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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Our little force will march on tomorrow or the day after.
* 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.
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 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.
The people are grown very wild and loose in their morals.
We derive our authority from God and the West India Company, not from the pleasure of a few ignorant subjects.
I am sustained by the tranquility of an upright and loyal heart.
I shall govern you as a father his children.
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 value the blood of one Christian more than that of a hundred Indians.
Powder and provisions failing, and no relief or reinforcement being expected, we were necessitated to come to terms with the enemy.
It is not the least anxiety that we have so little powder and lead on hand.
It is my intention to proceed slowly with our trenches.
To let her dail would be the greatest profit both for the company and for the merchants.
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.
Nothing is of greater importance than the right early instruction of youth.
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.
The Jews who have arrived would nearly all like to remain here.
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