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110 4 RebelsandGoodSwedishMen On March 11, 1644, the Fama reached New Sweden after ten weeks at sea. Rumbling in its hold was the colony’s future, packed and crated: 6,000 bricks, a ton of lime, 3 saws, 2 millstones, 8 grindstones, 2 stones for a hand mill, 5 anchors, 6 pumps, 20 augers, 4 compasses, 250 copper kettles, 200 barrels of flour, 20 barrels of salt, 10 casks of wine, a cask of brandy, several hundred yards of cloth, 10 flagpole knobs, 300 pairs of shoes, 200 pairs of stockings, and 147 shirts.1 Several soldiers were also aboard the Fama, among them Anders Jönsson from Jönköping.2 He had been recruited by Johan Papegoja, a young, high-strung nobleman who was returning on the Kalmar Nyckel, Peter Minuit’s old ship, to court the governor’s seventeen-year-old daughter. Papegoja was posted at Fort Christina—fifteen miles downriver from young Armegot and her father—while Jönsson and the other soldiers were sent across the river to Fort Elfsborg. They would be guarding the colony’s newest and most important fortress, the symbol and instrument of Governor Printz’s ambition to control the Delaware River.3 Situated on the east side of the river near the mouth of modern-day Salem River in New Jersey, Fort Elfsborg was well suited to challenge vessels entering the mouth of the river. But its marshy site made it a miserable place to live— and to die. During the previous summer its miasmas had claimed the lives of nine men; Jönsson surely wondered whether he would be the next to die at the fort nicknamed Myggenborgh, or “Mosquito Castle.” Per Lindeström reBelS And good SwediSh men 111 later wrote that it had such “an immense number of [mosquitoes] that they almost ate the people up.” During the day the insects swarmed so that the men “could not see with their eyes,” and at night they “could neither rest nor sleep” for all the mosquito music.The “continued stinging and sucking” made the men so sick, weak, and swollen that they appeared to have “some horrible disease.” Perhaps if the soldiers had smeared themselves with bear grease, as their Lenape neighbors did, they might have suffered less—and smelled no worse.4 By the time Lindeström saw Fort Elfsborg in 1654, it had been abandoned for several years and was “totally in ruins.”5 The imaginative engineer blamed the insects, but it was really Peter Stuyvesant’s construction of Fort Casimir in 1651 and New Sweden’s slow, steady decay that had led its officers to give up the fort.6 Just as Fort Elfsborg had become “dilapidated and abandoned,” so had New Sweden, which had not received any support from Sweden since 1648.7 Morale in the settlement had collapsed, and the governor was deeply resented by free settlers, soldiers, and company employees alike. Already some colonists had left or attempted to leave. Some headed west to the upper Chesapeake, where Marylanders were planting tobacco and needed workers. Others escaped downriver to the Dutch post at Fort Casimir or fled north to New Amsterdam. Finally, in the summer of 1653 a group of freemen and soldiers confronted their governor. The protestors could not fault Printz for the failures of their fatherland, but they did blame him for depriving them of their rights and for abusing their fellow settlers. On July 27 they presented him with a listing of their grievances and informed him that they were sending two men to the Crown and the company “in the fatherland, to find out whether we are entirely disowned.” They wanted to know once and for all whether the Swedish Crown intended to protect them.8 The twenty-two signers were among the most senior residents of the colony . A majority had been in New Sweden longer than Printz, and only one or two appear to have lived there less than ten years.9 Other colonists were involved in the protest who had not attached their names. The most prominent among them was the colony’s minister, Lars Carlsson Lock, who may have drafted the petition. The most unfortunate participant was the soldier from Jönköping, Anders Jönsson, whom the governor blamed for instigating the rebellion. On August 1, four days after Printz received the petition, Jönsson was executed before a firing squad of his fellow soldiers.10 Printz left for Sweden two months later...

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