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Updated: May 15, 2025
The preceding account of the origin of the Dutch colony and its progress thus far is essential to the understanding of the long and successful administration of the new governor, whose name is one of the most illustrious in the early annals of New York. It may be worthy of brief remark that a few weeks after the arrival of Governor Stuyvesant, Kieft embarked in the ship Princess for Holland.
Historians state that Kieft, from the ramparts at Fort Amsterdam, watched the burning wigwams. This treachery and wholesale murder roused the fiery hatred of the savages and kindled a war so fierce that Kieft was frightened by the fury of the tempest which his wickedness and folly had raised, and he humbly asked the people to choose a few men again to act as his counsellors.
All his foreign expeditions were baffled and set at naught by the all-pervading Yankees; all his home measures were canvassed and condemned by "numerous and respectable meetings" of pot-house politicians. In the multitude of counsellors, we are told, there is safety; but the multitude of counsellors was a continual source of perplexity to William Kieft.
In doing so, however, she went the whole length of nullification and almost broke up the confederacy. Governor Winthrop in reply assured Kieft that the influence of Massachusetts would be on the side of peace, for that "the ground of difference being only a small parcel of land" was a matter of too small value to cause a breach between two people so nearly related as the Dutch and English.
But De Vries answered, sadly, "No Indian has done this. It is the Dutch who have killed your people." And he pointed toward the deep woods close by. "Go there for safety, but do not come here." This was not war. It was murder. A cruel, treacherous act, which the greater number of colonists condemned and the record of which is a dark stain on the memory of William Kieft.
The shortness of the female dresses, which had continued in fashion ever since the days of William Kieft, had long offended his eye; and though extremely averse to meddling with the petticoats of the ladies, yet he immediately recommended that every one should be furnished with a flounce to the bottom.
The sachem refused to deliver up the criminal, saying that he had but done his duty, according to the custom of his race, in avenging the death of his kinsman, murdered many years before. Kieft was exceedingly embarrassed.
The Indians attacked it, killed four of the laborers, burned the dwelling and destroyed the crops. Kieft, in his blind rage, resolved upon the extermination of the Raritans. He offered a large bounty for the head of any member of that tribe.
As to Wilhelmus Kieft, having dispatched his proclamation to the frontiers, he put on his cocked hat and corduroy small clothes, and, mounting a tall, raw-boned charger, trotted out to his rural retreat of Dog's Misery.
True it is, and I confess it with sorrow, that he had an unreasonable aversion to experiments, and was fond of governing his province after the simplest manner; but then he contrived to keep it in better order than did the erudite Kieft, though he had all the philosophers, ancient and modern, to assist and perplex him.
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