Pig War (Staten Island)
The pig war (ger .: Pig War ) of 1640 was an armed conflict between the Dutch and the Indians in New Netherland , broke out, the Dutch colony in North America.
The Netherlands in the young colony were legally obliged to buy land from the Indians, but alcohol and fraud were usually involved. Even if the sales contract was legal, there were problems with the different legal views on land ownership between Indians and Europeans.
Patroon David de Vries had regularly bought his land on Staten Island , Richmond County ( New York ), from the Raritan , a tribe of Lenni Lenape . According to the European view, he now had exclusive rights to use the land, but the Indians believed they could continue to hunt there. Another point of contention was the free-roaming pigs of the colonists, which devastated the Raritan's unfenced fields. Sometimes these animals were killed by the Indians and the Dutch demanded compensation for the loss.
In 1638 Willem Kieft , a tough and moralistic man, came to New Amsterdam as the new general manager . He had instructions to restore discipline, order and morality in the young colony and to make more profit. Kieft had little feeling for dealing with the indigenous people and within a short time he managed to create a hostile atmosphere. He soon sent an armed force to the Tappan villages to collect taxes in the form of corn and wampum . The Tappan had been peaceful so far, but they did not want to accept this treatment by the Dutch. In July 1640 some pigs disappeared from the De Vries plantation and the Raritan were immediately suspected as the perpetrators. However, it later emerged that the culprits were Dutch. Kieft demonstrated military strength and sent 100 soldiers to Staten Island to punish the Raritans in September. Several Raritans were killed, a sachem was taken hostage and the body of another chief was mutilated. This started the first war between the Dutch and Indians, which went down in history as the pig war .
In retaliation, the Raritans burned the De Vries plantation and killed four farm workers. Kieft then declared the war of extermination and offered a bounty of 10 fathoms wampum for each Raritan head brought to him in Fort Amsterdam. Only a few Metoacs from Long Island , old enemies of the Raritan, accepted the offer and gave Governor Kieft a head. However, it is not certain whether it was really a Raritan's head. The Raritans fled to New Jersey to join the other Lenni Lenape, and the pig war was over. Willem Kieft was deposed in 1647 for unsuccessfulness and died on the way home to the Netherlands when his ship sank off the coast of Wales.
See also: Timeline of the Indian Wars
literature
- Bruce G. Trigger (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians . Vol. 15: Northeast . Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington DC 1978, ISBN 0-16004-575-4 .
- Wilcomb E. Washburn (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians . Vol. 4: History of Indian-White Relations . Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington DC 1988, ISBN 0-16004-583-5 .
- Alvin M. Josephy Jr.: 500 Nations. The Illustrated History of the Indians of North America . Frederking & Thaler, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-89405-356-9 .
- Alvin M. Josephy Jr.: The world of the Indians . Frederking & Thaler GmbH, Munich 1994, ISBN 3-89405-331-3 .
Web links
Individual evidence
This article is based on the article Swine War (Staten Island) ( Memento from July 1, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) from the free encyclopedia Indianer Wiki ( Memento from March 18, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) and is under Creative Commons by-sa 3.0 . A list of the authors was available in the Indian Wiki ( Memento from July 1, 2007 in the Internet Archive ).