Читать книгу Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam - John S. C. Abbott - Страница 8

"The fierce Adirondacs had fled from their wrath,

The Hurons been swept from their merciless path,

Around, the Ottawas, like leaves, had been strown,

And the lake of the Eries struck silent and lone.

The Lenape, lords once of valley and hill,

Made women, bent low at their conquerors' will.

By the far Mississippi the Illini shrank

When the trail of the Tortoise was seen on the bank.

On the hills of New England the Pequod turned pale

When the howl of the Wolf swelled at night on the gale,

And the Cherokee shook, in his green smiling bowers,

When the foot of the Bear stamped his carpet of flowers."

Thus far the Iroquois possessed only bows and arrows. They were faithful to their promises, and implicit confidence could be reposed in their pledge. The Dutch traders, without any fear, penetrated the wilderness in all directions, and were invariably hospitably received in the wigwams of the Indians.

In their traffic the Dutch at first exchanged for furs only articles of ornament or of domestic value. But the bullet was a far more potent weapon in the chase and in the hunting-field than the arrow. The Indians very soon perceived the vast advantage they would derive in their pursuit of game, from the musket, as well as the superiority it would give them over all their foes. They consequently became very eager to obtain muskets, powder and ball. They were warm friends of the Europeans. There seemed to be no probability of their becoming enemies. Muskets and steel traps enabled them to obtain many more furs. Thus the Indians were soon furnished with an abundant supply of fire-arms, and became unerring marksmen.

Year after year the returns from the trading-posts became more valuable; and the explorations were pushed farther and farther into the interior. The canoes of the traders penetrated the wide realms watered by the upper channels of the Delaware. A trading-house was also erected in the vast forest, upon the Jersey shore of the Hudson River, where the thronged streets of Jersey City at the present hour cover the soil.

We have now reached the year 1618, two years before the arrival of the Pilgrims at Plymouth. Though the energetic Dutch merchants were thus perseveringly and humanely pushing their commerce, and extending their trading posts, no attempt had yet been made for any systematic agricultural colonization.

The Dutch alone had then any accurate knowledge of the Hudson River, or of the coasts of Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Long Island. In 1618 the special charter of the Company, conferring upon them the monopoly of exclusive trade with the Indians, expired. Though the trade was thus thrown open to any adventurous Dutch merchant, still the members of the Company enjoyed an immense advantage in having all the channels perfectly understood by them, and in being in possession of such important posts.

English fishing vessels visited the coast of Maine, and an unsuccessful attempt had been made to establish a colony at the mouth of the Kennebec River. Sir Walter Raleigh had also made a very vigorous but unavailing effort to establish a colony in Virginia. Before the year 1600, every vestige of his attempt had disappeared. Mr. John Romeyn Brodhead, in his valuable history of the State of New York, speaking of this illustrious man, says:

"The colonists, whom Raleigh sent to the island of Roanoke

in 1585, under Grenville and Lane, returned the next year

dispirited to England. A second expedition, dispatched in

1587, under John White, to found the borough of Raleigh, in

Virginia, stopped short of the unexplored Chesapeake,

whither it was bound, and once more occupied Roanoke. In

1590 the unfortunate emigrants had wholly disappeared; and

with their extinction all immediate attempts to establish an

English colony in Virginia were abandoned. Its name alone

survived.

"After impoverishing himself in unsuccessful efforts to add

an effective American plantation to his native kingdom,

Raleigh, the magnanimous patriot, was consigned, under an

unjust judgment, to lingering imprisonment in the Tower of

London, to be followed, after the lapse of fifteen years, by

a still more iniquitous execution. Yet returning justice has

fully vindicated Raleigh's fame. And nearly two centuries

after his death the State of North Carolina gratefully named

its capital after that extraordinary man, who united in

himself as many kinds of glory as were ever combined in any

individual."