The Quaker Colonies, a chronicle of the proprietors of the Delaware Part 5

The new King, James II, was inclined to rea.s.sume jurisdiction and extend the power of the Governor of New York over East Jersey in spite of his grant to Sir George Carteret. In fact, he desired to put New England, New York, and New Jersey under one strong government centered at New York, to abolish their charters, to extinguish popular government, and to make them all mere royal dependencies in pursuance of his general policy of establis.h.i.+ng an absolute monarchy and a papal church in England.

The curse of East Jersey's existence was to be always an appendage of New York, or to be threatened with that condition. The inhabitants now had to enter their vessels and pay duties at New York. Writs were issued by order of the King putting both the Jerseys and all New England under the New York Governor. Step by step the plans for amalgamation and despotism moved on successfully, when suddenly the English Revolution of 1688 put an end to the whole magnificent scheme, drove the King into exile, and placed William of Orange on the throne.

The proprietaries of both Jerseys rea.s.sumed their former authority. But the New York a.s.sembly attempted to exercise control over East Jersey and to levy duties on its exports. The two provinces were soon on the eve of a little war. For twelve or fifteen years East Jersey was in disorder, with seditious meetings, mob rule, judges and sheriffs attacked while performing their duty, the proprietors claiming quitrents from the people, the people resisting, and the British Privy Council threatening a suit to take the province from the proprietors and make a Crown colony of it. The period is known in the history of this colony as "The Revolution." Under the threat of the Privy Council to take over the province, the proprietors of both East and West Jersey surrendered their rights of political government, retaining their owners.h.i.+p of land and quitrents, and the two Jerseys were united under one government in 1702. Its subsequent history demands another chapter.

Chapter XI. The United Jerseys

The Quaker colonists grouped round Burlington and Salem, on the Delaware, and the Scotch Covenanters and New England colonists grouped around Perth Amboy and Newark, near the mouth of the Hudson, made up the two Jerseys. Neither colony had a numerous population, and the stretch of country lying between them was during most of the colonial period a wilderness. It is now crossed by the railway from Trenton to New York. It has always been a line of travel from the Delaware to the Hudson. At first there was only an Indian trail across it, but after 1695 there was a road, and after 1738 a stage route.

In 1702, while still separated by this wilderness, the two Jerseys were united politically by the proprietors voluntarily surrendering all their political rights to the Crown. The political distinction between East Jersey and West Jersey was thus abolished; their excellent free const.i.tutions were rendered of doubtful authority; and from that time to the Revolution they const.i.tuted one colony under the control of a royal governor appointed by the Crown.

The change was due to the uncertainty and annoyance caused for their separate governments when their right to govern was in doubt owing to interference on the part of New York and the desire of the King to make them a Crown colony. The original grant of the Duke of York to the proprietors Berkeley and Carteret had given t.i.tle to the soil but had been silent as to the right to govern. The first proprietors and their successors had always a.s.sumed that the right to govern necessarily accompanied this gift of the land. Such a privilege, however, the Crown was inclined to doubt. William Penn was careful to avoid this uncertainty when he received his charter for Pennsylvania. Profiting by the sad example of the Jerseys, he made sure that he was given both the t.i.tle to the soil and the right to govern.

The proprietors, however, now surrendered only their right to govern the Jerseys and retained their owners.h.i.+p of the land; and the people always maintained that they, on their part, retained all the political rights and privileges which had been granted them by the proprietors. And these rights were important, for the concessions or const.i.tutions granted by the proprietors under the advanced Quaker influence of the time were decidedly liberal. The a.s.semblies, as the legislatures were called, had the right to meet and adjourn as they pleased, instead of having their meetings and adjournments dictated by the governor. This was an important right and one which the Crown and royal governors were always trying to restrict or destroy, because it made an a.s.sembly very independent. This contest for colonial rights was exactly similar to the struggle of the English Parliament for liberty against the supposed right of the Stuart kings to call and adjourn Parliament as they chose. If the governor could adjourn the a.s.sembly when he pleased, he could force it to pa.s.s any laws he wanted or prevent its pa.s.sing any laws at all. The two Jersey a.s.semblies under their Quaker const.i.tutions also had the privilege of making their own rules of procedure, and they had jurisdiction over taxes, roads, towns, militia, and all details of government. These rights of a legislature are familiar enough now to all. Very few people realize, however, what a struggle and what sacrifices were required to attain them.

The rest of New Jersey colonial history is made up chiefly of struggles over these two questions-the rights of the proprietors and their quitrents as against the people, and the rights of the new a.s.sembly as against the Crown. There were thus three parties, the governor and his adherents, the proprietors and their friends, and the a.s.sembly and the people. The proprietors had the best of the change, for they lost only their troublesome political power and retained their property. They never, however, received such financial returns from the property as the sons of William Penn enjoyed from Pennsylvania. But the union of the Jerseys seriously curtailed the rights enjoyed by the people under the old government, and all possibility of a Quaker government in West Jersey was ended. It was this experience in the Jerseys, no doubt, that caused William Penn to require so many safeguards in selling his political rights in Pennsylvania to the Crown that the sale was, fortunately for the colony, never completed.

The a.s.sembly under the union met alternately at Perth Amboy and at Burlington. Lord Cornbury, the first governor, was also Governor of New York, a humiliating arrangement that led to no end of trouble. The executive government, the press, and the judiciary were in the complete control of the Crown and the Governor, who was instructed to take care that "G.o.d Almighty be duly served according to the rites of the Church of England, and the traffic in merchantable negroes encouraged." Cornbury contemptuously ignored the a.s.sembly's right to adjourn and kept adjourning it till one was elected which would pa.s.s the laws he wanted. Afterwards the a.s.semblies were less compliant, and, under the lead of two able men, Lewis Morris of East Jersey and Samuel Jennings, a Quaker of West Jersey, they stood up for their rights and complained to the mother country. But Cornbury went on fighting them, granted monopolies, established arbitrary fees, prohibited the proprietors from selling their lands, prevented three members of the a.s.sembly duly elected from being sworn, and was absent in New York so much of the time that the laws went unexecuted and convicted murderers wandered about at large. In short, he went through pretty much the whole list of offenses of a corrupt and good-for-nothing royal governor of colonial times. The union of the two colonies consequently seemed to involve no improvement over former conditions. At last, the protests and appeals of proprietors and people prevailed, and Cornbury was recalled.

Quieter times followed, and in 1738 New Jersey had the satisfaction of obtaining a governor all her own. The New York Governor had always neglected Jersey affairs, was difficult of access, made appointments and administered justice in the interests of New York, and forced Jersey vessels to pay registration fees to New York. Amid great rejoicing over the change, the Crown appointed the popular leader, Lewis Morris, as governor. But by a strange turn of fate, when once secure in power, he became a most obstinate upholder of royal prerogative, worried the a.s.sembly with adjournments, and, after Cornbury, was the most obnoxious of all the royal governors.

The governors now usually made Burlington their capital and it became, on that account, a place of much show and interest. The last colonial governor was William Franklin, an illegitimate son of Benjamin Franklin, and he would probably have made a success of the office if the Revolution had not stopped him. He had plenty of ability, affable manners, and was full of humor and anecdote like his father, whom he is said to have somewhat resembled. He had combined in youth a fondness for books with a fondness for adventure, was comptroller of the colonial post office and clerk of the Pennsylvania a.s.sembly, served a couple of campaigns in the French and Indian Wars, went to England with his father in 1757, was admitted to the English Bar, attained some intimacy with the Earl of Bute and Lord Fairfax, and through the latter obtained the governors.h.i.+p of New Jersey in 1762.

The people were at first much displeased at his appointment and never entirely got over his illegitimate birth and his turning from Whig to Tory as soon as his appointment was secured. But he advanced the interests of the colony with the home government and favored beneficial legislation. He had an attractive wife, and they entertained, it is said, with viceregal elegance, and started a fine model farm or country place on the north sh.o.r.e of the Rancocas not far from the capital at Burlington. Franklin was drawing the province together and building it up as a community, but his extreme loyalist principles in the Revolution destroyed his chance for popularity and have obscured his reputation.

Though the population of New Jersey was a mixed one, judged by the very distinct religious differences of colonial times, yet racially it was thoroughly Anglo-Saxon and a good stock to build upon. At the time of the Revolution in 1776 the people numbered only about 120,000, indicating a slow growth; but when the first census of the United States was taken, in 1790, they numbered 184,139.

The natural division of the State into North and South Jersey is marked by a line from Trenton to Jersey City. The people of these two divisions were quite as distinct in early times as striking differences in environment and religion could make them. Even in the inevitable merging of modern life the two regions are still distinct socially, economically, and intellectually. Along the dividing line the two types of the population, of course, merged and here was produced and is still to be found the Jerseyman of the composite type.

Trenton, the capital of the State, is very properly in the dividing belt. It was named after William Trent, a Philadelphia merchant who had been speaker of the Pennsylvania a.s.sembly and who became chief justice of New Jersey. Long ages before white men came Trenton seems to have been a meeting place and residence of the Indians or preceding races of stone age men. Antiquarians have estimated that fifty thousand stone implements have been found in it. As it was at the head of tidewater, at the so-called Falls of the Delaware, it was apparently a center of travel and traffic from other regions. From the top of the bluff below the modern city of Trenton there was easy access to forests of chestnut, oak, and pine, with their supplies of game, while the river and its tributary creeks were full of fish. It was a pleasant and convenient place where the people of prehistoric times apparently met and lingered during many centuries without necessarily having a large resident population at any one time. Trenton was so obviously convenient and central in colonial times that it was seriously proposed as a site for the national capital.

Princeton University, though originating, as we have seen, among the Presbyterians of North Jersey, seems as a higher educational inst.i.tution for the whole State to belong naturally in the dividing belt, the meeting place of the two divisions of the colony. The college began its existence at Elizabeth, was then moved to Newark, both in the strongly Presbyterian region, and finally, in 1757, was established at Princeton, a more suitable place, it was thought, because far removed from the dissipation and temptation of towns, and because it was in the center of the colony on the post road between Philadelphia and New York. Though chartered as the College of New Jersey, it was often called Na.s.sau Hall at Princeton or simply "Princeton." In 1896 it became known officially as Princeton University. It was a hard struggle to found the college with lotteries and petty subscriptions here and there. But Presbyterians in New York and other provinces gave aid. Substantial a.s.sistance was also obtained from the Presbyterians of England and Scotland. In the old pamphlets of the time which have been preserved the founders of the college argued that higher education was needed not only for ministers of religion, but for the bench, the bar, and the legislature. The two New England colleges, Harvard and Yale, on the north, and the Virginia College of William and Mary on the south, were too far away. There must be a college close at hand.

At first most of the graduates entered the Presbyterian ministry. But soon in the short time before the Revolution there were produced statesmen such as Richard Stockton of New Jersey, who signed the Declaration of Independence; physicians such as Dr. Benjamin Rush of Philadelphia; soldiers such as "Light Horse" Harry Lee of Virginia; as well as founders of other colleges, governors of States, lawyers, attorney-generals, judges, congressmen, and indeed a very powerful a.s.semblage of intellectual lights. Nor should the names of James Madison, Aaron Burr, and Jonathan Edwards be omitted.

East Jersey with her New England influence attempted something like free public schools. In West Jersey the Quakers had schools. In both Jerseys, after 1700 some private neighborhood schools were started, independent of religious denominations. The West Jersey Quakers, self-cultured and with a very effective system of mental discipline and education in their families as well as in their schools, were not particularly interested in higher education. But in East Jersey as another evidence of intellectual awakening in colonial times, Queen's College, afterward known as Rutgers College, was established by the Dutch Reformed Church in 1766, and was naturally placed, near the old source of Dutch influence, at New Brunswick in the northerly end of the dividing belt.

New Jersey was fortunate in having no Indian wars in colonial times, no frontier, no point of hostile contact with the French of Canada or with the powerful western tribes of red men. Like Rhode Island in this respect, she was completely shut in by the other colonies. Once or twice only did bands of savages cross the Delaware and commit depredations on Jersey soil. This colony, however, did her part in sending troops and a.s.sistance to the others in the long French and Indian wars; but she had none of the pressing danger and experience of other colonies. Her people were never drawn together by a common danger until the Revolution.

In Jersey colonial homes there was not a single modern convenience of light, heat, or cooking, and none of the modern amus.e.m.e.nts. But there was plenty of good living and simple diversion-husking bees and shooting in the autumn, skating and sleighing in the winter. Meetings and discussions in coffeehouses and inns supplied in those days the place of our modern books, newspapers, and magazines. Jersey inns were famous meeting places. Everybody pa.s.sed through their doors-judges, lawyers, legislators, politicians, post riders, stage drivers, each bringing his contribution of information and humor, and the slaves and rabble stood round to pick up news and see the fun. The court days in each county were holidays celebrated with games of quoits, running, jumping, feasting, and discussions political and social. At the capital there was even style and extravagance. Governor Belcher, for example, who lived at Burlington, professed to believe that the Quaker influences of that town were not strict enough in keeping the Sabbath, so he drove every Sunday in his coach and four to Philadelphia to wors.h.i.+p in the Presbyterian Church there and saw no inconsistency in his own behavior.

Almanacs furnished much of the reading for the ma.s.ses. The few newspapers offered little except the barest chronicle of events. The books of the upper cla.s.ses were good though few, and consisted chiefly of the cla.s.sics of English literature and books of information and travel. The diaries and letters of colonial native Jerseymen, the pamphlets of the time, and John Woolman's "Journal," all show a good average of education and an excellent use of the English language. Samuel Smith's "History of the Colony of Nova-Casaria, or New Jersey," written and printed at Burlington and published there in the year 1765, is written in a good and even attractive style, with as intelligent a grasp of political events as any modern mind could show; the type, paper, and presswork, too, are excellent. Smith was born and educated in this same New Jersey town. He became a member of council and a.s.sembly, at one time was treasurer of the province, and his ma.n.u.script historical collections were largely used by Robert Proud in his "History of Pennsylvania."

The early houses of New Jersey were of heavy timbers covered with unpainted clapboards, usually one story and a half high, with immense fireplaces, which, with candles, supplied the light. The floors were scrubbed hard and sprinkled with the plentiful white sand. Carpets, except the famous old rag carpets, were very rare. The old wooden houses have now almost entirely disappeared; but many of the brick houses which succeeded them are still preserved. They are of simple well-proportioned architecture, of a distinctive type, less luxuriant, ma.s.sive, and exuberant than those across the river in Pennsylvania, although both evidently derived from the Christopher Wren school. The old Jersey homes seem to reflect with great exactness the simple feeling of the people and to be one expression of the spirit of Jersey democracy.

There were no important seats of commerce in this province. Exports of wheat, provisions, and lumber went to Philadelphia or New York, which were near and convenient. The Jersey sh.o.r.es near the mouth of the Hudson and along the Delaware, as at Camden, presented opportunities for ports, but the proximity to the two dominating ports prevented the development of additional harbors in this part of the coast. It was not until after the Revolution that Camden, opposite Philadelphia, and Jersey City, opposite New York, grew into anything like their present importance.

There were, however, a number of small ports and s.h.i.+pbuilding villages in the Jerseys. It is a noticeable fact that in colonial times and even later there were very few Jersey towns beyond the head of tidewater. The people, even the farmers, were essentially maritime. The province showed its natural maritime characteristics, produced many sailors, and built innumerable small vessels for the coasting and West India trade-sloops, schooners, yachts, and sailboats, down to the tiniest gunning boat and sneak box. Perth Amboy was the princ.i.p.al port and s.h.i.+pbuilding center for East Jersey as Salem was for West Jersey. But Burlington, Bordentown, Cape May, and Trenton, and innumerable little villages up creeks and channels or mere ditches could not be kept from the prevailing industry. They built craft up to the limit of size that could be floated away in the water before their very doors. Plentifully supplied with excellent oak and pine and with the admirable white cedar of their own forests, very skillful s.h.i.+pwrights grew up in every little hamlet.

A large part of the capital used in Jersey s.h.i.+pbuilding is said to have come from Philadelphia and New York. At first this capital sought its profit in whaling along the coast and afterwards in the trade with the West Indies, which for a time absorbed so much of the s.h.i.+pping of all the colonies in America. The inlets and beaches along the Jersey coast now given over to summer resorts were first used for whaling camps or bases. Cape May and Tuckerton were started and maintained by whaling; and as late as 1830, it is said, there were still signs of the industry on Long Beach.

Except for the whaling, the beaches were uninhabited-wild stretches of sand, swarming with birds and wild fowl, without a lighthouse or lifesaving station. In the Revolution, when the British fleet blockaded the Delaware and New York, Little Egg, the safest of the inlets, was used for evading the blockade. Vessels entered there and sailed up the Mullica River to the head of navigation, whence the goods were distributed by wagons. To conceal their vessels when anch.o.r.ed just inside an inlet, the privateersmen would stand slim pine trees beside the masts and thus very effectively concealed the rigging from British cruisers prowling along the sh.o.r.e.

Along with the whaling industry the risks and seclusion of the inlets and channels developed a romantic cla.s.s of gentlemen, as handy with musket and cutla.s.s as with helm and sheet, fond of easy, exciting profits, and reaping where they had not sown. They would start legally enough, for they began as privateersmen under legal letters of marque in the wars. But the step was a short one to a traffic still more profitable; and for a hundred years Jersey customs officers are said to have issued doc.u.ments which were ostensibly letters of marque but which really abetted a piratical cruise. Piracy was, however, in those days a semi-legitimate offense, winked at by the authorities all through the colonial period; and respectable people and governors and officials of New York and North Carolina, it is said, secretly furnished funds for such expeditions and were interested in the profits.

Chapter XII. Little Delaware

Delaware was the first colony to be established on the river that bears this name. It went through half a century of experiences under the Dutch and Swedes from 1609 to 1664, and then eighteen years under the English rule of the Duke of York, from whom it pa.s.sed into the hands of William Penn, the Quaker. The Dutch got into it by an accident and were regarded by the English as interlopers. And the Swedes who followed had no better t.i.tle.

The whole North Atlantic seaboard was claimed by England by virtue of the discoveries of the Cabots, father and son; but nearly a hundred years elapsed before England took advantage of this claim by starting the Virginia colony near the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay in 1607. And nearly a quarter of a century more elapsed before Englishmen settled on the sh.o.r.es of Ma.s.sachusetts Bay. Those were the two points most accessible to s.h.i.+ps and most favorable for settlement. The middle ground of the Delaware and Hudson regions was not so easily entered and remained unoccupied. The mouth of the Delaware was full of shoals and was always difficult to navigate. The natural harbor at the mouth of the Hudson was excellent, but the entrance to it was not at first apparent.

Into these two regions, however, the Dutch chanced just after the English had effected the settlement of Jamestown in Virginia. The Dutch had employed an Englishman named Henry Hudson and sent him in 1609 in a small s.h.i.+p called the Half Moon to find a pa.s.sage to China and India by way of the Arctic Ocean. Turned back by the ice in the Arctic, he sailed down the coast of North America, and began exploring the middle ground from the Virginia settlement, which he seems to have known about; and, working cautiously northward along the coast and feeling his way with the lead line, he soon entered Delaware Bay. But finding it very difficult of navigation he departed and, proceeding in the same careful way up along the coast of New Jersey, he finally entered the harbor of New York and sailed up the Hudson far enough to satisfy himself that it was not the desired course to China.

This exploration gave the Dutch their claim to the Delaware and Hudson regions. But though it was worthless as against the English right by discovery of the Cabots, the Dutch went ahead with their settlement, established their headquarters and seat of government on Manhattan Island, where New York stands today, and exercised as much jurisdiction and control as they could on the Delaware.

Their explorations of the Delaware, feeling their way up it with small light draft vessels among its shoals and swift tides, their travels on land-shooting wild turkeys on the site of the present busy town of Chester-and their adventures with the Indians are full of interest. The immense quant.i.ties of wild fowl and animal and bird life along the sh.o.r.es astonished them; but what most aroused their cupidity was the enormous supply of furs, especially beaver and otter, that could be obtained from the Indians. Furs became their great, in fact, their only interest in the Delaware. They established forts, one near Cape Henlopen at the mouth of the river, calling it Fort Oplandt, and another far up the river on the Jersey side at the mouth of Timber Creek, nearly opposite the present site of Philadelphia, and this they called Fort Na.s.sau. Fort Oplandt was destroyed by the Indians and its people were ma.s.sacred. Fort Na.s.sau was probably occupied only at intervals. These two posts were built mainly to a.s.sist the fur trade, and any attempts at real settlement were slight and unsuccessful.

Meantime about the year 1624 the Swedes heard of the wonderful opportunities on the Delaware. The Swedish monarch, Gustavus Adolphus, a man of broad ambitions and energetic mind, heard about the Delaware from Willem Usselinx, a merchant of Antwerp who had been actively interested in the formation of the Dutch West India Company to trade in the Dutch possessions in America. Having quarreled with the directors, Usselinx had withdrawn from the Netherlands and now offered his services to Sweden. The Swedish court, n.o.bles, and people, all became enthusiastic about the project which he elaborated for a great commercial company to trade and colonize in Asia, Africa, and America. * But the plan was dropped because, soon after 1630, Gustavus Adolphus led his country to intervene on the side of the Protestants in the Thirty Years' War in Germany, where he was killed three years later at the battle of Lutzen. But the desire aroused by Usselinx for a Swedish colonial empire was revived in the reign of his infant daughter, Christina, by the celebrated Swedish Chancellor, Oxenstierna.

* See "Willem Usselinx," by J. F. Jameson in the "Papers of the American Historical a.s.sociation," vol. II.

An expedition, which actually reached the Delaware in 1638, was sent out under another Dutch renegade, Peter Minuit, who had been Governor of New Netherland and after being dismissed from office was now leading this Swedish enterprise to occupy part of the territory he had formerly governed for the Dutch. His two s.h.i.+ps sailed up the Delaware and with good judgment landed at the present site of Wilmington. At that point a creek carrying a depth of over fourteen feet for ten miles from its mouth flowed into the Delaware. The Dutch had called this creek Minquas, after the tribe of Indians; the Swedes named it the Christina after their infant Queen; and in modern times it has been corrupted into Christiana.

They sailed about two and a half miles through its delta marshes to some rocks which formed a natural wharf and which still stand today at the foot of Sixth Street in Wilmington. This was the Plymouth Rock of Delaware. Level land, marshes, and meadows lay along the Christina, the remains of the delta which the stream had formed in the past. On the edge of the delta or moorland, rocky hills rose, forming the edge of the Piedmont, and out of them from the north flowed a fine large stream, the Brandywine, which fell into the Christina just before it entered the Delaware. Here in the delta their engineer laid out a town, called Christinaham, and a fort behind the rocks on which they had landed. A cove in the Christina made a snug anchorage for their s.h.i.+ps, out of the way of the tide. They then bought from the Indians all the land from Cape Henlopen to the Falls of the Delaware at Trenton, calling it New Sweden and the Delaware New Swedeland Stream. The people of Delaware have always regarded New Sweden as the beginning of their State, and Peter Minuit, the leader of this Swedish expedition, always stands first on the published lists of their governors.

On their arrival in the river in the spring of 1638, the Swedes found no evidences of permanent Dutch colonization. Neither Fort Oplandt nor Fort Na.s.sau was then occupied. They always maintained that the Dutch had abandoned the river, and that it was therefore open to the Swedes for occupation, especially after they had purchased the Indian t.i.tle. It was certainly true that the Dutch efforts to plant colonies in that region had failed; and since the last attempt by De Vries, six years had elapsed. On the other hand, the Dutch contended that they had in that time put Fort Na.s.sau in repair, although they had not occupied it, and that they kept a few persons living along the Jersey sh.o.r.e of the river, possibly the remains of the Na.s.sau colony, to watch all who visited it. These people had immediately notified the Dutch governor Kieft at New Amsterdam of the arrival of the Swedes, and he promptly issued a protest against the intrusion. But his protest was neither very strenuous nor was it followed up by hostile action, for Sweden and Holland were on friendly terms. Sweden, the great champion of Protestant Europe, had intervened in the Thirty Years' War to save the Protestants of Germany. The Dutch had just finished a similar desperate war of eighty years for freedom from the papal despotism of Spain. Dutch and Swedes had, therefore, every reason to be in sympathy with each other. The Swedes, a plain, strong, industrious people, as William Penn aptly called them, were soon, however, seriously interfering with the Dutch fur trade and in the first year, it is said, collected thirty thousand skins. If this is true, it is an indication of the immense supply of furbearing animals, especially beaver, available at that time. For the next twenty-five years Dutch and Swedes quarreled and sometimes fought over their respective claims. But it is significant of the difficulty of retaining a hold on the Delaware region that the Swedish colonists on the Christina after a year or two regarded themselves as a failure and were on the point of abandoning their enterprise, when a vessel, fortunately for them, arrived with cattle, agricultural tools, and immigrants. It is significant also that the immigrants, though in a Swedish vessel and under the Swedish government, were Dutchmen. They formed a sort of separate Dutch colony under Swedish rule and settled near St. George's and Appoquinimink. Immigrants apparently were difficult to obtain among the Swedes, who were not colonizers like the English.

At this very time, in fact, Englishmen, Puritans from Connecticut, were slipping into the Delaware region under the leaders.h.i.+p of Nathaniel Turner and George Lamberton, and were buying the land from the Indians. About sixty settled near Salem, New Jersey, and some on the Schuylkill in Pennsylvania, close to Fort Na.s.sau-an outrageous piece of audacity, said the Dutch, and an insult to their "High Mightinesses and the n.o.ble Directors of the West India Company." So the Schuylkill English were accordingly driven out, and their houses were burned. The Swedes afterwards expelled the English from Salem and from the Cohansey, lower down the Bay. Later the English were allowed to return, but they seem to have done little except trade for furs and beat off hostile Indians.

The seat of the Swedish government was moved in 1643 from the Christina to Tinic.u.m, one of the islands of the Schuylkill delta, with an excellent harbor in front of it which is now the home of the yacht clubs of Philadelphia. Here they built a fort of logs, called Fort Gothenborg, a chapel with a graveyard, and a mansion house for the governor, and this remained the seat of Swedish authority as long as they had any on the river. From here Governor Printz, a portly irascible old soldier, said to have weighed "upwards of 400 pounds and taken three drinks at every meal," ruled the river. He built forts on the Schuylkill and worried the Dutch out of the fur trade. He also built a fort called Nya Elfsborg, afterward Elsinboro, on the Jersey side below Salem. By means of this fort he was able to command the entrance to the river and compelled every Dutch s.h.i.+p to strike her colors and acknowledge the sovereignty of Sweden. Some he prevented from going up the river at all; others he allowed to pa.s.s on payment of toll or tribute. He gave orders to destroy every trading house or fort which the Dutch had built on the Schuylkill, and to tear down the coat of arms and insignia which the Dutch had placed on a post on the site of Philadelphia. The Swedes now also bought from the Indians and claimed the land on the Jersey side from Cape May up to Racc.o.o.n Creek, opposite the modern Chester.

The best place to trade with the Indians for furs was the Schuylkill River, which flowed into the Delaware at a point where Philadelphia was afterwards built. There were at that time Indian villages where West Philadelphia now stands. The headwaters of streams flowing into the Schuylkill were only a short distance from the headwaters of streams flowing into the Susquehanna, so that the valley of the Schuylkill formed the natural highway into the interior of Pennsylvania. The route to the Ohio River followed the Schuylkill for some thirty or forty miles, turned up one of its tributaries to its source, then crossed the watershed to the head of a stream flowing into the Susquehanna, thence to the Juniata, at the head of which the trail led over a short divide to the head of the Conemaugh, which flowed into the Allegheny, and the Allegheny into the Ohio. Some of the Swedes and Dutch appear to have followed this route with the Indians as early as 1646.

The Ohio and Allegheny region was inhabited by the Black Minquas, so called from their custom of wearing a black badge on their breast. The Ohio, indeed, was first called the Black Minquas River. As the country nearer the Delaware was gradually denuded of beaver, these Black Minquas became the great source of supply and carried the furs, over the route described, to the Schuylkill. The White Minquas lived further east, round Chesapeake and Delaware bays, and, though spoken of as belonging by language to the great Iroquois or Six Nation stock, were themselves conquered and pretty much exterminated by the Six Nations. The Black Minquas, believed to be the same as the Eries of the Jesuit Relations, were also practically exterminated by the Six Nations. *

* Myers, "Narratives of Early Pennsylvania", pp. 103-104.

The furs brought down the Schuylkill were deposited at certain rocks two or three miles above its mouth at Bartram's Gardens, now one of the city parks of Philadelphia. On these rocks, then an island in the Schuylkill, the Swedes built a fort which completely commanded the river and cut the Dutch off from the fur trade. They built another fort on the other side of Bartram's Gardens along the meadow near what is now Gibson's Point; and Governor Printz had a great mill a couple of miles away on Cobb's Creek, where the old Blue Bell tavern has long stood. These two forts protected the mill and the Indian villages in West Philadelphia.

One would like to revisit the Delaware of those days and see all its wild life and game, its islands and shoals, its virgin forests as they had grown up since the glacial age, untouched by the civilization of the white man. There were then more islands in the river, the water was clearer, and there were pretty pebble and sandy beaches now overlaid by mud brought down from vast regions of the valley no longer protected by forests from the wash of the rains. On a wooded island below Salem, long since cut away by the tides, the pirate Blackhead and his crew are said to have pa.s.sed a winter. The waters of the river spread out wide at every high tide over marshes and meadows, turning them twice a day for a few hours into lakes, grown up in summer with red and yellow flowers and the graceful wild oats, or reeds, ta.s.seled like Indian corn.

At Christinaham, in the delta of the Christina and the Brandywine, the tide flowed far inland to the rocks on which Minuit's Swedish expedition landed, leaving one dry spot called Cherry Island, a name still borne by a shoal in the river. Fort Christina, on the edge of the overflowed meadow, with the rocky promontory of hills behind it, its church and houses, and a wide prospect across the delta and river, was a fair spot in the old days. The Indians came down the Christina in their canoes or overland, bringing their packs of beaver, otter, and deer skins, their tobacco, corn, and venison to exchange for the cloth, blankets, tools, and gaudy trinkets that pleased them. It must often have been a scene of strange life and coloring, and it is difficult today to imagine it all occurring close to the spot where the Pennsylvania railroad station now stands in Wilmington.