and surprises would have taken a more definite and systematic form. When Minuit went home from Manhattan in 1632, his ship was driven by bad weather into the English port of Plymouth. There she was seized upon the charge of illegal trading within the dominions of King Charles. After earnest protestations from the Dutch, and negotiation for several weeks, the ship was released, but the English ministry then declared that England claimed the region occupied by the Dutch, upon a title derived from "first discovery, occupation and possession," that she regarded title from the Indians as of no value, they not being "bona fide possessors" of the land, capable of making a conveyance for it. The Dutch were flatly told that if they would "submit themselves as subjects" to His Majesty, they might remain in New Netherland, but that otherwise his interests would not permit them to "usurp and encroach upon" his colonies.

This was notice that at a convenient season-which in time came the stronger power would oust the weaker. The claim of original discovery, from the dubious voyages of the Cabots, covered a vast deal of ground in England's interest.

And here we may close this period of discovery of the Delaware. We have seen the river in the possession of its native people, and we have seen the east bank occupied by the Dutch pioneers, with an abortive attempt to occupy the west bank. At the end of 1637 practically nothing had been done toward actual settlement and cultivation; the Holland people had come for trade, and that only. A new period of development was at hand.

CHAPTER III

THE SWEDES: THE FIRST SETTLEMENT IN PENNSYLVANIA.—

S

1638-1655

ENDING out her first expedition to the Delaware in 1637,

Sweden expressed in it the partial accomplishment of a cherished plan. Since 1624 she had been desirous to secure a trade with the New World, such as Spain had so long possessed, and the Netherlands had lately been acquiring. In the autumn of that year, at Gottenberg, the king, Gustavus Adolphus, gave audience to a somewhat unpractical but very earnest adventurer, William Usselincx, formerly a merchant of the Netherlands, and the man who had been there most active in urging the organization of the Dutch West India Company. The outcome

of this interview was the king's approval of a Swedish Company for the same general purpose as the Dutch; a commission issued. to Usselincx authorized its organization "for trade to Asia, Africa, America, and Magellanica."

In this scheme, indicative by its swelling phrase of the men who had designed it, the persistent though ruined Antwerper, and the generous, somewhat romantic monarch, lay the germ of the New Sweden of Delaware and Pennsylvania. In 1628 the first formal charter for the "South Company" was granted.

The undertaking, however, dragged. Usselincx wore out his influence in Sweden, as he had done in the Netherlands, by persistent importunity. Sweden was poor; the Thirty Years' War was raging; Swedish sailors and ships were few, and familiar only

with neighboring seas; at the death of Gustavus, in November, 1632, nothing of practical importance had been accomplished. He had indeed heartily approved the plan; if it languished during his absence in the wars it revived when he returned to Stockholm;

Proprietor of Maryland; born about 1582; died 1632. Photographed especially for this work from an old engraving

he hoped to increase the wealth of his country by the profits of exterior commerce, and to train at the same time a body of seamen who might even cope upon the great oceans with those of Spain. It was at Nuremberg, in the last of his conferences with his wise and trusty counsellor, the Chancellor Axel Oxenstiern, that he considered afresh the whole plan, and expressed his approval of a new and enlarged charter, designed to enlist the interest of the North German and other cities. Three weeks later he

fell at Lutzen-at the very time when the ships of DeVries were approaching the Delaware.

Upon Oxenstiern, burdened with all the other difficult affairs of Sweden, devolved the execution of the American scheme. Faithful to the thought of Gustavus in this as in other particulars, he was himself heartily in favor of it. No statesman of his time viewed more sagaciously the problem of Europe's relations with the New World. But the times were unpropitious; he was forced to wait five years, until practicable plans could be matured. Late in the autumn of 1637 two ships at last left Sweden for America. They were under the command of Peter Minuit, he who had been the Dutch company's director at Manhattan from 1626 to 1632. The expedition was bound, not to the Guinea Coast, or fabulous regions in the South Sea, but to the South River. The western side of this river, as Minuit knew, had remained unoccupied by Europeans since the abandonment of the Colony of DeVries at Swanendael, and he undoubtedly knew and appreciated the advantage for the Indian trade of occupancy upon that shore.

The two ships were the Kalmar Nyckel, a man of war, and the Gripen, a sloop. The crews and cargoes were from Holland; of the three-score persons in the expedition not more than a halfdozen were Swedes. Capital for it had been secured in equal parts from Holland and Sweden. In the latter country Oxenstiern had raised 12,000 florins, and in Holland a group of persons, headed by Minuit and Blommaert, connected with Swedish interests, had provided a corresponding sum. The whole enterprise was therefore a private venture; nothing of the "South Company" of 1626, or the enlarged company of 1633, appeared in it, except that this was at last a resolute effort to express in action something of what had so long been under discussion.

After leaving Gottenburg, baffling winds detained the ships in the North Sea, but about the end of December, after having refitted and obtained more provisions at the Dutch port of Medemblik, they quitted the familiar shores and took the ordinary south

ern route across the Atlantic. Toward the end of March they had entered the Delaware. Though it was scarcely spring, the river seemed beautiful to men who had left the north of Europe in the depths of winter, and one place at which they briefly landed, perhaps the mouth of Mispillion creek, they called "Paradise Point." Passing on upward, they cast anchor at last where a large stream came in on the left hand-the Minquas-kill of the Dutch. Here the ships lay while Minuit went ashore to confer with the Indians. He knew well, of course, the story of the catastrophe at Swanendael, and realized that above all he must avoid the conditions which had caused it.

The Indian chief whom Minuit now met was Mattahoorn, the same who has been mentioned as joining in the conveyance of the lands on Schuylkill to Corssen, the Dutch agent. Apparently he was the principal sachem of the region. He had his lodge near the Minquas-kill. He claims our remembrance both because he seems to have been a worthy character, and because he is practically the only one of the Lenâpé distinguishable by name before the time of Penn. Other Indians of the Delaware in the early period are a mass, in which none has individuality.

Mattahoorn was probably an elderly man. He was living, however, thirteen years later, for he joined in a Council held at Fort Nassau, in July, 1651, by Stuyvesant, the Dutch governor. It is possible that Minuit, from his acquaintance with the trade. on the South River during his administration at Manhattan, may have had some previous knowledge of the chief. There was no difficulty in concluding an agreement. Minuit explained what he wanted-ground on which to build a "house," and other ground on which to plant. For the former he offered "a kettle and other articles," for the latter half the tobacco raised upon it. Mattahoorn seems to have yielded cheerfully, as the Indians generally did until they began to see that land taken by the whites passed from common enjoyment into private and exclusive use. The land for the planting was defined to be, as Mattahoorn afterward