Pennsylvania, the keystone, a short history

Preface

This work gives in outline the history of Pennsylvania. It is the outcome of long special study with more than ordinary advantages. The author has here indicated his view of the manner in which that history ought to be presented with greater fulness and detail. Much of the story has been based upon original materials preserved in the Library of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania never before utilized. The facts which go to prove the unequalled influence of Pennsylvania in the development of American affairs are narrated, but comment and opinions are omitted. Many heretofore accepted conventions have upon investigation been discarded. And, using the language of a recent author, '' I have been sparing of references that encumber the foot of a page like barnacles on the keel of a vessel and delay progress."

PRINCIPAL SOURCES UTILIZED

Thomas' Pennsylvania.

Budd's Pennsylvania.

Smith's Pennsylvania.

Proud 's Pennsylvania.

Gordon's Pennsylvania.

BoUes' Pennsylvania.

Jenkins' Pennsylvania.

Sharpless' Pennsylvania.

Shimmel's Pennsylvania.

De Vries' Voyages {Dutch).

AcreHus' New Sweden {Swedish).

Campanius' New Sweden {Swedish).

Johnson's Swedes on the Delaware.

Hazard's Annals.

Falkner's Curieuse Nachricht.

Pennsylvania Archives.

Pennsylvania Colonial Records.

Morgan Edwards' Materials for a History of the Baptists.

Votes of the Assembly.

Swank's Iron and Coal in Pennsylvania.

Swank's Progressive Pennsylvania.

Penn Manuscripts.

Logan Manuscripts.

Norris Manuscripts.

Wayne Manuscripts.

Potts Manuscripts.

Jacobs Manuscripts.

Moore Manuscripts.

Penny packer Manuscripts.

Westcott's History of Philadelphia.

Smith's BouqueCs Expedition.

Pennsylvania Gazette.

Pennsylvania Mercury.

Pennsylvania Journal.

Pennsylvania Chronicle.

Sower's Der Pennsijlvanische Berichte.

Loudon's Indian Wars.

Doddridge's Notes.

Messages of the Governors.

Journals of Congress.

Brumbaugh's History of the Dunkers.

Sachse's German Pietists.

Rupp's County Histories.

Bancroft's United States.

McMaster's United States.

Wallace's Life of William Bradford.

Walton's Life of Conrad Weiser.

MacFarlane's Manufacturing in

Philadelphia.

Wilson's Pennsylvania Railroad.

Webster's Presbyterian Church in

America.

Learned's Pastorius, Pennsylvania

Magazine.

Contents

Chapter Page

I. — The Indians 9

II.— The Dutch 18

Chapter I The Indians

The American Races. — The name 'Tndians," though long used, is based on a mistake. When Christopher Columbus started across the wide Atlantic Ocean on his tour of discovery he was in search of a route to the Indies in Asia. The land he found he believed to be a part of the Indies. The people living on it were, therefore, called Indians. How or when they reached this continent is unknown, but they had been here long enough to have occupied both North and South America and to have developed civilizations of their own in Mexico, Central America, and Peru.

The Two Great Indian Families in Pennsylvania. — The forests of Pennsylvania were occupied by two great families of Indians, the Lenni Lenape or Delawares, along the Delaware River, and the Iroquois, who, having come down from western New York, had taken possession of the upper waters of the Susquehanna and the lands to the west of the river. The Iroquois, either through force or deception, had secured authority over the Lenni Lenape, whom they called women. The tradition among the Lenni Lenape was that many ages ago they came eastward from beyond the Mississippi River.

How the Indians Lived. — In the main the Indians lived by hunting and fishing. They had no horses, no cattle, no beast trained to bear burdens, and no domestic animals except the dog. They had just begun to leave the state of pure savagery and to take hold of that of agriculture. To some extent they gathered together into villages, generally along the banks of streams where they could catch plenty of fish

TEEDYUSCUNG, ON THE WISSAHICKON.

for food. There was one such village at Coaquannock, the site of Philadelphia, one at Conestoga, in Lancaster County, and others in various places throughout the State. For houses they fastened together poles or saplings in the shape of a cone or sugar-loaf, covered them with bark, and left a

THE INDIANS 11

space at the top for the escape of smoke. These rude houses had but one room and were called wigwams.

Food and Tobacco. — The Indians raised pumpkins, beans, Indian corn or maize, and tobacco. The work was done by the women, who were called squaws. When a couple were married the man gave to the woman the foot of a deer as a promise that he would hunt and bring home the meat, and she gave him some corn, to signify that she would cultivate the ground. Long before the coming of the white people they made pipes of clay and soapstone in which to smoke the tobacco, of which they were very fond. They dried and prepared the corn for the dish called hominy, and the squaws, with stone pestles and mortars, pounded the corn into meal and then made of it a bread, which we still imitate and call by the name they gave it — pone. They knew^ of the sweet sap of one species of the maple tree and how to make sugar from it, an art which we learned from them.

Implements and Weapons. — Their implements were made of stone, jasper, quartz, and hke material, but they had no knowledge of the methods of smelting metals. They made axes, hatchets, pestles, drills, knives, scrapers, spear-heads, arrow-heads, beads, and ornaments from the different varieties of stone, often displaying great skill and even an artistic sense. These articles, as they were lost or abandoned, are still often turned up by the plow, and may be found in considerable numbers in every locahty in the State.

They made bows and arrows from the hickory and other woods, canoes from the inner bark of the birch tree, and a kind of shoe, called moccasin, from the skin of the deer. Their canoes they managed in the water with great dexterity. They had some knowledge of the art of making pots from clay or soapstone, and the squaws wove baskets of straw and hickory with much skill.

Shells were sometimes used for saucers and spoons, and were made into beads and woven into a kind of money or representative of value called wampum. To their hatchets they gave the name of ^^dommehicken," and added to the English language the word ''tomahawk," which was our effort to express the same sound.

Every man among them was expected to be able to build a wigwam for himself and his family within three or four hours.

INDIAN ARROW HEADS, SPEAR HEADS, AND KNIVES.

They made boats, to which the English gave the name of ''dugouts," by taking the trunk of a tree and with much labor burning, punching, and scraping out the inside of the wood.

Race Characteristics. — As a general thing the men were tall and robust, with broad shoulders, of a proud and stern demeanor, and both sexes had straight black hair, and were brown in complexion. William Penn says, ''they mostly walk with a lofty chin." The children were lighter in color when

THE INDIANS they were first born, but the squaws rubbed them with fat and laid them out in the sun to make them browm. This fact shows that they regarded a Hght color as an indication of weakness or a disadvantage.

INDIAN AXES.

How the Indians Made Bread. — Daniel Falckner, in 1702, gives this description of the squaws making their corn bread: 'They make bread of the corn which they call Pone, and they make soup of it wliich they call Sapan. They sprinkle the

INDIAN MORTAR AND PESTLE.

corn with hot water, and beat it to get the peel off, and pound it small, sift the smallest through a straw basket and make loaves Uke great goat's cheese. They stick these in hot ashes and scrape the coals over them and so bake them. When it is ready they wash the bread off with water. Sometimes they mix red or other colored beans under the bread, which then looks as though raisins were baked in it."

Pastorius gives a delightful picture of four Indians seated on the ground around a stewed pumpkin, which in great earnestness they were scraping up with mussel shells and eating for a meal.

The Indians had great keenness of observation, and could tell from looking at the bushes and grass whether anyone had gone through the wood, and if so, whether he was European or Indian. They used native dyes and painted their faces.

Medicines and Cures. — They had a way of their own for the treatment of diseases. For fevers they gave a decoction of walnut hulls and bound the head with hemp. They believed in the virtue of sweating. They built a wigwam just high enough to sit in upright, made it warm by taking in heated stones, and then the patient sat there and sweated. Afterward he plunged into cold water and was regarded as cured. They used roots, plants, and snake-fat as medicines, and with a sharp flint cut out briars and splinters and even opened veins.

Religion. — They were, in their own way, religious and devout, believing in a God under the name of Manitou, who ''dwells in the great sun land." They could not understand why the white people should give so much thought and trouble to eating and drinking, clothing and houses, as though they had doubts whether the Manitou would care for them. A chief said about God to Penn in the presence of Kelpius in 1701: ''He maintains the sun. He maintained our fathers for so many, many moons. He maintains us. . . . He will also protect our children. . . . We trust in him and never bequeath a foot of land." They observed certain religious ceremonies. Two Indians started a song with notes of sadness and danced. The others gathered around them in a circle, dancing, weep-

THE INDIANS ing, clacking their teeth, snapping with their fingers, stamping with their feet, and uttering weird cries.

Further Characteristics. — Their chiefs were chosen only for life, and because they were the most skilful in hunting and in war. In talking they were unable to pronounce the sound of the letter ^'r" and they made many gestures. Their thoughts were often poetic and their oratory forcible. These were the people who were living on the land, now Pennsylvania, when

PENN S TREATY, BY BENJAMIN WEST.

the whites first came. They welcomed the strangers with a kindly curiosity. Pastorius tells us that during the ten years he had lived here there was no instance of one of them using force. The Shackamaxon Treaty. — Soon after the arrival of William Penn he held a treaty with them at Shackamaxon, on the Delaware, met them as friends, and agreed to purchase their lands. They ever afterward called him Brother Onas. This treaty, painted by Benjamin West, became known all over

Europe. It was described as the treaty which was never signed and never broken, and it gave a good reputation everywhere to Pennsylvania, which helped all of the American colonies. A wampum belt of beads showing this treaty came down in the Penn family, and now belongs to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, to whom Granville Penn gave it.

An Indian Writes a Letter. — Abraham Op den Graeff came to Germantown in 1683. His old mother came with him, and within a few weeks she died. He sat down to write home about the event. Some Indians appeared, and one of the squaws took hold of the pen. He guided her hand and in this way wrote of the death of his mother. Thus the story of the first death in the little colony was told l^y the hand of an Indian. The letter is still preserved in one of the libraries in Europe.

An Indian Chief Discovers Iron. — When Samuel Nutt started the manufacture of iron at Coventry, in Chester County, in 1718, the mine of ore was discovered and pointed out to him by an Indian chief. As a reward he gave to the daughter of the chief an iron pot which cost four shillings and six pence, i The only contest with the Indians in Eastern Pennsylvania occurred in Hanover Township, now Montgomery County, in 1728, forty-six years after the settlement by Penn, where a roving band of Shawn ees on the war-path came into collision with the settlers, and two or three were wounded. Upon a rumor of 'attack in 1689 Caleb Pusey went out, unarmed, into the woods to meet the savages. In 1728 two traders, Morgan and John Winters, were hanged for killing an Indian. V The Quaker Treatment of Indians. — The concessions of Penn, made to the settlers July 11, 1681, provided: 'That no man shall by any ways or means in word or deed affront or wrong any Indian, but he shall incur the same penalty of the law as if he had committed it against his fellow planter."

THE INDIANS

The policy of the Quaker government in carrjdng out the law with respect to all men alike, including the natives, made a favorable impression ever\^vhere, and maintained peace with the Indians throughout all the early days of the settlement.

Indian Humor. — Pastorius tells an incident which suggests even a touch of humor in the grim savages. An Indian promised to sell him a turkey hen. He brought instead an eagle and insisted that it was a turkey. When it was dechned he told a Swede, who had seen the occurrence, that he had thought a German, just arrived, would not know the difference.

Indian Place Names. — The Indians have made a permanent impression upon the State in the names of such streams and places as Ohio, Monongahela, Allegheny, Susquehanna, Perkiomen, Wingohocking, Conshohocken, Manayunk, Passyunk. and Mauch Chunk, which are all of Indian origin.

INDIAN CELTS.

Chapter II The Dutch

Race Stocks of the White Settlers. — Pennsylvania differed from all of the other American colonies in the fact that many settlements were made within her borders and many races contributed to her people. Numerous fibres were twisted into a cord, which grew strong.

Captain John Smith Approaches Pennsylvania. — In 1608 the famous Captain John Smith, of Virginia, sailed up the Chesapeake Bay to its head, and two miles further up the Susquehanna River, where he was stopped by the rocks. He almost reached Pennsylvania, and some of the Susquehanna Indians, from what is now called Lancaster County, went to meet him. He says the calf of the leg of one of them "was three-quarters of a yard about," and he seemed ''the goodliest man we had ever beheld."

Henry Hudson in Delaware Bay. — At this time the Dutch, of Holland, during a lull in their war with Spain, were sending maritime expeditions over the world. They sent Henry Hudson to America. He sailed up the coast and, on August 28, 1609, in his ship, the ''Half Moon," entered the bay now called Delaware Bay, and cast anchor. He reported his discovery, and the Dutch claimed the country.

The "South River." — This was before his discovery of the Hudson River, and, therefore. New Netherland had its origin on the Delaware, called by the Dutch the Zuyd Revier, or South River. Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, and New

THE DUTCH 19

York are the only American States whose territory was united under one government before the articles of confederation were adopted in 1777.

On August 27, 1610, Captain Samuel Argall, from Jamestown, sailed into the Delaware Bay, and, remaining a few hours, gave it the name of Delaware.

A Frenchman Crosses Pennsylvania. — Etienne Brule, a Frenchman in the service of Champlain, the first governor of Canada, left the neighborhood of Oneida, in New York, in 1615, and spent the following winter exploring along a river '^that debouches in the direction of Florida," and he followed it ''as far as the sea and to the islands and lands near them." This river was probably the Susquehanna, and it appears, therefore, that he crossed Pennsylvania and reached Chesapeake Bay.

The Dutch on the Delaware. — Hudson's report of a land rich in furs attracted the attention of the Dutch, and before 1614 five vessels came to Manhattan on the North River. One of them, in command of Cornehus Mey, sailed to the South River, and he named the cape at the east entrance of the bay Cape Mey, and the cape on the west Cape Henlopen. One of these vessels was burned, and her captain, Adrian Block, built a yacht forty-four and a half feet long, eleven and a half feet wide, of sixteen tons burden, to take her place. This boat, the '^Onrust," was the first built within the hmits of the United States. She was destined to fame. In her, in 1616, Cornelius Hendricksen, from Monnikendam upon the Zuyder Zee, discovered the mouth of the Schuylkill and first saw the site of Philadelphia. Here he ransomed from the Indians a Dutchman named Kleynties and two companions, who had come down from the North River by land, and who were perhaps the first Europeans in Pennsylvania.

The Dutch West India Company.— In 1621 the West India Company, with the exclusive right to trade on the coast of

America between Newfoundland and the Straits of Magellan, was chartered by the Dutch Government.

Fort Nassau. — In 1623 Mey built Fort Nassau on the east bank of the South River, about five miles above Wilmington, and here four married couples and eight seamen lived. They were the first settlers along the river.

The Valley of the Swans. — Another settlement of three or four families was made further north upon the same side of the

DAVID PIETERZOON DE VRIES.

river. In 1631 David Pieterzoon DeVries, with thirty-two people and a large stock of cattle from the Texel, made a settlement near the present town of Lewes, and called it Swanendael, or the Valley of the Swans. After a few weeks he returned to Holland and left the colony in charge of Gilles Hosset. Unhappily, in claim of right, Hosset or some other of the colonists set up upon a pole a tin display of the arms of Holland. An

THE DUTCH 21

Indian, seeing the glitter, or thinking the tin could be used for making tobacco pipes, stole it and carried it away. The Dutch, regarding the offence as an affair of state, succeeded in having the offender put to death. Then the Indians killed all of the settlers, and in this tragic manner ended the first settlement on the west shore of the Delaware. When DeVries came again, late in 1632, to the South River he found only the skulls and bones of the people. He landed at Fort Nassau, at Ridley Creek, and at the site of Philadelphia. He published a book describing the country, and told of the fine river, of the vines, of the fish which were so plentiful that with a single haul of the seine he caught as many as would feed thirty men, of the thousands of geese, and of the wild turkeys and deer.

The Dutch on the Schuylkill.— Wouter Van Twiller, the Dutch governor of New Netherland, who came over to New Amsterdam on the North River in 1633, sent Arent Corssen to the South River to build a new house and secure lands on the west bank of the river. Corssen bought from the Indians ''the Schuylkill and adjoining lands." One of the rivers on the banks of which Philadelphia was laid out still bears the Dutch name of Schuylkill: On this land Fort Beversrode was later erected.

The Dutch and the English. — The Dutch claim of ownership was not conceded by other nations, and their settlements were much disturbed by intruders. In 1642 the Dutch commander at Fort Nassau, Jan Jansen, sent a force across the river and drove away a number of Englishmen who proposed to establish a post near the mouth of the Schuylkill.

The Dutch and the Swedes. — As early as 1638 the Swedes began to appear on the river, making settlements and entering into trade with the Indians. At that time the Dutch at Manhattan were too busy fighting with the savages around them to pay much attention to the Swedes, but in 1645 Willem Kieft, the Dutch governor, sent Andreas Hudde to Fort Nassau, and the next year a Dutch sloop, loaded \\dth goods, sailed mto the Schuylkill to trade with the ^linqua Indians. The Swedes ordered her away, and since the captain was afraid of losing his cargo, he obeyed. Then in 1647 the sturdy Peter Stuyvesant became the Dutch governor. Hudde built Fort Beversrode at Passyunk. The Swedes cut dowTi the trees around the fort and erected a house between it and the river so as to make an obstruction. Two of the Dutch built houses and the Swedes tore them do^^'n.

Dutch Settlements on the **South River," or Delaware. — In 1651 Stuyvesant sent an armed ship from ^Manhattan to the South River, and he himself came overland with a body of soldiers to Fort Nassau. There he bought lands from the Indians, and he called upon the governor of the Swedes to show by what authority they remained upon the river. He gave up Fort Nassau and built another fort, called Fort Casimir, near what is now the toTsm of New Castle, in the State of Delaware, below the fort of the Swedes, and in this way was able to control the river.

The Dutch and Swedes Struggle for Fort Casimir. — In 1654 Fort Casimir had a garrison of twelve men under command of Gerrit Bikker. A Swedish vessel came into the river. Her commander, at the head of twenty or thirty soldiers, demanded possession of the fort, and Bikker, being without powder, surrendered. The Dutch West India Compam^ sent orders to Stu}^^esant to recapture the fort. On August 28, 1655, after a sermon in the Dutch Church at Manhattan, Stuyvesant, with seven ships, three hundred and seventeen soldiers, and a company of sailors, set sail, and on the following day entered the South River. That stream had never before seen so formidable a force. It passed Fort Casimir, and on August 31st the troops landed between the two forts. In Fort Casimir

THE DUTCH 23

were forty-seven Swedes. After three demands for surrender the Swedes, on the following day, gave up the fort. Thereupon Stuyvesant led his force to the Swedish Fort Christina and began a siege which lasted two weeks. In the fort were thirty men. At the end of this period, September loth, they surrendered, and in this way the Dutch estabhshed their control of the whole of the South River.

Colonists from Amsterdam. — Stm^vesant returned in triumph to ^lanhattan and sent John Paul Jacquette to take charge. Soon afterward, in 1656, the West India Company sold a large part of its lands on the west side of the river to the city of Amsterdam, which city sent Jacob Alrichs, Tsith three ships and a number of colonists, to be the governor. Around Fort Casimir had grown up a Dutch village, called New Amstel, afterward New Castle. Alrichs arrived there in April, 1657, with one hundred and eight persons, sixty of whom were soldiers.

The First Schoolmaster. — Among them, of more importance than the soldiers, came Evert Pietersen, a schoolmaster, who soon had a school of twenty-five pupils, and so began education in Pennsylvania and Delaware.

Life at New Amstel. — At New Amstel the settlers had horses and cows, some of them driven over from iManhattan, as well as pigs and goats. They made bricks with which to build houses and baked tiles to roof them. They traded with the Indians for beaver and deer skins and furs. They laid out gardens, raised rye and wheat, and sent timber to Holland. One morning, September 6, 1659, Colonel Nathaniel Utie came riding into New Amstel wdth nine followers, and threatened, on behalf of the governor of IMaryland, to seize the place, giving them three weeks time in which to depart. Stuj-^^esant, at Manhattan, made answer by sending sixty soldiers to New Amstel, and Augustine Herman and Resolved Waldron to

24 PEXXSYLVAXL\— THE I>;t:YSTOXE

Marj'land, to demand satisfaction for the threats. Utie returned no more. Another ^-illage called Altona grew up near the mouth of the Brando-wine Creek, where the Swedes had buih Fort Christina.

Troubles with the Indians. — There were some troubles with the Indians. The settlers sold them hquors in order to get deer meat and Indian com, and the results were harmful, since the Indians were led to commit depredations. In 1659 two servants of ALrichs, the former governor, killed three Indians, a man, a woman, and a boy. In 1660 the Indians killed Jan Barentsen, a carpenter. In 1661 the IncUans killed four men near New Amstel. In 1662 an old man named Joris Floris, sitting on one of his teams of horses, as he drove through the woods, was shot and scalped. A little later a young man was kiUed only four himdred steps from the fort at Altona. Nevertheless the relations with the Indians were, on the whole, peaceful, and the settlers used the Indian runners to send messages to Manhattan. In 1663 the city of Amsterdam bought all of the rights of the West India Company on the South River, and Alexander D'Hinoyossa, who had succeeded Alrichs. became the ruler independent of Governor Stuo-^'esant. He brought from Holland in 1663 one hundrerl and fifty settlers.

The First Social Experiment in America. — Pieter Comehus Plockhoy, a Mennonite, bom at Zierik Zee, in Holland, was the originator of those sociahstic and commimal odews which later led Hawthorne, Thoreau, and Emerson to undertake such a life at Brook Farm. He wrote several pamphlets containing his views of the brotherhood of man, of ways for helping the poor, and of men U^-ing together in one society and hao-ing their goods in common. He went to England and laid his plans before Cromwell, who listened to him. He also urged them upon Parhament. In 1662 he brought a colony of twenty-five Dutch Mennonites to Swanendael, on the South Ptiver, to try

THE DUTCH 25

his experiment in America. | He wrote a little book published in Amsterdam in 1662, describing his plan for a community of men

EenonderlingAccoort^

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*^et:nenticDpDetioo?-rcc{jtentaii f)are %c^U

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TITLE PAGE OF PLOCKHOY's BOOK. " VALLEY OF THE S"^AX5."

engaged in handicrafts to be settled on the South River. It provided for freedom of conscience, that there should be no lordship or ''servile slavery," and that goods should be held and used in common. His colony had hardly become fixed in its new home before trouble arose.

The English Claims and Contests. — The King of England, claiming rights through the voyages of Cabot, granted the land between the head of the Connecticut River and the east side of the Delaware Bay to his brother, the Duke of York. This meant war between Holland and England. Four English men-of-war, having eighty-two guns and four hundred and fifty soldiers, in 1664 took possession of the North River, which Stuyvesant, being unable to resist, surrendered. Then an expedition under Sir Robert Carr, with three vessels, was sent to the South River. He called upon Fort Amstel to surrender. D'Hinoyossa refused. The place was taken bj^ storm, in the course of which the Dutch had three men killed and ten wounded. It was the first real battle in the region of the Delaware River. Carr also destroyed the ''Quaking Society of Plockhoy to a very Naile." Under the treaty of peace made at Breda, three years later, Holland retained Java and other islands in the East, which she regarded as the more desirable, and gave up to England the lands on the North and South Rivers. In this way ended the Dutch efforts to colonize and form governments in this region. It is a period full of romance and interest. At the time of the English conquest there were a thousand people, perhaps more, living along the South River. The names of Cape May, Cape Henlopen, Marcus Hook, Hoorn Kill, Schuylkill, and Maurice River remain to remind us of the Dutch occupation. /

Chapter III The Swedes

The Swedes Come to the Delaware. — The settlements of the Dutch upon the North and South Rivers had the effect of stirring other nations to making similar efforts. Willem Usselinx, who had been the founder of the Dutch West India Company, feeling that he had not received proper consideration in his native land, went, in 1624, to Sweden, and there had an interview with Gustavus Adolphus, the famous King of the Swedes. The result was that he received a charter from the king to found a company for the purpose of trade with ''Asia, Africa, America, and Magellanica." This South Company was intended to establish trade with the New World, as America was then called, but it went into other ventures without much success, and in 1629 Usselinx returned to Holland. He still continued his efforts, however, and they finally led to results. Samuel Blommaert, another Dutchman, who had Imsiness interests in Sweden, directed the attention of the Swedish Chancellor, Axel Oxenstierna, to the possibilities of the copper trade with the West Indies. At this time Peter Minuit, who had been governor of New Netherland and was dissatisfied with his treatment, having been dismissed, offered his services to Blommaert, knowing that Blommaert owned lands on the South River. Minuit suggested the founding of a colony upon that river to trade with the Indians. A company was formed with the exclusive right to trade on the South River for twenty years and to send goods to Sweden for a period of ten years free of duty. The ownership of the company was half Swedish and half Dutch.

New Sweden. — The Swedish Government furnished two ships and a sloop, and Blommaert secured cargoes of goods and seamen to man the vessels in Holland. The expedition, under the command of Minuit, reached the South River in March, 1638. His instructions were to set up the arms of Sweden and take possession of the country, avoiding New Netherland, to do no harm to the Indians, to name the country New Sweden, to dispose of his cargo, and then, leaving the sloop, return to Sweden.