ad held their
independent position on the Delaware but about seventeen years.
Leaving an agent, as temporary commandant, Stuyvesant returned
triumphantly to fort Amsterdam.

And now for ten years there had been peace with the Indians, when a
gross outrage again roused their savage natures to revenge. The
Indians, ever accustomed to roam the forest, and to gather fruits,
nuts and game wherever they could find them, had not very
discriminating views of the rights of private property. Ensign Van
Dyck, the former treasurer, and one of the most noted men in the
colony, detected an Indian woman in his orchard gathering peaches.
Inhumanly he shot her dead. This roused all the neighboring tribes,
and they united to avenge her death. There was certainly something
chivalrous in this prompt combination of the warriors not to allow,
what they deemed the murder of a sister, to pass unpunished.

Taking advantage of the absence of Governor Stuyvesant, with nearly
all the military force he could raise, on his expedition to the South
river, sixty-four war canoes, containing nineteen hundred armed
Indians, were at midnight on the fifteenth of September, stealthily
paddled into the waters surrounding fort Amsterdam. They were picked
warriors from eight tribes. The night was dark, and the sighing of the
wind through the tree tops and the breaking of the surf upon the beach
added to the deep repose of the sleepers.

The Indians landed and stealthily crept through the silent streets;
and yet, from some unexplained cause, they made no attack. Gradually
the inhabitants were awakened, and there was a rapid assembling of the
principal men within the fort. Several of the chiefs were called
before them. They gave no satisfactory account of the object of their
formidable visit, and uttered no threats. On the contrary they
promised to withdraw before night, to Nutten Island, as Governor's
island was then called. Still, watching their opportunity, one of the
warriors pierced the bosom of Van Dyck with an arrow.

The cry of murder rang through the streets. The inhabitants were
prepared for the not unexpected emergency. The military rushed from
the fort, and a fierce battle ensued. The Indians, leaving three of
their warriors dead in the streets, and having killed five white men
and wounded three others, were driven to their canoes, and crossed
over the North river to the Jersey shore.

And now their savage natures burst forth unrestrained. The f