“Pierre” Minuit, for that is what the Hollanders often called him when he was their governor in New Netherland, had been born a French Huguenot in the German city of Wessel. It is not strange that his nationalism was therefore elastic enough to meet almost any demands of his ambition and ability. About the only point at which Minuit might have hesitated in those bigoted times would have been an association with Catholics. Certainly, to serve under the banner of Sweden, a protestant nation allied in the crusade against Spain, required a minimum degree of adaptability, especially as Sweden’s official excuse for a colony in America was that it would provide a base for attacking the common enemy at his weakest spot. Half the subscriptions for the venture in “New Sweden” were raised in Sweden and half in Holland, with Samuel Blommaert the largest single subscriber. Although the Swedish government furnished two well-armed ships, _Kalmar Nyckel_ and _Gripen_, as well as all other weapons and ammunition, the cost of the expedition to the company ran to 33,000 florins by the time it sailed from Gothenburg in the closing days of 1637. If Minuit was lucky however, a single Spanish prize would be enough to cancel out this unexpectedly high debt. Otherwise the New Sweden Company looked to the Indian fur trade to pay it off in a season or two. Almost half of the invested capital was for cargo that consisted mainly of the merchandise needed for the Indian trade. Axes, hatchets, adzes, knives, tobacco pipes, looking-glasses, cheap trinkets, duffels and other cloth weaved in Holland were purchased by Blommaert and shipped to Sweden where they were loaded aboard the two ships. So were a few tools for farming, as well as some spirituous liquors and wines to be traded either in Virginia or the West Indies for tobacco. The tobacco was to be brought into Sweden where people had lately developed a taste for it. But the furs would be sold in Holland, a better market for foreign skins. No act of fate guided Peter Minuit to the site he chose for the Swedish beachhead in America. It was on Minquas Kill, a little stream from the west emptying into the estuary of the Delaware River. The Indians from whom the stream acquired its name had often used its course in their raids against the Lenape. Minuit doubtless knew all about Minquas Kill from reports he had received from Dutch traders when he was Governor of New Netherland. He knew it was navigable by small boats almost to the borders of the Minqua country, where a trade might be joined for the rich pelts then finding their way to the English on Chesapeake Bay. Also, he well knew that the site he selected on this stream was a protected though strategic one from which, once fortified and garrisoned properly, further encroachment on the Dutch West India Company’s South River preserves might be safely launched.