Native American Wars in New Jersey

The area of North America that now encompasses New Jersey, Manhattan, New York State, Long Island, Coney Island, Staten Island, parts of Delaware, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Rhode Island was collectively known in the early part of the 17th century as New Netherland. It was an enormous chunk of land and was under the control of a single company, the Dutch West India Company. The New World settlement of New Netherland was run as a business and enterprises there had to be profitable. The post of Director-General would be recognised today as the CEO of a major global corporation. His governance was reinforced by an army of soldiers.

New Netherland, though, was not particularly profitable. Defence of the colonies was costly and non-effective and so land 'purchase' agreements were entered into with the local natives.There would be common use of lands, friendly relations and mutual protection. In 1639, Governor Kieft decided that, as the Dutch had 'bought' the land from the natives, extracting 'tribute' from the natives was an excellent fund-raiser and, ignoring long-term settlers' advice, he imposed his plan. Tribal leaders rejected it outright and this set Kieft on a headlong clash with local tribes.

Seizing on a rumour of natives stealing pigs from Dutch farmer David de Vries, Kieft ordered soldiers to raid a Raritan village on Staten Island. When the natives responded by burning down De Vries' farmhouse and killing four farm hands, Kieft offered a bounty payment of ten fathoms of wampum to rival tribes for each head of a Raritan native. It was later learned that the hogs had, in fact, been stolen by other Dutch settlers!

In 1641, Claes Swits, a Dutch colonist and owner of a popular public house in Deutel (Turtle) Bay, Manhattan, was beheaded by one of his customers, a 27 year-old Wappinger native, in revenge for the death of his uncle by white colonists. This incident reinforced Kieft's determination to wage war against the natives of New Netherland in order to subjugate the tribes and to levy tribute.

In 1643, natives from the Wappinger Confederacy were fleeing attacks by the Mahican and had sought out protection from the Dutch at Fort Amsterdam. The refugees set up camps at Communipaw (Jersey City) and Corlaer's Hook (Lower Manhattan). They had no idea that there was a price on their heads. Kieft responded by sending 129 soldiers to kill the natives as they slept. One hundred and twenty innocent natives, including women and children, were murdered. This savage event has become known as the Pavonia Massacre.

In retaliation for this atrocity, a force of 1,500 natives invaded the New Netherlands territory destroying homesteads, villages and settlements that had been two decades in the making. Among the dead was Anne Hutchinson, a notable dissident preacher, who had been cast out from the Massachusetts Bay Colony, for her anti-Puritan views. It is also unclear as to whether Jonas Bronck, after whom the Bronx is named was a fatal casualty of this uprising. A few months later, Dutch troops responded by killing 500 Weckquaesgeek.

Kieft's War against the natives flew against all the advice from his Council of Twelve Men and, when the war eventually came to an end with a truce and peace treaty in 1645, Kieft was recalled to the Provinces of Holland to answer for his actions. He died in a shipwreck en route in 1647.

His successor was Pieter Stuyvesant.

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