ams,
Weathersfield onions, and Yankee "notions" formed the _spolia opima;_
while several coiners of oyster-shells were led captive to grace the
hero's triumph.

The procession was accompanied by a full band of boys and negroes,
performing on the popular instruments of rattle-bones and clam-shells,
while Anthony Van Corlear sounded his trumpet from the ramparts.

A great banquet was served up in the Stadthouse from the clams and oysters
taken from the enemy, while the governor sent the shells privately to the
mint, and had them coined into Indian money, with which he paid his
troops.

It is moreover said that the governor, calling to mind the practice among
the ancients to honor their victorious generals with public statues,
passed a magnanimous decree, by which every tavern-keeper was permitted to
paint the head of Stoffel Brinkerhoff upon his sign!

FOOTNOTES:

[36] In a manuscript record of the province, dated 1659, Library
of the New York Historical Society, is the following mention of
Indian money:--"Seawant, alias wampum. Beads manufactured from
the Quahang or whelk, a shell-fish formerly abounding on our
coasts, but lately of more rare occurrence of two colors, black
and white; the former twice the value of the latter. Six beads of
the white and three of the black for an English penny. The
seawant depreciates from time to time. The New England people
make use of it as a means of barter, not only to carry away the
best cargoes which we send thither, but to accumulate a large
quantity of beavers' and other furs, by which the company is
defrauded of her revenues, and the merchants disappointed in
making returns with that speed with which they might wish to meet
their engagements; while their commissioners and the inhabitants
remain overstocked with seawant, a sort of currency of no value
except with the New Netherland savages," etc.

CHAPTER VII.

It has been remarked by the observant writer of the Stuyvesant manuscript,
that under the administration of William Kieft the disposition of the
inhabitants of New Amsterdam experienced an essential change, so that they
became very meddlesome and factious. The unfortunate propensity of the
little governor to experiment and innovation, and the frequent
exacerbations of his temper, kept his council in a continual worry; and
the council be