“Hot Pestilential and Unheard-Of Fevers, Illnesses, and Torments”: Days of Fasting and Prayer in New Netherland

New York History Summer / Fall 2015© 2015 by The New York State Historical Association 284 “Hot Pestilential and Unheard-Of Fevers, Illnesses, and Torments”: Days of Fasting and Prayer in New Netherland1 Jaap Jacobs In the early morning of September 15, 1655, sixty-four canoes with about six hundred Native Americans arrived at the southern tip of Manhattan Island. Before the inhabitants of New Amsterdam had risen from their beds, the Native Americans spread out over the town, entering houses and committing what the colonists with hindsight called “intolerable insolence.”2 Eventually, the situation escalated beyond control. Former fiscael Hendrick van Dijck lived in a house on the “Heere Straet” (now Broadway) and his garden bordered the shore where the Indian canoes were still beached. When he noticed an Indian woman picking “a few peaches or other fruit from his garden,” Van Dijck attacked and killed her. In retaliation, an unknown Native American shot Van Dijck in his side with an arrow. His neighbor, former schepen Paulus Leendertsz van der Grift, probably coming to his aid, was struck on the head with a tomahawk .3 Subsequently other colonists, led by fiscael Cornelis van Tienhoven, rushed to the shore to attack the Native Americans, sparking the so-called 1. This article was presented in an earlier incarnation to the Seminar Programme of the University of St Andrews Reformation Studies Institute, January 30, 2014. I would like to thank the participants to that seminar for their input. I also thank Daniel Meeter for his comments, and the editors and anonymous reviewers of New York History for their suggestions. 2. “onverdr. insolentie,”; New York State Archives, New York Colonial Manuscripts (hereinafter NYSA, NYCM) 18: 12, 1 (September 16, 1655; Charles T. Gehring, trans. & ed., Delaware Papers (Dutch period). A Collection of Documents Pertaining to the Regulation of Affairs on the South River of New Netherland, 1648–1664 (New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch, vols. XVIII-XIX; Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc., 1981), 35–36); NYSA, NYCM 6: 130–134 (October 31, 1655; Charles T. Gehring, trans. & ed., Council Minutes 1655–1656 (New Netherland Documents Series, vol. 6; Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1995), 120–123); I.N. Phelps Stokes, The Iconography of Manhattan Island 1498–1909 (New York: Robert H. Dodd, 6 vols., 1915–1928), 2: 222–223. 3. “om het nemen van enige persiken ofte andere vruchten uyt sijnen thuyn“; NSYA, NYCM 12: 45, 2 (December 19, 1656; Gehring, Correspondence 1654–1658, 103); NYSA, NYCM 18: 12 (September 16, 1655; Gehring, Delaware Papers 1648–1664, 35–36); NYSA, NYCM 6: 130–134 (October 31, 1655; Gehring, Council Minutes 1655–1656, 120–123); New York Public Library, Bontemantel Collection, box 1, doc. 17a (October 28, 1655; Dingman Versteeg, trans., Martha Dickinson Shattuck, ed., New Netherland Papers, C. 1650 -1660 From the Collected Papers of Hans Bontemantel, Director of the Amsterdam Chamber of Jacobs Days of Fasting and Prayer in New Netherland 285 “Peach War” that killed about fifty colonists over the next few days. The Indians also took more than one hundred captives and burned down twenty -eight farms. The colonial records do not reveal how many of them died in the fighting.4 The Peach War had a huge impact on New Netherland. Many colonists were relatively new arrivals and had not experienced Kieft’s War (1643– 1645). Although a few colonists had been killed since then, the war of 1655 was on a totally different scale, and its immediate effects reverberated throughout the colony. It caused a collective trauma that the people of New Netherland would not soon forget. It also impacted the director general, Petrus Stuyvesant, even though he was away from New Amsterdam when hostilities broke out. In the proclamation for a day of prayer in January of 1656, Stuyvesant compared recent events with the conclusion of the First Anglo-Dutch War in 1654: God had shown his “merciful protection” by keeping New Netherland out of war with its English neighbors, but this favor had been “ungratefully misused.” He had therefore altered “the appearance of His favor towards us . . . visiting and judging us, chastising us . . . with a sudden and unexpected ambush by the wild barbarians, the natives of these lands.”5 Native American...