The spiritual debate became a vehicle for political factionalism, with many Keithians collaborating with the Anglicans to oppose Quaker dominance. Penn’s personal troubles in England, as he dealt with accusations of treason after the Glorious Revolution deposed his patron James II (formerly the Duke of York), added to the colony’s political chaos in the 1690s. When Penn lost the Pennsylvania charter from 1692 to 1694, the monarchs William and Mary appointed a governor who—like most governors appointed by Penn—found the factionalized populace nearly impossible to govern. Penn’s absence from Pennsylvania except for two short sojourns in 1682–84 and 1699–1701 removed his personal influence and helped to undercut the authority of his government.23 During the 1690s, Swedish freeholders only tentatively took part in provincial politics fractured by the Keithian schism and Penn’s temporary loss of the government. In 1692, approximately 33 old settlers were among 261 dissidents who opposed the Quaker oligarchy’s plan for a tax on real and personal property to provide a salary for Deputy Governor Thomas Lloyd. The petition had its intended effect when the lower house of the Assembly refused to pass the bill. Just a few Swedes were among the 117 inhabitants of the town and county of Philadelphia who signed a welcoming address to Benjamin Fletcher, with whom William and Mary replaced Thomas Lloyd when they suspended Penn’s government. The Swedes’ opposition to the Quaker elite remained muted in the 1690s, as factions shifted with the Keithian schism and the return in 1694 of Penn’s right to govern. The proprietor helped the three Swedish ministers Andreas Rudman, Ericus Bjo¨rk, and Jonas Aure´n gain the English government’s permission to serve in Pennsylvania. After they arrived in 1697, the Swedes joyfully wrote to Penn thanking him for his assistance with the Crown. They were also pleased that Penn had once again appointed William Markham as deputy governor: ‘‘The

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LORD grant that we may always for the future have so good & loving governors as we now have. And also shall our real duty be as becomes true and obedient subjects.’’ They hoped that if Penn had received ‘‘false stories and ill deserved reports’’ about them from ‘‘ill disposed and malicious people’’ that he would discount them because ‘‘we live peaceably both in temporal & spiritual.’’ Still, like other non-Quakers, the Swedes were disappointed with their lack of representation in the Assembly and other offices. Robert Turner, an ex-Quaker who had joined the Keithians, alerted Penn in 1697 to ‘‘muttering & discontent’’ because ‘‘our Friends for this several years in the province I observe do not put up or propose either Dutch, Swede, Finn or any other person not of our persuasion: Baptist, Independent, Presbyterian, or Church of England man’’ for election.24 Nevertheless, over the next several years, the Swedish ministers focused their congregations on building new churches and updating their knowledge of church ritual and discipline through tutoring and use of the Bibles and other religious books the ministers had brought. From there, the Swedes built a political base in collaboration with their Anglican neighbors. Swedes became alarmed in 1700 when Penn contemplated a naturalization fee to bolster his revenues. Like others in the province, the old settlers had rejoiced at his arrival the previous year for his second (and final) visit, hoping that he could resolve the political problems plaguing the colony. The Swedish ministers and some members of their congregations met with Penn as soon as he arrived ‘‘and found that he would not forget his given promises to embrace . . . Swedes, with the same favor and goodness as any of the rest.’’ Pastor Andreas Rudman lived near Penn ‘‘so that he had free access to him, and the governor himself often walk[ed] to his house.’’ Nevertheless, by 1700, the colonists discovered that Penn was primarily concerned about raising taxes to help pay his huge debts. As Ericus Bjo¨rk wrote to the Swedish ambassador Carl Leijoncrona in London, ‘‘But so many as wished the governor here before he came, as many, and perhaps the greater part of them, would gladly see that he were not here now, for all his proposals, as the English notice, aim only for money.’’ Of particular concern to the Swedes was a proposal for a naturalization fee of thirty-two shillings, of which Penn would receive twenty shillings each. The Swedes lobbied the governor and Assembly against this, receiving an assurance that the tax would apply only to nonEnglish who had arrived since the proprietor received the charter in 1681.25 Penn’s efforts to regularize his revenues from quitrents generated serious animosity among the Swedes, raising resentments held since the early

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years of his proprietorship. The old settlers told Rudman that they had lost most of their best land to the English Quakers ‘‘who usurped property the Swedes held, especially along the water, cleared the land and made it bald, and crowded the Swedes, who had neither the will nor the understanding to strive with them.’’ By 1700, Rudman reported, nearly half of the old settlers had moved to West New Jersey and others had ‘‘sold their precious land along the water and had to go up into the country’’ where they had more land ‘‘in the woods.’’26 The Swedes’ anger over land claims came to a head in June 1709 when they petitioned the Pennsylvania Assembly about grievances against James Logan, the proprietor’s chief representative in the province with responsibilities (among others) for land titles and distribution, collection of quitrents, and relations with Native Americans (see Figure 18). While many individual colonists opposed Logan’s efforts to collect money for Penn, twenty-four Swedes banded together as an interest group to press their case, with help from the minister Andreas Sandel, who in 1702 had replaced Rudman at Wicaco. They organized their petition at a particularly contentious time in Pennsylvania politics after the arrival of a new governor, Charles Gookin. The Quaker lawyer David Lloyd led the majority in the Assembly in a power struggle with Logan over the extent of Penn’s proprietary privileges. The Swedes protested that Penn’s officials had taken the patents they received under the Duke of York and re-surveyed their land so that some lost acreage while others had to pay higher quitrents than before. They believed that their farms and quitrents should have remained the same regardless of whether the new surveys revealed a different acreage from previous patents. When Logan pressed them for payment, they claimed to be the tenants of Queen Anne rather than William Penn. Logan threatened ‘‘to make distress upon our goods for the said rents’’ and though some paid, he ‘‘most basely abused and reviled us, telling us we were no better than Indians, with several other scoffing terms.’’ The Swedes asked the Assembly to instruct Logan to restore their original patents and refund the excess quitrent money that ‘‘unjustly has [been] exacted from us these twenty years past.’’27 The Assembly referred the petition to Governor Gookin, recommending that he give the Swedes ‘‘speedy relief.’’ Gookin discussed the document with his provincial council, including Logan, who denied that he and his predecessors had treated the old settlers unfairly. Two months later, in August 1709, two of the petitioners, Matthias Nitzelius and Ma˚rten Ma˚rtensson, returned to the Assembly for a response. Upon learning that

Figure 18. Portrait of James Logan by Thomas Sully (after Gustavus Hesselius), 1831. The Library Company of Philadelphia.

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the house had not heard back from the governor and provincial council, the Swedes warned that they would find assistance elsewhere. Representatives from the Assembly reported this to the council, interpreting it as a threat to seek help from the Swedish ambassador in London, which the council—attended that day by Gookin, Logan, and five wealthy Friends— considered ‘‘exceedingly insolent.’’ The council reprimanded Nitzelius, Ma˚rtensson, and Nils Lycon, advising them that they should have petitioned the proprietor or his Board of Property for relief rather than the government. Instead of signing a group petition, the specific persons with grievances ‘‘ought to complain in a proper way, & not those of the nation conspire together, to make themselves a faction.’’ The council alleged that the Swedes had acted at the instigation of the proprietor’s enemies. The Swedes ‘‘had always behaved themselves peaceably & as good subjects hitherto’’ and thus had been treated well by Penn’s government. They should refrain from group action—individuals with grievances should proceed in the English way by petitioning the proper agency or going to the law. In conclusion, the council advised the Swedes ‘‘to take more care of themselves for the future, and not to render themselves obnoxious to their best friends, by factious caballing, only to gratify the ill-nature of those who never intended nor were capable of serving them.’’28 The petitioning Swedes did not yield, attending the Board of Property meeting on September 14, 1709. There they met with four of the same men who had attended the provincial council meeting in August—Logan, Edward Shippen, Richard Hill, and Samuel Preston—along with two other affluent Quakers, Griffith Owen and Caleb Pusey. After this meeting, the Swedes reported back to the Assembly that for all their efforts they had ‘‘received nothing but scurrilous and affrontive language from the Secretary [Logan], instead of satisfaction.’’29 Neither Logan nor the Swedes let the dispute drop, as the secretary returned to England in December 1709 to confer with Penn about the proprietor’s financial problems and the power struggle with David Lloyd and the Assembly; the Swedish community pursued interest politics. In England, after Logan reported to the proprietor on matters including the Swedes’ petition, Penn complained to the Swedish ambassador Carl Gyllenborg. The Pennsylvania Swedes, fearing loss of their supply of ministers and books, successfully defended their position to the Swedish government. The Swedes also took the offensive, joining with the Anglicans to oppose the Quakers’ right in government and legal matters to affirm that they were

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speaking the truth rather than take an oath. In doing so the Swedes embroiled themselves in a political struggle between the dominant Quaker faction and the Anglicans, who were members of the established church in England but a minority in Pennsylvania. The Friends refused to take oaths to assume political office or testify in court because they believed that people should not have to invoke God in promising to fulfill their duty or tell the truth. The Assembly had previously passed affirmation acts that the English Privy Council repealed, and it enacted yet another in 1710. If the British government refused Quakers the right to affirm in taking office, no observant Friend could hold office and thus they would lose control of the colony. In a 1711 letter to Queen Anne supporting the Anglican position, the Swedes actively opposed Quaker authority in Pennsylvania. They disputed the Friends’ claim that they should have the right of affirmation because ‘‘they were the first settlers, and out of a wilderness made this a country’’; instead, the older settlers pointed out the following: ‘‘most of us were born in this country long before any Quakers came, and . . . our ancestors and some of us their children living still . . . have reduced the natives here to general obedience, which was too difficult for men of Quaker principles to have done, so that the Quakers when they came found it a country in peace.’’30 In association with the Anglicans, whose ministers collaborated regularly with the Swedish pastors, the Swedes pursued their factional opposition to the Quaker government. James Logan and the provincial council responded to the old settlers’ attacks in terms reminiscent of the Dutch governor Peter Stuyvesant and the English governor Francis Lovelace, questioning the Swedes’ loyalty and alliance with Native Americans. The council reminded Penn in August 1715 that the Swedes were ‘‘using their own language and having their own ministers,’’ and thus the Swedes might side with their parent country if Great Britain and Sweden went to war. Even more, the proprietor should consider alerting the government about ‘‘the state of this river where there are such numbers of those people especially when the Indians of America seem so unsettled with whom these old inhabitants have a more intimate acquaintance than any others.’’31 Indeed, the Swedish pastors had recognized the partnership of the Swedes and Natives in the late 1690s and early 1700s, stating that ‘‘they are like brothers and sisters,’’ with the Lenapes calling the Swedes ‘‘their own people and their brothers, which they do not call the English.’’ The two groups ‘‘live[d] together in the most friendly manner, in trade, in council and justice.’’ Andreas Rudman and Ericus Bjo¨rk suggested

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to the Swedish ambassador in London that an important reason for this friendship was that the old settlers knew ‘‘all kinds of languages, Swedish, German, Finnish, Dutch, sometimes French, English, and American [Lenape, Susquehannock], as their own language, the greater part of them, while the English only know their own.’’ While circumstances had changed since the Lenape sachem Naaman and the Swedish governor Risingh forged their coalition in 1654, ties remained that buttressed the cultural platform on which new immigrants further developed Delaware Valley society. According to Andreas Sandel in 1702, the local Natives ‘‘are so faithful to the Swedes that if one of them should hear that a Swede was in any kind of danger, he would be willing to run a hundred miles to warn him.’’32 Since the mid-seventeenth century, under the governments of New Sweden, New Netherland, the Duke of York, and William Penn, the old settlers had maintained significant autonomy in alliance with neighboring Lenapes. Though the Swedes lost political power by 1682 with the overwhelming influx of new immigrants to Pennsylvania, they remained influential in relations with the Lenapes and by working together as a community. Some Swedes resisted selling their plantations and protested when new surveys resulted in loss of acreage or increased quitrents. Others moved to locations in New Jersey, northeast Maryland, and up the Schuylkill River where they could pursue their woodland agriculture in proximity to Native Americans. As prior to 1681, the Swedes continued to oppose centralized power, now working through ethnic group politics rather than the local governmental authority they had held under the Dutch and Duke of York. The influx of Europeans on both sides of the Delaware disrupted the Lenapes much more seriously than the Swedes, as the Natives’ population declined precipitously once again from smallpox and other diseases. While the Natives continued to live in autonomous (though linked) towns, the number of villages dwindled as groups merged to create new socially cohesive communities within various parts of West Jersey and in Bucks County, along the upper Schuylkill, and near the Brandywine River in Pennsylvania. As earlier, the Lenapes held land on both sides of the river and considered themselves a sovereign, independent people. To a certain extent, the experience of Lenapes was similar to that of the Swedes after the new immigrants flooded in: just as the Armewamese, Mantes, Cohanseys, and others became known as ‘‘Delawares’’ to the English, people of Swedish, Finnish, Dutch,

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German, French, and English backgrounds who affiliated with the Swedish Lutheran community became ‘‘Swedes.’’ Both groups lost political power and prime lands along the Delaware and its tributaries. The colonists and Lenapes alike noted the Natives’ population decline after the Quaker influx. In 1694, the Germantown leader Francis Daniel Pastorius wrote that so many Lenapes had died in the decade since he arrived that only about one-quarter remained. While many had passed away, some of the decline in Lenape numbers in Pastorius’s environs also resulted from migration north, west, and east to New Jersey. The Swedish ministers Rudman and Bjo¨rk noted in 1697 that the Lenapes were ‘‘now very scarce’’ in the Philadelphia area though at Passyunk ‘‘there were formerly many thousands, but now there are none. God has exterminated them through contagious diseases, war among themselves, etc.’’ At a July 1694 meeting of about eight Lenape sachems and two Susquehannocks with Deputy Governor Markham and the Pennsylvania Provincial Council, the Cohansey leader Mehocksett emphasized the Lenapes’ unity, stating that though some of them ‘‘live on the other side of the river, yet we reckon ourselves all one, because we drink one water,’’ the Lenapewihittuck. In response to the demand of the Iroquois that the Lenapes join them in fighting the French, the sachems sought support from the Pennsylvania government for refusing: ‘‘we having always been a peaceable people, & resolving to live so, & being but weak and very few in number, cannot assist them; & having resolved among ourselves not to go, do intend to send back this their belt of wampum.’’ The Lenapes made this decision despite the taunt of the Iroquois that ‘‘you Delaware Indians do nothing but stay at home & boil your pots, and are like women, while we Onondages & Senekaes go abroad & fight against the enemy.’’ As the historian Gunlo¨g Fur notes, this is the first extant record of the Iroquois calling the Lenapes women. Though the Iroquois expected help from the Lenapes as part of the Anglo–Native American alliance called the Covenant Chain, the Lenapes demonstrated their independence by refusing to go to war. Thus they also reinforced the culture that they had mutually developed with the old settlers, and in turn they supported the Quakers’ commitment to nonviolence. The Iroquois complained about the Lenapes just as the English government found fault with the Pennsylvania colonists’ failure to supply troops.33 Despite their waning numbers, and in collaboration with the Swedes, the Lenapes bargained effectively in negotiations for the land that William

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Penn so eagerly sought. With Lasse Cock and other old settlers interpreting, the sachems explained the process and terms upon which they would sell territory. As with New Sweden, New Netherland, and the Duke of York, they anticipated annual gifts, fair exchange in the fur trade, renegotiated agreements when lands remained unsettled, and rights to hunt, fish, and travel in ceded areas. Penn intended to deal respectfully and justly with the Lenapes, purchasing all lands before settlement. In October 1681 he wrote to the sachems that he ‘‘desire[d] to enjoy [his new colony] with your love and consent, that we may always live together as neighbors and friends.’’ From 1682 to 1684 the proprietor systematically bought land along the Delaware, Schuylkill, and lower Susquehanna rivers for goods worth the substantial sum of at least £1,200. While Penn expected with this largesse to dictate the treaty terms, he and his associates soon learned that the Natives negotiated well.34 In July and early August 1682, sixteen sachems concluded the first treaty with Deputy Governor William Markham for land in southern Bucks County between Neshaminy Creek and the Delaware. Several of the Lenapes—Oreckton, Mamarakiekon, Nanacussy, and Sackoquewan—had previously sold the territory to Governor Andros, but now they confirmed the transfer to Penn in return for a large amount of wampum, blankets, clothing, guns, ammunition, tools, knives, rum, and Dutch guilders. At least part of the treaty took place at the home of Lasse Cock, who served as interpreter and advised Markham that he needed to bring together all likely owners of the land to confirm the purchase in order to avoid objections like those Ockanickon and Metapis had raised to the 1675 sale.35 The detail and precision of the July–August 1682 deed suggest that Markham wanted to avoid later controversies with the Lenapes over the exact limits of the land sold and to establish a basis for subsequent deals. His memorandum accompanying the deed outlines the general principles on which the sachems and Pennsylvania officials agreed to cooperate: the Lenapes would warn the English if they heard that other Indians planned to attack; the Lenapes and English would hold an annual meeting to review the terms of their agreements (and presumably exchange gifts); in any case of conflict between settlers and Natives they would ask the appropriate authorities for satisfaction ‘‘according to their offense’’; and Lenapes would complain to the Pennsylvania government before attacking a colonist who mistakenly settled on unpurchased land. The Natives carefully protected

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Figure 19. Benjamin West, Penn’s Treaty with the Indians, 1771–72. This painting helped to perpetuate the myths that William Penn originated good relations with the Lenapes and that they passively received his beneficence. The work is also inaccurate in its portrayal of the Lenapes’ dress, Philadelphia in 1682, and Penn’s appearance. Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Gift of Mrs. Sarah Harrison (The Joseph Harrison, Jr., Collection).

within this treaty the right of free passage across lands, which they had observed with the Swedes since the 1640s. Markham recorded the understanding ‘‘that we may freely pass through any of their lands as well that which is not purchased as that which is, without molestation, as they do quietly amongst us.’’36 While the legendary treaty of Shackamaxon between Penn and the Lenape sachems has been lost and thus we lack knowledge of the specifics of the proprietor’s first face-to-face meeting with the Natives, this memorandum of understanding between the Lenapes and Markham served as the foundation for Lenape-Pennsylvania relations. The sachems, with the help of Lasse Cock and other Swedes, convinced the deputy governor to continue features of collaboration along the Lenapewihittuck that had existed since Naaman’s treaty with Governor Risingh in 1654: pledges to warn of

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enemy attack, permit joint access to lands, consult regularly, and work together to avoid disputes. In 1682, Penn readily agreed with several of these provisions. He had proposed an arbitration process for dealing with differences between colonists and Natives that he instructed his officials to explain to the Lenapes at their first meeting, and he was certainly gratified by their willingness to warn the colonists of any impending attack. In addition, though the proprietor had initially opposed open hunting and fishing rights in Pennsylvania, he approved the Assembly’s bill for these privileges and by 1684 he was sufficiently comfortable with the concept of joint access to argue to Colonel George Talbot of Maryland, who was representing Lord Baltimore, that the ‘‘Indians have a native right to hunt, fish, and fowl in all places and are not to be hindered from it by the English.’’ Penn also understood that the Lenapes would insist on subsequent payment for land that the colonists failed to occupy promptly. In instructions to Markham in 1683 regarding the boundary dispute with Lord Baltimore, Penn wrote, ‘‘It hath been the practice of America . . . even among Indians & Christians, to account not taking up, marking & in some degree planting, a reversion of right; for the Indians do make people buy over again that land the people have not seated in some years after purchased which is the practice also of all these governments towards the people inhabiting under them.’’37 As months passed and the cost of purchasing and renewing land rights mounted, the proprietor found it more difficult to maintain his amicable persona while paying large sums he could ill afford. Still, initially, he complied with the sachems’ demands. In July 1684, inhabitants of Philadelphia complained that Penn had not yet given them clear title to their lands because he continued to present regular gifts to the Natives: ‘‘These present acts of civility & courtesy between the Proprietary and the Indians, being no regular purchase nor clearing of Indian title, as often experience has evidenced in America.’’ The settlers wanted Penn to force the Lenapes to adhere to English practice, which the proprietor could not do. He responded sharply that he had purchased the land ‘‘at the greatest charge of any Proprietor & Governor in America. . . . [T]he land is both bought, the bounds either marked or natural.’’ He acknowledged that the Natives might be ‘‘unjust’’ and suspected the ‘‘hand’’ of an unnamed enemy ‘‘in our business.’’38 In December 1684 a Pennsylvania official, Nicholas More, informed Penn, after his return to England, that indeed there was a problem with the Lenapes, especially Nanacussy, who had signed the July–August 1682 deed

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for lower Bucks County and the July 1683 deed for land between the Schuylkill River and Pennypack Creek. More wrote that the ‘‘Indians are much displeased at our English settling upon their land, and seem to threaten us, saying that William Penn hath deceived them not paying for what he bought of them.’’ Nanacussy was impatient, ‘‘saying that William Penn shall be his brother no more’’ because he had not paid him what was previously promised and would now have to provide additional goods. The sachem was also angry because the Philadelphia magistrates failed to take action when he was robbed. More assured Penn that the provincial court would ‘‘do the utmost of our power to pacify him.’’39 A provincial councilor and surveyor-general named Thomas Holme warned Penn that the Falls sachem Tamany was threatening to burn the houses of settlers, that ‘‘he hath so discouraged our people that we cannot get them to go into Bucks County to settle’’; they were purchasing plantations in New Jersey instead. Penn responded to Holme that he had given the Lenapes match coats, stockings, and guns as a down payment and ‘‘if therefore they are rude and unruly, you must make them keep their word by just course.’’ Penn believed that the Lenapes should discipline Tamany for his misbehavior: ‘‘if the Indians will not punish him, we will & must, for they must never see you afraid of executing the justice they ought to do.’’ Pressured by both the colonists and Natives, and short on cash, Penn lost patience with the Lenapes when they would not meekly accept his terms. He believed he had been more than generous and that they should trust him to fulfill his debts. For their part, the Natives were infuriated and fearful, as thousands of colonists arrived to inhabit their land. The dynamic was much different from before Penn, and by 1684 it was clear that European settlement in the Delaware Valley would be systematic and dense as in the Chesapeake and New England, not scattered as under the Swedes, Dutch, and Duke of York. The Quaker proprietor believed he had the Lenapes’ ‘‘love and consent’’ to take control of their country. He was unhappy when the sachems successfully pushed for larger payments than he wished to make.40 He had grasped their territory with gifts and promises rather than conquest but, all the same, his colonists now populated most of the lands adjacent to the Delaware. With the Lenapes’ diminished numbers, they could sustain their traditional livelihood in agricultural villages at the heads of tributaries, and by hunting and fishing in more remote areas of New Jersey and Pennsylvania. They maintained ties with both the Swedes who also fled the onrush of new immigrants and other Natives who

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migrated into the Susquehanna Valley during the eighteenth century. Still, the Delaware Valley had become an English country. The Lenapes no longer dominated as they had before 1681. Though relations between the Pennsylvania government and Lenape sachems stayed peaceful in comparison with other English colonies where fighting erupted in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, disagreements over land sales and conflicts between individuals of each side disrupted Penn’s hopes for intergroup harmony. Bucks County remained a trouble spot in 1686 when Israel Taylor surveyed land above the Falls that had not been bought. When the sachems threatened to kill the surveyor, Markham arranged to meet with them along with Lasse Cock, Ma˚ns Cock, Thomas Holme, and several English settlers to negotiate a deed. Holme later wrote Penn that the sachems demanded a high price, that the proprietor must send a large order of goods from England for ‘‘till all is paid, we can have no lines run.’’ Penn apparently never paid the sachems in full, leaving the bargain unsettled. James Logan and Penn’s heirs in 1737 used a copy of the draft deed to defraud the Natives of a vast territory from central Bucks County to the Poconos in what became known as the Walking Purchase.41 At the same time Markham arranged this treaty, in the summer of 1686, he received a false report that Lenapes had murdered Nicholas Scull and his family at their home northwest of the city in Philadelphia County near a Lenape town. During a religious ceremony, some of the Lenapes went to buy alcohol from Scull because he had sold it to them previously, but this time he refused. They broke into his house at night, overpowered him, and took some of his rum. The initial report via a neighbor was that the entire family was killed but further investigation yielded the truth. Markham was dubious about the first report because many Lenapes were in town, so he could not imagine that the sachems had planned an attack. Relations were good enough between the Native leaders and colonial government that Markham checked before assuming the worst. Still, he was unable to obtain satisfaction from the Lenapes who assaulted and robbed Scull. When Markham tried to meet them at their town up the Schuylkill, with Ma˚ns Cock and Sven Svensson as interpreters, the troublemakers had departed, apparently protected by leading members of their community.42 With the overwhelming numbers of European immigrants after 1681 and sale of Lenape lands along the Delaware, the Natives built new communities near the Brandywine and the upper Schuylkill. The Swedes retained

Figure 20. ‘‘A Map of the Province of Pennsilvania Containing the Three Countyes of Chester, Philadelphia, & Bucks,’’ by Thomas Holme, 1687. This section of the larger map shows where surveying stopped in central Bucks County because Penn failed to pay the Lenapes for the land. Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

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their links with the Lenapes by establishing homesteads nearby, in both Pennsylvania and New Jersey; French and English traders also settled on the upper Schuylkill. By the late seventeenth century, a significant market existed in England for deerskins as a source of leather, thus providing the Lenapes and other Pennsylvania Natives a commercial product they could supply directly, unlike beaver pelts that could be obtained in quantity only from Canada. Like the Swedes and Dutch before them, Penn, Logan, and other Pennsylvania colonists regarded the fur trade as an essential facet of successful colonization. Lasse Cock, Ma˚ns Cock, Sven Svensson, John Hansson Steelman, and other Swedes continued their commerce with the Lenapes and other Natives as far west as the Susquehanna and north to the Lehigh Valley. The English merchant Zachariah Whitpain and the French traders Jacques Le Tort, Peter Bizaillon, and Martin Chartier also exploited the Schuylkill’s strategic location. From there, they could access the Susquehanna, Ohio, and Mississippi valleys by canoe and portage.43 The most successful of the fur traders in early eighteenth-century Pennsylvania, however, was none other than James Logan, who edged out his employer, William Penn, to create a lucrative commercial scheme by which he earned profits in three ways: on furs purchased from the Natives, on manufactured goods sold to his network of traders, and on land he seized from Natives as well as from traders who fell into debt. Logan used his monopoly of power as Penn’s secretary, commissioner of property, and provincial councilor (among other offices) to build his fortune. To a large extent he filled the power vacuum resulting from Penn’s absence from the colony after 1701 and the proprietor’s incapacity after suffering a series of strokes in 1712.44 The Lenapes, like the Swedes, thus influenced the development of Pennsylvania despite the thousands of new immigrants who came with Penn. At first, through their mutual alliance, the Natives and old settlers negotiated with the Quakers from a position of strength. Both groups welcomed the Quakers, offered assistance during their first difficult months in America, and initiated the proprietor and his officials into the legal, diplomatic, economic, and cultural practices of their society. Most of the new settlers accepted the norms that the Swedes and Lenapes had embraced: the lenient processes of the Upland Court; treaty protocol of the Lenapes and other Natives; broad acceptance of people of diverse ethnic backgrounds and religions; joint use of property for hunting, fishing, and travel; and an unwillingness to submit to arbitrary authority. The Quakers’ beliefs were generally

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congruent with these norms, exemplified by Penn’s commitment to found his colony with the Lenapes’ ‘‘love and consent.’’ After the first years of transition, however, when Penn and his colonists became less dependent on help from the Swedes and Lenapes, the new regime learned that the pre1681 inhabitants could still exert power. The Swedes organized a robust ethnic interest group, taking advantage of the relatively benign, factionalized Pennsylvania government and their long-standing ties with the Natives. The Lenapes, now diminished in population, land, and power, pursued an equally adept politics, manipulating the Quaker government with threats of violence. The Lenapes held on to their last bastion of land in eastern Pennsylvania from central Bucks County to the Poconos by refusing to permit surveys until they were fully paid for the territory, which the financially strapped Penn could not do. They counted on officials committed to the Quaker peace testimony not to risk bloodshed—and were successful until James Logan and Penn’s sons stole the land through the 1737 Walking Purchase, leading two decades later to the Seven Years’ War.

chapter eight

Strategies of Survival and Revenge

By 1700, though the Lenapes remained a sovereign people, their status had become tenuous as thousands of Europeans streamed into their country, bringing disease and taking the most desirable parcels of land. The Natives continued to live in separate small communities while collaborating with one another on mutual goals in diplomacy and, sometimes, war. Adapting to the dramatically changing circumstances of eighteenth-century North America, they chose from a variety of strategies to avoid annihilation. In eastern Pennsylvania, some held on to lands along the Brandywine and upper Schuylkill rivers, but by the 1730s, as whites encroached on their communities, most moved west to the Susquehanna River and beyond. Many Munsees and Lenapes also moved west from New Jersey, settling first in the Forks (Lehigh Valley) region of eastern Pennsylvania and then heading to the Susquehanna and Ohio valleys after the Walking Purchase. Many took vengeance on European settlers during the Seven Years’ and Pontiac’s wars, allying with other Natives and the French against the colonists and British forces.1 Lenapes also continued to live in New Jersey, where they retained political autonomy in areas of less-concentrated European settlement in central and southern Jersey, the Pine Barrens, and along the shores of the Atlantic Ocean and Delaware Bay. The eastern Lenapes pursued traditional ways of life—farming on agricultural tracts, hunting in Pennsylvania and the Pine Barrens, and fishing along the shore—and preserved the inclusive, decentralized society that they had shared with the old settlers prior to 1681. Though Ockanickon, Tamany, Mehocksett, Sehoppy, and other sachems had sold territory along both banks of the Delaware, in 1700 Lenapes retained ownership of substantial tracts through the CrossweeksungCranbury-Navesink corridor of central New Jersey as well as land farther

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south. In response to population decline and white settlement, Munsee and Lenape sachems of central New Jersey forged kinship alliances that helped to solidify their leadership of merged communities. In doing so, the distinction between these Munsee and Lenape people broke down, and some adopted the more general name of Delawares. The Crossweeksung sachem Ockanickon was the brother of Mamarakiekon of Millstone River and the Raritan-Navesink sachem Metapis, who married the sister of Tamany. Sehoppy (also known as Mechmiquon or King Charles) was another brother of Ockanickon, while Weequehela, who became an important sachem in the region by 1709, was the son of Metapis. These men, along with Tamany’s son Hithquoquean, sold expansive lands in central and northwestern New Jersey and southeastern Pennsylvania yet retained territory in central Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania north of Penn’s 1682 purchase in Bucks County.2 Agricultural tracts in New Jersey provided adequate farmland for their muchdepleted numbers, while rights in eastern Pennsylvania and the Jersey pinelands preserved space for hunting and trapping. The Lenape sachem Sehoppy (Mechmiquon) and his people retained the towns of Crossweeksung and Weekpink and adjacent land in Burlington County through canny negotiations, threat of violence, and help from the Quaker John Wills and other leaders. In 1703, Sehoppy protested to the West Jersey proprietors that the 1677 deeds for land along the Delaware River from the Assunpink to Timber Creek contained the wrong eastern boundaries. Whereas the documents indicated the bounds as a line connecting the extreme heads of the creeks, Sehoppy argued that ‘‘in truth [the boundary] ought to be according to a line that was afterwards actually run by agreement, made between the English and the Indians, and which comes lower upon the creek than the uppermost heads thereof.’’ The Burlington County court had recognized this ‘‘Indian Line’’ dividing English territory from Native lands, and the West Jersey proprietors now agreed that these ‘‘true limits’’ should be recorded with the deeds.3 Sehoppy faced another threat in 1717, when an English settler named John Wetherill attempted to defraud him of Weekpink lands. John Wills, who knew the Unami language and had witnessed early land sales, with several assemblymen accompanied Sehoppy and other Lenapes to obtain justice from Governor Robert Hunter. Sehoppy told the governor how ‘‘fraudulently & unjustly John Wetherill had obtained his hand to deed for a parcel of land out of the tract he had reserved for the Indians to live upon out of which he never intended to sell any having sold all the rest to the

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English.’’ The sachem rejected the notion that they should move away, questioning, ‘‘if [the land] be taken from us where must the Indians go signifying that he had lived amongst the English ever since they came into the country and that they had lived lovingly and like brothers together and that a little land would serve the Indians and that there was enough in the country for both.’’4 Governor Hunter supported Sehoppy’s claim, charging that Wetherill illegally purchased the land with alcohol. He warned Wetherill that his behavior had created ‘‘the danger of a rupture with these Indians,’’ a concern that the colonists shared. Wills noted that he and his associates warned Wetherill of the ‘‘danger he would not only bring himself into but that it might be the occasion of a war in the country’’ if he refused to relinquish the deed. The Lenapes actively took part in the negotiations. When the governor suggested that the parties reach an agreement out of his presence, the Lenapes refused to leave Hunter’s ‘‘fireside till they see that paper destroyed.’’ Wetherill went home to fetch the deed, returning after several hours. Sehoppy ‘‘tore it to pieces and threw it into the fire all but a small scrap that fell upon the floor. Another Indian perceiving of it stepped and picked it up and threw it into the fire also showing thereby their great aversion to it.’’ Sehoppy then thanked the governor, who treated them with food and drink. In a report to the Lords of Trade, Hunter defended his support for the Lenapes, stating that ‘‘I am sure the whole country applauded what was done in that matter as a very necessary, and considerable piece of justice and service.’’ As in Pennsylvania, to protect territory they had not sold, the Lenapes could use the threat of violence against the significant pacifist Quaker population in West Jersey.5 Prior to 1755, most West Jersey colonists agreed with Sehoppy that there was land enough for both groups while recognizing the Lenapes’ willingness to use bloodshed to defend their territory. The Lenapes and whites lived as neighbors, providing assistance; trading manufactured goods, alcohol, and furs; and dealing with individual conflicts similar to those among Europeans. Like the Swedes and Dutch before them, the English, before the 1740s, wasted little effort trying to convert the Natives to Christianity or to a more European lifestyle. References to the Lenapes in early Burlington and Gloucester county court cases, though relatively few in number, reveal regular contact—a borrowed canoe, disputes over trade, and settlers accused of illegally selling alcohol to the Natives. In 1694, a Lenape set into motion an infanticide case in Burlington County when she or he reported

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to a woman, Dugglas Ireton, that a newborn lying dead in a water tub near John Bainbridge’s house had ‘‘a kind of blackish spot in its neck.’’ As part of testimony in a 1690 Gloucester County inquiry about missing hogs, Peter Dalbo (alias Mattsson) reported that he had been with ‘‘the Indian Wisomck to help him to bury his child.’’ The Swedish fur trader Ma˚ns Cock and his wife, Gunnilla, faced a number of charges of theft, including one in 1699 when the Burlington County grand jury denied an indictment ‘‘for taking fifty shillings and sixpence from an Indian,’’ and another that Gunnilla cheated the sachem Sehoppy ‘‘of four pounds it being money she had of him in the street at Philadelphia.’’ The Burlington court apparently exonerated the Cocks both times—the record is unclear. It is possible, as with many cases between white settlers, that the parties resolved their conflict out of court. Alternatively, the justices were willing to hear the Lenapes’ charges but would not convict the settlers without further evidence. Regardless of these disputes, Ma˚ns Cock sold ‘‘strong liquors’’ to his Lenape neighbors, for which the justices fined him £5 in 1699.6 The Lenapes offered advice to the colonists about the region’s climate and natural resources, and together they followed the principle of joint use of undeveloped lands, which the Natives, Swedes, and Finns had worked out earlier and was formalized in the 1682 pact between the Lenapes and William Markham. When the Burlington immigrants began building houses and farms on lowland close to the Falls, the Lenapes warned them (unsuccessfully) of the probability of floods, which in fact occurred in the spring of 1692 when sudden snowmelt killed two people, drowned cattle, and swept away buildings and possessions in what was thereafter called ‘‘the great flood at Delaware falls.’’ The colonists subsequently built on higher ground. According to tradition, at Little Egg Harbor on the Atlantic coast, Lenapes welcomed the interpreter Henry Jacobs Falkenburg as the first white settler to the area. Falkenburg had served as an intermediary between the Lenapes and Burlington settlers, helping to negotiate the 1677 deed from the Rancocas to the Assunpink. When he moved to Little Egg Harbor, the Lenapes sold him land, helped him pursue a livelihood as hunter, fisherman, and oysterman, and attended his marriage to a woman from Raccoon. Some years later the leader Bathsheba Mullis, called by Europeans the ‘‘Indian Queen,’’ stayed with white inhabitants rather than camp with her people when she visited Little Egg Harbor. A family near Crossweeksung, who lived adjacent to the Indian trail known as the ‘‘Burlington Path,’’ left their kitchen door open for traveling Lenapes to obtain

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shelter. The Presbyterian missionary David Brainerd, in the mid-1740s, noted that some Indians who lived with Quakers near Crossweeksung had accepted the Friends’ doctrine of the inner light. He also complained that many Natives reveled on Christmas with neighboring whites (though probably not Quakers). Such stories suggest that amicable relations first worked out between the Lenapes, Swedes, and Finns continued in West Jersey after Quaker settlement.7 Some Lenapes and English colonists intermarried. Richard Haines, who in 1683 emigrated with his four brothers from Northampton, England, and settled in Evesham, Burlington County, wed Mary Carlisle, a Native woman, sometime before 1700. The Haines family and their descendants remained part of the West Jersey Quaker community. Three of their children, who numbered at least nine, married into the Matlack family, also English Quakers. William Aston, a poor weaver of Shrewsbury, Monmouth County, who described himself in his 1705 will as ‘‘ancient and crazy,’’ had a daughter Mary, living near Crosswicks Creek, who ‘‘married unto an Indian, who calleth his name Peter Powell, as I am informed.’’ The parents of Elizabeth Morrey, who married the African American leader Cyrus Bustill, were an Englishman, Richard Morrey and a Lenape woman, Satterthwait.8 Farther south, in Gloucester, Salem, and Cumberland counties, Lenapes intermarried with Swedes and Finns. The Lenape woman Walela and John Redstreak, a Finnish trapper and fur trader, had at least one child, a son also named John Redstreak, who became a farmer and fur trader at Penn’s Neck. A Lenape man, Othniel Murray of Cape May, and a Swedish woman named Katharine married and had five children, becoming one of the founding families of the multicultural settlement Gouldtown in Cumberland County. A number of eighteenth-century visitors to the region believed that the Natives and Europeans had mixed sexually and culturally. The Swedish Moravian minister Abraham Reincke noted in 1745 that old John Hopmann near the Maurice River ‘‘looks like an Indian.’’ When the Presbyterian minister Philip Vickers Fithian in 1775 traveled to Great Egg Harbor near the Atlantic shore in Gloucester County, he had likely heard rumors that the people he called ‘‘straggling, impertinent, vociferous swamp-men’’ were part-Lenape and part-white. Fithian was surprised that they treated him ‘‘with great civility’’ and that the forty to fifty congregants ‘‘were attentive, without any impropriety of behavior, & seemed to have some solemnity.’’9

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Despite the proximity of Native and white towns—and commingling of the two groups—the Lenapes and Europeans considered themselves, for the most part, politically and legally distinct. New Jersey courts tried several Natives for murder, but none for other crimes.10 Local township and county government records included only brief references to their Lenape neighbors during the first several decades after settlement, then all references dropped. Though Natives lived at Crossweeksung (within the bounds of Nottingham Township) and Weekpink (in Northampton Township), no one identified as a Lenape participated in either township’s governance or received poor relief. The Nottingham clerk noted in January 1696 that the township would reimburse ‘‘the charges of our neighbors of Chesterfield Towne touching on accommodation made with the Indians and for the better continuance of amity and concord etc.,’’ then in 1700 paid William Emley fifty-six shillings ‘‘by him formerly laid down in moneys and goods for clearing off the Indians.’’ Whether ‘‘clearing off’’ meant settling a debt (the clerk used the phrase with that meaning in another case) or represented a land deal is unknown. In 1694, the Chesterfield town meeting reimbursed Francis Davenport £1 and 18 shillings ‘‘for money he has already laid out of his [own] for wolves to the Indians.’’11 The 1727 murder trial and execution of the sachem Weequehela of central New Jersey marked a significant rupture between the New Jersey government and the Delawares, both Munsees and Lenapes. Three decades later, during the Seven Years’ War, Delawares used this instance of state violence against the leader as a reason for the attacks in the Pennsylvania backcountry and northwestern New Jersey. Weequehela had a large farm worked by enslaved Africans near Cranbury in Middlesex County. According to eighteenth-century historian Samuel Smith, he ‘‘was so far English in his furniture as to have a house well provided with feather beds, calico curtains, &c. He frequently dined with governors and great men, and behaved well.’’ Weequehela had signed deeds with other sachems for land from eastern Pennsylvania through Monmouth and Middlesex counties. He became involved in a dispute with his neighbor John Leonard over a cedar swamp, which Weequehela claimed as his property but Leonard purchased from other Delawares. It is unknown whether Weequehela sought help from the governor as Sehoppy had done a decade earlier or simply took matters into his own hands. The quarrel ended with Leonard’s death: accounts disagree on whether Weequehela committed murder or

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killed Leonard by accident. The New Jersey government tried the sachem and hanged him at Perth Amboy on June 30, 1727.12 While some Jersey Delawares had little love for Weequehela, perhaps because of his elevated English lifestyle, his execution reverberated among Lenapes and Munsees who had moved to the Forks and central Pennsylvania. With his lifestyle and alienation from some Natives he made himself vulnerable to English law and lacked the resources to avoid going to trial. Nevertheless, his allies took revenge farther west. In September 1727, several Indians murdered a trader at Snake Town near the Susquehanna River, then Delawares expelled surveyors at Durham in Bucks County, where James Logan was trying to establish an ironworks on land he had purchased illegally from several Lenape leaders. Manawkyhickon, a sachem and kinsman of Weequehela, in an unsuccessful attempt to obtain support for a war of revenge, sent a war belt to the Cayugas who forwarded it to the Miamis. Manawkyhickon considered his kinsman’s execution an unjust murder by the whites because Leonard had stolen Weequehela’s land.13 Fighting between Shawnees and settlers in the Schuylkill Valley and the slaying of two Delaware women and a man by whites impelled Governor Patrick Gordon of Pennsylvania to try to prevent an armed conflict by calling a general conference at Conestoga with Pennsylvania Natives. He specifically invited Manawkyhickon and sent him gifts, but both he and the Shawnees living at the Delaware River Gap refused to attend. Conestogas, Brandywine Delawares, Conoys, and Shawnees did meet with the governor at the May 1728 conference where Gordon reviewed Pennsylvania’s agreement with the Lenapes in words reminiscent of the 1654 meeting between Naaman and the Swedish governor Johan Risingh. Gordon called to mind an essential Lenape diplomatic metaphor, stating that ‘‘all William Penn’s people or Christians, and all the Indians should be brethren, as the children of one father, joined together as with one heart, one head and one body.’’ He followed immediately with the principles that ‘‘all paths should be open and free to both Christians and Indians’’ and that their homes should be mutually accessible as well. He then reviewed ways to deal with false rumors, conflicts, and threats from other nations.14 Regardless of Gordon’s speech making in the wake of Weequehela’s execution and the violent incidents of 1727–28, the underlying cause of the Delawares’ fury—white encroachment on their remaining lands—escalated in the 1730s through 1750s. The Delaware sachem Sasoonan, who was forced west with his people from the Tulpehocken Valley, challenged

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Figure 21. Wampum belt given to William Penn. Courtesy of the Philadelphia History Museum at the Atwater Kent, The Historical Society of Pennsylvania Collection.

Gordon at the Philadelphia council on June 5, 1728, declaring that ‘‘he was grown old and was troubled to see the Christians settle on lands that the Indians had never been paid for. . . . [T]hat his children may wonder to see all their father’s lands gone from them, without his receiving any thing for them, that the Christians now make their settlements very near them, and they shall have no place of their own left to live on.’’ Despite the efforts of Sasoonan and other Delawares to hold on to their territory at Tulpehocken, in 1732 they gave up hope of dislodging the European settlers and sold the land.15 The Walking Purchase of 1737 defrauded the Delawares of their last major tract of prime agricultural and hunting land in the Delaware Valley. The region from the northern boundary of Penn’s 1682 purchase in Bucks County through the Lehigh Valley (Forks) to the Poconos had preserved a homeland for Munsees and Lenapes as they sold much of central and northwestern New Jersey and southeastern Pennsylvania to land-hungry whites. William Penn’s sons, Thomas and John Penn, were now the colony’s proprietors and, with James Logan, they conspired to gain title to the territory they had already begun to sell. In a series of meetings, Thomas Penn and Logan browbeat the sachems Nutimus, Lappawinsa, Manawkyhickon, and Tishcohan to confirm a 1686 draft deed for land north of the 1682 boundary, for which only an incomplete copy existed. The officials deceived the sachems with a vague map suggesting that the lands in question extended only to Tohickon Creek, well south of the Lehigh River. The proprietors sought support from Iroquois leaders, who first answered that ‘‘they had nothing to do there about the land and they were afraid they should do anything amiss to their cousins the Delawares’’ but then acquiesced and conveyed any rights they possessed. Though they had none, the

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Penns and Logan used the document to put further pressure on the Delawares.16 Logan prepared to fulfill the requirement of the ‘‘deed’’ that the distance must be measured by a ‘‘walk’’ of one and one-half days, directing men to clear a path in advance. Three young settlers, Solomon Jennings, James Yeates, and Edward Marshall, accompanied by two Delaware observers, proceeded from Wrightstown on the morning of September 19, 1737. They covered much more territory than Nutimus, Lappawinsa, and others expected, crossing the Lehigh River in the afternoon. The sachems had assumed a more leisurely pace, traversing uncleared terrain and taking frequent breaks, ending with the northern boundary at Tohickon Creek. When the Native observers abandoned the group in disgust, Lappawinsa objected that the Penns had ‘‘got all the best of the land, and they might go to the Devil for the bad, and that he would send no Indians with them.’’ On the second day just one of the men, Edward Marshall, reached a point near present-day Jim Thorpe, completing sixty-four miles in eighteen hours. Logan drew the boundary there, extending the line northeast to the Delaware River to maximize the ‘‘purchase’’ of more than one million acres. The land fraud contributed to the outrage of Delawares who were forced west to the Susquehanna and Ohio valleys, as the Penns during the 1740s and 1750s sold lands in northern Bucks County and at the Forks to rising numbers of Scots-Irish and German immigrants. While groups of Delawares stayed in the region, some joining the Moravians who arrived in the early 1740s, many left and in 1755 were among the Natives who allied with the French to fight British colonists during the Seven Years’ War.17 While some Jersey Delawares had moved to Pennsylvania, others continued to pursue traditional ways of life in New Jersey, in towns like Crossweeksung and Weekpink near European settlements and in the pines. They kept a low profile, interacting with white neighbors on a generally amicable basis. The situation changed in the 1740s and 1750s, however, with the arrival of the Presbyterian missionary David Brainerd from Connecticut and the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War. When Brainerd, a young, moderate New Light sponsored by the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge, came to Crossweeksung, he met several Lenape women who spread word of his arrival to dispersed settlements within thirty miles of the town. Over the next several months, scores of Lenapes gathered to hear Brainerd’s preaching, as interpreted and explained by Moses (Tunda) Tatamy, the missionary’s recent Native convert. As numbers grew, a

Figure 22. Portrait of Lappawinsa, by Gustavus Hesselius, 1735. Courtesy of the Philadelphia History Museum at the Atwater Kent, The Historical Society of Pennsylvania Collection.

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religious revival swept Crossweeksung, and many joined Brainerd’s flock of converted Presbyterians.18 In stirring an awakening among the Lenapes and attempting to missionize them, Brainerd upset the tenuous pattern of Native-settler coexistence in New Jersey. The Lenapes became more visible to their neighbors, as 130 to 150 persons gathered at Crossweeksung by early 1746. Brainerd decided the site was impractical for a mission. Following the New England ‘‘praying town’’ model of evangelizing Native people, Brainerd convinced some of the Lenapes to move to lands they owned at Cranbury, about fifteen miles northeast of Crossweeksung. There they would settle more closely together, attend public worship, and send their children to the mission school. Brainerd described Cranbury as ‘‘the best and most convenient tract of their own lands.’’19 The move initially caused, according to Brainerd, ‘‘a terrible clamor raised against the Indians in various places in the country, and insinuations as though I was training them up to cut people’s throats.’’ In April 1746, the New Jersey Provincial Council received a report that while only two Lenapes had lived near Cranbury for the previous six years, ‘‘there were come forty fighting men of Indians to live there,’’ with rumors of hundreds more. White settlers near Cranbury ‘‘were extremely alarmed, at this number of Indians coming to settle there, where it’s esteemed impossible for such a number to live, without stealing or killing their neighbors’ creatures.’’ The uproar died quickly, however, when the Lenapes built the mission town. In early June 1746, when they worshipped with Reverend William Tennent’s white congregation in Freehold, Brainerd observed that some Indians took communion ‘‘with other Christians,’’ which was, ‘‘I trust, for the honor of God and the interest of religion in these parts; as numbers I have reason to think, were quickened by means of it.’’ It was a ‘‘comfortable season’’ for his congregation.20 The Presbyterian Lenapes stayed at the Cranbury mission, called Bethel, until 1758, continuing to hunt, gather, and fish while also planting corn and attending worship and school. When David Brainerd died in 1747, his brother Reverend John Brainerd took over the mission. Despite their success in converting some Lenapes and gathering them at Bethel, neither brother convinced them to alter their economic pursuits significantly. The mission residents, according to David Brainerd, continued ‘‘wandering to and fro in order to procure the necessaries of life.’’ This subjected them to temptation, he thought, either ‘‘among pagans further remote where they

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have gone to hunt . . . or, among white people, more horribly wicked, who have often made them drunk; then got their commodities—such as skins, baskets, brooms, shovels, and the like, with which they designed to have bought corn, and other necessaries of life, for themselves and families.’’ Bethel came under legal attack when Robert Hunter Morris, chief justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court and an extensive landholder, claimed the Cranbury lands. In 1749, he sued the Lenapes Thomas Store, Andrew Wooley, Philip Douty, and Stephen Calvin for trespass when they attempted to clear trees. Despite Morris’s prominence, his suit seems to have been dropped.21 The outbreak of war in the Ohio Valley focused attention once again on the Lenapes in New Jersey. When fighting spread through Pennsylvania to Sussex County in northwestern New Jersey, the provincial government thought it necessary to prevent the Natives from aiding their kin in the backcountry. The legislators also wanted to halt the Sussex County attacks by Munsees who had moved west but still had claims in the northern part of the colony. The government required all Jersey Delawares to demonstrate their loyalty to the Crown by carrying an identification certificate and wearing a red ribbon. Further, the New Jersey government requested negotiations with both the Lenapes south of the Raritan River and the Munsees. It appointed five commissioners who, at the first Crosswicks conference in 1756, asked the Lenapes for a list of lands they had not sold to whites. In 1758, the Natives submitted extensive claims, including territory on which whites lived. Because the Lenapes could prove title to few of these lands, they agreed to yield most of their claims south of the Raritan River for the 3,000-acre reservation called Brotherton in southern Burlington County. In addition, the sachems kept Weekpink, a tract of Moses Tatamy and another Thomas Store held in fee simple, and the rights to hunt on uncultivated lands throughout the province and to fish in the rivers and bays. In accepting Brotherton in exchange for most of their traditional lands, they lost considerable autonomy because they would now need permission from the New Jersey Assembly to lease or sell reservation land, and the legislators could appoint a superintendent for the community. Nevertheless, the proximity of Brotherton to the pinelands and water passage to the sea allowed the Lenapes to pursue their seasonal rotation of hunting, fishing, agriculture, and gathering of cranberries and wood for baskets and brooms. In return for lands north of the Raritan River, the provincial government paid the Munsees who lived in Pennsylvania and New York 1,000 Spanish pieces of eight.22

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The Delaware delegates to the 1758 Crosswicks conference included Teedyuscung, recognized by white officials during the Seven Years’ War as the ‘‘King of the Delawares,’’ and such prominent Jersey Delawares as Moses (Tunda) Tatamy, Isaac Stille, Thomas Store, Joseph Peepy, John Pompshire, and Sarah Stores, Weequehela’s widow. They represented the three to four hundred Jersey Delawares who remained in the province at midcentury and pursued their traditional economy. The largest groups came from Crossweeksung and Cranbury. Smaller delegations represented Weekpink on Rancocas Creek, the Raritan Valley, and Salem, Cumberland, and Gloucester counties in southern New Jersey. Many of the delegates claimed by traditional right large expanses of land in the central and southern parts of the province. The list of delegates suggests that most had adopted European-style names, perhaps as nicknames in addition to more private Indian names.23 Teedyuscung, for example, whose Delaware name is listed here, was also known as Honest John and, for a brief time after conversion by the Moravians, as Gideon. Some of the Crosswicks delegates had surnames probably derived from Indian names: Jacob Mullis (Bathsheba’s son?) and Dirick Quaquay (whose first name was probably Swedish or Dutch). Others had last names like Swedes or Finns, perhaps indicating relationships with specific immigrant families: Claus (Classon); Stille (Stille); Loques (Lock); and Swanelac (Swanson or Svensson). Quite a few had surnames that were common among English or other European settlers: Wheelwright, Evans, Gosling, Store, Calvin, and Wooley. List of Delaware Representatives to 1758 Crosswicks Conference24 Teedyuscung, king of the Delawares Crossweeksung Andrew Wooley George Wheelwright Joseph Peepy Joseph Cuish William Loulax Gabriel Mitop Zeb. Conchee Bill News John Pembolus

George Hopayock, from the Susquehanna Cranbury Thomas Store Stephen Calvin John Pompshire, interpreter Benjamin Claus Joseph Wooley Josiah Store Isaac Still James Calvin Peter Calvin Dirick Quaquay

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Mountain Moses Tatamy Philip Raritan Tom Evans Rancocas Robert Kekott Jacob Mullis Samuel Gosling

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Ebenezer Wooley Sarah Stores, widow of Weequehela

Southern Abraham Loques Isaac Swanelac

While biographical information about most of the delegates is elusive, what is known suggests that these men and one woman had fairly intimate ties with white settlers yet chose to keep their identity as Natives, unlike the descendants of Richard Haines and Mary Carlisle who passed as whites. The choice was in part related to landholding, whether the European father owned land in fee simple, like Richard Haines, or the children inherited rights to lands through their Delaware mother, as did Teedyuscung and other claimants at the Crosswicks meetings. Teedyuscung was born about 1705, the son of a Jersey Delaware woman whom the Moravians called Hannah and probably a white man. The future ‘‘King of the Delawares’’ grew up near the Falls of the Delaware. Though his mother maintained close relations with European settlers, she also held rights to Native lands that she passed on to her son. With ties to both the white and Delaware communities, Teedyuscung became a leading sachem during the Seven Years’ War. He had moved to the Forks in Pennsylvania, to land he claimed by traditional right even after the Walking Purchase, became a Moravian in 1750, then left the church in 1753 to move to Wyoming on the upper Susquehanna. As spokesman for many Delawares during the war, Teedyuscung became enmeshed in Pennsylvania Quakerproprietary politics but nevertheless helped to bring about a ceasefire, particularly with settlement of land claims in New Jersey.25 Less is known about another mid-eighteenth-century sachem, Isaac Stille, who was possibly related to the Swedish Stille/Steelman family of Great Egg Harbor (near present-day Atlantic City). At the 1758 conference, Stille claimed land along the Great Egg Harbor River and Bay, ‘‘except Tuckahoe, and the Summer’s, Steelman, and Skull’s places.’’ James and Peter Steelman (or Stille), brothers of John Hans Steelman, an interpreter

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and trader, had moved to Great Egg Harbor in the 1690s, where they purchased land and traded with the Lenapes. If Isaac Stille had a Swedish father from whom he took his surname, he held rights to Native lands from a Lenape mother. He used skills he might have learned from both parents to become an intermediary during the Seven Years’ War, serving as an emissary to Teedyuscung from the New Jersey Assembly and as a principal negotiator with the New Jersey commissioners from 1756 to 1758. Stille also accompanied the Moravian missionary Christian Frederick Post in 1758 to arbitrate an end to the war with the Delawares in the Ohio Valley. Post found him less than helpful, complaining that Stille, apparently suspicious of the colonial government’s intentions, ‘‘speaks both ways’’ and ‘‘makes trouble’’ in negotiating agreements over land.26 Other delegates to the Crosswicks conference had frequent interaction with European colonists. John Pompshire (Cawkeeponen) was the interpreter at the 1758 Crosswicks conference and other meetings. A John Pompshire, probably Cawkeeponen’s son, was one of five Native boys who studied at Reverend Eleazar Wheelock’s academy in Connecticut in the late 1750s. Joseph Peepy (Weholelahund), a Presbyterian convert who had remained at Crossweeksung rather than move to Cranbury, served as an interpreter on various occasions for the Presbyterian ministers John Brainerd and Charles Beatty and for the Moravians and Shawnee leader Paxinosa, who was married to a Delaware woman. Though Peepy himself did not become a Moravian, he frequently visited missions in Pennsylvania during the years 1748 to 1755, and in 1752 his children joined the church.27 Moses (Tunda) Tatamy (or Tatamy Willockwis) had been crucial in 1746 to David Brainerd’s success in converting scores of Delawares at Crossweeksung. Without realizing the full extent of Tatamy’s contribution, Brainerd described how his preaching became much more effective once he had converted Tatamy, his interpreter. Tatamy owned land in New Jersey and at the Forks in Pennsylvania, and he was one of the few Jersey Delawares who held acreage in fee simple as well as by Indian right. Like Teedyuscung and Isaac Stille, Tatamy was much involved in negotiations during the Seven Years’ War. And while he retained his identity as a Delaware, he had close ties to white colonists, seeking temporary shelter with a white family when fighting erupted at the Forks in 1755 and boarding his daughter Jemima with the Philadelphia Quaker Israel Pemberton during Pontiac’s War. Nicholas Tatamy, Moses’s son, was involved in litigation over land in Somerset County, New Jersey, and moved to the Forks in Pennsylvania,

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where the colonial government in 1769 granted him a tract in ‘‘consideration of the services of his father, an interpreter and faithful friend to this province.’’ Nicholas died in 1784, leaving his wife, Ann (a white woman), and three sons. The 1790 federal census listed two of those sons, with the widow, as whites.28 The 1758 Crosswicks delegates thus had significant connections with the colonists, while retaining Native identities both in their own view and that of their white neighbors. Most had Delaware and Christian names, could speak English and their Native language, and at least several had European ancestry. Many were Presbyterian, while others had ties to the Moravian Church. Yet all identified themselves as Delawares, retaining traditional ways of life and Native land rights alongside new identities (for some) as Christians, owners of land in fee simple, and intermediaries. The Jersey Delawares continued to support themselves economically on agricultural tracts in central and southern New Jersey and by moving seasonally from the seashore and pinelands to the Lehigh Valley to fish, gather, and hunt. The shift in provincial policy in 1758 from a sort of ‘‘benign neglect,’’ in which the New Jersey government left unchallenged the political and cultural integrity of the Delawares, to establishing the reservation involved the arrival of New England missionaries (with a very different view toward Native-white relations than the New Jersey Swedes, Finns, and Quakers) and the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War. The ‘‘decisions’’ of the Jersey Delawares to establish the Cranbury mission, then exchange widespread land claims for the Brotherton reservation, fit all too well the familiar pattern of settler expropriation and Native decline. Where among the Swedes, Finns, and Quakers, the Lenapes had kept considerable independence, in 1758, with the reservation, the New Jersey government adopted the ‘‘praying town’’ model of colonial New England. The Lenapes retained Weekpink and a few other tracts under English law and continued to live at Crossweeksung for some years despite the lack of title. By giving up traditional rights to extensive lands throughout central and southern New Jersey, however, they yielded their political sovereignty. The number of New Jerseyans identified as Delawares declined after 1758 and the Brotherton reservation failed to thrive. Some joined Delaware communities in the Ohio Valley, while, according to John Brainerd, about twenty men served with the British forces during the Seven Years’ War and never returned. By the 1770s only fifty or sixty people resided at Brotherton;

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a hundred more lived at Weekpink, Crossweeksung, and Cranbury; and others continued to live in the Pine Barrens and other parts of southern New Jersey. In 1774, ignoring the hundreds who resided in various places throughout the colony, Governor William Franklin reported to his superiors in England, ‘‘There are a few families of Indians, making in all about 50 or 60 persons, settled on a tract of upwards of 3,000 acres, called Brotherton, in Burlington County, purchased for their use by the province, and entailed on them & their successors forever. These are all the Indians settled in or near this province, and they are a quiet inoffensive people.’’29 Despite their diminished numbers, during the 1770s most Lenapes still living in the east preferred to stay in their homeland rather than move west. They had kin in New Jersey and enough land and access to hunting and other resources to support their families. In 1771, the sachem Netawatwees sent a message on behalf of the Ohio Delawares to Franklin requesting ‘‘that the governor would let the New Jersey Indians loose that they might go and live with the rest of their nation.’’ The Ohio Indians had in 1766 contacted the Jersey Delawares directly through one of their spokesmen, Joseph Peepy, about moving west. At that time, some eastern Lenapes had indicated interest in joining their relatives if they could recover the value of their homes, church, and school at Brotherton; obtain permission from the provincial government to sell the reservation; and secure financial assistance for the move. Netawatwees, who was by origin a Jersey Delaware and in 1771 about ninety years old, sought to unite dispersed groups of Delawares in the wake of Pontiac’s War. He also invited Delawares who lived in Moravian towns on the Susquehanna River, territory the Iroquois signed away to the British in the Treaty of Fort Stanwix (1768).30 With the ground sold from beneath them, the Moravian Delawares saw little choice but to head west. Most of the Jersey Lenapes stayed in the east. Governor Franklin and the New Jersey Provincial Council met with the Natives to discuss a petition from Stephen Calvin, a Brotherton Indian and interpreter for the government, ‘‘praying that a law might be passed to enable the said Indians to sell the lands allotted and secured to them by the government in this province and have leave to retire to the Ohio.’’ Calvin claimed that others, including the respected elder Thomas Store, had signed the petition. In the meeting, however, Store ‘‘declared that he did not sign the said petition [although his name was on it] nor had he ever seen it, or heard of it: and that he did not choose the land should be sold, nor did he want to go away.’’ Merrien Claus, ‘‘an Indian woman of good repute,’’

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agreed: though her fourteen-year-old son Ben’s name was on the petition, she assured Franklin that ‘‘she had not signed the said petition, nor seen it, and she was sure her son had not, nor did she or her son choose to have the land sold, or to leave the province.’’ Stephen Calvin admitted that he had written the names of Store and Claus on the document. The governor and council learned ‘‘that there was not above two of the Indians whose names were signed to the petition who were anyways privy to it, or had any inclination to remove.’’ The governor and council thus denied the petition to sell the Brotherton reservation at this time, noting that ‘‘the Indians were at full liberty to go to the Ohio whenever they pleased.’’31 During the eighteenth century, the Delawares in Pennsylvania and New Jersey followed diverse strategies as whites expropriated their lands. To keep political autonomy, Native communities left the Brandywine, upper Schuylkill, and Forks areas when settlers encroached on their property and the proprietors used schemes such as the Walking Purchase to usurp all of eastern Pennsylvania. In New Jersey, Lenapes managed to keep their independence longer and stay in the east, maintaining generally good relations with neighboring Quakers, Swedes, and Finns. Their lands at Crossweeksung, Weekpink, Cranbury, and various locations in central and southern New Jersey, as well as freedom to hunt and fish throughout the colony, gave Lenapes space in which to retain their traditional economy and government. By the 1750s, many Delawares in the Ohio Valley, with grievances such as Weequehela’s hanging, the Walking Purchase, and myriad land grabs and murders, took advantage of alliances with the French and other Natives to seek revenge and expel Anglo-Americans from the frontier. Raiding parties assailed settlements on contested ground in the Lehigh Valley and northeastern New Jersey as well as farther west. Ardently, but too late, these Delawares returned to the strategy of Swanendael, when in 1631 the Sickoneysincks had destroyed the Dutch plantation settlement, establishing control over the pace and extent of European settlement in the Delaware Valley for much of the seventeenth century. Jersey Delawares took various sides in the Seven Years’ War: while some joined their western kin in attacking white settlers, others fought with the British and Anglo-Americans, and a few served as mediators to forge peace. Later on, in the early nineteenth century, with permission of the New Jersey legislature, the Lenapes who dwelled at Brotherton sold the reservation and moved to New Stockbridge, New York. Significantly, the Brotherton residents who left the state retained their rights to hunt and fish in New Jersey

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until 1832, when they relinquished these privileges for $2,000. Still, the Delawares never united as one nation, as some stayed in the east while others ended up in Ontario, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, and elsewhere in North America. The Lenapes had lived in separate towns when the Dutch first came into the Lenapewihittuck region about 1615 and continue in separate groups yet today. In the Delaware Valley, Natives remained ‘‘hiding in plain sight’’ in the country where their ancestors had lived for millennia and where they played a central role in developing the region’s culture.32

Conclusion

In May 1751, the Presbyterian minister John Brainerd traveled from the Bethel mission near Cranbury, New Jersey, to visit and try to convert the Delawares in Wyoming on the Susquehanna River. The Natives received him kindly but refused to meet as a group to hear his Christian message. They had lately heard from a young woman in their community of a revelation she received from the Great Spirit ‘‘that they should destroy the poison from among them.’’ Though Brainerd recorded no more details about her vision and did not understand what the ‘‘poison’’ signified, he heard enough to know that ‘‘some of their old and leading men especially had imbibed some late prejudices against Christianity.’’ They told him that in part through missions ‘‘the white people were contriving a method to deprive them of their country in those parts, as they had done by the seaside, and to make slaves of them and their children as they did of the Negroes; that I was sent on purpose to accomplish that design.’’ While the Wyoming Delawares denied Brainerd permission to preach, the sachems indicated that the Presbyterian Lenapes in New Jersey, but not their minister, were welcome to join them on the Susquehanna. They told Brainerd’s interpreter ‘‘they should be glad if the Christian Indians should come and live there; that they should take their choice of all the uninhabited land on Susquehanna, and should have liberty to worship God as they thought right.’’ When the interpreter said that they would only migrate with Reverend Brainerd, the sachems ‘‘replied, the minister must not come, because he was a white man; that, if one white man came, another would desire it, etc., and so by-and-by they should lose their country.’’1 The Wyoming sachems’ conversation with Brainerd and his interpreter reflected the Lenapes’ long-term commitment to personal freedom, religious liberty, political sovereignty, and peaceful resolution of conflict. They received the minister amicably and permitted him to visit families in their homes but, after lessons from nearly a century of contact with English settlers, rejected a Christian service. The sachems’ willingness to respect the

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religious liberty of Christian Indians was consistent with their dedication to personal freedom, a principle the Swedish governor Johan Printz recognized on arrival in 1643. Perhaps most telling was the Delawares’ concern about slavery, that the Anglo-Americans might ‘‘make slaves of them and their children as they did of the Negroes.’’ The New Jersey historian Samuel Smith also emphasized this point in his discussion of the Lenapes’ society and culture that was published in 1765 but was based on tracts written by settlers who arrived in the late seventeenth century and his own more recent contact with the Jersey Delawares. Smith wrote, ‘‘Liberty in its fullest extent, was their ruling passion; to this every other consideration was subservient; . . . they dreaded slavery more than death.’’ With their obligation to personal liberty—that of others as well as their own—Lenapes saw the English plantation system as a threat because of expropriation of Native land and its dependence on unfree labor, including white servants and African and Indian slaves. While it is unclear whether the Lenapes knew of plantation servitude and slavery in Virginia prior to the 1631 Swanendael massacre, they became familiar with the system as New Sweden enslaved one African man, the Dutch imported slaves, and Chesapeake planters migrated with enslaved Africans into the Delaware colony prior to 1682. With the founding of Pennsylvania, affluent Quakers and other colonists purchased slaves from the West Indies and Africa as England’s involvement in the Atlantic slave trade boomed. In the early eighteenth century, Delaware Valley residents also imported enslaved Native Americans who had been captured by southeastern Indian nations, sold to South Carolina merchants, and exported to the West Indies and other colonies.2 With importation of Indian slaves, the Lenapes promptly insisted that the Pennsylvania government end this trade, concerned that it would lead to their own enslavement and, perhaps, extending their testimony to oppose human bondage. In January 1706, the Pennsylvania Assembly passed a law to prevent importation of enslaved Indians because the purchase of Natives ‘‘from Carolina or other places hath been observed to give the Indians of this province some umbrage for suspicion and dissatisfaction.’’ Though the Crown accepted this act, in 1712 the Pennsylvania legislators enacted a prohibitive duty of £20 on each imported African and Indian slave, justifying the law by citing recent insurrections in other colonies such as New York and proclaiming in language similar to that used in 1706 that they had received complaints from ‘‘our neighboring Indians in

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this province’’ about the trade. The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of Quakers also prohibited slave importation among its members, including in the Discipline of 1719 a statement that ‘‘to avoid giving them occasion of discontent, it is desired, that Friends do not buy or sell Indian slaves.’’ The British government repealed the 1712 act, as the Assembly probably expected, and Philadelphia Yearly Meeting’s statement of discipline imposed no penalty for violating the ban. Indeed, some Quakers and other colonists continued to keep imported Indians as slaves.3 Importantly, however, the Lenapes had tried to influence provincial policy on slavery, possibly using the leverage they held through threat of violence against the Quaker leaders or less aggressively through the persuasive power of speech. Their efforts must be seen as part of the movement among reforming Quakers and other Delaware Valley residents to abolish slavery and the slave trade. With the exception of the central New Jersey sachem Weequehela, no Lenapes are known to have held enslaved people in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries and, in fact, fugitive slaves believed that taking refuge with Delawares was an option for successful escape. The East New Jersey master of an escaped mulatto man, Tom, in 1751 heard that he planned ‘‘to make him Indian stockings, and to cut off his hair, and get a blanket, to pass for an Indian; that he enquired for one John and Thomas Nutus, Indians at Susquehanna, and about the Moravians, and the way there.’’ In 1763, a Berks County mulatto man named Joe was thought ‘‘gone to join the Indians beyond the Mountain,’’ and a Maryland mulatto fugitive named James Dyson ‘‘was seen with his hair combed out straight, and an Indian matchcoat on.’’ The owner was ‘‘informed he intends to make for the Jerseys in that disguise, pass for an Indian, and profess himself a shoemaker.’’4 The Lenapes identified themselves as ‘‘a free people, subject to no one,’’ and as a group had no interest in destroying the liberty of others. They believed that peace and freedom—like war and slavery—went hand in hand. Soon after the Quakers founded Burlington in West Jersey, the Lenapes met with them to discuss rumors of war. A sachem, speaking for the others, assured the Burlington Quakers that they did not intend to strike: ‘‘for when we have war, we are only skin and bones; and meat that we eat doth not do us good, we always are in fear, we have not the benefit of the sun to shine on us, we hide us in holes and corners; we are minded to live at peace.’’ He promised that they would warn the Quakers if they planned to attack and asked that they do the same. The sachem described the Lenape

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philosophy of keeping peace through respect for others’ ways of life and freedom: ‘‘We are willing to have a broad path for you and us to walk in, and if an Indian is asleep in this path, the Englishman shall pass him by, and do him no harm; and if an Englishman is asleep in this path, the Indian shall pass him by, and say, he is an Englishman, he is asleep, let him alone, he loves to sleep.’’5 That is not to say, however, that the Lenapes refrained from conflict when needed to protect their families, land, and political autonomy. Unlike the Quakers, the Lenapes did not profess nonviolence. Soon after the Dutch established Swanendael in 1631, the Sickoneysincks identified the plantation as a major threat to their sovereignty and survival based on the experience of Chesapeake Natives with the Virginia colony. The Sickoneysincks acted quickly to wipe out the Dutch outpost and then promptly reached a peace accord with the Dutch. While the Lenapes’ ongoing war versus the Susquehannocks over control of the river was a factor, the Lenapes placed priority on trade. They made peace with the Susquehannocks as well, forging an alliance that supported the right of both groups to exchange with the Europeans. All of the Lenapes benefited from the Sickoneysincks’ attack on Swanendael, which for half a century dampened the Europeans’ appetite for a plantation colony in the region. From 1638 to 1655, the Dutch, Swedes, and English competed for trade in the Lenapewihittuck region within the context of Lenape sovereignty. Only the Swedes could claim that they had established a fixed settlement, which remained small with a population of predominantly men. Their toehold in the river stayed insecure as few supplies and new immigrants arrived from their parent country, which was engulfed in war. Even as Johan Printz had strained relations with Mattahorn and other sachems, however, ordinary Swedes, Finns, and Lenapes shared resources, knowledge, and technology; intermarried; and forged friendships based on similar cultures and mutual respect. The Lenapes strongly and successfully resisted European efforts to convert them to Christianity or otherwise diminish their freedom. Lenape country thus remained relatively peaceful during the Pequot War in New England, Kieft’s War in the region surrounding Manhattan, and the Anglo-Powhatan conflicts in the Chesapeake. Both the Europeans and Natives played a ‘‘deed game,’’ but along the Lenapewihittuck, in the mid-seventeenth century, the Lenapes held the cards.6 The Dutch and Swedish governors received their written documents to send home to their

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governments, but the Natives ‘‘sold’’ only the right to build trading posts and small settlements. Soon after initial contact the Europeans and Natives understood each other clearly. Though the Swedes, for example, ‘‘purchased’’ extensive rights to land on both sides of the Lenapewihittuck, they quickly learned that territory needed to be occupied promptly and gifts paid on a regular basis for areas where they lived. The Lenapes preserved rights to use the land as before—for hunting, fishing, and agriculture. The Dutch, Swedes, Lenapes, and Susquehannocks avoided repeated cycles of violence in the region by following the Native practice of covering deaths with gifts rather than the European norm of punishing the murderer or going to war. Relations between the Swedes and Lenapes improved markedly in 1654 with the arrival of Governor Johan Risingh, trade goods, and several hundred settlers. Risingh, with better instincts than Printz for understanding the antiauthoritarian Swedes, Finns, and Natives, met with new Lenape leaders such as Naaman to broker an alliance that survived the Dutch and English conquests in 1655 and 1664. The Lenapes fulfilled their pledge to the Swedes to warn of any impending attack but the Swedes still could not prevent Stuyvesant’s takeover and the Dutch sacking of New Sweden. The Natives helped land the Mercurius colonists and cargo in 1656, benefiting economically while strengthening their allies, the Swedish nation. The Swedes and Finns honored the partnership as well, refusing to ally with the Dutch against the Lenapes or to serve as soldiers in Stuyvesant’s campaign against the Esopus Indians. With the Duke of York’s 1664 conquest of New Netherland and the Dutch colony next to the Lenapewihittuck, the Lenapes and the Swedish nation found ever more reasons to sustain their partnership. Just as the Lenapes sought support because their own and the Susquehannocks’ populations declined from war, smallpox, and other diseases, the Swedes and Finns needed the Lenapes’ backing to fend off heavy-handed English authority. Both groups fostered a culture of openness to people of various ethnicities through intermarriage and mutual respect. The Lenapes supported Swedes and Finns who took part in the Long Swede Rebellion in which they resisted English land policies that eliminated common lands, challenged shared use, and required quitrents. In turn, the Swedish nation refused to assist Governor Francis Lovelace’s mission to punish the Lenapes for defense of their lands through mourning war, particularly in central Delaware and at the Falls. In 1675–76, Lenape country escaped the horrors

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of a conflict similar to Bacon’s Rebellion and King Philip’s War because the Lenapes and the Swedish nation had bonds that undermined the creation of racial hatred; Europeans and Lenapes found the will to avoid large-scale violence. Shared economic goals, common values, and intermarriage kept communities in Lenape country from spinning apart. Though Governor Edmund Andros, unlike his predecessor, Lovelace, accommodated the Native practices of covering deaths with gifts and purchasing land through treaties and gift giving, the Lenapes—encouraged by the Swedes—worked to block his plans for territorial expansion. While the Lenapes stopped short of murdering Andros’s Crewcorne settlers at the Falls, the sachems clarified that even in diminished numbers they controlled significant portions of the region. The arrival of 8,000 colonists with William Penn seemed to spell the end of Lenape power, yet, with the old settlers, the Natives influenced the principles and practices of the evolving Delaware Valley society. From their separate communities the Lenapes and the Swedish nation had together forged a society committed to freedom of religion, self-determination, decentralized government, peaceful resolution of conflict, and shared use of lands for hunting, fishing, and travel. The old settlers, with loss of their central role in government and lack of faith in the courts, formed a political interest group grounded in their Swedish Lutheran church, opposing Penn’s land policies and naturalization fee. Like the Lenapes, many lost well-situated lands along the Delaware, moving to New Jersey and the upper Schuylkill. The Natives, too, resisted land transfers without annual gifts and careful attention to treaty protocol and boundaries. The long-term direction of Pennsylvania’s economy in the eighteenth century challenged the economic significance of the fur trade on which the Lenapes and old settlers had founded their alliance. While deerskins and other furs made up a large portion of the colony’s exports to London from 1699 to 1770, London exports were in fact a small part of its external commerce. Philadelphia merchants sold flaxseed to Ireland and grain to southern Europe, and they dealt most heavily in the West Indies market where they sent grain, flour, livestock, meat, and wood products. Unfree laborers —white indentured servants and enslaved Africans and Native Americans —provided considerable labor, tying the Delaware Valley to the Atlantic trading system in servants and slaves. The supply of agricultural exports depended on the thousands of settlers who built farms throughout the region, displacing the Lenapes rather than sustaining economic bonds

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through trade. Though individuals continued to profit from furs, largescale agriculture and trade with the West Indies and Europe prevailed, thus undercutting the basis for cooperation between colonists and Natives. During the eighteenth century, this economic trajectory thrived on expropriation of Lenape lands as the proprietors and speculators sought profits from selling farmland to English, Irish, and German immigrants.7 As the Wyoming Delaware sachems noted in 1751, the Atlantic trade and plantation system depended on slavery, as a source of both revenue for traders and labor throughout the American colonies. The Delawares were determined to prevent loss of their autonomy and land near the Susquehanna by denying Brainerd’s request to establish a mission. They had come to the conclusion that allowing any white man to settle among them could spell doom for their sovereignty and freedom. In embracing the principles of peace and freedom for others as well as for themselves, the Lenapes diverged significantly from some major Indian groups, including the Iroquois, whose mourning war entailed capturing outsiders to replenish their society spiritually through torture and death or adoption, and the Natives of what is now the southeastern United States, who had enslaved war captives since before Europeans brought their own brand of slavery and eagerly purchased enslaved Indians. In Slavery in Indian Country: The Changing Face of Captivity in Early America, Christina Snyder contends that slavery characterized Mississippian communities in which headmen led attacks on other towns to assert power and take captives whose labor contributed to their wealth. Slavery remained an important feature of Southern nations, such as the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, and Creeks, changing as the British offered a commercial market for war captives and the Natives adopted features of Southern plantation society. Snyder argues that because the Southern nations remained powerful during the eighteenth century, they made an imprint through slavery and the slave trade on mainstream Southern society. She does not claim that the Indians alone created plantation society in the South but suggests their practices facilitated slavery’s spread. ‘‘American history and Native history,’’ Snyder concludes, ‘‘cannot—and should not—be separated, for each is indelibly part of the other. Because of captivity, the histories, cultures, and even the genes of the diverse peoples who inhabit North America are irrevocably intertwined.’’8 While slavery, servitude, and other forms of captivity were prevalent in both North and South, not all Natives used violence to impose hierarchy

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on others. The Lenapes preferred peace and believed they could preserve their own liberty by respecting that of others. Their sachems had limited authority within the group and sought power for the community through trade rather than war. To cover the murder of a Lenape, family members normally negotiated for compensation before conducting mourning war, which for Lenapes involved killing the murderer or his or her relative in revenge. The Lenapes avoided expanded warfare except when deemed necessary to preserve their land and freedom—at Swanendael, against the Susquehannocks in the decade after 1626, and during the Seven Years’ and Pontiac’s wars. Like Indians within the Southeast, the Lenapes retained strength in numbers and influence to help shape American society and culture. As human bondage permeated the social fabric, so too did principles of freedom oppose notions of racial hierarchy, principles that had their origins in Native American and African culture and experience as well as in European thought. John M. Murrin argues in his essay ‘‘A Roof without Walls: The Dilemma of American National Identity’’ that while ‘‘the Republic’s selfannounced progenitors, New England and Virginia, fought out their differences into the Civil War, the middle states quietly eloped with the nation, giving her their most distinctive features: acceptance of pluralism, frank pursuit of self-interest, and legitimation of competing factions.’’9 Underpinning these features was personal liberty—for people of different backgrounds to practice their religion and culture, pursue economic opportunity, and engage in democratic government—aspects of a liberal society the Lenapes and their allies the Swedes, Finns, and other old settlers crafted before William Penn’s arrival. Though general commitment to antislavery emerged slowly and imperfectly, Delaware Valley society retained the imprint of Lenape principles. The Sickoneysincks’ massacre at Swanendael set the parameters for European settlement, delaying expansive agriculture for more than a half century. During that time, Lenapes controlled the river, allying with the Susquehannocks, Swedes, Finns, and other Europeans against heavyhanded Dutch and English authority. In the process, the Lenapes and old settlers interacted on the basis of principles of personal liberty, religious freedom, respect for other cultures, decentralized government, and joint use of the land. When conflict arose, they sought ways to make peace. Creating this structure of shared norms began with Swanendael, as the Lenapes proved their supremacy over Europeans primed to see themselves as

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superior, then matured as each group grasped the economic profits to be gained from cooperating. Intermarriage and sexual liaisons helped as well, underscoring the role of women as well as men in cultural exchange. Despite intermarriage and friendships, however, the Lenape and old settler communities did not merge. Each group retained its identity while together they established the cultural platform on which Delaware Valley society grew.

note on methodology

This study is primarily a social and political history of the Native and European peoples who lived in Lenape country from the early seventeenth century to the mid-eighteenth century, focusing particularly on interactions among the Lenapes, Swedes, Finns, Dutch, and English. The book builds on the admirable work of many scholars who have studied the Lenapes, New Netherland, New Sweden, English Delaware governments, and, more generally, Native-European relations in eastern North America. Recent rigorous translations of Dutch and Swedish records by Charles T. Gehring, Stellan Dahlgren, Hans Norman, Peter Stebbins Craig, and Kim-Eric Williams as well as older works by Amandus Johnson, J. Franklin Jameson, and Albert Cook Myers enable a historian like me, who reads English and some French, to cross the linguistic barrier that would otherwise make this study impossible. In addition, Gunlo¨g Fur’s analysis of Swedish records for the history of New Sweden, Peter Craig’s extensive genealogical work on Swedish and Finnish immigrant families, and Robert S. Grumet’s exhaustive research on the Munsees, all published in the last two decades, provide crucial evidence for this book. For researchers of Native-European relations, of course, obtaining access to European documents is only the first step toward understanding the perspectives of groups such as the Lenapes. Historians lack written documents from Natives everywhere in North America because they communicated primarily through speech. Thus we depend on careful readings of European records for evidence of the actions and interactions of Natives and newcomers. My methodology involves immersion in all available documents, maintaining close attention to chronology to detect political, economic, and diplomatic exchanges within the context of broader developments in eastern North America. I rely on documents written by European colonists about the Lenapes’ statements and actions, but I use my comprehensive reading to try to understand the Natives’ decisions at a

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given time. If one takes the reports of Swedish, Dutch, and English officials at face value, for example, we might believe their claims to have taken possession of the region for their home governments. Only through careful reading and analysis of reports, deeds, meeting minutes, correspondence, and other records does it become clear that the Lenapes remained in control. Indeed, I initially believed the English governor Edmund Andros’s pretense to power in the 1670s but then realized that his claims were as empty as those of governors Printz, Risingh, Stuyvesant, and Lovelace before him. The balance of power shifted only gradually and quite later from the Lenapes to the government of William Penn. I learned a great deal from reading and thinking about these events in the early Delaware Valley, most importantly how the Lenape leaders and people made decisions that were shrewd and political—and often kind, sometimes cruel— successfully preserving for many decades, in a region along the Atlantic seacoast, their sovereignty and freedom.

notes

Introduction 1. Norman Penney, ed., The Journal of George Fox, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1911), 2:205–6, 211; H. Larry Ingle, First among Friends: George Fox and the Creation of Quakerism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 237–40. 2. Penney, Journal of George Fox, 2:211, 227–28, 250, 445, 499. 3. Augustine Herrman, Virginia and Maryland as it is planted and inhabited this present year 1670, W. Faithorne, sculpt. (London, 1673); Christian J. Koot, ‘‘The Merchant, the Map, and Empire: Augustine Herrman’s Chesapeake and Interimperial Trade, 1644–73,’’ William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 67 (October 2010): 609, 634; Christian J. Koot, Empire at the Periphery: British Colonists, Anglo-Dutch Trade, and the Development of the British Atlantic, 1621–1713 (New York: New York University Press, 2011), 77–79. 4. On Penn’s intentions for good relations with the Lenapes and the creation of the founding myth, see Mary Maples Dunn and Richard S. Dunn et al., eds., The Papers of William Penn, 5 vols. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981–87; hereafter PWP), 2:120, 128–29; James O’Neil Spady, ‘‘Colonialism and the Discursive Antecedents of Penn’s Treaty with the Indians,’’ in William A. Pencak and Daniel K. Richter, eds., Friends and Enemies in Penn’s Woods: Indians, Colonists, and the Racial Construction of Pennsylvania (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004), 18–40; James H. Merrell, Into the American Woods: Negotiators on the Pennsylvania Frontier (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999), 28–35. 5. Daniel K. Richter, Before the Revolution: America’s Ancient Pasts (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011), 3–5, 419–22; Jack P. Greene, The Intellectual Construction of America: Exceptionalism and Identity from 1492 to 1800 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), 89–93, 200–209. 6. Steven Craig Harper, Promised Land: Penn’s Holy Experiment, the Walking Purchase, and the Dispossession of Delawares, 1600–1763 (Bethlehem, Pa.: Lehigh University Press, 2006), 80–85. For a general discussion of how words and myths ‘‘were and are tools in the imperial project of relieving Indians of their sovereignty and their land,’’ see James H. Merrell, ‘‘Second Thoughts on Colonial Historians of American Indians,’’ William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 69 (July 2012): 451–512 (quotation on p. 477).

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7. Bernard Bailyn, The Barbarous Years: The Peopling of British North America: The Conflict of Civilizations 1600–1675 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012), 12–13, 277. 8. Gunlo¨g Fur, Colonialism in the Margins: Cultural Encounters in New Sweden and Lapland (Leiden: Brill, 2006); Gunlo¨g Fur, A Nation of Women: Gender and Colonial Encounters among the Delaware Indians (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009); Francis Jennings, ‘‘Glory, Death, and Transfiguration: The Susquehannock Indians in the Seventeenth Century,’’ Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 112 (February 15, 1968): 15–53; Karen Ordahl Kupperman, ‘‘Scandinavian Colonists Confront the New World,’’ in Carol E. Hoffecker et al., eds., New Sweden in America (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1995), 89–111; Michael Dean Mackintosh, ‘‘New Sweden, Natives, and Nature,’’ in Pencak and Richter, Friends and Enemies, 3–17; Magdalena Naum and Jonas M. Nordin, eds., Scandinavian Colonialism and the Rise of Modernity: Small Time Agents in a Global Arena (New York: Springer, 2013); Dawn Marsh Riggs, ‘‘Hiding in Plain Sight: Hannah Freeman, a Lenape Woman in William Penn’s Peaceable Kingdom’’ (PhD dissertation, University of California, Riverside, 2003); Spady, ‘‘Colonialism,’’ 18–40; Mark L. Thompson, The Contest for the Delaware Valley: Allegiance, Identity, and Empire in the Seventeenth Century (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2013); Cynthia J. Van Zandt, Brothers among Nations: The Pursuit of Intercultural Alliances in Early America, 1580–1660 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); and Lorraine E. Williams, ‘‘Indians and Europeans in the Delaware Valley, 1620–1655,’’ in Hoffecker et al., New Sweden, 112–20. 9. PWP, 2:108; Edwin B. Bronner, William Penn’s ‘‘Holy Experiment’’: The Founding of Pennsylvania 1681–1701 (New York: Temple University Publications, 1962), 12–13; Merrell, Into the American Woods, 28–30; Jane T. Merritt, At the Crossroads: Indians and Empires on a Mid-Atlantic Frontier, 1700–1763 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 24–28, 268–69. Influential studies of the relations of Lenapes with the Pennsylvania government from William Penn’s ‘‘holy experiment’’ through the Walking Purchase of 1737 to the Seven Years’ War and beyond include Gregory Evans Dowd, A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745–1815 (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992); Gregory Evans Dowd, War under Heaven: Pontiac, the Indian Nations, and the British Empire (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002); Harper, Promised Land; Eric Hinderaker, Elusive Empires: Constructing Colonialism in the Ohio Valley, 1673–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Francis Jennings, The Ambiguous Iroquois Empire: The Covenant Chain Confederation of Indian Tribes with English Colonies from Its Beginnings to the Lancaster Treaty of 1744 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1984); Francis Jennings, ‘‘Brother Miquon: Good Lord!,’’ in Richard S. Dunn and Mary Maples Dunn, eds., The World of William Penn (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986); Michael N. McConnell, A Country Between: The Upper Ohio Valley and Its Peoples, 1724–1774 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992); Merrell, Into the American Woods; Merritt, At the Crossroads; Daniel K. Richter, Facing East from

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Indian Country: A Native History of Early America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001); Amy C. Schutt, Peoples of the River Valleys: The Odyssey of the Delaware Indians (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007); Peter Silver, Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early America (New York: W. W. Norton, 2008); Anthony F. C. Wallace, King of the Delawares: Teedyuscung 1700–1763 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1949; reprint, Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1990); Paul A. W. Wallace, Indians in Pennsylvania, ed. William A. Hunter, rev. ed. (Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1999); and Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). Their works provide a grand narrative for the mid-Atlantic—the ‘‘ordeal’’ of Pennsylvania a` la Edmund S. Morgan’s Virginia—situating regional conflict at the center of empire; see Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (New York: W. W. Norton, 1975). A grand synthesis that places Pennsylvania at the center of mid-eighteenth-century Atlantic history is Fred Anderson, Crucible of War: The Seven Years’ War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754–1766 (New York: Vintage, 2000). The Lenapes in New Jersey have received much less attention from historians. Useful works include Gregory Evans Dowd, The Indians of New Jersey (Trenton: New Jersey Historical Commission, 1992); Herbert C. Kraft, The Lenape: Archaeology, History, and Ethnography (Newark: New Jersey Historical Society, 1986); Peter O. Wacker, Land and People: A Cultural Geography of Preindustrial New Jersey: Origins and Settlement Patterns (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1975); and C. A. Weslager, The Delaware Indians: A History (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1972). While Robert S. Grumet focuses primarily on the Munsees in The Munsee Indians: A History (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2009), he offers substantial evidence about the Lenapes as well. 10. Grumet, Munsee Indians, 13; William C. Reichel, ‘‘Names Which the Lenni Lennape or Delaware Indians Gave to Rivers, Streams and Localities . . . from a Ms. by John Heckewelder,’’ in Transactions of the Moravian Historical Society, vol. 1 (Nazareth, Pa.: Whitefield House, 1876), 23 [249]; Weslager, Delaware Indians, 50, 62–63; Schutt, Peoples, 7–30; Kraft, Lenape, 122. In comparison, the towns of the Iroquois and Susquehannocks had palisades; Daniel K. Richter, ‘‘The First Pennsylvanians,’’ in Randall M. Miller and William Pencak, eds., Pennsylvania: A History of the Commonwealth (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 2002), 24; Jennings, Ambiguous Iroquois Empire, 128; Fur, Colonialism in the Margins, 107–13; Fur, Nation of Women, 15–31. 11. For examples, see Charles T. Gehring, trans. and ed., New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch, Volumes XVIII–XIX: Delaware Papers (Dutch Period) (Baltimore, Md.: Genealogical Publishing, 1981), 5, 24; Donald H. Kent, ed., Early American Indian Documents: Treaties and Laws, 1607–1789, vol. 1: Pennsylvania and Delaware Treaties, 1629–1737, gen. ed. Alden T. Vaughan (Washington, D.C.: University Publications of America, 1979), 13; Stellan Dahlgren and Hans Norman, The Rise and Fall

210

Notes to Pages 10–13

of New Sweden: Governor Johan Risingh’s Journal 1654–1655 in Its Historical Context (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1988), 183. 12. White, Middle Ground, ix–x. 13. The Lenapes, Swedes, and Finns did not create a new society or nation in the sense of Benedict Anderson’s ‘‘imagined communities.’’ The Natives and Europeans remained separate, creating through their alliance the common ground for colonial Delaware Valley society. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (London: Verso, 1991), 5–7. In an essay on the colonial Latin American frontier, Amy Turner Bushnell offers a pertinent concept of ‘‘the paradigm of negotiation,’’ arguing that ‘‘focusing on negotiation allows one to see, on a frontier, two societies surviving side by side, not because the one is economically stagnant, spiritually irresolute, and unable to conclude a conquest and the other is irretrievably ruined and wronged, but because together they have achieved that wonder of human accomplishments, a delicate, constantly negotiated balance.’’ Bushnell, ‘‘Gates, Patterns, and Peripheries: The Field of Frontier Latin America,’’ in Christine Daniels and Michael V. Kennedy, eds., Negotiated Empires: Centers and Peripheries in the Americas, 1500–1820 (New York: Routledge, 2002), 22. 14. David Hackett Fischer, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 595. 15. According to Wayne Standing Wolf Posten of the Lenape Nation of Indians, approximately fourteen groups represent Lenapes in Pennsylvania (see Morning Call, November 18, 2002, B2). In New Jersey, the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape Indians of Bridgeton is the largest organization tracing its roots to the seventeenth century in New Jersey, while the Powhatan Renape Nation of Burlington County includes the descendants of Natives who had migrated from Virginia and Delaware since 1800. Both organizations have state recognition. The Powhatan Renape Nation owns the Rankokus Indian Reservation, which is maintained as a cultural and educational center. ‘‘Renape’’ is another spelling of the word ‘‘Lenape’’ that some early Swedes also used. Nemattanew (Chief Roy Crazy Horse), Morrisville: A Native Hidden Community (Rancocas, N.J.: Powhatan, 2002), 1–8, 53–55. Chapter 1 1. ‘‘Printz to Oxenstierna, April 14, 1643,’’ in Amandus Johnson, The Instruction for Johan Printz, Governor of New Sweden (Philadelphia: Swedish Colonial Society, 1930), 153. On the southeastern Indian slave trade, see Christina Snyder, Slavery in Indian Country: The Changing Face of Captivity in Early America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2010), 48–79; on the Iroquois, see Daniel K. Richter, Trade, Land, Power: The Struggle for Eastern North America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 69–96. 2. Peter O. Wacker, Land and People: A Cultural Geography of Preindustrial New Jersey: Origins and Settlement Patterns (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1975), 1–17; Daniel K. Richter, ‘‘The First Pennsylvanians,’’ in Randall M. Miller and

Notes to Page 13

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William Pencak, eds., Pennsylvania: A History of the Commonwealth (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 2002), 8; John A. Munroe, Colonial Delaware: A History (Millwood, N.Y.: KTO Press, 1978), 4. 3. Herbert C. Kraft, The Lenape: Archaeology, History, and Ethnography (Newark: New Jersey Historical Society, 1986), 86, 117–20, 138–42; Amy C. Schutt, Peoples of the River Valleys: The Odyssey of the Delaware Indians (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 13–14, 198. Schutt effectively demonstrates that the Lenapes grew corn and used it in their diet by the seventeenth century, in contrast to Marshall Becker’s argument that they remained foragers through the eighteenth century. Becker also insists that the true Lenapes lived only in southeastern Pennsylvania, that they were distinct from the people he calls ‘‘Jerseys’’ on the eastern bank of the Lenapewihittuck. As demonstrated in the chapters that follow, the Lenapes lived and owned territory on both sides of the river, sometimes relocating because of war, efforts to gain advantage in the fur trade, and European immigration. See Marshall Joseph Becker, ‘‘Lenape Population at the Time of European Contact: Estimating Native Numbers in the Lower Delaware Valley,’’ Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 133 (June 1989): 112–22; Becker, ‘‘Lenape Maize Sales to the Swedish Colonists: Cultural Stability during the Early Colonial Period,’’ in Carol E. Hoffecker, Richard Waldron, Lorraine E. Williams, and Barbara E. Benson, eds., New Sweden in America (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1995), 121–36; and Colin G. Calloway, One Vast Winter Count: The Native American West before Lewis and Clark (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003), 96–104. 4. C. A. Weslager and A. R. Dunlap, Dutch Explorers, Traders and Settlers in the Delaware Valley 1609–1664 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1961), 44– 45, 112–13; Susan E. Klepp, ‘‘Encounter and Experiment: The Colonial Period,’’ in Miller and Pencak, Pennsylvania, 49–51; Peter Lindestro¨m, Geographia Americae with an Account of the Delaware Indians Based on Surveys and Notes Made in 1654–1656, trans. and ed. Amandus Johnson (Philadelphia: Swedish Colonial Society, 1925), map f. 156; Adriaen van der Donck, Beschryvinge van Nieuw-Nederlant. . . . (Aemsteldam: Evert Nieuwenhof, 1656); Albert Cook Myers, ed., Narratives of Early Pennsylvania, West New Jersey, and Delaware 1630–1707 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1912), map f. 170; Ives Goddard, ‘‘Delaware,’’ in Bruce G. Trigger, ed., Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 15, Northeast (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1978), 214; Lorraine E. Williams, ‘‘Indians and Europeans in the Delaware Valley, 1620–1655,’’ in Hoffecker et al., New Sweden, 113. See also Francis Jennings, The Ambiguous Iroquois Empire: The Covenant Chain Confederation of Indian Tribes with English Colonies from Its Beginnings to the Lancaster Treaty of 1744 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1984), 118; C. A. Weslager, The Delaware Indians: A History (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1972), 38, 42; and C. A. Weslager, ‘‘Robert Evelyn’s Indian Tribes and Place-Names of New Albion,’’ reprint from Bulletin, Archaeological Society of New Jersey, 9 (November 1954): 1–14.

212

Notes to Pages 15–19

5. This was the case with other North American people such as the Iroquois and the Catawbas. See Richter, Trade, Land, Power, 69–96; James H. Merrell, ‘‘The Indians’ New World: The Catawba Experience,’’ William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 41 (October 1984): 537–65. 6. Lindestro¨m, Geographia Americae, 154, 165–67. 7. Ibid., 167, 169–71; Governor Johan Printz’s 1644 report in Johnson, Instruction, 117; Stellan Dahlgren and Hans Norman, The Rise and Fall of New Sweden: Governor Johan Risingh’s Journal 1654–1655 in Its Historical Context (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1988), 199, 205, 207, 215. 8. Lindestro¨m, Geographia Americae, 172–73. 9. John Romeyn Brodhead, et al., eds., Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York (hereafter NYCD), 15 vols. (Albany, N.Y.: Weed, Parsons, Printers, 1853–87), 1:366–67; Robert Steven Grumet, ‘‘ ‘We Are Not So Great Fools’: Changes in Upper Delawaran Socio-Political Life, 1630–1758’’ (PhD dissertation, Rutgers University, 1979), 33–40, 47–49, 130, 200–205; Augustine Herrman, Virginia and Maryland as it is planted and inhabited this present year 1670, W. Faithorne, sculpt. (London, 1673); Christian J. Koot, Empire at the Periphery: British Colonists, AngloDutch Trade, and the Development of the British Atlantic, 1621–1713 (New York: New York University Press, 2011), 77–79. 10. Herbert C. Kraft, The Lenape-Delaware Indian Heritage: 10,000 B.C.—A.D. 2000 (n.p.: Lenape Books, 2001), 389; Goddard, ‘‘Delaware,’’ in Trigger, Handbook, 214; Weslager, ‘‘Robert Evelyn’s Indian Tribes,’’ 1–14. Robert Evelyn gave a lower total count but his numbers add up to 940. 11. Richard S. Dunn, James Savage, and Laetitia Yeandle, eds., The Journal of John Winthrop 1630–1649 (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996), 402–3; NYCD, 1:366; Conrad E. Heidenreich, ‘‘Huron,’’ in Trigger, Handbook, 387; Daniel K. Richter, The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European Colonization (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 58–59. 12. Quoted in Gunlo¨g Fur, Colonialism in the Margins: Cultural Encounters in New Sweden and Lapland (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 214. 13. Goddard, ‘‘Delaware,’’ in Trigger, Handbook, 216–20; Gregory Evans Dowd, The Indians of New Jersey (Trenton: New Jersey Historical Commission, 1992), 14–16, 21; Weslager, Delaware Indians, 56–64; Edward McM. Larrabee, ‘‘Recurrent Themes and Sequences in North American Indian-European Culture Contact,’’ Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, n.s., 66, pt. 7 (1976): 3–4. 14. ‘‘Representation of New Netherland, 1650,’’ in J. Franklin Jameson, ed., Narratives of New Netherland 1609–1664 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1909), 302; ‘‘From the ‘Korte Historiael Ende Journaels Aenteyckeninge,’ by David Pietersz. de Vries, 1633–1643 (1655),’’ in Jameson, Narratives, 218; ‘‘From the ‘Historisch Verhael,’ by Nicolaes van Wassenaer, 1624–1630,’’ in Jameson, Narratives, 69.

Notes to Pages 21–28

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15. ‘‘Representation of New Netherland,’’ in Jameson, Narratives, 302; ‘‘Letter of Isaack de Rasieres to Samuel Blommaert, 1628 (?),’’ in Jameson, Narratives, 108–9; ‘‘De Vries,’’ in Jameson, Narratives, 218. 16. ‘‘Letter of Reverend Jonas Michae¨lius, 1628,’’ in Jameson, Narratives, 128–29; Lindestro¨m, Geographia Americae, 202. 17. Weslager, Delaware Indians, 55–56, 65–72; Schutt, Peoples, 25–30; Gregory Evans Dowd, A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745–1815 (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 1–22; Dowd, Indians of New Jersey, 27–30. 18. ‘‘Michae¨lius,’’ in Jameson, Narratives, 126–28. 19. ‘‘Printz to Oxenstierna, April 14, 1643,’’ in Johnson, Instruction, 153. 20. Peter Stebbins Craig, ‘‘New Sweden Settlers, 1638–1664 Part 1 (1638–1640),’’ Swedish American Genealogist (hereafter SAG), 16 (March 1996): 77; Craig, ‘‘New Sweden Settlers, 1638–1664 Part 3 (1643),’’ SAG 17 (March 1997): 5–6; ‘‘Brahe to Printz, November 9, 1643,’’ in Johnson, Instruction, 156; Thomas Campanius Holm, Description of the Province of New Sweden, trans. Peter S. Du Ponceau (Philadelphia: M’Carty and Davis, 1834; reprint, Millwood, N.Y.: Kraus Reprint Co., 1975), 74–76, 144–59; Ives Goddard, ‘‘The Delaware Language, Past and Present,’’ in Herbert C. Kraft, ed., A Delaware Indian Symposium (Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1974), 105; Goddard, ‘‘The Delaware Jargon,’’ in Hoffecker et al., New Sweden, 138; Patrick M. Erben, A Harmony of the Spirits: Translation and the Language of Community in Early Pennsylvania (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012), 106. 21. Campanius to the Archbishop, January 20, 1647, quoted in Fur, Colonialism in the Margins, 192. See also Peter Stebbins Craig and Kim-Eric Williams, eds., Colonial Records of the Swedish Churches in Pennsylvania, 5 vols. (Philadelphia: Swedish Colonial Society, 2006–9), 1:7. 22. Jaap Jacobs, New Netherland: A Dutch Colony in Seventeenth-Century America (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 9, 145–47; ‘‘From the ‘New World,’ by Johan de Laet, 1625, 1630, 1633, 1640,’’ in Jameson, Narratives, 57–58; ‘‘De Rasieres,’’ in Jameson, Narratives, 105, 109; ‘‘Representation of New Netherland,’’ in Jameson, Narratives, 288, 302–3; Lindestro¨m, Geographia Americae, 205–6. 23. ‘‘Representation of New Netherland,’’ in Jameson, Narratives, 301–3; Lindestro¨m, Geographia Americae, 196–99, 207. 24. ‘‘From ‘The Third Voyage of Master Henry Hudson,’ by Robert Juet, 1610,’’ in Jameson, Narratives, 15–17; ‘‘From ‘The Third Voyage of Master Henry Hudson,’ by Robert Juet,’’ Introduction by Daniel K. Richter, Early American Studies 7 (Fall 2009): 426–28. 25. ‘‘Representation of New Netherland,’’ in Jameson, Narratives, 293; ‘‘Robert Juet, 1610,’’ in Jameson, Narratives, 18. 26. ‘‘Robert Juet, 1610,’’ in Jameson, Narratives, 18–21.

214

Notes to Pages 28–31

27. Daniel K. Richter, Before the Revolution: America’s Ancient Pasts (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011), 137–39. 28. The Dutch adopted the name Minquas, which was the Lenape name for the Susquehannocks. 29. Weslager and Dunlap, Dutch Explorers, 44–45, 112–13; Cynthia J. Van Zandt, Brothers among Nations: The Pursuit of Intercultural Alliances in Early America, 1580– 1660 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 122–23; Klepp, ‘‘Encounter and Experiment,’’ 49–51; Richter, ‘‘First Pennsylvanians,’’ 41; Jacobs, New Netherland, 34–36. 30. ‘‘Instructions for Willem Verhulst, Director of New Netherland [January 1625],’’ in A. J. F. van Laer, trans. and ed., Documents Relating to New Netherland, 1624–1626 (San Marino, Calif.: Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, 1924), 51; Weslager and Dunlap, Dutch Explorers, 44–46, 57, 63–64, 79–80. 31. Goddard, ‘‘Delaware Jargon,’’ 137–43; ‘‘Johan de Laet,’’ in Jameson, Narratives, 58–60. 32. ‘‘Wassenaer,’’ in Jameson, Narratives, 84–86; Weslager and Dunlap, Dutch Explorers, 48–81, 121–27; Oliver A. Rink, Holland on the Hudson: An Economic and Social History of Dutch New York (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986), 70–74, 87–88, 143; ‘‘Letter from Isaack de Rasie`re to the Directors of the Amsterdam Chamber of the West India Company, September 23, 1626,’’ in Van Laer, Documents, 208–9. Fort Nassau was unoccupied by the Dutch when David de Vries traveled upriver to purchase food from the Lenapes in January 1633; ‘‘From the ‘Korte Historiael Ende Journaels Aenteyckeninge,’ by David Pietersz. de Vries, 1630–1633, 1643 (1655),’’ in Myers, Narratives, 18. 33. Conrad E. Heidenreich, ‘‘Huron,’’ in Trigger, Handbook, 368, 384; Elisabeth Tooker, ‘‘The League of the Iroquois: Its History, Politics, and Ritual,’’ in Trigger, Handbook, 422–23; Francis Jennings, ‘‘Susquehannock,’’ in Trigger, Handbook, 362–65; Francis Jennings, ‘‘Glory, Death, and Transfiguration: The Susquehannock Indians in the Seventeenth Century,’’ Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 112 (February 15, 1968): 16–18; J. Frederick Fausz, ‘‘Merging and Emerging Worlds: Anglo-Indian Interest Groups and the Development of the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake,’’ in Lois Green Carr et al., eds., Colonial Chesapeake Society (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 59–65; Van Zandt, Brothers, 120–21, 124–25; Richter, ‘‘First Pennsylvanians,’’ 39–40; Karen Ordahl Kupperman, ‘‘Scandinavian Colonists Confront the New World,’’ in Hoffecker et al., New Sweden, 102–3; Lynn Ceci, The Effect of European Contact and Trade on the Settlement Pattern of Indians in Coastal New York, 1524–1665 (New York: Garland, 1990), 12–26, 206–9; Lynn Ceci, ‘‘Native Wampum as a Peripheral Resource in the Seventeenth-Century WorldSystem,’’ in Laurence M. Hauptman and James D. Wherry, eds., The Pequots in Southern New England: The Rise and Fall of an American Indian Nation (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990), 48–63; Lindestro¨m, Geographia Americae, 232; Jacobs, New Netherland, 194–97.

Notes to Pages 32–40

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34. Philip L. Barbour, ed., The Complete Works of Captain John Smith (1580– 1631), 3 vols. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986), 2:105–6, 135, 171–72; Kupperman, ‘‘Scandinavian Colonists,’’ 96–97. 35. ‘‘De Rasie`re,’’ in Van Laer, Documents, 192, 195–96; Weslager and Dunlap, Dutch Explorers, 58–59, 121; Van Zandt, Brothers, 127–30. 36. ‘‘De Rasie`re,’’ in Van Laer, Documents, 195, 200, 203, 208, 211. 37. Ibid., 228, 231. The preference for dark cloth was apparently local because Natives in Canada wanted red textiles; Albright G. Zimmerman, ‘‘European Trade Relations in the 17th and 18th Centuries,’’ in Kraft, Delaware Indian Symposium, 65; Jacobs, New Netherland, 198–99. Chapter 2 1. Oliver A. Rink, Holland on the Hudson: An Economic and Social History of Dutch New York (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986), 94–116. 2. Donald H. Kent, ed., Early American Indian Documents: Treaties and Laws, 1607–1789, Volume 1: Pennsylvania and Delaware Treaties, 1629–1737, gen. ed. Alden T. Vaughan (Washington D.C.: University Publications of America, 1979), 2–7; C. A. Weslager and A. R. Dunlap, Dutch Explorers, Traders, and Settlers in the Delaware Valley 1609–1664 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1961), 85, 257–70. 3. Weslager and Dunlap, Dutch Explorers, 90–99, 271–72; Rink, Holland on the Hudson, 107–11. 4. ‘‘From the ‘Korte Historiael Ende Journaels Aenteyckeninge,’ by David Pietersz. de Vries, 1630–1633, 1643 (1655),’’ in Albert Cook Myers, ed., Narratives of Early Pennsylvania, West New Jersey, and Delaware 1630–1707 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1912), 16–17. On the ways in which Europeans signified their claims to territory in the Americas, see Patricia Seed, ‘‘Taking Possession and Reading Texts: Establishing the Authority of Overseas Empires,’’ William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 49 (April 1992): 183–209. 5. ‘‘De Vries,’’ in Myers, Narratives, 16–17; Peter Lindestro¨m, Geographia Americae with an Account of the Delaware Indians Based on Surveys and Notes Made in 1654–1656, trans. and ed. Amandus Johnson (Philadelphia: Swedish Colonial Society, 1925), 205; Gunlo¨g Fur, Colonialism in the Margins: Cultural Encounters in New Sweden and Lapland (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 171–81; Amy C. Schutt, Peoples of the River Valleys: The Odyssey of the Delaware Indians (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 10. For later evidence of mourning war, see Chapters 5 and 6. For the Lenapes’ belief that a great sachem at Cape Henlopen could intercede with an evil manitou, see Chapter 3. 6. ‘‘De Vries,’’ in Myers, Narratives, 16–17. 7. Ibid., 9, 15; Weslager and Dunlap, Dutch Explorers, 95–96. 8. ‘‘De Vries,’’ in Myers, Narratives, 15–18; Weslager and Dunlap, Dutch Explorers, 84; ‘‘From the ‘Korte Historiael Ende Journaels Aenteyckeninge,’ by David Pietersz. de Vries, 1633–1643 (1655),’’ in J. Franklin Jameson, ed., Narratives of New

216

Notes to Pages 40–46

Netherland 1609–1664 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1909), 214. De Vries’s phrase ‘‘rancontyn marenit’’ roughly corresponded phonetically with the Lenape phrase for making a firm peace; Ives Goddard, ‘‘The Delaware Jargon,’’ in Carol E. Hoffecker, Richard Waldron, Lorraine E. Williams, and Barbara E. Benson, eds., New Sweden in America (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1995), 147. 9. ‘‘De Vries,’’ in Myers, Narratives, 18–21. 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid., 21. 12. Ibid., 21–22. 13. Ibid., 23–24. 14. Ibid., 26. 15. ‘‘Relation of Captain Thomas Yong, 1634,’’ in Myers, Narratives, 37–40. 16. Fur, Colonialism in the Margins, 178–79; ‘‘De Vries,’’ in Myers, Narratives, 16–17; ‘‘Report of Governor Johan Printz, 1644,’’ in Myers, Narratives, 103; Ives Goddard, ‘‘Delaware,’’ in Bruce G. Trigger, ed., Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 15, Northeast (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1978), 216; Robert Steven Grumet, ‘‘ ‘We Are Not So Great Fools’: Changes in Upper Delawaran Socio-Political Life, 1630–1758’’ (PhD dissertation, Rutgers University, 1979), 105–8. 17. Bartlett Burleigh James and J. Franklin Jameson, eds., Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679–1680 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1913), 152; Weslager and Dunlap, Dutch Explorers, 100–101; Jameson, Narratives, 72, 106–9, 218, 302; Gunlo¨g Fur, A Nation of Women: Gender and Colonial Encounters among the Delaware Indians (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 15–31. 18. Helen C. Rountree and Thomas E. Davidson, Eastern Shore Indians of Virginia and Maryland (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1997), 98–99; Christian F. Feest, ‘‘Nanticoke and Neighboring Tribes,’’ in Trigger, Handbook, 240–41; C. A. Weslager, The Nanticoke Indians: Past and Present (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1983), 37–38. On the broad geographic network of Native American exchange in eastern North America, see April Lee Hatfield, Atlantic Virginia: Intercolonial Relations in the Seventeenth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 13–22. 19. Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (New York: W. W. Norton, 1975), 73–74. On trade connections among Native inhabitants on the Chesapeake’s eastern and western shores, see Thomas E. Davidson, ‘‘Relations between the Powhatans and the Eastern Shore,’’ in Helen C. Rountree, ed., Powhatan Foreign Relations 1500–1722 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1993), 136–53. 20. J. Frederick Fausz, ‘‘Merging and Emerging Worlds: Anglo-Indian Interest Groups and the Development of the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake,’’ in Lois Green Carr et al., eds., Colonial Chesapeake Society (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 51–57; Morgan, American Slavery, 98–100, 133–43; John J. McCusker and Russell R. Menard, The Economy of British America 1607–1789 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), 118–19, 136; Karen Ordahl Kupperman, The

Notes to Pages 46–55

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Jamestown Project (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), 304–27. 21. Michael Dean Mackintosh, ‘‘New Sweden, Natives, and Nature,’’ in William A. Pencak and Daniel K. Richter, eds., Friends and Enemies in Penn’s Woods: Indians, Colonists, and the Racial Construction of Pennsylvania (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004), 4–6; Cynthia J. Van Zandt, Brothers among Nations: The Pursuit of Intercultural Alliances in Early America, 1580–1660 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 133–34; Virginia DeJohn Anderson, Creatures of Empire: How Domestic Animals Transformed Early America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 103, 178–79; William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983), 127–51; Fur, Colonialism in the Margins, 202–4. 22. Anderson, Creatures, 175, 177; Morgan, American Slavery, 137–40. 23. Anderson, Creatures, 211. 24. Kent, Early American, 2–7; Fur, Colonialism in the Margins, 120–22, 136–37. 25. Jaap Jacobs, New Netherland: A Dutch Colony in Seventeenth-Century America (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 112–13; Rink, Holland on the Hudson, 90–118; Donna Merwick, The Shame and the Sorrow: Dutch-Amerindian Encounters in New Netherland (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 59–60, 67–70. 26. Fausz, ‘‘Merging,’’ 58–60; Van Zandt, Brothers, 117–18; J. Frederick Fausz, ‘‘Present at the ‘Creation’: The Chesapeake World That Greeted the Maryland Colonists,’’ Maryland Historical Magazine (hereafter MHM), 79 (Spring 1984): 7–12. 27. Fausz, ‘‘Merging,’’ 60; Francis Jennings, The Ambiguous Iroquois Empire: The Covenant Chain Confederation of Indian Tribes with English Colonies from Its Beginnings to the Lancaster Treaty of 1744 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1984), 116; Rountree and Davidson, Eastern Shore Indians, 45; Fausz, ‘‘Present at the ‘Creation,’ ’’ 12; Erich Isaac, ‘‘Kent Island Part 1: The Period of Settlement,’’ MHM 52 (June 1957): 94, 100–113; Van Zandt, Brothers, 133. 28. ‘‘Claiborne vs. Clobery et als. in the High Court of Admiralty,’’ MHM 27, no. 4 (1932): 340; ‘‘Claiborne vs. Clobery et als. in the High Court of Admiralty,’’ MHM 28, no. 2 (1933): 182, 184. 29. Isaac, ‘‘Kent Island,’’ 115–16; ‘‘Claiborne vs. Clobery,’’ MHM 27: 344–45. 30. Isaac, ‘‘Kent Island,’’ 114–15; Fausz, ‘‘Present at the ‘Creation,’ ’’ 13; Francis Jennings, ‘‘Susquehannock,’’ in Trigger, Handbook, 364; Fausz, ‘‘Merging,’’ 63–65; Van Zandt, Brothers, 120–21, 124–25. 31. Fausz, ‘‘Merging,’’ 65–73. Chapter 3 1. Donald H. Kent, ed., Early American Indian Documents: Treaties and Laws, 1607–1789, vol. 1: Pennsylvania and Delaware Treaties, 1629–1737, gen. ed. Alden T. Vaughan (Washington, D.C.: University Publications of America, 1979), 11–14; A. R.

218

Notes to Pages 55–60

Dunlap and C. A. Weslager, ‘‘More Missing Evidence: Two Depositions by Early Swedish Settlers,’’ Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 91 (January 1967): 35– 45. The spelling of the names of individual sachems and of Lenape groups varied widely depending on the European’s ear and translation into his language. For example, Mattahorn’s name was also spelled Amattehooren; Mitatsimint also appears as Mitot Schemingh; and the Armewamese were referred to as Ermewormahi and Armewamex. Kent, Early American, 470–71; C. A. Weslager, The Delaware Indians: A History (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1972), 35–36. 2. Kent, Early American, 12–14; Amandus Johnson, The Swedish Settlements on the Delaware 1638–1664, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Swedish Colonial Society, 1911), 1:182–84; Dunlap and Weslager, ‘‘More Missing Evidence,’’ 37–38; Mark L. Thompson, The Contest for the Delaware Valley: Allegiance, Identity, and Empire in the Seventeenth Century (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2013), 54–55. The ‘‘Ancient Swedes’’ stated that Ridder arrived in 1639 when in fact he arrived in the spring of 1640; Johnson, Swedish Settlements, 1:199–201. 3. Kent, Early American, 19–20. 4. Cynthia J. Van Zandt argues that New Sweden was a client state of the Susquehannocks, who were the senior partners in their trade relationship. While the Susquehannocks were powerful in the 1640s and 1650s, their dealings with New Sweden focused on commerce, whereas the colony existed only by permission of the Lenapes. See Van Zandt, Brothers among Nations: The Pursuit of Intercultural Alliances in Early America, 1580–1660 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 175. For a full discussion of the controversy about Susquehannock dominion over the Lenapes, see Francis Jennings, ‘‘Glory, Death, and Transfiguration: The Susquehannock Indians in the Seventeenth Century,’’ Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 112 (February 15, 1968): 50–55. See also Gunlo¨g Fur, Colonialism in the Margins: Cultural Encounters in New Sweden and Lapland (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 111; and Karen Ordahl Kupperman, ‘‘Scandinavian Colonists Confront the New World,’’ in Carol E. Hoffecker, Richard Waldron, Lorraine E. Williams, and Barbara E. Benson, eds., New Sweden in America (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1995), 97–98. 5. Peter Stebbins Craig, ‘‘New Sweden Settlers, 1638–1664 Part 1 (1638–1640),’’ Swedish American Genealogist (hereafter SAG), 16 (March 1996): 63–86. Peter Craig provided authoritative biographies of New Sweden settlers in a series of articles, which also include the following for the period before 1654: Craig, ‘‘New Sweden Settlers, 1638–1664 Part 2 (1641),’’ SAG 16 (September 1996): 219–48; Craig, ‘‘New Sweden Settlers, 1638–1664 Part 3 (1643),’’ SAG 17 (March 1997): 1–22; Craig, ‘‘New Sweden Settlers, 1638–1664 Part 4 (1644–1653),’’ SAG 17 (September 1997): 113–32. Craig employed Swedish manuscripts to correct errors in Amandus Johnson’s Swedish Settlements. I have compiled quantitative and qualitative evidence about the colonists from the biographical information available in these articles and other works, including Peter Stebbins Craig, 1671 Census of the Delaware (Philadelphia: Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania, 1999); Peter Stebbins Craig, The 1693 Census of the Swedes on the

Notes to Pages 60–65

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Delaware (Winter Park, Fla.: SAG, 1993); and Peter Stebbins Craig and Kim-Eric Williams, eds., Colonial Records of the Swedish Churches in Pennsylvania, 5 vols. (Philadelphia: Swedish Colonial Society, 2006–9). See also Johnson, Swedish Settlements, 2:699–726; ‘‘Report of Governor Johan Printz, 1644,’’ in Albert Cook Myers, ed., Narratives of Early Pennsylvania, West New Jersey, and Delaware 1630–1707 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1912), 110–16. 6. Craig, ‘‘Settlers, Part 1,’’ 75; Johnson, Swedish Settlements, 2:706, 710, 722; ‘‘Report of Governor Johan Printz, 1644,’’ in Myers, Narratives, 114. 7. Craig, ‘‘Settlers, Part 1,’’ 63–86. 8. C. A. Weslager, The English on the Delaware: 1610–1682 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1967), 91–95; Amandus Johnson, The Instruction for Johan Printz Governor of New Sweden (Philadelphia: Swedish Colonial Society, 1930), 229–43. 9. Weslager, English, 95–97, 100; Johnson, Instruction, 231–37. 10. John Romeyn Brodhead, et al., eds., Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York, 15 vols. (Albany, N.Y.: Weed, Parsons, Printers, 1853–87; hereafter NYCD), 12:23–24; Weslager, English, 103–5; Thompson, Contest, 74–77. 11. Johnson, Instruction, 68–70; Fur, Colonialism in the Margins, 148–49. 12. Stellan Dahlgren and Hans Norman, The Rise and Fall of New Sweden: Governor Johan Risingh’s Journal 1654–1655 in Its Historical Context (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1988), 64–65; Johnson, Instruction, 108; Johnson, Swedish Settlements, 2:709; Richard S. Dunn, James Savage, and Laetitia Yeandle, eds., The Journal of John Winthrop 1630–1649 (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996), 402–3. 13. Dahlgren and Norman, Rise and Fall, 64–65; Craig, ‘‘Settlers, Part 3,’’ 1–3; Johnson, Swedish Settlements, 2:688–89; Peter Lindestro¨m, Geographia Americae with an Account of the Delaware Indians Based on Surveys and Notes Made in 1654–1656, trans. and ed. Amandus Johnson (Philadelphia: Swedish Colonial Society, 1925), 129. 14. Dahlgren and Norman, Rise and Fall, 126; Charles T. Gehring, ‘‘Hodie Mihi, Cras Tibi: Swedish-Dutch Relations in the Delaware Valley,’’ in Hoffecker et al., New Sweden, 77; Johnson, Instruction, 105–7, 111, 118; Kupperman, ‘‘Scandinavian Colonists,’’ 99–104. 15. Ericus Bjo¨rk to Dr. Collmodin, October 29, 1697, trans. Amandus Johnson, Amandus Johnson Papers, VI:59:1, pp. 78–79, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; Thomas Campanius Holm, Description of the Province of New Sweden, trans. Peter S. Du Ponceau (Philadelphia: M’Carty & Davis, 1834; reprint, Millwood, N.Y.: Kraus Reprint Co., 1975), 94, 100; Fur, Colonialism in the Margins, 196–97. Despite Peter Craig’s excellent and painstaking research, many gaps exist in our knowledge of New Sweden colonists because of inadequate records. The patronymic system by which sons and sometimes daughters retained a surname based on their father’s given name (for example, Jacob Svensson and Margaret Andersdotter) can make family linkages difficult.

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Notes to Pages 65–69

16. In trying to determine Finnish and Swedish ethnicity, I have followed Peter Craig’s lead in counting as Finns only people who spoke Finnish as their primary language. Reference to a colonist as ‘‘the Finn’’ also indicates how their neighbors perceived their identity. At the time of New Sweden’s founding, Finland was part of Sweden. Many of the Finns who immigrated to the colony had already migrated to Sweden. In contrast, many Swedish colonists had lived in the coastal towns of what is now Finland and thus their language rather than immediate prior residence provides a better indication of their ethnic identity as Swedes. Peter Stebbins Craig, ‘‘The Delaware Finns of Colonial America,’’ SAG 21 (March 2001): 28–36. 17. Printz’s 1648 roll of inhabitants included only two men who arrived in 1648, omitting additional settlers who came on Swanen. Craig, ‘‘Settlers, Part 4,’’ 120–25; Johnson, Swedish Settlements, 2:710–16. 18. Dunn et al., Journal of John Winthrop, 402–3; Susan E. Klepp, ‘‘The Swift Progress of Population’’: A Documentary and Bibliographic Study of Philadelphia’s Growth, 1642–1859 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1991), 3. 19. These statistics are from Printz’s report of 1644 (Johnson, Swedish Settlements, 2:700–710; ‘‘Report of Governor Johan Printz, 1644’’ in Myers, Narratives, 97–98, 110–16), supplemented and corrected by Craig. For evidence of high mortality among new colonists in the Chesapeake in the seventeenth century, see Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (New York: W. W. Norton, 1975), 158–60; and Lois Green Carr et al., eds., Colonial Chesapeake Society (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 3–6. 20. Calculations of the New Sweden population in 1648 and 1654 are based on the sources in note 5. Risingh’s number of 370 residents in July 1654 seems quite ¨ rnen survivors, of whom a accurate: approximately 130 colonists welcomed 250 O number died soon after arrival. When Risingh stated in his 1654 report that only seventy people lived in the colony when he arrived, he either was mistaken or referred only to adults. ‘‘Report of Governor Johan Rising, 1654’’ in Myers, Narratives, 149; Dahlgren and Norman, Rise and Fall, 91–92. 21. Johnson, Instruction, 127, 129, 136. 22. Ibid., 159–61; Craig, ‘‘Settlers, Part 4,’’ 113–15. 23. See, for examples, Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 60–75; Robert S. Grumet, The Munsee Indians: A History (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2009), 40; and Michelle LeMaster, Brothers Born of One Mother: British-Native American Relations in the Colonial Southeast (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2012), 149–84. 24. Terry G. Jordan and Matti Kaups, The American Backwoods Frontier: An Ethnic and Ecological Interpretation (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 87–92; Adolph B. Benson, ed., Peter Kalm’s Travels in North America, 2 vols. (New York, 1937), 1:268; Lorraine E. Williams, ‘‘Indians and Europeans in the Delaware Valley, 1620–1655,’’ in Hoffecker et al., New Sweden; Ives Goddard, ‘‘Delaware,’’ in

Notes to Pages 69–72

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Bruce G. Trigger, ed., Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 15, Northeast (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1978), 219; Paul A. W. Wallace, Indians in Pennsylvania, rev. ed. William A. Hunter (Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1999), 30; Peter O. Wacker, Land and People: A Cultural Geography of Preindustrial New Jersey: Origins and Settlement Patterns (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1975), 72–78, 107–18; Frank J. Esposito, ‘‘The Lenape and the Swede: Indian and White Relations in the Delaware River Region, 1638–55,’’ New Jersey History 112 (February 1994): 1–14. 25. Johnson, Instruction, 116. 26. Andrew Charles Lipman, ‘‘The Saltwater Frontier: Indians, Dutch, and English on Seventeenth-Century Long Island Sound’’ (PhD dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 2010), 158–200; Donna Merwick, The Shame and the Sorrow: DutchAmerindian Encounters in New Netherland (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 137–39; Oliver A. Rink, Holland on the Hudson: An Economic and Social History of Dutch New York (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986), 158, 258; Grumet, Munsee Indians, 56–67. 27. Johnson, Instruction, 116; Helen C. Rountree, ‘‘The Powhatans and the English: A Case of Multiple Conflicting Agendas,’’ in Helen C. Rountree, ed., Powhatan Foreign Relations 1500–1722 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1993), 194–95. According to Francis Jennings, the Swedes assisted the Susquehannocks by supplying firearms, thus securing the fur trade to the Lenapewihittuck region rather than to the Chesapeake; Jennings, The Ambiguous Iroquois Empire: The Covenant Chain Confederation of Indian Tribes with English Colonies from Its Beginnings to the Lancaster Treaty of 1744 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1984), 119–20; Jennings, ‘‘Glory,’’ 20. 28. Johnson, Instruction, 113–14, 116–17; Fur, Colonialism in the Margins, 171–72. 29. Johnson, Instruction, 117. ‘‘Minquas’’ is a Lenape word meaning approximately ‘‘Iroquoian-speakers.’’ The Swedes and Dutch generally used this name for the Susquehannocks. In this report, Printz distinguished between the Susquehannocks (‘‘White Minquas’’) and another Iroquoian group (‘‘Black Minquas’’). The identity of the Black Minquas is unknown; they received that name because they wore black badges. They lived west of the Susquehanna River and were perhaps the Eries or Monongahelas, whose villages were depopulated by disease and war prior to European settlement of their region. Daniel K. Richter, ‘‘The First Pennsylvanians,’’ in Randall M. Miller and William Pencak, eds., Pennsylvania: A History of the Commonwealth (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 2002), 41. 30. Johnson, Swedish Settlements, 1:7; Dahlgren and Norman, Rise and Fall, 74; Johnson, Instruction, 132–33, 140. 31. The Dutch, Swedes, and English all sold firearms and ammunition to the Natives, who demanded guns and powder as part of the trade because they believed them superior to their traditional weapons. Jennings, Ambiguous Iroquois Empire,

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Notes to Pages 72–79

80–81; Charles T. Gehring, trans. and ed., New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch, Volumes XVIII–XIX Delaware Papers (Dutch Period) (Baltimore, Md.: Genealogical Publishing, 1981), 26, 34; Johnson, Instruction, 127–43; Dahlgren and Norman, Rise and Fall, 126, 239; Fur, Colonialism in the Margins, 156–57, 164–65. 32. Robert Steven Grumet, ‘‘ ‘We Are Not So Great Fools’: Changes in Upper Delawaran Socio-Political Life, 1630–1758’’ (PhD dissertation, Rutgers University, 1979), 33–40, 47–49, 130, 200–205; Rink, Holland on the Hudson, 223–26; Jaap Jacobs, New Netherland: A Dutch Colony in Seventeenth-Century America (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 63; Johnson, Swedish Settlements, 2:696–97; Donna Merwick, Stuyvesant Bound: An Essay on Loss across Time (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013). 33. Gehring, Dutch, 1–2. 34. Ibid., 9–10, 16–17; C. A. Weslager and A. R. Dunlap, Dutch Explorers, Traders, and Settlers in the Delaware Valley 1609–1664 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1961), 307–8. 35. Gehring, Dutch, 10, 12–19; Kent, Early American, 16–17, 471; Weslager and Dunlap, Dutch Explorers, 142–49. The Armewamese sachems owned land in this area on both sides of the Lenapewihittuck. 36. Kattan (The Cat) departed Sweden in 1649 for New Sweden but was wrecked near Puerto Rico, with lives lost and its cargo confiscated by the Spanish. Dahlgren and Norman, Rise and Fall, 75, 126; Johnson, Instruction, 185. 37. Gehring, Dutch, 12–13, 18–19. 38. ‘‘Representation of New Netherland, 1650,’’ in J. Franklin Jameson, ed., Narratives of New Netherland 1609–1664 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1909), 287– 92, 314; Johnson, Instruction, 180–81; Gehring, ‘‘Hodie Mihi, Cras Tibi,’’ 77–78. The site of Tamecongh is now New Castle, Delaware. 39. Kent, Early American, 18–21. 40. Ibid., 18–21, 471. Mattahorn apparently referred to the sea captain Cornelis May. 41. Ibid., 17, 21. The confirmation of deed is dated at Fort Elfsborg, July 3, 1651. Because the Swedes used the Julian calendar (old style), the date was July 13, 1651, under the Gregorian calendar (new style), which the Dutch used. Thus Notike and Mitatsimint’s children signed the document four days after the conference at Fort Nassau. For somewhat different interpretations of the documents, see Johnson, Swedish Settlements, 1:434–46; Fur, Colonialism in the Margins, 127–32; Gunlo¨g Fur, A Nation of Women: Gender and Colonial Encounters among the Delaware Indians (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 31–36. 42. Kent, Early American, 21–23. 43. Leon de Valinger, Jr., Indian Land Sales in Delaware (Wilmington: Archaeological Society of Delaware, 1941), 4; C. A. Weslager, ‘‘A Discussion of the Family Hunting Territory Question in Delaware,’’ in de Valinger, Jr., Indian Land Sales, 16–17; Dahlgren and Norman, Rise and Fall, 227; Lindestro¨m, Geographia Americae, 304–5, 389; Kent, Early American, 22.

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44. Johnson, Swedish Settlements, 2:755–56; Dahlgren and Norman, Rise and Fall, 187–89; Fur, Colonialism in the Margins, 134–36. 45. Dahlgren and Norman, Rise and Fall, 175, 187. 46. Ibid., 177; Lindestro¨m, Geographia Americae, 129–30. 47. Risingh had completed a dissertation at Uppsala University in 1640 and received a grant from Queen Christina to write a book on economics. Prior to his appointment in New Sweden, he served as secretary to the Board of Commerce. Dahlgren and Norman, Rise and Fall, 26–27. 48. Kent, Early American, 18–23. Both Lindestro¨m and Risingh reported on the meeting. Lindestro¨m listed the ten sachems who participated. Risingh indicated that twelve sachems took part but did not list their names. Their accounts can be found in Lindestro¨m, Geographia Americae, 126–32; Dahlgren and Norman, Rise and Fall, 175–79. 49. Sachems from the east bank of the river did not attend this conference. Risingh received confirmation of earlier land sales from the Mantes on August 11, 1654, and from the sachem Arceorenium for the land surrounding Fort Elfsborg (Salem Creek) on July 17, 1655. Peter Stebbins Craig, ‘‘New Sweden Settlers, 1638–1664 Part 5 (1654),’’ SAG 18 (March 1998): 1; Dahlgren and Norman, Rise and Fall, 121–22, 177, 199, 237. 50. Dahlgren and Norman, Rise and Fall, 175, 177; Lindestro¨m, Geographia Americae, 129. Lindestro¨m quoted Naaman using the words ‘‘they would indeed give [us] warning [even in] the dark midnight.’’ See James H. Merrell, ‘‘ ‘I desire all that I have said may be taken down aright’: Revisiting Teedyuscung’s 1756 Treaty Council Speeches,’’ William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 63 (October 2006): 796, for his discussion of the treaty in Easton, November 1756, in which the Lenape sachem Teedyuscung used a very similar phrase. 51. Dahlgren and Norman, Rise and Fall, 177; Lindestro¨m, Geographia Americae, 129; Naaman’s reference to ‘‘one body and one heart . . . [and] one head’’ is similar to the language used in the 1701 treaty between William Penn and the Conestogas. See Nancy Shoemaker, A Strange Likeness: Becoming Red and White in EighteenthCentury North America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 125–27. On Lenape and Iroquois diplomatic culture, see Merrell, ‘‘ ‘I desire all that I have said,’ ’’ 821–26. See also Robert A. Williams, Jr., Linking Arms Together: American Indian Treaty Visions of Law and Peace, 1600–1800 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 108–10. 52. Lindestro¨m, Geographia Americae, 129. It is also possible that the translator misinterpreted Naaman’s point. 53. Ibid., 127–28; Dahlgren and Norman, Rise and Fall, 177. 54. Lindestro¨m, Geographia Americae, 130–31. 55. Johnson, Swedish Settlements, 2:514. 56. Daniel K. Richter, Trade, Land, Power: The Struggle for Eastern North America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 1–6. 57. Alfred W. Crosby, ‘‘Virgin Soil Epidemics as a Factor in the Aboriginal Depopulation in America,’’ William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 33 (April 1976):

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Notes to Pages 85–92

289–99; Dunn et al., Journal of John Winthrop, 402–3; Conrad E. Heidenreich, ‘‘Huron,’’ in Trigger, Handbook, 387; Daniel K. Richter, The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European Colonization (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 58–59. Chapter 4 1. Fifteen of the twenty male freemen who signed the 1654 loyalty oath for Risingh had signed the petition. Of the other five males, three became freemen after the petition. Peter Stebbins Craig and Kim-Eric Williams, eds., Colonial Records of the Swedish Churches in Pennsylvania, 5 vols. (Philadelphia: Swedish Colonial Society, 2006–9), 1:11–13, 16–19; Peter Stebbins Craig, ‘‘New Sweden Settlers, 1638–1664 Part 1 (1638–1640),’’ Swedish American Genealogist (hereafter SAG), 16 (March 1996): 67–75: Craig, ‘‘New Sweden Settlers, 1638–1664 Part 2 (1641),’’ SAG 16 (September 1996): 219–48; Craig, ‘‘New Sweden Settlers, 1638–1664 Part 3 (1643),’’ SAG 17 (March 1997): 1–22; Craig, ‘‘New Sweden Settlers, 1638–1664 Part 4 (1644–1653),’’ SAG 17 (September 1997): 113–32. 2. Craig and Williams, Swedish Churches, 1:11–13. 3. Ibid., 1:12–13, 17; Stellan Dahlgren and Hans Norman, The Rise and Fall of New Sweden: Governor Johan Risingh’s Journal 1654–1655 in Its Historical Context (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1988), 157. 4. Dahlgren and Norman, Rise and Fall, 149–65. 5. Ibid., 171; Craig and Williams, Swedish Churches, 1:16–19. 6. Craig and Williams, Swedish Churches, 1:20–25; Dahlgren and Norman, Rise and Fall, 184–85. 7. Craig, ‘‘Settlers, Part 4,’’ 113–15. 8. Peter Lindestro¨m, Geographia Americae with an Account of the Delaware Indians Based on Surveys and Notes Made in 1654–1656, trans. and ed. Amandus Johnson (Philadelphia: Swedish Colonial Society, 1925), 172; Craig and Williams, Swedish Churches, 1:xi; Dahlgren and Norman, Rise and Fall, 167, 173–79, 185. 9. Dahlgren and Norman, Rise and Fall, 189, 193, 195, 199–201. 10. Ibid., 200; Amandus Johnson, The Swedish Settlements on the Delaware 1638– 1664, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Swedish Colonial Society, 1911), 2:691. 11. The fact that Risingh lacked a formal appointment as New Sweden’s governor until June 1655 may have created some ambiguity about the colony’s leadership, though Risingh was instructed to take charge if Printz had left the colony before Risingh arrived. Dahlgren and Norman, Rise and Fall, 27, 92, 98–99, 158–59, 199, 201, 207, 215. 12. ‘‘Report of Governor Johan Rising, 1655,’’ in Albert Cook Myers, ed., Narratives of Early Pennsylvania, West New Jersey, and Delaware 1630–1707 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1912), 156–57. 13. Ibid., 157. 14. Dahlgren and Norman, Rise and Fall, 171, 173.

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15. Printz to Oxenstierna, April 14, 1643, in Amandus Johnson, The Instruction for Johan Printz Governor of New Sweden (Philadelphia: Swedish Colonial Society, 1930), 153; Rev. Ericus Bjo¨rk’s letter to Superintendent of Gotland, Dr. Collmodin, October 29, 1697, in Amandus Johnson Papers, VI:59:1, pp. 78–79, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. 16. Dahlgren and Norman, Rise and Fall, 245; Charles T. Gehring, trans. and ed., New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch, Volumes XVIII–XIX Delaware Papers (Dutch Period) (Baltimore, Md.: Genealogical Publishing, 1981), 35–36. The council stated that Maquas (Mohawks) were among the Native attackers (Gehring, Dutch, 35) but Stuyvesant doubted they were involved because they were allies of the Dutch and had helped preserve peace (Gehring, Dutch, 41). Though the council did not mention Lenapes, Peter Lindestro¨m believed that when they heard of the Dutch attack, ‘‘our river savages showed their friendship and faithfulness towards us . . . wherefore they betook themselves (unknown to us) and went to Manhattan City, in New Holland, to exact revenge on our behalf, doing great damage to the Hollander[s]’’ (Lindestro¨m, Geographia Americae, 235–36). No additional evidence exists that Mantes, Armewamese, or other Lenapes actually participated in the attack on Manhattan. The Hackensacks and Tappans committed much of the initial destruction during the Peach War. Several Susquehannock sachems and their families lived with the Hackensacks. The Raritans and Navesinks continued to oppose New Netherland until the English conquest in 1664. They lived in what is now central and eastern New Jersey and had close relationships with the Lenapes. Robert S. Grumet, The Munsee Indians: A History (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2009), 70–72; Robert Steven Grumet, ‘‘ ‘We Are Not So Great Fools’: Changes in Upper Delawaran Socio-Political Life, 1630– 1758’’ (PhD dissertation, Rutgers University, 1979), 23–28, 33–55, 112–14, 143–95; Ives Goddard, ‘‘Delaware,’’ in Bruce G. Trigger, ed., Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 15: Northeast (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1978), 216; Allen W. Trelease, Indian Affairs in Colonial New York: The Seventeenth Century (Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat, 1971), 159. Additional sources on the Manhattan attack include Cynthia J. Van Zandt, Brothers among Nations: The Pursuit of Intercultural Alliances in Early America, 1580–1660 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 179–86; ‘‘Letter of Johannes Bogaert to Hans Bontemantel, 1655,’’ in J. Franklin Jameson, ed., Narratives of New Netherland 1609–1664 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1909), 381–86; and Donna Merwick, The Shame and the Sorrow: Dutch-Amerindian Encounters in New Netherland (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 219–27. 17. Dahlgren and Norman, Rise and Fall, 261; Gehring, Dutch, 44. 18. Dahlgren and Norman, Rise and Fall, 261–63. 19. Gehring, Dutch, 42–47. 20. Ibid., 48; John Romeyn Brodhead et al., eds., Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York, 15 vols. (Albany, N.Y.: Weed, Parsons, Printers, 1853–87; hereafter NYCD), 12:113–17. Despite the prohibition on selling liquor to the

226

Notes to Pages 96–108

Natives, the practice was common under the Dutch government. For examples, see Gehring, Dutch, 60, 179–80. 21. Gehring, Dutch, 50–52. For examples of the Dutch asking the Swedes to arrange meetings with the Lenapes, see Gehring, Dutch, 188–90, 193. 22. NYCD, 12:120–23. 23. Ibid., 12:124–26; Johnson, Swedish Settlements, 2:661; Peter Stebbins Craig, ‘‘New Sweden Settlers, 1638–1664 Part 7 (1656),’’ SAG 19 (March 1999): 1–3. 24. NYCD, 12:121, 124–28, 211–13; Craig, ‘‘Settlers, Part 1,’’ 75–76, 84; Craig, ‘‘Settlers, Part 3,’’ 3–5, 18–19; Craig, ‘‘Settlers, Part 7,’’ 5; Gehring, Dutch, 69, 193, 201, 204, 303; Gunlo¨g Fur, Colonialism in the Margins: Cultural Encounters in New Sweden and Lapland (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 227; Mark L. Thompson, The Contest for the Delaware Valley: Allegiance, Identity, and Empire in the Seventeenth Century (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2013), 154–60. 25. Gehring, Dutch, 77–79; Peter Stebbins Craig, 1671 Census of the Delaware (Philadelphia: Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania, 1999), passim. 26. NYCD, 12:219–22, 246. 27. C. A. Weslager and A. R. Dunlap, Dutch Explorers, Traders and Settlers in the Delaware Valley 1609–1664 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1961), 288–89; this is a contemporary English translation (Gehring, Dutch, 144, 351).Thirty Dutch miles equaled about 138 English miles (Gehring, Dutch, 365). 28. NYCD, 12:220–22. 29. Ibid., 12:212–13, 232–33. 30. Ibid., 12:246–47. The directors repeated the demand to scatter the Swedes in October 1659 (12:271). 31. Grumet, Munsee Indians, 72–78; NYCD, 12:254–55. 32. Grumet, Munsee Indians, 75–76; NYCD, 13:163; Gehring, Dutch, 152, 154–55, 162, 190, 192, 195, 199; NYCD, 12:297–98. 33. Gehring, Dutch, 186, 188, 198; NYCD, 12:305. 34. Gehring, Dutch, 189, 191–93, 201, 353. 35. Ibid., 193, 195, 197, 200–204, 207. 36. Charles T. Gehring, ed., New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch, vols. XX– XXI, Delaware Papers (English Period) (Baltimore, Md.: Genealogical Publishing, 1977), 11. 37. Gehring, Dutch, 243, 305, 314, 317, 322–23; Francis Jennings, The Ambiguous Iroquois Empire: The Covenant Chain Confederation of Indian Tribes with English Colonies from Its Beginnings to the Lancaster Treaty of 1744 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1984), 127–28; Daniel K. Richter, Trade, Land, Power: The Struggle for Eastern North America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 69–96; Daniel K. Richter, The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European Colonization (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 60–65. 38. Gehring, Dutch, 243, 264. 39. Ibid., 304–6, 312–14. It is unclear whether ‘‘the celebrated murder’’ was that of Joris Florissen or the servant.

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40. Ibid., 320–22; Richter, Ordeal of the Longhouse, 98–99; Jennings, Ambiguous Iroquois Empire, 127–30; Francis Jennings, ‘‘Glory, Death, and Transfiguration: The Susquehannock Indians in the Seventeenth Century,’’ Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 112 (February 15, 1968): 28; Grumet, Munsee Indians, 79. 41. Gehring, Dutch, 321, 326, 334, 337; Grumet, Munsee Indians, 77–78. Erwehongh was likely the sachem Renowewan who negotiated with the Dutch in 1646 and the English during the 1670s. 42. Gehring, Dutch, 336, 338–41. 43. Ibid., 342; Grumet, Munsee Indians, 103–6. Chapter 5 1. C. A. Weslager, The English on the Delaware: 1610–1682 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1967), 7–8, 176–95; C. A. Weslager and A. R. Dunlap, Dutch Explorers, Traders and Settlers in the Delaware Valley 1609–1664 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1961), 233–55; John Romeyn Brodhead et al., eds., Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York, 15 vols. (Albany, N.Y.: Weed, Parsons, Printers, 1853–87; hereafter NYCD), 12:457–58; Robert C. Ritchie, The Duke’s Province: A Study of New York Politics and Society, 1664–1691 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), 23–24. 2. Charles T. Gehring, ed., New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch, vols. XX–XXI, Delaware Papers (English Period) (Baltimore, Md.: Genealogical Publishing, 1977), 11; Francis Jennings, ‘‘Glory, Death, and Transfiguration: The Susquehannock Indians in the Seventeenth Century,’’ Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 112 (February 15, 1968): 26–30. 3. Mary Maples Dunn and Richard S. Dunn et al., eds., The Papers of William Penn, 5 vols. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981–87; hereafter PWP), 2:114; Charles T. Gehring, trans. and ed., New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch, vols. XVIII–XIX, Delaware Papers (Dutch Period) (Baltimore, Md.: Genealogical Publishing, 1981), 160–61, 211–23; Craig W. Horle et al., eds., Lawmaking and Legislators in Pennsylvania: A Biographical Dictionary, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991, 1997), 1:425; Christian J. Koot, ‘‘The Merchant, the Map, and Empire: Augustine Herrman’s Chesapeake and Interimperial Trade, 1644–73,’’ William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 67 (October 2010): 603–44; Christian J. Koot, Empire at the Periphery: British Colonists, Anglo-Dutch Trade, and the Development of the British Atlantic, 1621–1713 (New York: New York University Press, 2011), 77–79; Augustine Herrman, Virginia and Maryland as it is Planted and Inhabited this Present Year 1670 . . . W. Faithorne, sculpt. (London, 1673). 4. Gehring, English, 114, 145, 147; NYCD, 12:553; Edward Armstrong, ed., ‘‘Record of Upland Court; From the 14th of November, 1676, to the 14th of June, 1681,’’ Memoirs of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, vol. 7 (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1860), 120; Peter Stebbins Craig, 1671 Census of the Delaware (Philadelphia: Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania, 1999), 31.

228

Notes to Pages 115–124

5. These population estimates and the discussion that follows are constructed from Peter Craig’s extraordinary genealogical research on the 1671 census. See Craig, 1671 Census, and Gehring, English, 24–25. 6. Craig, 1671 Census, 13, 15–18. 7. Ibid., 57–60, 66, 68, 72–74; John A. Munroe, Colonial Delaware: A History (Millwood, N.Y.: KTO Press, 1978), 59–78; Horle et al., Lawmaking, 1:passim; Gehring, English, 140. 8. Craig, 1671 Census, 32, 55–56, 58. 9. Peter Stebbins Craig, ‘‘New Sweden Settlers, 1638–1664 Part 3 (1643),’’ Swedish American Genealogist (hereafter SAG), 17 (March 1997): 18; Peter Stebbins Craig, The 1693 Census of the Swedes on the Delaware (Winter Park, Fla.: SAG, 1993), 70–71. 10. My computation of New Jersey residents is based on the findings in Craig, 1693 Census. See also Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 60–75; Robert S. Grumet, The Munsee Indians: A History (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2009), 40; Michelle LeMaster, Brothers Born of One Mother: British-Native American Relations in the Colonial Southeast (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2012), 149–84; Chapter 8 below. 11. Craig, 1671 Census, 13–16; Horle et al., Lawmaking, 1:288. 12. NYCD, 12:463, 483, 490–92; Gehring, English, 27–30; Israel Acrelius, A History of New Sweden; or, The Settlements on the River Delaware, trans. William M. Reynolds, Memoirs of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, vol. 11 (Philadelphia: Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1874), 106–7; Evan Haefeli, ‘‘The Revolt of the Long Swede: Transatlantic Hopes and Fears on the Delaware, 1669,’’ Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 130 (April 2006): 171; Ritchie, Duke’s Province, 55, 105–6. 13. NYCD, 12:461–62. The Dutch magistrates Hans Block and Peter Alrichs and the Swede Israel Helm also received reappointments with Cock and Rambo. 14. Haefeli, ‘‘Revolt,’’ 137–80. 15. Craig, 1671 Census, 25; NYCD, 12:463–72; Gehring, English, 5–10; Samuel Smith, The History of New-Jersey, 2d ed. (Trenton, N.J.: William S. Sharp, 1877), 53. 16. Haefeli, ‘‘Revolt,’’ 175; NYCD, 12:467–69, 472. 17. NYCD, 12:463–66, 469–71. 18. NYCD, 12:465–66; Craig, 1671 Census, 32–33, 40; Gehring, Dutch, 268–69; Peter Stebbins Craig and Kim-Eric Williams, eds., Colonial Records of the Swedish Churches in Pennsylvania, 5 vols. (Philadelphia: Swedish Colonial Society, 2006–9), 1:41. 19. Haefeli, ‘‘Revolt,’’ 175; Craig, 1671 Census, 12, 13, 15–18. 20. Craig, 1671 Census, 22. 21. Ibid., 41–42, 44; Haefeli, ‘‘Revolt,’’ 171; Acrelius, History, 106–7; NYCD, 12:464. 22. Craig, 1671 Census, passim; Craig, 1693 Census, 12, 59–82, 135–58; Haefeli, ‘‘Revolt,’’ 179–80. See also Armstrong, ‘‘Record of Upland Court,’’ 77–80.

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23. Craig, 1671 Census, 68–69; Gehring, English, 93, 299. In 1679, the New Castle court called Van der Veer ‘‘mutinous’’ and characterized his way of life as ‘‘more that of Indian than a Christian’’ (Craig, 1693 Census, 113). 24. NYCD, 12:462–63. 25. Gehring, English, 15, 17–19. As Amy Schutt demonstrates, in many instances the Lenapes killed individuals in retaliation for the deaths of their relations. Amy C. Schutt, Peoples of the River Valleys: The Odyssey of the Delaware Indians (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 10. The murders of English people and their Dutch allies during Lovelace’s administration suggest a more expanded, though still limited, policy of war. 26. Gehring, English, 17–19; Schutt, Peoples, 29; Daniel G. Brinton and Rev. Albert Seqaqkind Anthony, eds., A Lenaˆpe´-English Dictionary (Philadelphia: Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1888), 40. 27. Gehring, English, 17–19. 28. Ibid., 11–12. 29. NYCD, 12:484–85; Craig, 1671 Census, 12–13; Armstrong, ‘‘Record of Upland Court,’’ 149. 30. Peter Lindestro¨m, Geographia Americae with an Account of the Delaware Indians Based on Surveys and Notes Made in 1654–1656, trans. and ed. Amandus Johnson (Philadelphia: Swedish Colonial Society, 1925), 130–31; John Brainerd to Ebenezer Pemberton, August 30, 1751, in Thomas Brainerd, The Life of John Brainerd (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Publication Committee, 1865), 233–37; Gregory Evans Dowd, A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745–1815 (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 27–36. 31. NYCD, 12:484–86. 32. Gehring, English, 30–31, 49–50. 33. NYCD, 12:488–49; Gehring, English, 32–33. 34. Smith, History of New-Jersey, 71–72. Chapter 6 1. C. A. Weslager, The English on the Delaware: 1610–1682 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1967), 204–6; Peter Stebbins Craig, 1671 Census of the Delaware (Philadelphia: Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania, 1999), 69; John Romeyn Brodhead et al., eds., Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York, 15 vols. (Albany, N.Y.: Weed, Parsons, 1853–87; hereafter NYCD), 12:507–8. 2. Francis Jennings, ‘‘Glory, Death, and Transfiguration: The Susquehannock Indians in the Seventeenth Century,’’ Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 112 (February 15, 1968): 31–32; NYCD, 12:511; Weslager, English, 200–202, 212–15; Leon de Valinger, Jr., ‘‘The Burning of the Whorekill, 1673,’’ Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 74 (October 1950): 473–87; Craig W. Horle et al., eds., Lawmaking and Legislators in Pennsylvania: A Biographical Dictionary, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991, 1997), 1:636–37.

230

Notes to Pages 133–139

3. Weslager, English, 216–18; NYCD, 12:513, 515; Horle et al., Lawmaking, 1:176–78; Peter R. Christoph and Florence A. Christoph, eds., The Andros Papers 1674–1676 (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1989), xiii–xvi; Jennings, ‘‘Glory,’’ 35; Robert S. Grumet, The Munsee Indians: A History (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2009), 132–34; Mary Lou Lustig, The Imperial Executive in America: Sir Edmund Andros, 1637–1714 (Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2002), 25–41. 4. NYCD, 12:516–18. 5. Ibid., 12:519–20. 6. Grumet, Munsee Indians, 134–35, 314–15; Christoph and Christoph, Andros Papers, 131–33, 291; NYCD, 12:519–20. 7. Charles T. Gehring, ed., New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch, vols. XX–XXI: Delaware Papers (English Period) (Baltimore, Md.: Genealogical Publishing, 1977), 71–72; Christoph and Christoph, Andros Papers, 131; Donald H. Kent, ed., Early American Indian Documents: Treaties and Laws, 1607–1789, vol. 1: Pennsylvania and Delaware Treaties, 1629–1737, gen. ed. Alden T. Vaughan (Washington, D.C.: University Publications of America, 1979), 41–50. 8. Gehring, English, 71–72; Daniel G. Brinton and Rev. Albert Seqaqkind Anthony, eds., A Lenaˆpe´-English Dictionary (Philadelphia: Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1888), 40. 9. Craig, 1671 Census, 32; Horle et al., Lawmaking, 1:656–58; Gehring, English, 67, 73–82. 10. NYCD, 12:462–63; Gehring, English, 25–27, 39, 76, 79. For examples of liquor sales and fraternization between colonists and Lenapes, see Charles T. Gehring, trans. and ed., New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch, vols: XVIII–XIX: Delaware Papers (Dutch Period) (Baltimore, Md.: Genealogical Publishing, 1981), 60, 179–80. On the sale of alcohol to Native Americans in New Netherland and other North American colonies, see Peter C. Mancall, Deadly Medicine: Indians and Alcohol in Early America (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1995), 39–49; and Sharon V. Salinger, Taverns and Drinking in Early America (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 27–28, 99–101. 11. Gunlo¨g Fur, Colonialism in the Margins: Cultural Encounters in New Sweden and Lapland (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 237–38; Jenny Hale Pulsipher, Subjects unto the Same King: Indians, English, and the Contest for Authority in Colonial New England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 1–36, 129–32. See also Gregory Evans Dowd, War under Heaven: Pontiac, the Indian Nations, and the British Empire (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 174–90, on conceptions of the status of Delawares and other Natives in the British empire in the eighteenth century. 12. Jennings, ‘‘Glory,’’ 33–35; Grumet, Munsee Indians, 139–42; Pulsipher, Subjects, 101–18, 131–32. 13. Grumet, Munsee Indians, 129, 135, 138–39; NYCD, 12:541; Christoph and Christoph, Andros Papers, 203–4; Gehring, English, 99; Kent, Early American, 37–40.

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14. Jennings, ‘‘Glory,’’ 36–39; NYCD, 12:542–43. 15. Kent, Early American, 40–41; Jennings, ‘‘Glory,’’ 35–40; Gehring, English, 104, 112; Edward Armstrong, ed., ‘‘Record of Upland Court; From the 14th of November, 1676, to the 14th of June, 1681,’’ Memoirs of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, vol. 7 (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1860), 49, 52–53; NYCD, 12:572. 16. Daniel K. Richter, Trade, Land, Power: The Struggle for Eastern North America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 97–112; Pulsipher, Subjects, 42, 119–34; Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (New York: W. W. Norton, 1975), 250–70; Jennings, ‘‘Glory,’’ 34–35; April Lee Hatfield, Atlantic Virginia: Intercolonial Relations in the Seventeenth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 198–204; Kathleen DuVal, The Native Ground: Indians and Colonists in the Heart of the Continent (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006); Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). 17. John E. Pomfret, The Province of West New Jersey 1609–1702: A History of the Origins of an American Colony (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1956), 57, 60–61, 71–85, 103–4; Mary Maples Dunn and Richard S. Dunn et al., eds., The Papers of William Penn, 5 vols. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981–87; hereafter PWP), 1:383–87; Peter O. Wacker, Land and People: A Cultural Geography of Preindustrial New Jersey: Origins and Settlement Patterns (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1975), 178, 225, 228, 275–83; William A. Whitehead et al., eds., Documents Relating to the Colonial History of the State of New Jersey (New Jersey Archives), 2 series, 35 vols. (Newark, Trenton, and Paterson, N.J.: Various publishers, 1880–1931), 1st ser., 21:559–60; Gehring, English, 132–36, 186–88. 18. PWP, 1:387–410; Pomfret, West New Jersey, 92–100; H. Clay Reed and George J. Miller, eds., The Burlington Court Book: A Record of Quaker Jurisprudence in West New Jersey 1680–1709 (Washington, D.C.: American Historical Association, 1944), xxviii. 19. Pomfret, West New Jersey, 102–8; Samuel Smith, The History of New-Jersey, 2d ed. (Trenton, N.J.: William S. Sharp, 1877), 124–25, 150–51. 20. Smith, History of New-Jersey, 93–95; Craig, 1671 Census, 71–72. 21. Pomfret, West New Jersey, 102; Smith, History of New-Jersey, 98–102; Thomas Budd, Good Order Established in Pennsilvania & New-Jersey in America (1685), 28, 29, 32, 33; Amy C. Schutt, Peoples of the River Valleys: The Odyssey of the Delaware Indians (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 42; Kent, Early American, 37–40; PWP, 2:265–66. 22. Armstrong, ‘‘Record of Upland Court,’’ 67, 74–75, 81; Gehring, English, 166, 175. 23. Gehring, English, 253; NYCD, 12:623–24. 24. NYCD, 12:626; Gehring, English, 256–57, 271. 25. NYCD, 12:626; Gehring, English, 275–76.

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Notes to Pages 146–152

26. Gehring, English, 295–97; Kent, Early American, 37–40; Grumet, Munsee Indians, 315. 27. Gehring, English, 311, 316; NYCD, 12:645–46, 650. 28. Gehring, English, 316, 340–41; NYCD, 12:658–60; Armstrong, ‘‘Record of Upland Court,’’ 194; Reed and Miller, Burlington Court Book, xxxi, 9–10. 29. Gehring, English, 353–55; NYCD, 12:668. 30. ‘‘A Further Account of the Province of Pennsylvania, by William Penn, 1685,’’ in Albert Cook Myers, ed., Narratives of Early Pennsylvania, West New Jersey, and Delaware 1630–1707 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1912), 260. Chapter 7 1. The term ‘‘old settlers’’ refers to the Europeans who lived in the Lenapewihittuck region prior to November 1675, when the Quakers under John Fenwick’s leadership founded Salem, West Jersey. The old settlers comprised a mix of nationalities dominated by the Swedes, Finns, and Dutch, but also included Germans and English who had intermarried with these groups and became part of the Swedish nation over previous decades. The region’s culture evolved from interactions among the Lenapes and old settlers prior to the Quaker migrations of the 1670s and 1680s. Gunlo¨g Fur points to the impact of relatively peaceful interaction between the Swedes and Lenapes on the subsequent development of the Delaware Valley in Colonialism in the Margins: Cultural Encounters in New Sweden and Lapland (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 274–76. 2. The Loyal Protestant, and True Domestick Intelligence, or News both from City and Country, 噛56 (September 17, 1681), published in Jean R. Soderlund et al., eds., William Penn and the Founding of Pennsylvania 1680–1684 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983), 81–82; Edward Armstrong, ed., ‘‘Record of Upland Court; From the 14th of November, 1676, to the 14th of June, 1681,’’ Memoirs of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, vol. 7 (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1860), 195–96; Mary Maples Dunn and Richard S. Dunn et al., eds., The Papers of William Penn, 5 vols. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981–87; hereafter PWP), 2:281–84. 3. PWP, 2:85–87; Record of the Courts of Chester County Pennsylvania 1681–1697 (Philadelphia: Colonial Society of Pennsylvania, 1910), 1:3; Armstrong, ‘‘Record of Upland Court,’’ 165, 189–90; Peter Stebbins Craig, The 1693 Census of the Swedes on the Delaware (Winter Park, Fla.: SAG, 1993), 6. Markham continued Otto Ernest Cock and Lasse Cock as Upland justices but not the long-serving Swedish official Israel Helm and the Englishmen George Brown and Henry Jones. Record of the Courts of Chester County, 1:3, 8; Craig W. Horle et al., eds., Lawmaking and Legislators in Pennsylvania: A Biographical Dictionary, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991, 1997), 1:211–18, 283–84, 517, 723–24, 731–32; PWP, 2:336–37; Craig, 1693 Census, 33–34. 4. The Duke of York’s Laws did not provide specific penalties for every crime. The Court of Assizes heard capital crimes, which included blasphemy, premeditated

Notes to Pages 152–156

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murder, bestiality, homosexual intercourse, kidnapping, treason, assault of one’s parent, arson, subsequent convictions for burglary or robbery, and falsely accusing another of a capital crime. For lesser crimes, which justices of the peace in a Court of Sessions heard, the Duke’s Laws specified enjoining marriage, fine, or corporal punishment for fornication; branding, whipping, and (for a third offense) death for burglary or robbery; and loss of an ear or more severe punishment for stealing hogs or canoes. Staughton George et al., comps. and eds., Charter to William Penn and Laws of the Province of Pennsylvania Passed Between the Years 1682 and 1700, Preceded by Duke of York’s Laws in Force from the Year 1676 to the Year 1682 (Harrisburg, Pa.: Lane S. Hart, State Printer, 1879), 3–4, 14–15, 24, 27–28, 59, 62–63, 70, 73; John Smolenski, Friends and Strangers: The Making of a Creole Culture in Colonial Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), 138–39; Jack D. Marietta and G. S. Rowe, Troubled Experiment: Crime and Justice in Pennsylvania, 1682–1800 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 10–11; William M. Offutt, Jr., Of ‘‘Good Laws’’ and ‘‘Good Men’’: Law and Society in the Delaware Valley, 1680–1710 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995), 20. 5. Armstrong, ‘‘Record of Upland Court,’’ 60–61, 70; Craig, 1693 Census, 32, 38– 41, 76. 6. Armstrong, ‘‘Record of Upland Court,’’ 176–78; Craig, 1693 Census, 39–40. 7. Armstrong, ‘‘Record of Upland Court,’’ 180–81; Record of the Courts of Chester County, 1:8–23. 8. Armstrong, ‘‘Record of Upland Court,’’ 69–70; Craig, 1693 Census, 84; PWP, 2:559. 9. Armstrong, ‘‘Record of Upland Court,’’ 46, 51–52, 62. As a servant, Richard Duckett could not marry Anna until after he fulfilled his term. It seems unlikely (though possible) that they married even then because he promised not to frequent her company in the future. 10. Armstrong, ‘‘Record of Upland Court,’’ 170, 175, 180, 182; Craig, 1693 Census, 59, 64, 71. 11. George et al., Charter, 27, 63. 12. Armstrong, ‘‘Record of Upland Court,’’ 194; Record of the Courts of Chester County, 1:3–23; H. Clay Reed and George J. Miller, eds., The Burlington Court Book: A Record of Quaker Jurisprudence in West New Jersey 1680–1709 (Washington, D.C.: American Historical Association, 1944), 1, 26; Offutt, Of ‘‘Good Laws,’’ 114. 13. Record of the Courts of Chester County, 1:10, 13, 14, 16–19, 22–23; Craig, 1693 Census, 67, 85; Peter Stebbins Craig, 1671 Census of the Delaware (Philadelphia: Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania, 1999), 22. 14. Record of the Courts of Chester County, 1:3, 6. Pumphrey was a West Jersey resident, Brinson petitioned for land near the Falls in 1679, and Brigham has not been identified. Reed and Miller, Burlington Court Book, 1, 10, 84; Charles T. Gehring, ed., New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch, vols. XX–XXI: Delaware Papers (English Period) (Baltimore, Md.: Genealogical Publishing, 1977), 253. See Smolenski, Friends and Strangers, 131–32, for another discussion of this case.

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Notes to Pages 156–160

15. Record of the Courts of Chester County, 1:7–8, 10, 13–14, 19, 22–23; PWP, 2:268. 16. Record of the Courts of Chester County, 1:23, 25. For the Philadelphia County Court, Penn continued English Quaker Thomas Fairman (who had served on the Upland Court) and appointed two new immigrants, the wealthy Anglican Nicholas More and Thomas Holme, a Quaker First Purchaser and surveyor-general of the colony. PWP, 2:121–23, 126–27, 130, 254, 314, 336–37, 374–75, 526, 605, 630–64; Horle et al., Lawmaking, 1:59–67, 211–18, 283–84, 404–5, 517, 523–24, 657, 723–24, 731–32. 17. Peter Stebbins Craig and Kim-Eric Williams, eds., Colonial Records of the Swedish Churches in Pennsylvania, 5 vols. (Philadelphia: Swedish Colonial Society, 2006–9), 2:9, 3:13; Horle et al., Lawmaking, 2:508–9. 18. Minutes of the Provincial Council of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: Jo. Severns & Co., 1852), 1:93–96; Craig, 1693 Census, 69–70, 111; Craig, 1671 Census, 81. 19. William M. Offutt, Jr., ‘‘The Limits of Authority: Courts, Ethnicity, and Gender in the Middle Colonies, 1670–1710,’’ in Christopher L. Tomlins and Bruce H. Mann, eds., The Many Legalities of Early America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 375–77; Extracts from the Minute Book of Common Pleas and Quarter Sessions Courts, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, 1684–1730, Historical Society of Pennsylvania (hereafter HSP), Philadelphia, 181–82, 188–89, 217, 223–23; Minutes of the Provincial Council of Pennsylvania, 1:367–68, 382–83, 442; Timothy J. Hayburn, ‘‘Who Should Die? The Evolution of Capital Punishment in Pennsylvania, 1681–1794’’ (PhD dissertation, Lehigh University, 2011), 34; Craig, 1693 Census, 56. 20. Craig, 1693 Census, 25–27, 56; Extracts from the Minute Book of Bucks County Courts, 188–89; Craig and Williams, Swedish Churches, 1:182–86. They specifically denied the need for a Finnish minister because all the Swedes and Finns understood Swedish. 21. Craig and Williams, Swedish Churches, 1:184. Benedict Anderson discusses this kind of community formation in Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (London: Verso, 1991), 5–7. On the Swedes’ development of an ethnic group, see also Daniel Lindmark, Ecclesia Plantanda: Swedishness in Colonial America (Umea˚: Kulturgra¨ns Norr, Umea˚ University, 2005), 31–39. Lindmark does not consider the Finns and other groups who made up this community. 22. On the significance of local and interest group politics in Pennsylvania government—and by extension, over the long term, in the United States government as well—see, for example, Gary B. Nash, ‘‘The Social Evolution of Preindustrial American Cities, 1700–1820: Reflections and New Directions,’’ Journal of Urban History 13 (February 1987): 120; Alan Tully, Forming American Politics: Ideals, Interests, and Institutions in Colonial New York and Pennsylvania (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), 424–30; Richard R. Beeman, The Varieties of Political Experience in Eighteenth-Century America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 204–16; and John M. Murrin, ‘‘A Roof without Walls: The Dilemma of American National Identity,’’ in Richard Beeman, Stephen Botein, and Edward C. Carter II,

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eds., Beyond Confederation: Origins of the Constitution and American National Identity (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987), 347. 23. PWP, 3:347–49, 354–64; J. William Frost, A Perfect Freedom: Religious Liberty in Pennsylvania (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 19–20; Gary B. Nash, Quakers and Politics: Pennsylvania, 1681–1726, new ed. (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1993), 144–80; Jon Butler, ‘‘Into Pennsylvania’s Spiritual Abyss: The Rise and Fall of the Later Keithians, 1693–1703,’’ Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography (hereafter PMHB) 101 (April 1977): 151–70. 24. Nash, Quakers and Politics, 143–44, 158–59; Craig and Williams, Swedish Churches, 2:20–21; PWP, 3:510, 521–22; Sally Schwartz, ‘‘A Mixed Multitude’’: The Struggle for Toleration in Colonial Pennsylvania (New York: New York University Press, 1987), 40. 25. Craig and Williams, Swedish Churches, 2:102–8; PWP, 3:567; Nash, Quakers and Politics, 211–16; Gertrude MacKinney, ed., Pennsylvania Archives, 8th ser., vol. 1 (n.p.: 1931), 259, 263, 264. 26. Craig and Williams, Swedish Churches, 2:47–50, 88, 114–15, 117–18, 142–50. Swedish families settled at Nitapkung at the falls of the Schuylkill and, after 1693, on grants from Penn in present Upper Merion Township, Montgomery County, and Amity Township, Berks County. Craig, 1693 Census, 10; Horle et al., Lawmaking, 2:508–9; Craig and Williams, Swedish Churches, 2:47, 145. 27. Frederick B. Tolles, James Logan and the Culture of Provincial America (Boston: Little, Brown, 1957), 70–75; Craig and Williams, Swedish Churches, 3:118–21; PWP, 3:609; Nash, Quakers and Politics, 216–17, 269–73. 28. Craig and Williams, Swedish Churches, 3:121–22, 125–29; Gertrude MacKinney, ed., Pennsylvania Archives, 8th ser., vol. 2 (n.p.: 1931), 856, 863–64, 882; Minutes of the Provincial Council of Pennsylvania, vol. 2 (Harrisburg, Pa.: Theophilus Fenn, 1838), 485, 500–502. 29. Craig and Williams, Swedish Churches, 3:129–31; William H. Egle, ed., Pennsylvania Archives, 2d ser., vol. 19 (Harrisburg, Pa.: E. K. Meyers, State Printer, 1800), 501–2; MacKinney, Pennsylvania Archives, 8th ser., 2:910. 30. Tolles, James Logan, 82–83; PWP, 4:665–66; Craig and Williams, Swedish Churches, 3:150–53, 199–200, 209–13, 215–17; Frost, Perfect Freedom, 23–25; Horle et al., Lawmaking, 2:30–31. In using the word ‘‘reduced,’’ the Swedes rewrote the history of European colonization in the region (see Chapters 2–6). Nevertheless, they were correct that the old settlers had reached peaceful accommodation with the Lenapes and Susquehannocks prior to Penn’s arrival. 31. Provincial council to William Penn, August 12, 1715, pp. 4, 7, Philadelphia, Penn Papers, HSP. The council referred to the Yamassee War, a major conflict in which a broad coalition of southeastern Natives fought the English of South Carolina. 32. Craig and Williams, Swedish Churches, 2:64, 88–89; Craig and Williams, Swedish Churches, 3:28; Amandus Johnson Papers, Series VI, Box 59, Folder 1, HSP. See also the ‘‘Letter of Thomas Paschall, 1683,’’ by an English settler, in Albert Cook

236

Notes to Pages 167–172

Myers, ed., Narratives of Early Pennsylvania, West New Jersey, and Delaware 1630–1707 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1912), 252. 33. Myers, Narratives, 426; Craig and Williams, Swedish Churches, 2:64; Minutes of the Provincial Council of Pennsylvania, 1:447–49; Gunlo¨g Fur, A Nation of Women: Gender and Colonial Encounters among the Delaware Indians (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 172–73; Francis Jennings, The Ambiguous Iroquois Empire: The Covenant Chain Confederation of Indian Tribes with English Colonies from Its Beginnings to the Lancaster Treaty of 1744 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1984), 204–5; Francis Jennings, ‘‘Glory, Death, and Transfiguration: The Susquehannock Indians in the Seventeenth Century,’’ Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 112 (February 15, 1968): 44; Francis Jennings, ‘‘ ‘Pennsylvania Indians’ and the Iroquois,’’ in Daniel K. Richter and James H. Merrell, eds., Beyond the Covenant Chain: The Iroquois and Their Neighbors in Indian North America, 1600–1800 (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1987), 81–82; Frederick B. Tolles, Meeting House and Counting House: The Quaker Merchants of Colonial Philadelphia 1682–1763 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1963), 17–18; Nash, Quakers and Politics, 201–2; Smolenski, Friends and Strangers, 124–25. 34. PWP, 2:128–29, 491; William A. Pencak and Daniel K. Richter, eds., Friends and Enemies in Penn’s Woods: Indians, Colonists, and the Racial Construction of Pennsylvania (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004), 34; ‘‘A Further Account of the Province of Pennsylvania, by William Penn, 1685,’’ in Myers, Narratives, 276. 35. PWP, 2:261–69. For the disputed land sale to Andros, see Chapter 6. 36. Ibid., 2:264–65. 37. C. A. Weslager, The Delaware Indians: A History (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1972), 167; Francis Jennings, ‘‘Brother Miquon: Good Lord!,’’ in Richard S. Dunn and Mary Maples Dunn, eds., The World of William Penn (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986), 198, 200; James O’Neil Spady, ‘‘Colonialism and the Discursive Antecedents of Penn’s Treaty with the Indians,’’ in Pencak and Richter, Friends and Enemies, 18–40. See Chapter 3 in this book regarding the 1654 treaty; PWP, 2:99–100, 120, 128–29, 376–77, 474; MacKinney, Pennsylvania Archives, 8th ser., 1:26, 36; Donald H. Kent, ed., Early American Indian Documents: Treaties and Laws, 1607–1789, vol. 1: Pennsylvania and Delaware Treaties, 1629–1737, gen. ed. Alden T. Vaughan (Washington, D.C.: University Publications of America, 1979), 75. See also the speech of Pennsylvania Governor Patrick Gordon in 1728 that reflected both the 1654 treaty between Naaman and the Swedes and the 1682 memorandum between the Lenape sachems and Markham; Stephen H. Cutcliffe, ‘‘Indians, Furs, and Empires: The Changing Policies of New York and Pennsylvania, 1674–1768’’ (PhD dissertation, Lehigh University, 1976), 24–26; Kent, Early American, 285–88. 38. PWP, 2:569–78. 39. Ibid., 2:261–69, 608; Kent, Early American, 66–67. 40. Weslager, Delaware Indians, 169; PWP, 3:33.

Notes to Pages 173–178

237

41. PWP, 3:107, 113, 131, 158; Gary B. Nash, ‘‘The First Decade in Pennsylvania: Letters of William Markham and Thomas Holme to William Penn: Part I,’’ PMHB 90 (July 1966): 336, 349; Kent, Early American, 80; Francis Jennings, ‘‘The Scandalous Indian Policy of William Penn’s Sons: Deeds and Documents of the Walking Purchase,’’ Pennsylvania History 37 (January 1970): 29–32. Thomas Holme’s 1687 map of surveyed land in Pennsylvania indicates that surveying had stopped between Neshaminy Creek and the Delaware River at the approximate northern limit of the 1682 deed; PWP, 2:649. 42. PWP, 3:106–7, 112–13; Amy C. Schutt, Peoples of the River Valleys: The Odyssey of the Delaware Indians (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 63–64; Minutes of the Provincial Council of Pennsylvania, 1:187–88. 43. Schutt, Peoples, 74–81; Weslager, Delaware Indians, 174–87; Cutcliffe, ‘‘Indians, Furs, and Empires,’’ 122–23. In addition to deerskins, which were dominant in the Pennsylvania and New Jersey fur trade, trappers and traders could obtain the pelts of minks, bears, beavers, raccoons, foxes, fishers, otters, wolves, wildcats, and other animals. Craig and Williams, Swedish Churches, 3:147, 201, 231; PWP, 2:242–43, 614–15; PWP, 3:157; Craig, 1693 Census, 30; Nash, ‘‘First Decade in Pennsylvania,’’ 332, 334; Francis Jennings, ‘‘The Indian Trade of the Susquehanna Valley,’’ Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 110 (December 16, 1966): 409–10; Albright G. Zimmerman, ‘‘Daniel Coxe and the New Mediterranean Sea Company,’’ PMHB 76 (January 1952): 86–96. 44. Jennings, ‘‘Indian Trade,’’ 410–24; PWP, 4:20–22. Chapter 8 1. Amy C. Schutt, Peoples of the River Valleys: The Odyssey of the Delaware Indians (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 74–81; C. A. Weslager, The Delaware Indians: A History (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1972), 174–87; Fred Anderson, Crucible of War: The Seven Years’ War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754–1766 (New York: Vintage, 2000); Gregory Evans Dowd, A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745–1815 (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992); Gregory Evans Dowd, War under Heaven: Pontiac, the Indian Nations, and the British Empire (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002); James H. Merrell, Into the American Woods: Negotiators on the Pennsylvania Frontier (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999); Jane T. Merritt, At the Crossroads: Indians and Empires on a Mid-Atlantic Frontier, 1700–1763 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003; Matthew C. Ward, Breaking the Backcountry: The Seven Years’ War in Virginia and Pennsylvania, 1754–1765 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003); Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). 2. Robert S. Grumet, The Munsee Indians: A History (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2009), 208–10, 230–45, 315; Donald H. Kent, ed., Early American Indian

238

Notes to Pages 178–181

Documents: Treaties and Laws, 1607–1789, vol. 1: Pennsylvania and Delaware Treaties, 1629–1737, gen. ed. Alden T. Vaughan (Washington, D.C.: University Publications of America, 1979), 476–77. 3. Samuel Smith, The History of New-Jersey, 2d ed. (Trenton, N.J.: William S. Sharp, 1877), 95–97; Burlington County Court [of Quarter Sessions] Minutes, 1709– 17, MS 噛14, p. 48, Burlington County Historical Society, Burlington, N.J.; H. Clay Reed and George J. Miller, eds., The Burlington Court Book: A Record of Quaker Jurisprudence in West New Jersey 1680–1709 (Washington, D.C.: American Historical Association, 1944), 92–93. 4. William A. Whitehead et al., eds., Documents Relating to the Colonial History of the State of New Jersey (New Jersey Archives), 2 series, 35 vols. (Newark, Trenton, and Paterson, N.J.: Various publishers, 1880–1931; hereafter NJCD), 1st ser., 4:275–85. 5. Ibid., 1st ser., 4:275, 278, 280–81. 6. Reed and Miller, Burlington Court Book, 46–47, 62, 125, 166–67, 218, 294–95; Transcription of the First Quarter Century Documents of Old Gloucester County New Jersey, vol. 1, pp. 8, 216, Gloucester County Historical Society, Woodbury, N.J.; Peter Stebbins Craig, The 1693 Census of the Swedes on the Delaware (Winter Park, Fla.: SAG, 1993), 30, 67–68. See also Amandus Johnson, trans., The Journal and Biography of Nicholas Collin 1746–1831 (Philadelphia: New Jersey Society of Pennsylvania, 1936), 224–25, 289. 7. Mary Maples Dunn and Richard S. Dunn et al., eds., The Papers of William Penn, 5 vols. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981–87; hereafter PWP), 2:264–65; Smith, History of New-Jersey, 94–95, 208; Charles T. Gehring, ed., New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch, vols. XX–XXI: Delaware Papers (English Period) (Baltimore, Md.: Genealogical Publishing, 1977), 231; Ewan M. Woodward and John F. Hageman, History of Burlington and Mercer Counties, New Jersey (Philadelphia: Everts and Peck, 1883), 333, 336; George DeCou, Historical Sketches of Crosswicks and Neighborhood (Burlington, N.J.: Burlington County Historical Society, 1956), 14; Jonathan Edwards, ed., Memoirs of the Rev. David Brainerd; Missionary to the Indians on the Borders of New-York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, rev. ed. Sereno Edwards Dwight (New Haven, Conn.: Sherman Converse, 1822), 260, 262. See also Robert Daiutolo, Jr., ‘‘The Early Quaker Perception of the Indian,’’ Quaker History 72 (Fall 1983): 103–19. 8. Franklin W. Earl to Samuel Allinson, January 11, 1875, in Allinson Family Papers, Box 8, ‘‘Indians,’’ Quaker Collection, Haverford College, Haverford, Pa.; NJCD, 1st ser., 30:210; NJCD, 1st ser., 23:17; Anna Bustill Smith, ‘‘A Communication,’’ Journal of Negro History 10 (1925): 645. 9. William N. Redstreake, Genealogy of the Redstreake Family, January 20, 2002; my thanks to Robert T. Redstreake for sharing his family’s history with me. William Steward and Rev. Theophilus G. Steward, Gouldtown (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1913), 10–11, 62–63; ‘‘Reincke’s Journal of a Visit among the Swedes of West Jersey, 1745,’’ Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 33, no. 1 (1909): 101; Terry G.

Notes to Pages 181–187

239

Jordan and Matti Kaups, The American Backwoods Frontier: An Ethnic and Ecological Interpretation (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 87–93; Robert Greenhalgh Albion and Leonidas Dodson, eds., Philip Vickers Fithian: Journal, 1775– 1776 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1934), 249–50; John Fea, The Way of Improvement Leads Home: Philip Vickers Fithian and the Rural Enlightenment in Early America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 129–30. 10. This generalization is based on my reading of Burlington County court records and New Jersey Supreme Court records. Natives were sometimes sued for debt or for trespass in the Supreme Court. New Jersey Supreme Court records, New Jersey State Archives, Trenton; Reed and Miller, Burlington Court Book; Burlington County Court minutes, 1709–17, and Indictments, 1731–68, Burlington County Historical Society, Burlington, N.J. 11. Northampton Towne Book, 1697–1768, New Jersey State Archives; New Hanover Township Minute Book, 1729–74, New Jersey State Archives; Chesterfield Town Book, 1692–1712, New Jersey State Archives; Chesterfield Town Book, 1712–74, Burlington County Historical Society; Nottingham Township Minute Book, 1692–1710, 1752–72, published in Proceedings of the New Jersey Historical Society 58 (1940): 22–44, 74, 124–38, 179–92. 12. Smith, History of New-Jersey, 440–41; NJCD, 1st ser., 11:129–33; Grumet, Munsee Indians, 144, 197, 222, 231, 239–40; Kent, Early American, 94–96, 477. 13. NJCD, 1st ser., 11:129–33; Grumet, Munsee Indians, 240, 374; Kent, Early American, 282–302; Merrell, Into the American Woods, 158–60; Anthony F. C. Wallace, King of the Delawares: Teedyuscung 1700–1763 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1949; reprint, Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1990), 24, 197–200; Dowd, War under Heaven, 66. 14. Kent, Early American, 282, 286–87; Merrell, Into the American Woods, 160–63. 15. Kent, Early American, 296; Schutt, Peoples, 74–78. 16. Grumet, Munsee Indians, 245–49, 377; Steven Craig Harper, Promised Land: Penn’s Holy Experiment, the Walking Purchase, and the Dispossession of Delawares, 1600–1763 (Bethlehem, Pa.: Lehigh University Press, 2006), 46–67; Wallace, King of the Delawares, 19–26; Francis Jennings, ‘‘The Scandalous Indian Policy of William Penn’s Sons: Deeds and Documents of the Walking Purchase,’’ Pennsylvania History 37 (January 1970): 19–37; Schutt, Peoples, 81–87; Kent, Early American, 457–59. 17. Grumet, Munsee Indians, 248–50; Harper, Promised Land, 67–73; Wallace, King of the Delawares, 26–30; Jennings, ‘‘Scandalous Indian Policy,’’ 37–39; Moses Tatamie’s Acct. of Indian Claims, 1757, Etting Collection, folder 32:94, Misc. MSS, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. 18. Edwards, Memoirs of David Brainerd, 3–5, 203–24; Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge (hereafter SSPCK) records, Minutes of Committee Meetings, GD 95/2, 6:394, 533, 599, National Archives of Scotland (NAS), Edinburgh. 19. Richard W. Pointer, ‘‘ ‘Poor Indians’ and the ‘Poor in Spirit’: The Indian Impact on David Brainerd,’’ New England Quarterly 67 (September 1994): 408–9; Edwards, Memoirs of David Brainerd, 274–75, 290–91, 298.

240

Notes to Pages 187–192

20. NJCD, 1st ser., 6:406–7; Edwards, Memoirs of David Brainerd, 298, 316–18. 21. Edwards, Memoirs of David Brainerd, 328, 360, 362–63; Thomas Brainerd, The Life of John Brainerd (New York: A. D. F. Randolph, 1865), 253–59; New Jersey Supreme Court cases 噛24262, 噛26476, 噛26886, 噛26888; New Jersey Supreme Court Minute Book, 1749–52, pp. 11, 37, 43, 49, 62, 75, and 87, New Jersey State Archives. The SSPCK used its influence within the royal government to try to block Morris’s suit. The minutes, however, include no report of whether or not the effort was successful. SSPCK, Minutes of General Meetings, GD95/1, 4:450–51, NAS. 22. Peter O. Wacker, Land and People: A Cultural Geography of Preindustrial New Jersey: Origins and Settlement Patterns (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1975), 85, 90–91; Smith, History of New-Jersey, 440–46; N.J. Secretary of State Deeds, Book I-2, 85–92, New Jersey State Archives; Edward McM. Larrabee, ‘‘Recurrent Themes and Sequences in North American Indian-European Culture Contact,’’ Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, n.s., 66, pt. 7 (1976): 7–11; Thomas Store et al. to Israel Pemberton, March 8, 1758, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting Indian Committee records, AA1:427, Quaker Collection, Haverford College, Haverford, Pa. (hereafter PYMIC). 23. Smith, History of New-Jersey, 443–45; C. A. Weslager, ‘‘Delaware Indian Name Giving and Modern Practice,’’ in Herbert C. Kraft, ed., A Delaware Indian Symposium (Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1974), 135–41. 24. Smith, History of New-Jersey, 442. 25. Wallace, King of the Delawares; Paul A. W. Wallace, Indians in Pennsylvania, rev. ed. William A. Hunter (Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1999), 182–83; Marshall Joseph Becker, ‘‘Teedyuscung and His Kin: Cultural Activities and Movements among 18th Century Native Americans from Southern New Jersey as Inferred from a Reconstruction of Familial Relationships’’ (unpublished MS, New Jersey State Library, Trenton, N.J., 1985); Carl John Fliegel, comp., Index to the Records of the Moravian Mission among the Indians of North America, 3 vols. (New Haven, Conn., 1970), s.v. Gideon No. 259; A Treaty Held at Easton in July 1756 between the Governor of Pennsylvania and the Delaware Indians, PYMIC, AA1:143–44. 26. Smith, History of New-Jersey, 444–45; Craig, 1693 Census, 59–63, 126–27; Albert Rau, ‘‘Moravian Missions and Colonial Politics,’’ Transactions of the Moravian Historical Society, 11 (1936): 143; Fliegel, Index, s.v. Isaac Still; Minutes of Meeting, March 24, 1758, PYMIC, AA1:443–44. 27. A Treaty Held at Easton in July 1756, PYMIC, AA1:143–44; Minutes of Treaty at Easton, July 19, 1756, PYMIC, AA1:155–56; Fliegel, Index, s.v. Joe Peepy, Polly No. 680; Merrell, Into the American Woods, 88–89; Brainerd, John Brainerd, 365–70; Paul A. W. Wallace, ed., Thirty Thousand Miles with John Heckewelder (Pittsburgh, 1958), 135; SSPCK records, Eleazar Wheelock to William Hyslop, December 1, 1760, GD95/ 12/2, NAS. 28. David Brainerd’s Journal 1745 (MS), American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, 1, 6–7; Edwards, Memoirs of David Brainerd, 210–14; William A. Hunter,

Notes to Pages 192–197

241

‘‘Moses (Tunda) Tatamy, Delaware Indian Diplomat,’’ in Kraft, Delaware Indian Symposium, 76, 82, 84–85; Merrell, Into the American Woods, 88–91; Fliegel, Index, s.v. Tatemy; Moses Tatamy’s Account of Indian Complaints, PYMIC, AA1:64–65; N.J. Supreme Court Case 噛41011, New Jersey State Archives. 29. Brainerd, John Brainerd, 315–16, 405–6; Weslager, Delaware Indians, 271; John Hunt’s Journal, published in Friends’ Miscellany, vol. 10: Containing Journals of the Lives, Religious Exercises, and Labours in the Work of the Ministry of Joshua Evans and John Hunt, Late of New Jersey (Philadelphia: J. Richards, 1837), 226; Larrabee, ‘‘Recurrent Themes,’’ 13–17; NJCD, 1st ser., 10:447; Gregory Evans Dowd, ‘‘Declarations of Dependence: War and Inequality in Revolutionary New Jersey, 1776–1815,’’ New Jersey History 103 (February 1985): 58. On the experiences of Jersey Delaware Joseph Machi of Cranbury, who joined the New Jersey forces, see William Johnson to Simon Frasier, Fort Johnson, N.Y., March 1, 1759, in Thomas Gage Papers 1754–1783, American Series, vol. 2, William L. Clements Library, Ann Arbor, Michigan. My thanks to Thomas Agostini for this reference. 30. Michael N. McConnell, A Country Between: The Upper Ohio Valley and Its Peoples, 1724–1774 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992), 225–26, 248–54; New Jersey Historical Society manuscript of N.J. council minutes, Burlington, May 30, 1771, quoted in Weslager, Delaware Indians, 271–72; Weslager, Delaware Indians, 252, 284; Brainerd, John Brainerd, 369–73; Earl P. Olmstead, Blackcoats among the Delaware: David Zeisberger on the Ohio Frontier (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1991), 10–11, 222; Wallace, Indians in Pennsylvania, 179; Wallace, Thirty Thousand Miles, 96, 427; Amy C. Schutt, ‘‘Forging Identities: Native Americans and Moravian Missionaries in Pennsylvania and Ohio, 1765–1782’’ (PhD dissertation, Indiana University, 1995), 147; Daniel K. Richter, Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001), 210–12. 31. New Jersey Historical Society manuscript of N.J. council minutes, June 1, 1771, quoted in Weslager, Delaware Indians, 273. 32. Weslager, Delaware Indians, 8–9, 274–78; Larrabee, ‘‘Recurrent Themes,’’ 15–17; Carla Messinger, ‘‘Hiding in Plain Sight,’’ Lenape Olam 22 (Spring/Early Summer 2001): 1, 3; Grumet, Munsee Indians, 208, 284–85, James W. Brown and Rita T. Kohn, eds., Long Journey Home: Oral Histories of Contemporary Delaware Indians (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), xxiv–xxvii. Conclusion 1. Thomas Brainerd, The Life of John Brainerd (New York: A. D. F. Randolph, 1865), 230–39; Gregory Evans Dowd, A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745–1815 (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 30. 2. Samuel Smith, The History of New-Jersey, 2d ed. (Trenton, N.J.: William S. Sharp, 1877), v–vi, 144; Jean R. Soderlund, Quakers and Slavery: A Divided Spirit

242

Notes to Pages 197–203

(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985), 54–86; Jean R. Soderlund, ‘‘African Americans and Native Americans in John Woolman’s World,’’ in Mike Heller, ed., The Tendering Presence: Essays on John Woolman (Wallingford, Pa.: Pendle Hill, 2003), 152, 162–63; Christina Snyder, Slavery in Indian Country: The Changing Face of Captivity in Early America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2010), 46–79; Alan Gallay, The Indian Slave Trade: The Rise of the English Empire in the American South, 1670–1717 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002). 3. James T. Mitchell and Henry Flanders, comps., The Statutes at Large of Pennsylvania from 1682 to 1801, Volume 2: 1700 to 1712 (Harrisburg, Pa.: Clarence M. Busch, 1896), 236–37, 433–36; J. William Frost, ed., The Quaker Origins of Antislavery (Norwood, Pa.: Norwood Editions, 1980), 131; Soderlund, Quakers and Slavery, 21, 42, 166; Soderlund, ‘‘African Americans,’’ 162–63; Brycchan Carey, From Peace to Freedom: Quaker Rhetoric and the Birth of American Antislavery, 1657–1761 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2012), 106–23. 4. Billy G. Smith and Richard Wojtowicz, Blacks Who Stole Themselves: Advertisements for Runaways in the ‘‘Pennsylvania Gazette,’’ 1728–1790 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989), 34, 66–67. 5. ‘‘Printz to Oxenstierna, April 14, 1643,’’ in Amandus Johnson, The Instruction for Johan Printz Governor of New Sweden (Philadelphia: Swedish Colonial Society, 1930), 153; Thomas Budd, Good Order Established in Pennsilvania & New-Jersey in America (1685), 32–33. 6. Francis Jennings, The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism, and the Cant of Conquest (New York: W. W. Norton, 1976), 128–45. 7. Stephen H. Cutcliffe, ‘‘Indians, Furs, and Empires: The Changing Policies of New York and Pennsylvania, 1674–1768’’ (PhD dissertation, Lehigh University, 1976), 88, 151, 182, 223, 260; John J. McCusker and Russell R. Menard, The Economy of British America 1607–1789 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), 194–99; Marianne S. Wokeck, Trade in Strangers: The Beginnings of Mass Migration to North America (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999). 8. Snyder, Slavery in Indian Country, 1–79, 248. 9. John M. Murrin, ‘‘A Roof without Walls: The Dilemma of American National Identity,’’ in Richard Beeman, Stephen Botein, and Edward C. Carter II, eds., Beyond Confederation: Origins of the Constitution and American National Identity (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987), 347.

index

Ackehorn, 16, 72, 74, 78, 81 affirmation controversy, 165–66 Africans, enslaved, 60–61, 112, 182, 196–97, 201 Ahopameck, 79–81 alcohol: Europeans and, 96, 109, 128, 134, 137–38, 144, 152, 155, 180, 188; Native Americans and, 96, 103, 125, 128, 134, 137–38, 144, 180, 188 Alrichs, Jacob, 101 Alrichs, Peter, 114, 125–28, 132–33, 146, 157 Anderson, Virginia DeJohn, 47–48 Andros, Edmund, 9, 124; Bacon’s Rebellion and, 139; King Philip’s War and, 139–40; Lenapes and, 133–140, 144–48, 169; Maryland and, 140–41; Munsees and, 135–36; Susquehannocks and, 140–41; Swedish nation and, 145–48; West New Jersey and, 142–48 Anglicans, 160, 162, 165 Anne (queen of England), 163, 166 Armewamese, 2, 16, 106–7, 113, 126, 167. See also Lenapes Bailyn, Bernard, 5–6 Beeckman, Willem, 101–10 Bengtsson, Anders, 98, 150, 157 Bethel mission, 187–88, 192–94 Biles, William, 147, 152 Bjo¨rk, Ericus, 18, 65, 93, 161–62, 166–68 Block, Hans, 118, 124, 128–29 Blommaert, Samuel, 36, 37 Boyer, Alexander (Sander), 75, 101, 104 Brainerd, David, 181, 185, 187–88, 191 Brainerd, John, 188, 191–92, 196, 202 Brockholls, Anthony, 147, 150 Brotherton (N.J.) reservation, 188, 192–94 Budd, Thomas, 143

Burgh, Albert, 36, 37 Burlington, settlement of, 141–45. See also West New Jersey Byllynge, Edward, 142–43 Calvin, Stephen, 188, 193–94 Campanius, Johan, 23, 66 Cantwell, Edmund, 117, 125–26, 128–29, 133–37, 140, 146, 153, 156 Carr, John, 112, 117, 118, 122, 125, 129 Carr, Robert, 112, 120 Carteret, Philip, 129, 135, 138 Charles I (king of England), 42, 61, 138 Charles II (king of England), 112, 133, 138, 147 Chesapeake Native, 45–51; conflict with English, 50–51; conflict with Susquehannocks, 49–51; European livestock and, 46–48 Christina (queen of Sweden), 58–59, 62, 81, 87, 88; coat of arms of, 55–57 City of Amsterdam colony. See New Amstel colony Claiborne, William, 49–53 Claus, Merrien, 193–94 Cock, Lars (Lasse), 117, 119, 136–37, 143, 146; fur trade and, 175; Pennsylvania and, 150, 153–58, 169–71, 173 Cock, Ma˚ns, 173, 175, 180 Cock, Otto Ernest, 150, 152–53, 157 Cock, Peter, 56, 98, 105, 109, 117, 125–26, 128–29, 137, 145; Long Swede revolt and, 120–22 Cohanseys, 2, 114, 123, 132, 136, 142, 167. See also Lenapes Coleman, Hendrick Andersson, 119, 121–22 Colve, Anthony, 132–33 Conestogas, 183. See also Susquehannocks

244

Index

Conoys, 183 Corsz, Arent, 75, 77 Crewcorne settlement, 145–47 Dalbo, Anders, 68, 99 Danckaerts, Jasper, 44 de Laet, Johan, 24, 30 Delaware colony, Duke of York’s (1664–73, 1674–81), 1, 7, 112–49; censuses of, 115–20; conferences with Lenapes, 125–26, 129–30, 136–39; conflict with Lenapes, 113, 124–31, 145–48; conflict with Swedish nation, 128–31; Dutch reconquest of, 132–33; government of, 133; land policies of, 114, 120–21; Long Swede revolt in, 113, 120–25; population of, 115–19; relations with Lenapes, 133–37, 139, 143–48; relations with Susquehannocks, 140–41 Delawares. See Lenapes Delaware Valley, mythology of, 2, 4, 10 de Rasie`re, Isaack, 21, 24, 32 de Sille, Nicasius, 98 de Vries, David, 8, 19, 21; peace with Lenapes, 40, 48; Susquehannocks and, 42; Swanendael massacre and, 38–40, 44; trade with Lenapes, 40–41; Virginia and, 42 d’Hinojossa, Alexander, 101, 104, 107, 109–10, 112 Douty, Philip, 188 Dutch: conflict with English, 58, 61–62; conflict with Esopus Indians, 93, 103–6; conflict with Munsees, 93–97, 103–5; conflict with New Sweden, 58, 74–76, 79, 90, 93–95; exploration of, 26–28; fur trade of, 7, 9, 13, 26–28, 30, 32–33, 35, 40–45, 49, 53, 55, 57, 62, 71–72, 75, 92, 96–97, 99, 102, 107, 114; Lenapes and, 28–29, 72, 74–75, 77–79, 85, 101–2; South River colonies, 96–112; Susquehannocks and, 107–9; takeover of Duke of York’s Delaware colony, 132–33. See also Dutch West India Company (WIC); New Amstel colony; New Netherland Dutch South River colonies (1655–64, 1673–74), 7, 96–112; takeover by English, 112, 132–33. See also Dutch; Dutch West India Company Dutch United East India Company, 26

Dutch West India Company (WIC), 28–30, 32, 42, 62, 77–78, 101–3; colony on South River, 96–111; patroonships of, 35–40, 45, 48, 53; peace with Lenapes, 40, 49; whale fishery of, 36. See also Dutch; New Netherland; Swanendael Eesanques, 36 English: conflict with Chesapeake Natives, 50–51; conflict with Dutch, 58, 61–62; conflict with New Sweden, 58, 61–62; conquest of New Amstel colony, 110; explorers of, 42–43; fur trade of, 31, 33, 42–43, 49–53, 57, 61, 175. See also Delaware colony, Duke of York’s; Maryland; New England; New Jersey; Pennsylvania; Pennsylvania government; Virginia; West New Jersey Erwehongh. See Renowewan Esopus Indians, 9, 93, 103–6, 109 Esopus War, 5, 9, 103–6, 109 Evelyn, Robert, 17 Fabritius, Jacobus, 124, 141, 159 Falkenburg, Hendrick Jacobs, 143, 180 Fenwick, John, 136, 141–42 Finns, 220 n.16. See also New Sweden; Swedish nation Fischer, David Hackett, 10–11 Fletcher, Benjamin, 161 Fluviander, Israel Holg, 23 forts: Altena, 94, 101–2, 104, 105, 107, 109, 112; Beversreede, 73, 77; Casimir, 76–77, 79, 88, 94, 96–97, 99; Christina, 56, 60, 73, 76–77, 90–91, 95, 96, 98; Elfsborg, 63, 73, 76, 90; Nassau, 30, 33, 40, 45, 55, 56, 62, 73, 76, 77, 214 n.32; Trinity, 79, 88–89, 90, 93–94, 99 Fox, George, 1, 2, 4 Franklin, William, 193–94 French, 32, 168, 175, 177, 185 Fur, Gunlo¨g, 168 Goddard, Ives, 17 Godijn, Samuel, 36, 37, 39, 48 Gookin, Charles, 163, 165 Gordon, Patrick, 183–84 Haefeli, Evan, 120 Hansson, Mats, 98

Index Harmer, Gotfried, 58 Helm, Israel, 119, 125–26, 136–37, 143, 145–46 Hendricksen, Cornelis, 13, 28 Herrman, Augustine, map of, 2, 3, 16–17, 114 Herrman, Casparus, 114, 157 Herrman, Ephraim, 114, 145–46 Heyes, Peter, 36 Hithquoquean, 178 Holme, Thomas, 158, 172–73; map of, 174 Hoskins, Robert, 145 Hossitt, Gillis, 36, 38, 39 Hudde, Andries, 73–74, 108 Hudson, Henry, 26–28 Hunter, Robert, 178–79 Hurons, 108; fur trade of, 30; mortality among, 17–18, 85 Huygen, Hendrick, 58, 74, 97, 107 Hvivan, 81 indentured servitude, 201–2 Iroquois, 5, 12, 28, 202; attack Lenapes, 106–7; conflict with Susquehannocks, 106–8; fur trade of, 30–31; killings of Europeans, 107; King Philip’s War and, 139–40; lands of, 8; misconceptions about, 13; mortality among, 17–18, 84–85, 106, 108; relations with Lenapes, 168, 193; Walking Purchase and, 184–85 Jacquet, Jean Paul, 96–97, 99 James, Duke of York (James II), 92, 112, 113, 120, 133, 138, 142–43, 145, 147, 150, 161; laws of, 152, 154, 232–33 n.4 Jegoe, Peter, 125, 143 Jennings, Francis, 140 Jersey Delawares. See Lenapes Juet, Robert, 26–27 Kalm, Peter, 18 Keithian controversy, 161 Kent Island (Md.), English settlement on, 49–53 Kieft, Willem, 53, 62, 69 Kleynties, 28 Kling, Ma˚ns Nilsson, 58, 66 Kraft, Herbert, 17 Lalement, Je´roˆme, 108 Lappawinsa, 184–86

245

Laurens, Andries, 104 Lenapes, 1–6; alliance with New Sweden, 58, 83, 86, 92; alliance with Swedish nation, 95–97, 102–6, 110–11, 113, 117, 120–21, 127–31, 135, 140, 145–48; apparel of, 25; Chesapeake Natives and, 46; Christianity and, 12, 22–23, 83–84, 86, 179, 181, 185, 187–93, 196–97, 202; conferences with Duke of York’s Delaware colony, 125–26, 129–30, 136–39; conflict with English, 40, 113, 124–31, 145–47; Dutch and, 40, 49, 72–77, 93, 101–2, 104; economy of, 13, 16, 18, 19, 188, 211 n.3; Esopus War and, 103–5, 109; European livestock and, 46–48; European technology and, 25; expectations in land sales, 38, 48, 57–58, 74, 77–79, 81, 85, 101–2, 139, 169–71; gender roles of, 19, 41; groups of, 13–14, 16, 17, 114; Iroquois and, 106–8, 168, 184–85, 193; killed by Europeans, 104, 134; killings of European settlers, 39, 66–67, 70, 92, 124, 127–30, 132, 134–36, 139; King Philip’s War and, 139–40; land sales of, 55–56, 61–62, 72, 74–75, 77–81, 101, 169–71; lands of, 6, 8, 13, 15–16, 189, 191; language of, 6, 22, 23, 29–30; Long Swede revolt and,120–25; marriage and family of, 19, 21, 41; migration of, 106, 113, 168, 173, 177, 185, 193–95; misconceptions about, 4–5, 12, 218 n.4; mortality among, 17, 83–85, 106–8, 113, 127, 135, 143–44, 167; mourning war and, 39, 44, 70, 84, 106, 125, 127–30, 144, 203; Munsees and, 24, 106, 110–11, 136; New Jersey government and, 177–83, 187–95; New Jersey settlers and, 142–48, 177–83, 187–94; New Sweden and, 60, 65, 68–70, 72, 74, 77, 81–84, 91; opposition to plantation colonies, 35–54; opposition to slave trade, 197–98; oral narratives of, 4; Pennsylvania government and, 149, 156, 167–76, 183–85, 190–91, 194, 197–98; population of, 10, 17–18, 86, 106, 192–93; Quakers and, 142, 145–48, 166, 175, 191, 194, 198–99; relations with Duke of York’s Delaware colony, 133–34, 139, 145–48; relations with Swedish nation, 99, 101, 114–15, 117–19, 123, 156, 160, 166–73, 175, 180–81, 189, 194; religion of, 18–19, 21–23, 38–39, 84, 126–28, 137, 144,

246

Index

Lenapes (continued ) 196–97; slavery and, 12, 196–98, 203; sociopolitical structure of, 7, 12, 13, 19, 21, 23–24, 38, 41, 57, 119, 167, 195, 203; sovereignty of, 10, 12, 138, 141, 148, 167, 196; Susquehannocks and, 10, 44, 53, 55, 56, 106–7, 111, 140; trade of, 7, 9, 16, 28, 30, 33, 35, 40–45, 49, 53, 55–57, 61, 72, 75, 88, 92, 96–97, 102, 107, 114; war with Susquehannocks, 13, 15, 17, 33, 35, 40–43, 49; William Penn and, 149, 168–76, 183–84. See also Sickoneysincks Lenapewihittuck (South River, Delaware River), defined, 1, 7, 57 Lindestro¨m, Peter, 15–16, 18, 21, 24, 25, 31, 90, 95; ally of Armegard Printz, 91; treaty of 1654 and, 81–84 Lloyd, David, 163 Lloyd, Thomas, 161 Lock, Lars, 66, 86–88, 159 Logan, James, 164; fur trade of, 175; relations with Swedish nation, 160, 163, 165–67; Walking Purchase and, 5, 173, 176, 184–85 Long Swede (Long Finn, Marcus Jacobsson, Ko¨nigsmark), 119–25 Long Swede revolt, 113, 120–25 Lovelace, Francis, 9, 113, 120; conflict with Lenapes, 125–30, 136, 148; Long Swede revolt and, 121–25; relations with Swedish nation, 127–30 Lucas, Robert, 145, 147, 152 Lucasson, Andries, 55, 60 Mackintosh, Michael Dean, 46–47 Mamarakiekon, 126, 136, 139, 145–47, 169, 178 Manawkyhickon, 183–85 Ma˚nsson, Hans, 55, 68, 105 Markham, William, 147–48, 150, 155–56; relations with Lenapes, 150, 168–71, 173, 180; relations with Swedish nation, 157, 161–62, 173 Maryland: attacks on Whorekill, 132–33, 141; conflict with Susquehannocks, 52–53, 69; conflict with William Claiborne, 52–53; founding of, 52; New Sweden and, 88; Pennsylvania and, 150, 171; relations with Duke of York’s Delaware colony, 140–41

Mattahorn, 16, 55, 56, 62, 72, 74–75, 77–79, 81–82 May, Cornelis, 28–29, 77, 81 Mehocksett, 126, 136, 168, 177 Mercurius (ship), affair of, 93, 97–99, 121 Metapis, 136, 145–47, 169, 178 Michae¨lius, Jonas, 21–22, 23 Minquas. See Susquehannocks Minuit, Peter, 9, 30, 36, 55–58, 60, 61, 72, 74, 77–78 Mitatsimint, 55, 78–79; family of, 78 Moravians, 185, 189–92, 198 More, Nicholas, 171–72 Morgan, Edmund S., 46 Morris, Robert Hunter, 188 Mullis, Bathsheba, 180, 189 Munsees, 7, 17, 69, 72; Dutch and, 27–28, 93–97, 103–5, 109, 225 n.16; English and, 135–36, 139; European technology and, 25; King Philip’s War and, 139–40; lands of, 8; Lenapes and, 24, 93, 106, 110–11; migration of, 185; New Jersey government and, 182–83, 188–89; Pennsylvania government and, 183–85 Murrin, John M., 203 Naaman, 82–84, 127, 167, 170, 183 Nahoosey, 146 Nanacussy, 126, 136, 139, 145–47, 169, 171–72 Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape Indians, 210 n.15 Navesinks, 26–28. See also Munsees Neolin, 128 Netawatwees, 193 New Amstel colony, 101–12; conflict with Lenapes, 104; conquest by English, 110 New England: European settlement of, 45; King Philip’s (Metacom’s) War in, 5, 9, 135, 138–41; Natives in, 84, 138; Pequot War in, 5, 69 New Haven Delaware Company, 61–64, 66 New Jersey, 1, 172; European settlers of, 142–48, 177–83, 187–94; Lenapes and, 177–83, 187–95. See also West New Jersey New Netherland: colony on South River, 96–111; conflict with Munsees, 93–96, 225 n.16; conquest of New Sweden, 93–95; Esopus War in, 93; European settlement of, 28–30, 35; Kieft’s War in, 5, 9, 69, 72;

Index map of, 100; Peach War in, 93–94, 225 n.16. See also Dutch New Netherland Company, 28 New Sweden (1639–55), 7, 9, 55–95; alliance with Lenapes, 81–83, 86, 92–93; conflict with Dutch, 58, 74–76, 79; conflict with English, 58, 61–62; conflict with Lenapes, 64, 70, 72, 77, 91–92; conversion of Lenapes and, 23; court of, 88; discontent of settlers, 67, 75, 86–88, 90; diversity of population, 60, 65; Dutch conquest of, 9, 90, 93–95; founding of, 53, 55; lack of support from Sweden, 64–65, 67, 71, 72, 75, 87; Maryland and, 88; mortality in, 64, 66–67, 83–84; population of, 58, 60–61, 65–68, 83, 86–87, 220 n.20; relations with Lenapes, 60, 65, 68–70, 77–85, 91–92; Susquehannocks and, 65; religion in, 68; trade of, 55–57, 71–72, 88, 92. See also Swedish nation Notike, 78 Nutimus, 184–85 Ockanickon, 126, 136, 139, 145–47, 177–78 Offutt, William M., Jr., 159 old settlers. See Swedish nation Opechancanough, 46, 70 Oreckton, 139, 145–47, 169 Papegoja, Johan, 67–68, 87, 90, 97–98 Pastorius, Francis Daniel, 168 Peepy, Joseph (Weholelahund), 189, 191, 193 Peeques, 135, 137–38 Peminacka, 77–82 Penn, John, Walking Purchase and, 5, 173, 176, 184–85 Penn, Thomas, Walking Purchase and, 5,173, 176, 184–85 Penn, William, 7, 9, 119, 151; founding myth of, 4, 5, 6; founding of Pennsylvania and, 149–50, 154, 156–57; fur trade and, 175; Lenapes and, 149, 168–76, 183–84; Maryland and, 4, 171; New Jersey and, 142; Swedish nation and, 157, 160–63, 165–67 Pennsylvania, 149–176; economy of, 201–2; European settlement of, 148, 157, 172–76, 185, 201–3; founding of, 112–13, 147, 149–57; fur trade of, 175, 201–2. See also Pennsylvania government

247

Pennsylvania government: Lenapes and, 149, 156, 167–76, 183–85, 190–91, 194, 197–98; Maryland and, 150; Swedish nation and, 149–50, 152–67 Pocock, Philip, 145–46 Pompshire, John (Cawkeeponen), 189, 191 Powhatan Renape Nation, 210 n.15 Presbyterians, 162, 185, 187–89, 191–92, 196 Printz, Armegard, 67–68, 87, 97–98, 105, 118; conflict with Johan Risingh, 90–91; Long Swede revolt and, 122–23 Printz, Johan, 12, 22, 58, 60, 62–64, 66–67, 72, 78, 81–83, 197; conflict with Dutch, 74–75, 78; conflict with Lenapes, 70–72, 74–75, 77, 91; family of, 64; petitions against, 86–88, 90 Pulsipher, Jenny Hale, 138 Quakers, 11; missionaries of, 1, 2; settlement in West New Jersey, 141–45; relations with Lenapes, 1–2, 142–48, 175, 191, 194, 198–99; relations with Swedish nation, 143–48, 157, 165–66, 175; slavery and, 198. See also New Jersey; Pennsylvania; West New Jersey Queskakons, 36 Rambo, Peter, 56, 98, 125–26, 128–29, 137, 143, 145; Long Swede revolt and, 120, 122, 159 Rambo, Peter, Jr., 155–56, 159 Raritans. See Munsees Renowewan (Erwehongh), 74, 126, 136–37, 140; Esopus War and, 109 Revell, Thomas, 155 Richter, Daniel, 84 Ridder, Peter Holla¨nder, 56–57, 61–62, 77, 98 Risingh, Johan, 58, 66, 79, 86–88, 223 n.47, 224 n.11; conflict with Armegard Printz, 90–91; relations with Lenapes, 91–92; surrender to Dutch, 94–95; treaty of 1654 and, 81–84, 127, 167, 170, 183 Roades, John, Sr., 132, 134, 136 Rudman, Andreas, 18, 157, 161–63, 166–68 Sackoquewan, 139, 145–47, 169 Salem, settlement of, 141–42. See also West New Jersey Sandel, Andreas, 163

248

Index

Sandelands, James, 118; Pennsylvania and, 150, 152, 157; tried for death of Peeques, 135, 137–38 Sasoonan, 183–84 Sehoppy (Mechmiquon), 177–80, 182 Shawnees, 183 Sickoneysincks, 7, 8–9, 15, 17, 18, 35–36, 38–40, 43–49, 130, 132, 194. See also Lenapes Sinquees, 16, 75, 77–78 Skute, Sven Svensson, 91, 97, 99 slavery, 12, 196–98, 201–3 Sluyter, Peter, 44 Smith, John, 31–32 Smith, Samuel, 182, 197 Snyder, Christina, 202 Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge, 185 Society of Friends. See Quakers Springer, Carl, 159 Sta˚lkofta (Stalcop), Johan, 91, 121–22 Steelman, John Hansson, 175, 190–91 Stille, Isaac, 189–91 Stille, Olof, 87–88, 90, 98 Store, Thomas, 188–89, 193–94 Stores, Sarah, 189–90 Stuyvesant, Peter, 9, 56, 72–73, 75–76, 79; colony on South River and, 102–5, 110; conquest of New Sweden, 93–95; Esopus Indians and, 103–6, 109; Lenapes and, 77–78, 81, 96, 108; Mercurius affair and, 97–98; Swedish nation and, 96–99, 104 Susquehannocks, 221 n.29; alliance with Lenapes, 10, 44, 106–8, 111, 140–41; Bacon’s Rebellion and, 135, 138–39; conflict with Chesapeake Natives, 45, 49, 50–51; conflict with Iroquois, 106–8; conflict with Maryland, 52–53, 69, 138–41; conflict with Virginia, 138–39; controversy over land rights, 56; decline, of, 140–41; Dutch and, 93–96, 107–9, 225 n.16; Esopus War and, 103–6, 109; fur trade of, 9, 16, 28, 30–33, 35, 43, 45, 49–53, 57, 62, 71–72, 75, 92, 99, 102, 106, 108, 114; killed by Europeans, 104, 107; misconceptions about, 12, 13, 218 n.4; mortality among, 17, 85, 106–8, 114; New Sweden and, 60, 65; relations with Duke of York’s Delaware colony, 140–41; relations with Lenapes, 53, 55, 56, 79, 126,

130; Swedish nation and, 99, 104; trade with William Claiborne, 49–53; war with Lenapes, 13, 15, 17, 33, 35, 40–43, 49 Svensson, Jacob, 99; friend of Armegard Printz, 91, 118; mediator and trader with Natives, 91, 97, 99, 105, 107, 118–19 Svensson, Karin (Karin the Finn), 61, 90 Svensson, Lars (Lasse the Finn), 61, 90 Svensson, Olof, 119, 145–46 Svensson, Sven, 150, 157, 173, 175 Swanendael, 41; events leading to massacre, 38; map of, 37; massacre at, 4, 5, 7, 8–9, 10, 35–36, 38–40, 43–50, 53, 84, 109–10, 125–26, 130, 194, 197 Swartz, Anthony, 60–61 Swedes. See New Sweden; Swedish nation Swedish Lutheran churches, 90, 105, 115, 119, 150, 159–63, 165–67 Swedish nation, 93; affirmation controversy and, 165–66; alliance with Lenapes, 95–97, 102–6, 110–11, 113, 117, 120–21, 127–31, 135, 140, 145–48, 167; Anglicans and, 160, 165–66; conflict with Duke of York’s Delaware colony, 128–31; conflict with Dutch, 95, 104; diversity of population, 113, 115–19, 167, 232 n.1; government of, 98–99, 112, 133, 145–47; loyalty oaths and, 95–97, 110, 112; mediate between Dutch and Lenapes, 97, 104, 107, 109, 125–26; mediate between English and Lenapes, 136–38; migration of, 138, 167, 173, 175; Pennsylvania government and, 149–50, 152–70; population of, 115–19; Quakers and, 143–48, 157, 165, 175; relations with Duke of York’s Delaware colony, 145–48; relations with Lenapes, 99, 101, 114–15, 117–19, 123, 156, 160, 166–73, 175, 180–81, 189, 194; relations with Susquehannocks, 99, 104; settlement patterns of, 115–19, 123; trade of, 99, 114; Swedish government and, 159–60, 162, 165–67; William Penn and, 157, 160–63, 165–67. See also New Sweden Tamany, 172, 177–78 Tashiowycan, 127–30 Tatamy, Moses (Tunda), 185, 188–92 Teedyuscung, 189–91 Tentackan, 84, 127 Test, John, 153, 155–56

Index Tilley, Thomas, 132, 134, 136 Tishcohan, 184–85 Tom, William, 114, 117, 123–26, 128–29 Turner, Robert, 162 Upland Court, 145–47, 150, 152–58, 175 Usquata, 61 van der Donck, Adriaen, 18, 19, 21, 24, 25, 26 van Dijk, Gregorius, 84, 98, 104 van Rensselaer, Kiliaen, 36, 37 van Tienhoven, Cornelis, 16, 18, 98 van Wassenaer, Nicolaes, 19, 30 Virginia, 32; Anglo-Powhatan wars in, 5, 9, 46–48, 69; Bacon’s Rebellion in, 5, 9, 135, 138–41; conflict with Susquehannocks, 138–39; David de Vries and, 42; Swanendael massacre and, 46

249

Wahunsonacock (Powhatan), 46 Walking Purchase, 5, 173, 176, 177, 184–85, 190, 194 wampum, 31 Weequehela, 178, 182–83, 189–90, 194, 198 West, Benjamin, Penn’s Treaty with the Indians, 170 West New Jersey, 112; European settlement in, 115–17, 123–24, 141–45; Lenapes and, 142. See also New Jersey Wetherill, John, 178–79 Wheeler, Gilbert, 147 Wichusy, 61–61 Wills, John, 178–79 Winthrop, John, 64, 66 Wooley, Andrew, 188 Wywannattamo, 127–29 Yong, Thomas, 17, 42–43

acknowledgments

Over the years this book has been in progress, I have benefited from the insights of many colleagues and from the wealth of recent scholarship published in early American studies. This is a different book from what I could have written a decade ago when I published several articles and presented papers at the Annual Conference of the Omohundro Institute for Early American History and Culture, Glasgow; McNeil Center for Early American Studies, University of Pennsylvania; Swarthmore College; Princeton Friends Meeting; and the Fourth Annual New Sweden History Conference at the Delaware History Museum, Wilmington. These discussions helped develop my thinking a great deal, as have more recent conversations at the American Swedish Historical Museum’s Eleventh Annual New Sweden History Conference; Winterthur Museum, Winterthur, Delaware; and Rural History Confederation Conference at Pennsbury Manor, Morrisville, Pennsylvania. For research support I am indebted to the New Jersey Historical Commission and particularly to Mary Murrin, who administered the grants program. At Lehigh University, the Lawrence Henry Gipson Institute for Eighteenth-Century Studies, co-directed by Monica Najar and Scott Gordon, provided several research grants and generous assistance for illustrations. Over the years, the Lehigh Department of History, College of Arts and Sciences, and Provost’s Office have offered financial support and research leaves to advance this project. Colleagues at many libraries, manuscript repositories, archives, and historical societies have helped me locate and utilize a variety of manuscript and printed materials, including the American Philosophical Society Library, Burlington County (N.J.) Historical Society, Friends Historical Library at Swarthmore College, Gloucester County (N.J.) Historical Society, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Moravian Archives, National Archives of Scotland, New Jersey State Archives, Princeton University Library, and

252

Acknowledgments

Quaker Collection at Haverford College. In recent years I have profited from the expert assistance of Pat Ward, Carol Baylor, and Dan Huang of Lehigh’s Inter-Library Loan (ILL) program. Pat Ward found materials that I had little hope of obtaining through ILL; her dedication is a major asset to Lehigh University Libraries. I also thank Ilhan Citak of Special Collections for his aid in locating useful printed sources and illustrations in Lehigh’s impressive rare books collection. Jay Donis, Gunlo¨g Fur, Robert Lockhart, Daniel Richter, Richard Waldron, and Lorraine Williams read the manuscript at different stages and offered much-appreciated advice. I am indebted particularly to Dan Richter and Bob Lockhart for shepherding the manuscript through review and revision in a way that greatly improved the work while providing much encouragement. Many thanks as well to Erica Ginsburg and her colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania Press for their thoughtful attention to the challenging process of turning the manuscript into a book. Thomas Agostini, Steven Harper, Timothy Hayburn, and Mark Nicholas offered keen ideas and references while working on their own research at Lehigh. For insights on their family history and the work of current Lenape groups in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, I am grateful to Brian Alnutt, Carla Messinger, and Robert T. Redstreake. My friends, colleagues in the Lehigh Department of History, and extended family—the Ruths, Zuckers, and Fultons—have all listened to various pieces of this story and cheered me on. As always, I am most indebted to my husband, Rudy, who has supported me in so many ways that allowed me to finish the book, and he never doubted that I would.