Steven Newcomb: Dutch ordered Lenape massacre in 1643

The Two-Row Wampum was made in 1613 between the Haudenosaunee and the Dutch government of Holland. Dutch Consul-General Rob de Vos was in attendance. When I read that Mr. de Vos attended the event, I immediately thought of our own Lenape Nation and our bloody experience at the hands of the Dutch government in our traditional territory on Manhattan Island.

In the early 1640’s, Dutch Governor William Kieft was trying to impose a tax on our ancestors, who were refusing to pay foreigners for the ‘privilege’ of living in our own territory. According to a Dutchman named David Pietersz de Vries, Governor Kieft judged the “relatively nonbeligerant Hackensack Indians at Pavonia to be in a weakened position.” Kieft vowed to force them into submission. (Herbert C. Kraft, The Lenape: Archaeology, History, and Ethnography, Newark, 1986, p. 223).

De Vries was unsuccessful in his effort to talk Kieft out of slaughtering our non-Christian Lenape ancestors. The governor would not be dissuaded. De Vries gave the following first-hand account of the atrocity which occurred in February, 25, 1643. The account makes for very difficult reading.