The Massacre of the Lenape Indians in 1643 1 



By Alan son Skinner 



Prior to the year 1642 the constant chafing- of the Dutch and 

 their Algonquin neighbors had been growing daily more and more 

 unbearable owing to the high-handed and unjust bearing of the 

 Director (Kieft), who permitted the Indians to be maltreated 

 at the will of the colonists, and a crisis was finally reached. 



A Dutch colonist, Myndert Myndertsen van der Horst, pur- 

 chased (against the will of the majority of the Hackensack, a 

 local branch of the Unami Lenape, who held what is now Jersey 

 City, Hoboken, Weehawken, Newark, Passaic, etc., and a part 

 of Staten Island) a tract of land, extending, according to Reut- 

 tenber, from " Archer Cul bay north towards Tappan, and in- 

 cluded the valley of the Hackensack River. The headquarters 

 of the settlement were about five or six hundred paces from the 

 principal settlement of the Hackensacks." A Hackensack war- 

 rior was enticed into the settlement, made intoxicated, and, as is 

 usual to this day when white men deal with their " inferiors," 

 robbed of his beaver skin robe. 



When the warrior recovered he went away vowing vengeance, 

 and later returned armed with his bow and arrows. A colonist 

 named Garret Jansen van Voorst was thatching the roof of one 

 of the houses of the settlement, and the angry warrior shot and 

 killed him. 



The chiefs at once repaired to their stanch friend, the 

 humane De Vries (they were afraid to visit Fort Amsterdam 

 for fear Kieft would imprison them), and offered De Vries two 

 hundred fathoms of wampum as blood atonement to the mur- 

 dered man's family. De Vries finally persuaded the sachems 

 to accompany him to Fort Amsterdam where they repeated their 



1 Presented February 15, 1908. 



53 



