Children's Stories in American History Part 9

But in the meantime the English had not been idle. The year after De Monts left France the English also sent an expedition to the northern part of what they then called Virginia. The leader was George Weymouth, and the name of the vessel was the Archangel. After a pleasant voyage they landed in May on Monhegan Island, south of Maine, near Pemaquid Point. After the long sea voyage the men were glad to get on land again, and delighted with the island, which had fine shade trees, cool streams of fresh water, and was covered with gooseberries, strawberries, roses and violets, which grew down to the water's edge. But pleasant as this was, they made only a short stay here, and went on along the coast and up some of the large rivers to find a good place for a settlement. They sailed in and out among the many bays, and everywhere found the country as pleasant as their first view of it. Everywhere were good harbors, forests full of deer and other game, trees for ship-building, acres and acres of fertile ground for raising crops, and miles of meadow land, through which ran the brooks that had come rushing down from the high lands. The men declared that the peas and barley grew half an inch a day, and said that it was impossible to describe the beauty and goodness of the land.

The Indians, too, were of orderly and peaceful habits, the different tribes living for the most part very quietly. The princ.i.p.al tribe was the Abnakis, and it was their custom to dwell in villages and to till the soil. The princ.i.p.al villages were on the banks of the Kennebec, the Androscoggin and the Saco. They were all enclosed with high palisades for defence against enemies, and the wigwams were very comfortable, being built of bended poles and covered with bark and moss. These Indians had gardens well laid out in regular manner, and raised corn and peas and beans. They prepared the ground as soon as the snow melted, and planted their corn early in June, making holes in the ground with their fingers or with little sticks.

The Abnakis were also fond of ornamenting their dress with fringes of feathers and sh.e.l.ls and stones, and always wore a great number of rings, bracelets, necklaces, and belts embroidered with sh.e.l.ls and pearls. But the English never could win the Indian hearts as the French could. They never trusted them as they trusted the French, and when trouble arose between the English and French for the possession of Canada, the Indians always were ready to join with the French against the English, and showed their hatred and distrust in very cruel and savage ways. One reason for this was, that the French tried to win the Indians by kindness; they did not show that contempt for them which the English nearly always showed, and they tried in every way to be just in their dealings with them. They learned the different Indian languages so that they could talk easily with the natives, and in naming rivers and bays and islands, they kept many of the poetical Indian names, which the English would never take the trouble to learn to p.r.o.nounce. And then, too, it was always very easy for the French to adopt the habits of the Indians. Frenchmen would sleep in wigwams and eat Indian bread, and wear the Indian dress, travel in birch-bark canoes, and hunt Indian fashion.

All this was very different from the English, who, wherever they went, changed the names of places for English names, and insisted on the Indians learning the English way of doing things.

And so the Indians grew to love the French, who were always kind to them in health, and whose gentle priests nursed them carefully in sickness; and by and by they came to learn many useful things, and to adopt many French customs, which linger among their descendants to this day.

But all this made it very much harder for the English who tried to settle that part of the country, and Weymouth and his friends soon found that the natives looked upon them with distrust and dislike; and very good reason they had for this, as the English captain, the first chance he got, kept five Indians who had come on board his vessel and carried them off to England.

Here they were looked upon as great curiosities. Great crowds followed them about the streets, as they walked through London wrapped in their skin mantles, and with their strange head-dress of quills and feathers; and none the less curiously did the Indians look at the Londoners, and at the fine buildings and palaces which adorned their famous city.

The returned seamen reported that the coast of Maine would be an excellent place for an English settlement, and gave wonderful descriptions of the fine climate, rich soil, and good fishing, and praised the country so much that from their accounts, and from the stories of the kidnapped Indians, some English gentlemen decided to begin a settlement there at once. There were plenty of men willing to go to a place where the sailors said one could gather pearls on the beach, and where the trees oozed gum as sweet as frankincense, and very soon a ship was sent out to explore the country still farther, and take Nahanada, one of the captive Indians, back to his tribe at Pemaquid.

In 1607 two other ships left England also, and on one of them was the Indian Skitwanoes, who was to act as guide and interpreter.

They landed in July, and immediately received visits from Indians on the coast who came to trade; and after spending a week in visiting the islands near, a boat was sent up the river to an Indian village in Pemaquid. Skitwanoes went with this party to show them the way, and had it not been for his presence the English would have been met with a shower of arrows, for as soon as they came in sight of the village the Indians started up, and s.n.a.t.c.hing up their bows, would have begun fighting at once, had not Skitwanoes stepped in front of the party and called the angry chief by name. It was Nahanada, the Indian who had been sent back from England the year before; as soon as he recognized Skitwanoes and saw that his friends were Englishmen, he dropped his weapons and went up to his visitors, and welcomed them and kissed them in true Indian fashion. After a pleasant visit of some hours they returned to the ship, and in a few days, after choosing a good spot on the banks of a river, built a fort and some houses, and the place soon looked like a thriving little settlement. Some timber was cut and seasoned for the building of a ship, which was named the Virginia, the first vessel ever built by English settlers in America.

The Indians looked on all these preparations with wonder. For the first time they saw substantial houses that would protect the inmates from snow and cold; and the fort, with its twelve mounted guns, looked as if the new-comers meant to stay, and if need be fight for the new homes that had been made with such trouble. But there was one thing the natives could not understand, and that was what right these white men had to come and take away one of their favorite spots, and make it their own without paying for it, or even asking for it. It seemed to them very unfair that they must lose their property in this way, and they soon began to show the settlers that they were very much displeased. They became very troublesome, refused to trade with the English, and showed their ill-will in many ways; and this was very discouraging to the English, who wanted to get along peaceably; and so many of them, before the winter was over, became disheartened at the thought of living in such a cold, dreary region, surrounded by bitter foes, and sailed back to England again in the Virginia, on her first voyage to the old country.

As time went on the Indians grew more and more troublesome, sometimes even coming inside the fort; and once the settlers became so angry that they set the dogs on them and drove them back to the woods. But this only made matters worse, and when a party went up the river to explore the country, they found that the other tribes were just as unfriendly, and that, excepting the chief Nahanada, they had not a friend among the natives.

The second winter was as severe as the first, and quite discouraged the colonists, who could get very little to eat, as their storehouse had been burned by the Indians; and so when spring came and they had a chance to leave Maine they all went back to England, and the settlement of Maine by the English was given up for many years. The next attempt to settle this coast was made by the French, who, not satisfied with claiming Acadia and Canada, wanted also to get possession of Maine, which had been so often described as a good place for settlement. In 1613 Madame la Marquise de Guercheville, a wealthy Catholic, and some French priests sailed from France to make a settlement at Kadesquit on the Pen.o.bscot; but, arriving at the coast in a heavy fog, they did not reach the mouth of the Pen.o.bscot, and, after waiting two days for the fog to lift, found themselves near Mt. Desert island. The grand and beautiful scenery of this island pleased them so much that they sailed up into Frenchmen's Bay, and made a landing on the coast, intending to stay there awhile before going on.

A number of Indian villages were scattered over the island, and as soon as the French landed they saw smoke arising, and knew by that that the natives had seen them, and that the smoke was meant for a signal; so they built a fire in answer, and the Indians soon came flocking down to the beach in great haste to see the strangers. One of the priests, Father Biard, had met some of these Indians before on his former visit to the Pen.o.bscot, and he now asked them the way to Kadesquit. But the cunning Indians did not want their white visitors to go on to Kadesquit; they wanted them to stay there with them, so they told them that their own island was a much better place than Kadesquit. They pointed to the mountains covered with spruce and pine, and to the sparkling brooks, fringed with delicate wild flowers, and to the moss-covered rocks, and cl.u.s.ters of dainty ferns, and said that this fair spot was as healthful as it was beautiful, and that all the neighboring tribes sent their sick to them to be cured by the pure air and delightful waters. But Father Biard was quite determined to go on to Kadesquit, and the Indians, seeing this, gave up coaxing and instead begged of him to visit their sick chief, who, they feared, was going to die. Kind Father Biard consented very willingly to go and see the sick man, and when he reached his home, which was on a bay in the eastern part of the island, he found the place so beautiful that he quite gave up Kadesquit, and decided to stay there.

So they raised a cross, built some huts, and planted corn, for it was in the early summer, with many long months of warm weather still to come.

But the settlement that was begun in such pleasant weather, and with such good will from the natives, came soon to a sad end; for an English captain from Jamestown, who was sailing along the coast, was very angry when he found that the French had begun a settlement, and asked the Indians to show him the way thither; and they, thinking that the English and French were friends, and that the captain wanted to get provisions from the priests, led the way, and, as most of the French were away from the camps, the captain had no difficulty in seizing the place, and in two days he had plundered it of everything, and, driving some of the men away in a boat, took Father Biard and the rest with him to Jamestown; the English governor there said that the captain had done quite right, and sent him back to destroy all the French settlements in Acadia too. The captain was very glad to do this, and landing first at Mt. Desert, he cut down the French cross, and then went on his way to Port Royal, where Poutrincourt's son, Biencourt, was ruling; and here the English did as they had done at other French settlements on their way, for Biencourt had few men and could make no resistance. The English destroyed Port Royal, its fort and monuments and church, and even chiselled out the name of De Monts that was engraved in a stone column, and so the French were driven out of Acadia, and not a single cross remained upon the coast of Maine to show they had ever been there.

The English themselves did not make any permanent settlement there till 1629.

CHAPTER XX.

HENRY HUDSON AND THE KNICKERBOCKERS.

Henry Hudson was the first white man who ever sailed up the Hudson River. He was an English sailor in the service of the Dutch, who sent him on a voyage to North America. While sailing along the Atlantic coast he entered the bay of New York, and pa.s.sing inland discovered the beautiful river that bears his name. He was charmed with its clear waters and banks which were covered with gra.s.s and flowers and trees, and said that the country through which it flowed was "as beautiful as one could tread upon."

The vessel was called the Half Moon, and had a crew of English and Dutch--Hudson's own son being of the number. As they sailed up the river the Indians put out from the sh.o.r.e in their canoes and paddled up to the Half Moon. Hudson would not let them come on board at first, as one of his sailors had been killed by an Indian; but as they seemed very friendly, the sailors at last grew less timid, and traded with them, giving them beads, knives, hatchets, etc., for the grapes, pumpkins, and furs which they brought, and after a time Hudson and his men went on sh.o.r.e and visited the country around.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE HALF-MOON IN THE HUDSON.]

Hudson sailed up the river as far as he could with the Half Moon, and then sent a small boat as far up as Albany. He was hoping to find a strait through which he could sail to India; but of course he did not find that, so he turned back and sailed down the river again, and out into the ocean and back to Holland.

Some time after he came back to America, and, sailing to the north, discovered Hudson's Bay; while here his men became angry because they did not wish to go any farther in such a region, and taking Hudson and his son and a few others, they bound them and put them in an open boat and set them adrift in the sea. No one ever heard of them again. It is supposed that the boat was dashed to pieces by the floating ice, and that the bold sailor and his companions perished; but in the old stories of the Hudson the legend runs that he and his companions did not die, but found their way down to the Catskills and Highlands; and when it thunders they say it is Henry Hudson and his crew rolling their ninepins among the hills.

How that is we do not know. If the brave sailor and his friends really are living there yet, why, we must admit they could not have chosen a lovelier place, for nowhere in the world is a fairer spot than where the Hudson goes down to the sea, pa.s.sing on its way the misty blue Catskills, rich with stories of fairies and legends of the old Dutch sailors, and the beautiful Highlands, which stand strong and firm, as if protecting the bright river that sweeps around their base.

This happened over two hundred and seventy years ago, in the year 1609, two years after the settlement of Jamestown by the English.

About five years after a company of Dutch came to trade with the Indians, and just as their ship was ready to sail home again it caught fire and burned up; so they had to stay all winter with the Indians.

They had landed on Manhattan Island, on which the City of New York now stands, and from this time the Dutch began coming there to trade with the Indians, and after a few years they bought the island, paying about one hundred and twenty-five dollars for it.

The little Dutch children used to do very much as the little New York children do now. They had their lessons and their games; and although they learned in a different way and about different things, still they played a good deal and worked a very little, as is the way of children all the world over.

Perhaps, though, you would like to imagine yourself a little Dutch child living in New York (or New Amsterdam, as it was then called, after the city of Amsterdam in Holland) over two hundred years ago.

Well, in the first place, you would not be living in a tall, narrow house of brown stone or red brick, standing in a row with thirty other houses just like it. You would be living in a wooden house with a gable roof like a country church, and the ends of the house would be made of black and yellow bricks. Over the door would be some iron letters telling when the house was built, and on the roof a gay weather-c.o.c.k would be standing. When you came in from the street on a winter day and wanted to warm yourself, you would go up to a great open fireplace and sit up in the corner of it, close to where the great logs of wood were burning.

The fireplaces were all tiled as many of those in new houses are now, only the tiles then were all arranged so as to tell some story, usually from the Bible, and around one fireplace you would read the story of Noah and the Ark; around another, the story of the children of Israel crossing the Red Sea, and so on.

The floors were not covered with carpet, but every day they were sprinkled with fresh white sand, and the little Dutch girls were taught how to draw pretty figures on the sand with their birch brooms; and at night, when they gathered around to listen to the stories of the Catskill fairies, the room would not be lighted with gas or lamps, but with great pine knots or tallow candles, which with the flames from the wood fire made the room full of queer shadows; and I do not doubt that oftentimes the little girls and boys were just a little bit afraid to go to bed after listening to some of these tales of Hendrick Hudson and Rip Van Winkle, and their queer adventures among the mountains up the river.

But the best time in all the year was at Christmas, when the Dutch kept the feast of Santa Claus, or St. Nicholas. What a gathering then of all the little folks! what games were played over the nicely sanded floors!

and what a treat to sit around the great fire and eat the sweet cakes and crullers, which no one but Dutch mothers knew how to make so well!

And you must remember, when at Christmas you have your Christmas tree and invite your little friends to come and spend the evening with you, that you are doing the very thing that the little Dutch boys and girls did in New Amsterdam over two hundred years ago; and when your mamma stands in the parlor on New-year's-day ready to receive callers, she is doing just what the Dutch mammas did so long ago; and at Easter when you have presents of colored eggs and ask your playmates to hunt for the nests which you have hidden away, remember that this, also, was a Dutch custom, for the Dutch were great people for holidays, and to this day many of the Dutch manners and customs are to be found among the New Yorkers who are proud to claim descent from the honest and hospitable Knickerbockers, who looked on life as a thing to be enjoyed, and who have left such pleasant customs to us, as the keeping of Christmas, New Year, Easter, and other holidays.

One morning, about fifty years after the Dutch first settled on Manhattan Island, a fleet of English vessels was seen in New York Bay, and by and by a letter was brought from the English commander to Peter Stuyvesant, the governor of New Amsterdam, asking him to give the town up to the English. The English king, Charles II., thought that as the Cabots had first discovered this part of America, the English had more right to it than the Dutch, and he sent a fleet across the sea and demanded the Dutch to give up the town.

Governor Stuyvesant got into a dreadful rage at this, and stumped wrathfully around on his wooden leg, and threatened dreadful things if the English did not hoist sail and go away again; but it all did no good; the Dutch people themselves thought that they would be better governed, and also better protected from the Indians, if they were ruled by the English; so they made Governor Stuyvesant give their city up to the English, who changed its name to New York, in honor of the king's brother, the Duke of York, to whom the king had given all the Dutch possessions in America. But for years and years the Dutch language and customs held their own in the city, and there are many things about it still which show that it was originally a Dutch settlement.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE PILGRIMS AND THE SETTLEMENT OF NEW ENGLAND.

About two hundred and fifty years ago, there was living in England a cla.s.s of people who did not think it right to worship G.o.d in the same way that most of the English nation did: they did not believe in building so many fine churches and cathedrals, or in having so much chanting and singing in the service; they did not like to see the priests, dressed in rich robes, standing before magnificent altars whereon candles blazed and incense burned. They said that this was all wrong, and that the money that was spent in fine churches and music and candles was only wasted, and that such things were not pleasing to G.o.d; and above all they did not believe many of the things which the English Church held sacred. So all these people refused to go to church; they stayed at home and had meeting at their houses, much in the same way that people now, who live far away from churches, meet at one another's houses and have prayer-meeting.

But the king of England, James I., said that these people had no right to stay away from church, and he made a law which said that every one who did not go to church should be punished.

These punishments were very severe, and the people were even sometimes afraid of their lives. After this law was pa.s.sed they did not dare any more to go to meeting openly, but used to meet at night at their minister's house.

At last things got so bad that they decided to go away from England, and find some place where they could worship G.o.d as they thought right; so they sold their houses and lands, gathered their families together, and one day sailed away for Holland.

The king's officers, however, were looking out for them, and some of them were captured before they could get on the ship and taken to prison, where they were kept many weary months; but finally as many of these people as wanted to found their way to Holland. Here they lived very quietly for eleven years, the Hollanders being very willing to have them among them, as they were a very peaceable, honest, and kindly people.

But after a time the Pilgrims--for so these people were called--did not like it so well in Holland as they did at first, for they found that their children were growing up to be Dutch children instead of English; their sons and daughters began to marry into the families of their Dutch neighbors, and they feared that in a few years they would no longer consider themselves English. The Pilgrims were still very fond of England and everything English. Their language and customs were still dear to them, and they considered themselves Englishmen in every way.

So the princ.i.p.al men met together and talked the matter over, and at last decided that they would leave Holland and seek some other place where their children would hear only English spoken and learn only English habits.

As they could not think of any place in Europe where it would be safe for them to go, they all agreed that the best thing for them to do would be to sail away across the ocean to the New World, where they would be free to worship as they pleased, and where they would make a little colony by themselves.