CHAPTER VII

PETER STUYVESANT,  THE LAST  OF  THE DUTCH DIRECTORS

1647-1664
 

E cannot judge Peter Stuyvesant from the enlightened
standpoint of to-day, when through the evolution of politi¬
cal, social, and religious ideas the conditions of hfe are
so different from those of the middle of the seventeenth
century. To-day a man like this great Dutch governor of early New-
York would be decried as a tyrant, as obstinate, and as well deserving
the soubriquet of " Stiff-necked Peter," bestowed upon him by an early
chronicler. He was, however, nothing more than what the Roman
poet calls his hero Romulus in the familiar ode, " a just man of de¬
termined intentions"^; and this, it is hoped, the reader of the present
chapter, who does not expect to read a homily on Stuyvesant's in¬
fallibility or an essay against his perversity, will find to be the true
estimate of his character.

Political complications, which had assumed a warlike as])ect at
home and in the colony on the Hudson, led the directors of the West
India Company to select as the successor of Kieft a man of military
experience. They found such in their late Governor of the Island of
Cura^oa, who had been obliged to return home for surgical treatment
and final amputation of a part of his right leg, badly shattered in an
attack on the Portuguese Island of St. Martin in 1644. Little is known
of the early life of the fourth Director-General of New Netherland.
He was the son of a clergyman, the Rev. Balthazar Stuyvesant, or
Stuyfsant,^ who was settled at Berlikum in the province of Friesland
for many years. As he did not arrive there until 1622, tliis can gi\ (^
us no clue to his son Peter's birthplace.'^   The latter was born in the
 

1 Justum ac tenacem propositi virum
Non civium ardor prava jubentium
Non vultus instantis tyranni
Mente quatit solida neque auster.

(Horace III. 3.)

2 The name is derived from stuiven, to stir or
raise a dust, and sand, being the same in both
Dntch and English.                                Editoe.

'^ 'Vho lace dress in which he was baptized is
still preserved, and has been used for that pur¬
pose by his lineal descendants for nearly thrtie
centuries.   Stuyvesant's seal of solid silver, rep¬
 

resented on another pajfe, is als<
session of liis family.
 

still ill llic jM»s-
ICditok.
 

The fiii(5 steel portrait of Peter Stuyvcsitui, Ihe
puissant potentate of New NcthcrlarHl, t'aciiijL': lliis
page, is copied from ascveiitccnni ccjiliiry piclurc,
the property of Mr. Van Rensselaer Stuyvesant,
and is at present incliKhMl in ihe collections of
the New-York Historical Socict >'. It was ]»r(>bubly
painted in Holland, but not by Van ! )yck to whom
it has incorrectly been attributed. It is obviously
not the work of that master, or any other ^vcnl
portrait painter.                                     1]ditok.