lourishing
little villages of Pavonia and Hoboken were instantly in flames. A
general scene of massacre and destruction ensued. Men, women and
children fell alike before the bullet, the arrow and the tomahawk. The
inhabitants of fort Amsterdam in anguish witnessed the massacre, but
could render no assistance. Nearly all their armed men were far away
on the Delaware.

The savages, elated with success, crossed over to Staten island. The
scattered settlements there numbered about ninety souls. There were
eleven farms in a high state of cultivation, and several plantations.
The settlers had received warning of their danger, perhaps by the
flames and musketry of Hoboken and Pavonia, perhaps by some messenger
from fort Amsterdam. Sixty-seven of them succeeded in reaching some
stronghold where they were able to defend themselves. The rest,
twenty-three in number, were cut off by the savages. The buildings of
twenty-eight farms and plantations were laid in ashes and the crops
destroyed.

For three days these merciless Indians had free range, with scarcely
any opposition. During this time one hundred of the Dutch were killed,
one hundred and fifty were taken prisoners, and more than three
hundred were deprived of house, clothes and food. Six hundred cattle
and a vast amount of grain were destroyed. The pecuniary value of the
damage inflicted amounted to over eighty thousand dollars.

Such were the consequences which resulted from the folly and crime of
one man in shooting an Indian woman who was purloining peaches from
his orchard. Terror spread far and wide. The farmers with their
families, fled from all directions to fort Amsterdam for protection.
The feeble settlements on Long island were abandoned in dismay.
Prowling bands of savages wandered over the island of Manhattan,
burning and destroying. No one dared to venture to any distance from
the fort. An express was dispatched to South river to inform Governor
Stuyvesant of the peril of the colony, and to implore his return. This
led to the hurried close of the transactions on the Delaware, and
probably secured for the Swedes more favorable terms of capitulation
than they would otherwise have obtained.

The return of Governor Stuyvesant with his military force, reassured
the colonists. In such an hour his imperious nature hesitated not a
moment in assuming the dictatorship. The one man power, so essential
on the field of battle, seemed requisite in these scenes of peril.