Mercy they did deserve for their valor, could we have had opportunity to have bestowed it. Many were burnt in the Fort, both men, women, and children. Others forced out and came in troops to the Indians twenty and thirty at a time, which our soldiers received and entertained with the point of the sword. Down fell men, women, and children. Those that escaped us fell into the hands of the Indians that were in the rear of us. It is reported by themselves that there were about four hundred souls in this Fort and not above five of them escaped out of our hands. Great and doleful was the bloody sight to the view of young soldiers that never had been in War, to see so many souls lie gasping on the ground so thick in some places that you could hardly pass along. It may be demanded, Why should you be so furious (as some have said)? Should not Christians have more mercy and compassion? But I would refer you to David’s war, when a people is grown to such a height of blood and sin against God and man, and all confederates in the action, there he has no respect to persons but harrows them and saws them and puts them to the sword and the most terrible death that may be. Sometimes the Scripture declares women and children must perish with their parents. Sometime the case alters but we will not dispute it now. We had sufficient light from the word of God for our proceedings.

Patroons were expected to bring their own tenant farmers from Holland. The largest landholding was Rensselaerswijck, established by Kiliaen van Rensselaer, which covered almost all of present-day Albany and Rensselaer Counties. Others included Staaten Eylandt (Staten Island), owned by Cornelis Melyn, and Bronx, owned by Jonas Bronk.

They shall forever own and possess and hold from the Company as a perpetual fief of inheritance, all the land lying within the aforesaid limits together with the fruits, plants, minerals, rivers and springs thereof, rights of fishing, fowling and grinding, to the exclusion of all others. No fishing or fowling shall be carried on by anyone but the patroons and such as they shall permit.

The Company will endeavor to supply the colonists with as many blacks as it possibly can, on the conditions hereafter to be made, without however being bound to do so to a greater extent or for a longer time than it shall see fit.

Respecting these colonies, they have already a prosperous beginning and the hope is that they will not fall through provided they be zealously sustained, not only in that place but in the South river. For their increase and prosperous advancement, it is highly necessary that those sent out be first of all well provided with means both of support and defense. And that being freemen, they be settled there on a free tenure. That all they work for and gain be theirs to dispose of and to sell it according to their pleasure. That whoever is placed over them as commander act as their father not as their executioner, leading them with a gentle hand. For whoever rules them as a friend and associate will be beloved by them, as he who will order them as a superior will subvert and nullify everything. Yea, they will excite against him the neighboring provinces to which they will fly. ‘Tis better to rule by love and friendship than by force.

The Swedes set up a colony to their south in 1638, but the Dutch absorbed it into New Netherland in 1655. After Peter Minuit “bought” Manhattan from the Lenape in 1626, the colony’s center was the settlement surrounding Fort Amsterdam at the southern tip of the island. Peter Stuyvesant became governor of the colony in 1647 and remained in that position until 1664.

So that I have not a penny to help me to either spice or sugar or strong waters, without the which one cannot live here. For as strong beer in England does fatten and strengthen them, so water here does wash and weaken these here [and] only keeps life and soul together. But I am not half a quarter so strong as I was in England and all is for want of victuals, for I do protest unto you that I have eaten more in [one] day at home than I have allowed me here for a week. You have given more than my day’s allowance to a beggar at the door and if Mr. Jackson had not relieved me, I should be in a poor case. But he like a father and she like a loving mother does still help me.

This is to let you understand that I your child am in a most heavy case by reason of the nature of the country, [which] is such that it causes much sickness as the scurvy and the bloody flux and diverse other diseases, which makes the body very poor and weak. And when we are sick there is nothing to comfort us; for since I came out of the ship I never ate anything but peas and loblollie [water gruel]. As for deer or venison I never saw any since I came into this land. There is indeed some fowl but we are not allowed to go and get it, but must work hard both early and late for a mess of water gruel and a mouthful of bread and beef. A mouthful of bread for a penny loaf must serve for four men which is most pitiful.

They afterward determined to establish themselves there for the winter, and they accordingly built a large house. There was no lack of salmon there either in the river or in the lake, and larger salmon than they had ever seen before. The country thereabouts seemed to be possessed of such good qualities that cattle would need no fodder there during the winters. There was no frost there in the winters, and the grass withered but little. The days and nights there were of more nearly equal length than in Greenland or Iceland. On the shortest day of winter, the sun was up between 7:30 and 3:30 [suggesting a latitude of about 50°]. When they had completed their house, Leif said to his companions, “I propose now to divide our company into two groups, and to set about an exploration of the country. One-half of our party shall remain at home at the house, while the other half shall investigate the land; and they must not go beyond a point from which they can return home the same evening, and are not to separate [from each other]. Thus they did for a time.

The Norse have an old legend that Viking hero Leif Erikson founded a colony in a new land they called Vinland. The discovery of the Norse village in 1960 and its acceptance as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1978 established the Newfoundland colony as the oldest known European site in the Americas, and very probably as the Vinland settlement of Norse legends. The Canadian ruins date from the appropriate period, around 1000 CE. Artifacts found in the remains of eight buildings include farm implements and spinning and blacksmith tools. It was probably an extension of the permanent Viking settlements on Greenland that were the home of Leif’s father, Erik the Red.

Sassafras trees great plenty all the island over, a tree of high price and profit. Also, in every island, and almost in every part of every island, are great store of Ground nuts, forty together on a string, some of them as big as hens’ eggs. They grow not two inches underground; the which nuts we found to be as good as Potatoes. Also, diverse sorts of shellfish, as Scallops, Muscles, Cockles, Lobsters, Crabs, Oysters, and Wilks, exceeding good and very great [large].

These people are exceeding courteous, gentle of disposition, and well conditioned, excelling all others that we have seen. I think they excel all the people of America; of stature much higher than we. Some of them are black thin bearded. They make beards of the hair of beasts and one of them offered a beard of their making to one of our sailors, for his that grew on his face, which because it was of a red color they judged to be none of his own. They are quick eyed and steadfast in their looks, fearless of others’ harms, as intending none themselves. Some of the meaner sort given to filching, which the very name of Savages (not weighing their ignorance in good or evil) may easily excuse

Upon the six and twentieth of March 1602, being Friday, we went from Falmouth, being in all two & thirty persons, in a small bark of Dartmouth called the Concord, holding a course for the North part of Virginia . . . on Friday the fourteenth of May early in the morning we made the land, being full of fair trees, the land somewhat low, certain hummocks or hills lying into the land, the shore full of white sand, but very stony or rocky. And standing fair along by the shore about twelve of the clock the same day we came to an anchor where six Indians in a Basque-shallop [water-taxi] with mast and sail, an iron grapple, and a kettle of copper came boldly aboard us; one of them appareled with a waistcoat and breeches of black serge made after our sea fashion, hose and shoes on his feet. All the rest (saving one that had a pair of breeches of blue cloth) were all naked.