University of Virginia Library

7. CHAP. VII.

Among the many perils and mishaps that surround
your hardy historian, there is one that in
spite of my unspeakable delicacy, and unbounded
good will towards all my fellow creatures, I have
no hopes of escaping. While raking with curious
hand, but pious heart, among the rotten remains of
former days, I may fare somewhat like that doughty
fellow Sampson, who in meddling with the carcass
of a dead Lion, drew a swarm of bees about
his ears. Thus I am sensible that in detailing the
many misdeeds of the Yanokie, or Yankee tribe, it
is ten chances to one but I offend the morbid sensibilities
of certain of their unreasonable descendants,
who will doubtless fly out, and raise such a buzzing
about this unlucky pate of mine, that I shall need
the tough hide of an Achilles, or an Orlando Furioso,
to protect me from their stings. Should such
be the case I should deeply and sincerely lament—
not my misfortune in giving offence—but the wrong-headed
perverseness of this most ill natured and uncharitable

age, in taking offence at any thing I say.
—My good, honest, testy sirs, how in heaven's name,
can I help it, if your great grandfathers behaved in a
scurvy manner to my great grandfathers?—I'm very
sorry for it, with all my heart, and wish a thousand
times, that they had conducted themselves a thousand
times better. But as I am recording the sacred
events of history, I'd not bate one nail's
breadth of the honest truth, though I were sure the
whole edition of my work, should be bought up and
burnt by the common hangman of Connecticut.—
And let me tell you, masters of mine! this is one of
the grand purposes for which we impartial historians
were sent into the world—to redress wrongs
and render justice on the heads of the guilty—So
that though a nation may wrong their neighbours,
with temporary impunity, yet some time or another
an historian shall spring up, who shall give them a
hearty rib-roasting in return. Thus your ancestors,
I warrant them, little thought, when they were kicking
and cuffing the worthy province of Nieuw Nederlandts,
and setting its unlucky little governor at
his wits ends, that such an historian as I should ever
arise, and give them their own, with interest—Body-o'me!
but the very talking about it makes my
blood boil! and I have as great a mind as ever I
had for my dinner, to cut a whole host of your ancestors
to mince meat, in my very next page!—but
out of the bountiful affection which I feel towards
their descendants, I forbear—and I trust when you
perceive how completely I have them all in my power,
and how, with one flourish of my pen I could
make every mother's son of ye grandfatherless, you
will not be able enough to applaud my candour and
magnanimity.—To resume then, with my accustomed
calmness and impartiality, the course of my
history.

It was asserted by the wise men of ancient
times, intimately acquainted with these matters,
that at the gate of Jupiter's palace lay two huge
tuns, the one filled with blessings, the other with
misfortunes—and it verily seems as if the latter
had been set a tap, and left to deluge the unlucky
province of Nieuw Nederlandts. Among other
causes of irritation, the incessant irruptions and
spoliations of his eastern neighbours upon his frontiers,
were continually adding fuel to the naturally
inflammable temperament of William the Testy.
Numerous accounts of them may still be found
among the records of former days; for the commanders
on the frontiers were especially careful to
evince their vigilance and soldierlike zeal, by striving
who should send home the most frequent and
voluminous budgets of complaints, as your faithful
servant is continually running with complaints to
the parlour, of all the petty squabbles and misdemeanours
of the kitchen.

All these valiant tale-bearings were listened to
with great wrath by the passionate little governor,
and his subjects, who were to the full as eager to
hear, and credulous to believe these frontier fables,
as are my fellow citizens to swallow those amusing
stories with which our papers are daily filled, about
British aggressions at sea, French sequestrations
on shore, and Spanish infringements in the promised
land of Louisiana—all which proves what I
have before asserted, that your enlightened people
love to be miserable.

Far be it from me to insinuate however, that our
worthy ancestors indulged in groundless alarms;
on the contrary they were daily suffering a repetition
of cruel wrongs, not one of which, but was a
sufficient reason, according to the maxims of national
dignity and honour, for throwing the whole
universe into hostility and confusion.

From among a host of these bitter grievances
still on record, I select a few of the most atrocious,
and leave my readers to judge, if our progenitors
were not justifiable in getting into a very valiant
passion on the occasion.

“24 June 1641. Some of Hartford haue taken
a hogg out of the vlact or common and shut it vp
out of meer hate or other prejudice, causing it to
starve for hunger in the stye!

26 July. The foremencioned English did againe
driue the companies hoggs out of the vlact of Sico

joke into Hartford; contending daily with reproaches,
blows, beating the people with all disgrace
that they could imagine.

May 20, 1642. The English of Hartford haue
violently cut loose a horse of the honored companies,
that stood bound vpon the common or vlact.

May 9, 1643. The companies horses pastured
vpon the companies ground, were driven away by
them of Connecticott or Hartford, and the heards-man
was lustily beaten with hatchets and sticks.

16. Again they sold a young Hogg belonging
to the Companie which piggs had pastured on the
Companies land.”[8]

Oh ye powers! into what indignation did
every one of these outrages throw the philosophic
Kieft! Letter after letter; protest after protest;
proclamation after proclamation; bad Latin,[9]
worse English, and hideous low dutch were exhausted
in vain upon the inexorable Yankees; and
the four-and-twenty letters of the alphabet, which
except his champion, the sturdy trumpeter Van
Corlear, composed the only standing army he had
at his command, were never off duty, throughout
the whole of his administration.—Nor did Antony
the trumpeter, remain a whit behind his patron,

the gallant William in his fiery zeal; but like a
faithful champion and preserver of the public safety,
on the arrival of every fresh article of news, he
was sure to sound his trumpet from the ramparts
with most disasterous notes, throwing the people
into violent alarms and disturbing their rest at all
times and seasons—which caused him to be held in
very great regard, the public paying and pampering
him, as we do brawling editors, for similar important
services.

Appearances to the eastward began now to assume
a more formidable aspect than ever—for I
would have you note that bitherto the province had
been chiefly molested by its immediate neighbours,
the people of Connecticut, particularly of Hartford,
which, if we may judge from ancient chronicles,
was the strong hold of these sturdy moss troopers;
from whence they sallied forth, on their daring incursions,
carrying terror and devastation into the
barns, the hen-roosts and pig-styes of our revered
ancestors.

Albeit about the year 1643, the people of the
east country, inhabiting the colonies of Massachusetts,
Connecticut, New Plymouth and New Haven,
gathered together into a mighty conclave, and
after buzzing and turmoiling for many days, like a
political hive of bees in swarming time, at length
settled themselves into a formidable confederation,
under the title of the United Colonies of New England.

By this union they pledged themselves to
stand by one another in all perils and assaults, and
to co-operate in all measures offensive and defensive
against the surrounding savages, among which
were doubtlessly included our honoured ancestors
of the Manhattoes; and to give more strength and
system to this confederation, a general assembly
or grand council was to be annually held, composed
of representatives from each of the provinces.

On receiving accounts of this puissant combination,
the fiery Wilhelmus was struck with vast
consternation, and for the first time in his whole
life, forgot to bounce, at hearing an unwelcome
piece of intelligence—which a venerable historian
of the times observes, was especially noticed among
the sage politicians of New Amsterdam. The
truth was, on turning over in his mind all that he
had read at the Hague, about leagues and combinations,
he found that this was an exact imitation
of the famous Amphyctionic council, by which the
states of Greece were enabled to attain to such
power and supremacy, and the very idea made his
heart to quake for the safety of his empire at the
Manhattoes.

He strenuously insisted, that the whole object
of this confederation, was to drive the Nederlanders
out of their fair domains; and always flew into
a great rage if any one presumed to doubt the
probability of his conjecture. Nor, to speak my

mind freely, do I think he was wholly unwarranted
in such a suspicion; for at the very first annual
meeting of the grand council, held at Boston
(which governor Kieft denominated the Delphos of
this truly classic league) strong representations
were made against the Nederlanders, for as much
as that in their dealings with the Indians they
carried on a traffic in “guns, powther and shott—
a trade damnable and injurious to the colonists.”
Not but what certain of the Connecticut traders
did likewise dabble a little in this “damnable traffic”
—but then they always sold the Indians such
scurvy guns, that they burst at the first discharge—
and consequently hurt no one but these pagan
savages.

The rise of this potent confederacy was a death
blow to the glory of William the Testy, for from
that day forward, it was remarked by many,
he never held up his head, but appeared quite crest
fallen. His subsequent reign therefore, affords but
scanty food for the historic pen—we find the grand
council continually augmenting in power, and threatening
to overwhelm the mighty but defenceless
province of Nieuw Nederlandts; while Wilhelmus
Kieft kept constantly firing off his proclamations
and protests, like a sturdy little sea captain, firing
off so many carronades and swivels, in order to
break and disperse a water spout—but alas! they
had no more effect than if they had been so many
blank cartridges.

The last document on record of this learned,
philosophic, but unfortunate little man is a long
letter to the council of the Amphyctions, wherein
in the bitterness of his heart he rails at the people
of New Haven, or red hills, for their uncourteous
contempt of his protest levelled at them for squatting
within the province of their high mightinesses.
From this letter, which is a model of epistolary
writing, abounding with pithy apophthegms and
classic figures, my limits will barely allow me to
extract the following recondite passage:-“Certainly
when we heare the Inhabitants of New Hartford
complayninge of us, we seem to heare Esop's wolfe
complayninge of the lamb, or the admonition of the
younge man, who cryed out to his mother, chideing
with her neighboures, `Oh Mother revile her, lest
she first take up that practice against you.' But being
taught by precedent passages we received such
an answer to our protest from the inhabitants of
New Haven as we expected: the Eagle always
despiseth the Beetle fly; yet notwithstanding we
doe undauntedly continue on our purpose of pursuing
our own right, by just arms and righteous
means, and doe hope without scruple to execute
the express commands of our superiours.” To
shew that this last sentence was not a mere empty
menace he concluded his letter, by intrepidly protesting
against the whole council, as a horde of
squatters and interlopers, inasmuch as they held

their meeting at New Haven, or the Red Hills,
which he claimed as being within the province of
the New Netherlands.

Thus end the authenticated chronicles of the
reign of William the Tety—for henceforth, in the
trouble, the perplexities and the confusion of the
times he seems to have been totally overlooked, and
to ahve slipped forever through the fingers of scrupulous
history. Indeed from some cause or another,
which I cannot divine, there appears to have
been a combination among historians to sink his
very name into oblivion, in consequence of which
they have one and all forborne even to speak of his
exploits; and though I have disappointed the caitiffs
in this their nefarious conspiracy, yet I much
question whether some one or other of their adherents
may not even yet have the hardihood to rise
up, and question the authenticity of certain of the
well established and incontrovertible facts, I have
herein recorded—but let them do it at their peril;
for may I perish, if ever I catch any slanderous incendiaries
contradicting a word of this immaculate
history, or robbing my heroes of any particle of that
renown they have gloriously acquired, if I do not
empty my whole ink-horn upon them—even though
it should equal in magnitude that of the sage Gargantua;
which according to the faithful chronicle of
his miraculous atchievements, weighted seven thousand
quintals.

It has been a matter of deep concern to me, that
such darkness and obscurity should hang over the
latter days of the illustrious Kieft—for he was a
mighty and great little man worthy of being utterly
renowned, seeing that he was the first potentate
that introduced into this land, the art of fighting by
proclamation; and defending a country by trumpeters,
and windmills—an economic and humane
mode of warfare, since revived with great applause,
and which promises, if it can ever be carried into
full effect, to save great trouble and treasure, and
spare infinitely more bloodshed than either the
discovery of gunpowder, or the invention of torpedoes.

It is true that certain of the early provincial poets,
of whom there were great numbers in the Nieuw
Nederlandts, taking advantage of the mysterious
exit of William the Testy, have fabled, that like
Romulus he was translated to the skies, and forms
a very fiery little star, some where on the left claw
of the crab; while others equally fanciful, declare
that he had experienced a fate similar to that of the
good king Arthur; who, we are assured by ancient
bards, was carried away to the delicious abodes of
fairy land, where he still exists, in pristine worth
and vigour, and will one day or another return to
rescue poor old England from the hands of paltry,
flippant, pettifogging cabinets, and restore the gallantry,
the honour and the immaculate probity,

which prevailed in the glorious days of the Round
Table.[10]

All these however are but pleasing fantasies, the
cobweb visions of those dreaming varlets the poets,
to which I would not have my judicious reader attach
any credibility. Neither am I disposed to yield
any credit to the assertion of an ancient and rather
apocryphal historian, who alledges that the ingenious
Wilhelmus was annihilated by the blowing down of
one of his windmills—nor to that of a writer of later
times, who affirms that he fell a victim to a philosophical
experiment, which he had for many
years been vainly striving to accomplish; having
the misfortune to break his neck from the garret
window of the Stadt house, in an ineffectual attempt
to catch swallows, by sprinkling fresh salt
upon their tails.

The most probable account, and to which I am
inclined to give my implicit faith, is contained in a
very obscure tradition, which declares, that what

with the constant troubles on his frontiers, the incessant
schemings, and projects going on in his own
pericranium—the memorials, petitions, remonstrances
and sage pieces of advice from divers respectable
meetings of the sovereign people, together with
the refractory disposition of his council, who were
sure to differ from him on every point and uniformly
to be in the wrong—all these I say, did eternally
operate to keep his mind in a kind of furnace heat,
until he at length became as completly burnt out, as
a dutch family pipe which has passed through three
generations of hard smokers. In this manner did
the choleric but magnanimous William the Testy
undergo a kind of animal combustion, consuming
away like a farthing rush light—so that when grim
death finally snuffed him out, there was scarce left
enough of him to bury!