punish them with severity which should be a warning
to all the Indians.

He sent to this innocent, unsuspecting tribe, a party of seventy well
armed men, many of them unprincipled desperadoes. They fell upon the
peaceful Indians, brutally killed several, destroyed their crops, and
perpetrated all sorts of outrages.

The Indians never forget a wrong. The spirit of revenge burned in
their bosoms. There was a thriving plantation belonging to DeVrees on
Staten Island. The Indians attacked it, killed four of the laborers,
burned the dwelling and destroyed the crops. Kieft, in his blind rage,
resolved upon the extermination of the Raritans. He offered a large
bounty for the head of any member of that tribe.

It will be remembered that some years before an Indian had been robbed
and murdered near the pond, in the vicinity of the fort at Manhattan,
and that his nephew, a boy, had escaped. That boy was now a man, and,
through all these years, with almost religious scrupulousness, had
been cherishing his sense of duty to avenge his uncle's unatoned
death.

A very harmless Dutchman, by the name of Claes Smits, had reared his
solitary hut upon the Indian trail near the East river. The nephew of
the murdered savage came one day to this humble dwelling, and stopped
under the pretence of selling some beaver skins. As Smits was stooping
over the great chest in which he kept his goods, the savage, seizing
an axe, killed him by a single blow. In doing this, he probably felt
the joys of an approving conscience,--a conscience all uninstructed in
religious truth--and thanked the great spirit that he had at length
been enabled to discharge his duty in avenging his uncle's death.

Kieft sent to the chief of the tribe, demanding the murderer. The
culprit Indian sent back the reply:

"When the fort was building some years ago, my uncle and I,
carrying some beaver skins to the fort to trade, were
attacked by some Dutchmen, who killed my uncle and stole the
furs. This happened when I was a small boy. I vowed to
revenge it upon the Dutch when I grew up. I saw no better
chance than this of Claes Smits."

The sachem refused to deliver up the criminal, saying that he had but
done his duty, according to the custom of his race, in avenging the
death of his kinsman, murdered many years before. Kieft was
exceedingly embarrassed. He was very unpopular; was getting the colony
deeper and deeper into difficulty, and was