OF LANCASTER COUNTY. SI- 



"For the purpose of prosecuting their plans of colonization, the above 

 named and several other directors entered into an association, to which 

 they admitted, on equal terms, David Pieterson De Vries, an experienced 

 and enterprising navigator. Their immediate design was to colonize the 

 Delaware river ; to cultivate tobacco and grain, and to establish a whale 

 iind seal fishery. The command of the vessels appointed to carry out 

 the colonists, was given to De Vries, who left the Texel on the 12th De- 

 cember, 1630, and arrived in the Delaware bay in the course of the win- 

 ter. He found the country deserted by Europeans. Fort Nassau wat< 

 abandoned, and in possession of the Indians. Captain Mey had departed, 

 bearing with him the affections and regrets of the natives, who lon^" 

 cherished his memory. De Vries and his companions selected a spot on 

 Ijewis' creek, (called by the Dutch Hoerne Kill,) for their settlement, and 

 unimpeded by the season, which he reports as uncommonly mild, they 

 erected a house, surrounded with palisades, and called it Fort Oplandt, 

 serving as a fort, a house of commerce, and place of rendezvous. The 

 whole plantation, as included within the limits of Godyn's purchase, ex- 

 tended to the Little Tree corner, or Boompjes Iloeck, corrupted into 

 Bombay Hook. 



"On the return of De Vries to Holland, the colony was left under the 

 command of Giles Osset, who set upon a post or pillar the arms of the 

 States General, painted on tin, in evidence of their claim and possession. 

 An Indian, ignorant of the object of this exhibition, and, perhaps, un- 

 conscious of the right of exclusive property, appropriated to his own use 

 this honored symbol. The folly of Osset considered this offence, not 

 only as a larceny, but as a national insult ; and he urged his complaints 

 and demands for redress, with so much vehemence and importunity, that 

 the harrassed and perplexed tribe brought him the head of the offender. 

 This was a punishment which Osset neither wished nor had foreseen, and 

 he ought justly to have dreaded its consequences. In vain he repre- 

 hended the severity of the Indians, and told them, had they brought the 

 delinquent to him, he would have been dismissed Avith a reprimand. 

 The love of vengeance, inseparable from the Indian character, sought a 

 dire gratification ; and, though the death of the culprit was doomed and 

 executed by his own tribe, still they beheld its cause in the exaction of 

 the strangers. Availing themselves of the season in which a greater part 

 of the Dutch were engaged in the cultivation of the fields, at a distance 

 Irom their house, the Indians entered it, under the amicable pretence of 

 trade, and murdered the unsuspicious Osset, with a single sentinel, who 

 attended him. Thence proceeding to the fields, they fell upon the labor- 

 ers, in the moment of exchanging friendly salutations, and massacred 

 every individual. This conduct of the Indians, with its extenuating cir- 

 cumstances, as related by themselves to De Vries, is sufficiently atro- 



