Page:History of Hudson County and of the Old Village of Bergen.djvu/26

18 hot-hearted, Petrus who in his person exemplified in dramatic degree all that obstinacy side by side with tolerance, that courage mingled with liking for peaceful ways, that shrewdness grained with a deep honesty that has made the small Dutch nation a power in the world to be reckoned with, both in peace and war.

The great Petrus Stuyvesant—and he was indeed one of the greatest of the men who had come into the New World up to that time—was emphatically no pacificist. But he knew when to fight and when not to fight. Little by little he restored something of the old good relations, until settlers again dared to enter New Jersey. For ten years they planted and traded in peace. Then in 1654 the killing of an Indian girl on Manhattan Island caused another war. The Indians brought it home to New Amsterdam itself. On the New Jersey side they swept the country almost as before. "Not one white person remained in Pavonia." Twenty Boueries were destroyed and three hundred families were collected in the Fort on Manhattan Island.

Governor Stuyvesant had been away on a little war against the Swedes who had settled along the South River (Delaware) in defiance of Dutch claims. He returned quickly and again conciliated the Indians, even agreeing to pay ransom for their prisoners whom they held at Paulus Hook. Gradually peace