-The
Humiliation of Kieft.--Wide-Spread Desolation.--The Reign of
Terror.--State of Affairs at Fort Nassau.--The Massacre at
Stamford.--Memorial of the Select Men.--Kieft Superseded by
Peter Stuyvesant.

The year 1643 was a year of terror and of blood in nearly all of the
American colonies. New England was filled with alarm in the
apprehension of a general rising of the Indians. It was said that a
benighted traveller could not halloo in the woods without causing fear
that the savages were torturing their European captives. This
universal panic pervaded the Dutch settlements. The wildest stories
were circulated at the firesides of the lonely settlers. Anxiety and
terror pervaded all the defenceless hamlets.

DeVrees, rambling one day with his gun upon his shoulder, met an
Indian "who was very drunk." Coming up to the patroon, the Indian
patted him upon the shoulder, in token of friendship, saying,

"You are a good chief. When we come to see you, you give us
milk to drink. I have just come from Hackensack where they
sold me brandy, and then stole my beaver skin coat. I will
take a bloody revenge. I will go home for my bow and arrows,
and shoot one of those rascally Dutchmen who have stolen my
coat."

DeVrees endeavored in vain to soothe him. He had hardly reached his
home ere he heard that the savage had kept his vow. He had shot and
killed an innocent man, one Garret Van Voorst, who was thatching the
roof of a house. The chiefs of the tribe were terror-stricken, through
fear of the white man's vengeance. They did not dare to go to the fort
lest they should be arrested and held as hostages. But they hastened
to an interview with DeVrees, in whom they had confidence, and
expressed a readiness to make atonement for the crime, in accordance
with the custom of their tribe, by paying a large sum to the widow of
the murdered man.

It is worthy of notice that this custom, so universal among the
Indians, of a blood atonement of money, was also the usage of the
tribes of Greece We read in Homer's Iliad, as translated by Pope,

"If a brother bleed,
On just atonement we remit the deed;
A sire the slaughter of his sons forgives,
The price of blood discharged, the murderer lives."

At length, encouraged by DeVrees and accompanied by him, the chiefs
ventured to fort Amsterdam. They explained to Kieft the occurrence,
and proposed the expiatory offering to