ister of Jesus
Christ. It was he who saved Father Jogues, the Jesuit missionary, from
imminent torture and death among the Mohawks, and befriended him, and
saw him safely off for Europe. This is one honorable instance, out of
not a few, of personal respect and kindness shown to members of the
Roman clergy and the Jesuit society by men who held these organizations
in the severest reprobation. To his Jesuit brother he was drawn by a
peculiarly strong bond of fellowship, for the two were fellow-laborers
in the gospel to the red men. For Domine Megapolensis is claimed[71:1]
the high honor of being the first Protestant missionary to the Indians.

In 1647, to the joy of all the colonists, arrived a new governor, Peter
Stuyvesant, not too late to save from utter ruin the colony that had
suffered everything short of ruin from the incompetency and wickedness
of Kieft. About the time that immigration into New England ceased with
the triumph of the Puritan party in England, there began to be a
distinct current of population setting toward the Hudson River colony.
The West India Company had been among the first of the speculators in
American lands to discover that a system of narrow monopoly is not the
best nurse for a colony; too late to save itself from ultimate
bankruptcy, it removed some of the barriers of trade, and at once
population began to flow in from other colonies, Virginia and New
England. Besides those who were attracted by the great business
advantages of the Dutch colony, there came some from Massachusetts,
driven thence by the policy of exclusiveness in religious opinion
deliberately adopted there. Ordinances were set forth assuring to
several such companies "liberty of conscience, according to the custom
and manner of Holland." Growing prosperously in numbers, the colony grew
in that cosmopolitan diversity of sects and races which went on
increasing with its years. As early as 1644 Father Jogues was told by
the governor that there were persons of eighteen different languages at
Manhattan, including Calvinists, Catholics, English Puritans, Lutherans,
Anabaptists (here called Mennonists), etc. No jealousy seems to have
arisen over this multiplication of sects until, in 1652, the Dutch
Lutherans, who had been attendants at the Dutch Reformed Church,
presented a respectful petition that they might be permitted to have
their own pastor and church. Denied by Governor Stuyvesant, the request
was presented to the Company