Page:History of Hudson County and of the Old Village of Bergen.djvu/24

16 much filling in of shore front that the site of Paulus' trading post is more than a thousand feet inland.

Jan Evertsen Bout, the lone house-holder of Communipau, got a lease of Communipau from the Dutch West India Company in the same year, 1638. His yearly rental was set as "one quarter of his crops, two tuns of strong beer and 12 capons." Presumably the New Amsterdam representatives of the Company knew what to do with the two last items. In 1641, Hobocan-hackingh, or Hoebuck, was leased to Aert Teunisen Van Putten for twelve years, for a rental of "the fourth sheaf with which God Almighty shall favor the field." These, and a Bouerie in the Greenville section occupied by Dirck Straatmaker, were apparently the only notable settlements then existing in the large tract that afterward became the township of Bergen.

The conveyances of the lands that had belonged to the Patroonship of Pavonia were made by Director-General William Kieft. It is a melancholy duty to say that William Kieft lacked that equable disposition which so distinguished most of his fellow colonists. His zeal for the interests of the Dutch West India Company was perhaps sincere but certainly injudicious. When he went so far as to demand tribute of maize, furs and other supplies from the Indians, with threats of force if they refused, they responded in their own injudicious way by capturing or killing cattle. The peaceful intercourse of the past ceased, and mischief followed on mischief. Finally Kieft ordered an attack on an Indian encampment behind Communipaw, or rather Communipau, as it was called till well into the Nineteenth Century. The order was obeyed with