the colonists were outrageously in the wrong in provoking
the conflict. They had given the Indians brandy until they had become
intoxicated. And then half a dozen drunken soldiers had discharged a
volley of bullets upon them as they were revelling in noisy but
harmless orgies.

Had the governor frankly acknowledged that the colonists were in the
wrong; had he made full amends, according to the Indian custom, for
the great injury inflicted upon them, they would have been more than
satisfied. Even more friendly relations than had ever before existed
might have been established.

But instead of this the governor assumed that the Indians were
entirely in the wrong; that they had wantonly commenced a series of
murders and burnings without any provocation. The Esopus chiefs were
afraid to meet the angry governor with proposals for peace. They
therefore employed three Mohegan chiefs as their mediators. They
offered to cease all hostilities, to abandon the Esopus country
entirely, and surrender it to the Dutch if the Indian captives, whom
the Dutch held, might be restored to them. These very honorable
proposals were rejected. The Mohegan chiefs were told that the
governor could not enter into any treaty of peace with the Esopus
Indians unless their own chiefs came to fort Amsterdam to hold a
council. And immediately the Indian captives received the awful doom
of consignment to life-long slavery with the negroes, upon a tropical
island, which was but a glowing sandbank in the Caribbean sea.

"On the next day," writes Mr. O'Callaghan,

"an order was issued, banishing the Esopus savages, some
fifteen or twenty, to the insalubrious climate of Curacoa,
to be employed there or at Buenaire with the negroes in the
Company's service. Two or three others were retained at fort
Amsterdam to be punished as it should be thought proper. By
this harsh policy Stuyvesant laid the foundations of another
Esopus war, for the Indians never forgot their banished
brethren."

It was ascertained that several miles up the Esopus creek the Indians
were planting corn. It was the 20th of May, 1660. Ensign Smith took a
party of seventy-five men and advanced upon them. The barking of dogs
announced his approach just as his band arrived within sight of the
wigwams. They all made good their retreat with the exception of one,
the oldest and best of their chiefs. His name was Preumaker. We know
not whether pride of c