44 The Story of The Bronx 



petrated on both sides were horrible; if anything, the Dutch 

 were the more savage of the two. In vain did Stuyvesant, 

 after the Indian troubles of 1655, order the settlers to form 

 towns after the English fashion, an order not carried out for 

 years, except in the case of Esopus. These repeated Indian 

 wars no doubt retarded settlement to some extent, though 

 English from both Virginia and New England came into the 

 colony, as well as the Walloons from Europe. 



The conditions during Dutch rule are well summed up by 

 the historian Eliot, who says: 



"Had the wars never occurred, the colony would have 

 made no rapid progress. In itself it was divided by what 

 may be called castes. The patroons, for instance, were an 

 order by themselves, not necessarily hostile to the au- 

 thorities nor unfriendly to the colonists, yet often prov- 

 ing to be one or both. Then the colony lay at the mercy 

 of the company and its director, whose supremacy was 

 shared by none but a few officials and councillors. The 

 attempts at representation on the part of the more substantial 

 colonists were of no avail. The colony was still a colony of 

 traders. No generous views, no manly energies, were as yet 

 excited among its inhabitants or its rulers. From the slave 

 to the colonist, from the colonist to the patroon, from the 

 patroon to the director, and even from the director to the 

 company, there was little besides struggling for pecuniary 

 advantage. It was esteemed a great era in the colony when, 

 after various dissensions, in 1638, its trade was nominally 

 thrown open. But the percentages to the company were 

 such as to prevent any really free trade." 



