Peter Stuyvesant (1612 – 1672)
Served as the last Dutch Director-General of the colony of New Netherland from 1647 until it was ceded provisionally to the English in 1664.
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I value the blood of one Christian more than that of a hundred Indians.
The Jews who have arrived would nearly all like to remain here.
It would be altogether too tedious to insert here all the annual petitions for powder which were sometimes repeated two or three times a year.
Nothing is of greater importance than the right early instruction of youth.
We pray that the deceitful race - such hateful enemies and blasphemers of the name of Christ -be not allowed to further infect and trouble this new colony.
To let her dail would be the greatest profit both for the company and for the merchants.
It is my intention to proceed slowly with our trenches.
It is not the least anxiety that we have so little powder and lead on hand.
Powder and provisions failing, and no relief or reinforcement being expected, we were necessitated to come to terms with the enemy.
Our little force will march on tomorrow or the day after.
Your patience would fail you if I should continue to relate all the disrespectful speeches and treatment which your servants have been obliged to listen to and patiently to bear.
I shall govern you as a father his children.
I am sustained by the tranquility of an upright and loyal heart.
We derive our authority from God and the West India Company, not from the pleasure of a few ignorant subjects.
The people are grown very wild and loose in their morals.
The design of those commissioners, frigates and warlike force is directed rather against Long Island and these your Honors' possessions, than to the imagined reform of New England.
Praise the Lord, O England's Jerusalem: and Netherland's Zion, praise ye the Lord! He hath secured your gates, and blessed your possessions with peace, even here, where the threatened torch of war was lighted.
* The attack on St. Martin did not succeed as well as I had hoped, no small impediment having been the loss of my right leg.
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