e for the establishment
of a small company on the Connecticut River. Governor Winthrop sent a
message to the Dutch governor at New Netherlands, as New York was then
called, informing him that the King of England had granted all the
region of the Connecticut River to his own subjects, and requesting
that the Dutch would not build there. Governor Van Twiller returned a
very polite answer, stating that the authorities in Holland had
granted the same country to a Dutch company, and he accordingly
requested the English not to settle there.

Governor Winthrop immediately dispatched some men through the
wilderness to explore the country, and several small vessels were
sent to ascend the river, and, by trade, to establish friendly
relations with the Indians. The Plymouth colony also sent a company of
men with a frame house and boards for covering. When William Holmes,
the leader of this company, had sailed up the Connecticut as far as
the present city of Hartford, he found that the Dutch were before him,
and had erected a fort there. The Dutch ordered him to go back, and
stood by their cannon with lighted torches, threatening to fire upon
him.

Mr. Holmes, an intrepid man, regardless of their threats, which they
did not venture to execute, pushed boldly by, and established himself
at the mouth of Little River, in the present town of Windsor. Here he
put up his house, surrounded it with palisades, and fortified it as
strongly as his means would allow. Governor Van Twiller, being
informed of this movement, sent a band of seventy men, under arms, to
tear down this house and drive away the occupants. But Holmes was
ready for battle, and the Dutch, finding him so well fortified that he
could not be displaced without a bloody conflict, retired.

The whole region of the State of Connecticut was at this time a
wilderness, covered with a dense and gloomy forest, which
overshadowed both mountain and valley. There were scattered here and
there a few spots where the trees had disappeared, and where the
Indians planted their corn. The Indians were exceedingly numerous in
this lovely valley. The picturesque beauty of the country, the genial
climate, the fertile soil, and the vast variety of fish and fowl which
abounded in its bays, ponds, and streams, rendered Connecticut quite
an elysium for savage life.

These Indians were divided into very many tribes or clans, more or
less independent, each with its sachem and its chief warriors. Th