Lenape Country by Soderlund Jean R.;

Author:Soderlund, Jean R.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Published: 2014-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

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 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.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.